Chapter Text
Xiao's life might have gone so much differently if he hadn’t waited until the last minute to take the trash out. This was sadly not a metaphor. Sometimes mundane tasks just slipped his mind until they couldn't be ignored.
So, it was late when he brought the trash bag to the disposal area, which was lit only by one flickering fluorescent lamp. Xiao wasn’t bothered by the darkness, but he did admit it felt like a horror movie set. He was honestly more concerned with being knifed than haunted.
He'd just pulled the netting over the trash bags when he heard running footsteps coming toward him. Xiao looked up to see a figure bolting in from the street. The first thought that flashed through his head was, This is it. I'm finally going to get knifed.
Xiao tried to dodge, but he was a moment too late. The runner cannoned into him, nearly throwing him off balance. They let out a wordless shriek as they latched onto Xiao's arm, and for a millisecond, Xiao almost entertained the idea of ghosts. But then the person spoke.
“I'm really sorry, but I'm being chased by these guys and I need you to scare them off!”
Xiao's thought process instantly reset. Now that they were in the light, he could see this strange figure was just a person, about his stature and probably age as well. They wore one of those black masks that covered the lower half of their face, so all Xiao could see were their bright green eyes. They gazed back at him plaintively.
“What?” Xiao asked, his mouth and brain horribly out of sync.
“Long story short,” the person said with a nervous giggle, “I might have made some people very angry.”
Right as they spoke, two men appeared from around the corner at a run. One shouted something unintelligible in Xiao and the stranger's direction. The stranger ducked behind Xiao, still clinging to his arm.
Okay, well. It wasn’t like Xiao was inexperienced in this area. He had no idea what the stranger had done to piss off the men chasing them, but Xiao’s conscience wasn’t going to let him hand them over to be beaten up (or worse).
The two men slowed down, but continued on the warpath to where Xiao stood. Both of them towered over him in what they probably thought was an intimidating manner.
“Hey, kid,” one said. “Step aside.”
“I'm not a kid,” Xiao said.
“Whatever. Just get out of our way. Unless you want to have the shit kicked out of you, too.”
Adrenaline rushed through Xiao's veins. Tough guys like this were all the same. No doubt they talked a big game, but had nothing to back it up with. Xiao lifted his chin.
“Why? You think you can scare me with that weak threat?” he said.
A vein pulsed in the man's forehead. He glanced at his companion. It was good to be right; if they really meant business, they would've started swinging by now.
The stranger said, “My friend here knows martial arts. If you want to get to me, you're gonna have to go through him, and I don’t think you gentlemen will enjoy that.”
It was probably meant as a bluff, but they weren’t wrong.
“You little--!” The other man reached for the stranger.
Xiao grabbed his wrist and twisted. The man let out a cry of pain. His friend looked startled, then tried to swing at Xiao's head. He missed. Xiao let go of the first man and delivered a gut punch to the second that left him staggering backwards, wheezing.
“Try it again,” Xiao growled. “I dare you.”
The first man backed away, cradling his wrist. “You'll be fucking sorry you messed with us,” he hissed.
“No, you messed with me.” Xiao took a step forward, in case the point hadn’t been made clear already. “Now walk away while you still can.”
The pair hesitated. Xiao didn’t have high hopes. If they were smart, they'd give up here, but neither seemed particularly bright. However, the gut-punched one shook his head at the other. Looked like he had some common sense, at least.
The one with the twisted wrist spat at Xiao's feet, then turned and stalked away, his buddy close behind. Xiao let out a breath. He had sort of been looking forward to a fight. It was probably better that things hadn’t escalated further. Getting involved in other people's business was a surefire way to land himself back in hot water, and Zhongli wouldn’t be able to bail him out this time.
The stranger whistled appreciatively. “Lucky me,” they said. “You actually do know martial arts.”
Xiao turned to look at them. Now that the moment had passed, he could absorb more details. Aside from the mask, they were dressed pretty plainly in shorts, an oversized shirt, and a bucket hat. They also wore a fanny pack cross-body style. Xiao guessed they might be a tourist, given the obvious accent. The other thing that stood out were the small braids hanging on either side of their face. It was very… cute.
In fact, they seemed eerily familiar, though Xiao couldn’t remember where he’d seen them before.
The stranger squeezed Xiao's arm—harder than Xiao was expecting—and leaned against him. “Thank you! You saved me!”
Xiao hastily pulled his arm free. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but--"
“I'm Venti.” Their eyes crinkled in a smile. “What's your name?”
“Xiao.”
“It's nice to meet you, Xiao.” Venti took his hand and shook it. “Is it okay if I ask for one more favor?”
Xiao hesitated. What was happening right now? He felt like he'd gotten on a roller coaster by mistake.
Venti laughed. “It's nothing bad, I promise! Could you walk with me back to my hotel? I don’t know if those guys will show up again.”
No way, Xiao thought. But when he opened his mouth, the word that came out was, “Sure.”
“Great!”
Xiao mentally kicked himself. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t be getting involved any more than he already had. Though he had to admit, he was a little worried about what might happen if Venti went back alone. They'd backed off, but those guys had seemed pretty angry.
Alright, Xiao decided. I’ll go with them as far as their hotel and that will be that. He sighed. “Where are you staying?”
There was a beat. Then Venti said, “I actually… don’t remember the name. But I do remember it was on the big strip in the city center!”
“Well, that narrows it down,” Xiao deadpanned.
Venti huffed. “I'm a busy guy, okay? I don’t have enough brain space to remember everything. Besides, I only got here this morning.”
“Your hotel seems like a pretty important thing to just forget.”
“That's why I need your help,” Venti whined. “I don’t know my way around yet.”
“Fine, fine,” Xiao said. “I'll go with you. But you should write it down next time. Don’t you have a room key or something?”
Venti shook his head. “My manager has it. She probably thought it would keep me from leaving on my own.”
Manager? Xiao didn’t have time to question it because Venti started dragging him away from the trash disposal area. He stumbled along in a daze. This didn’t feel real. Maybe he was actually asleep and this was a very vivid dream. It wasn’t that people never asked for his help with things; it had just never happened like this before. He usually thought it through a bit more before agreeing, too.
Venti chatted as they walked. “I bet you're wondering why those guys were after me. It's actually a pretty funny story. I was at this bar, and everyone was having a great time until those two came in. They were bothering people, so I asked them to cut it out—I was pretty polite about it, I think—but they wouldn’t listen, so I sort of took things into my own hands.”
“How?” Xiao said warily.
“I spilled my drinks on them. And then I tripped one of them when they tried to stand up.”
Xiao scrubbed his hand down his face. No wonder Venti had gotten chased.
“I tried to make it look like an accident, but I guess it was obvious, heh,” Venti went on.
“You shouldn’t start a fight you don’t intend to win,” Xiao said.
“Yeah… I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing, though. They were killing the vibe.”
Xiao supposed there was something admirable about that. He probably wouldn’t have been able to sit by either.
The two men didn’t show up again on the whole walk to the city center. Venti talked the whole way about nothing in particular. Normally Xiao would have found this annoying, but silence would have been more awkward. He didn’t know how to do small talk. Eventually, they reached the main strip.
Xiao preferred to avoid the city center since it gave him sensory overload. He could handle it in small doses, but the lights and sounds were a stark contrast from his relatively quiet neighborhood. He hoped they could find Venti's hotel quickly so this could be over.
“Okay, I think I remember something about the hotel,” Venti said. “It has a super fancy restaurant attached. Liu something.”
“Liuli Pavilion?” Xiao guessed.
Venti snapped his fingers. “That's it!”
Whoever Venti was, he was either rich or knew someone with money. Staying in the city center was expensive, and Liuli Pavilion was particularly upscale. Venti didn’t look like a wealthy person. He was a foreigner, so maybe he just wore it differently.
Xiao had actually been to Liuli Pavilion before, with Zhongli and Ganyu. He'd had to wear a tie. In all honesty, he never thought he’d come here again. The strip was buzzing with activity even this late at night, brimming with tourists and rich locals alike. There was nothing that visibly differentiated Xiao from them, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t belong here. Not without his old employer at his side.
Venti jogged ahead as they approached the hotel's revolving doors. Xiao supposed that was it. He'd successfully escorted the hapless tourist. Now it was time to go back home, take a sleeping pill, and pray he could get a few hours of sleep before the nightmares woke him up.
“Well,” Xiao said. “I'll just…”
Venti spun around. “I really owe you one. How about a drink?”
“No thanks.”
“Aw.” Venti slouched. “Please? My treat. I swear I’m good for it.”
“I don’t drink.” Xiao could see into the lobby from here. Someone was pacing around the fountain in the middle, a phone held to her ear. “You don’t have to pay me back.”
“Hm, but what if I want to get to know you better?” Venti asked. He put his arms behind his back. “We went through a life-or-death situation together.”
“I wouldn’t call that life-or-death,” Xiao said.
Venti ignored this. “You’re really cool, and I’ve decided that we should be friends.”
“W-wait.” Xiao was struggling to keep up. “Don’t I get a say?”
Venti seemed like he was about to respond when the pacing woman stopped in her tracks. She stared directly at Venti, who appeared to notice her as well.
“Uh oh,” Venti said.
The woman made a beeline for them, moving with shocking speed. Xiao asked, “Who is that?”
“My manager. You should probably go. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” Venti laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. “I think I’m gonna get yelled at.”
Venti’s manager pushed through one of the regular doors. Xiao figured he should take Venti’s advice and leave before he got caught in the middle of an argument. As he backed away, Venti pulled down his mask.
“Hi, Jean! I’m back!” he sing-songed, waving.
Xiao froze. Time slowed to a crawl as he processed what his eyes were showing him. He couldn’t believe it. This had to be a dream. There was no way that the random idiot he’d saved was—
“Where were you?” the manager demanded. “I just got off the phone with the police.”
“I’m fine. This guy made sure of that.” Venti gestured at Xiao, and that was when time began flowing normally again.
“I have to go,” Xiao blurted. “Good night.” And then he ran for it. He thought he heard Venti calling after him, but he didn’t turn around or stop until he was far away from the city center.
Xiao caught his breath leaning against a random lamp post. He was the real idiot. How had he not recognized who Venti really was the whole time they’d been talking? Xiao knocked his forehead against the post. Stupid, stupid.
He had never, in all his years of living, expected he would meet Barbatos—international idol—by the trash disposal outside his apartment building. Xiao replayed every beat of the evening, growing increasingly mortified as he did. He didn’t know what was worse: not realizing sooner or having acted like an asshole.
That sealed it. Xiao would just never leave his apartment again. That would be best for everyone. He banged his head against the post one last time, gritted his teeth, and let out a short, angry scream.
A light went on in a nearby apartment window. Someone inside shouted, “Shut the fuck up!”
Xiao kicked the lamp post in response. Predictably, it didn’t make him feel any better. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked home.
*
Xiao would never admit this to another living soul, but Barbatos’ music had gotten him through some of the darkest periods in his life. He wouldn’t be caught dead at a concert or a fanmeet, but he did quietly order the albums online. They were kept on a lower shelf in Xiao’s bedroom, where they wouldn’t be noticed if someone happened to visit. (Not that people visited him often.)
To Xiao, Barbatos was the embodiment of everything he was not: happy, free, fully confident in who he was. His music made the shadows in Xiao’s head retreat. They were all about living life to the fullest, having hope when the world was turned against you, and having fun (something that was almost entirely foreign to Xiao).
And now he was going to have to give away all his albums, delete Barbatos’ songs off his phone, and never listen to his music again. Just looking at the albums lined up on the shelf made Xiao cringe. He’d thought that if he ever did get a chance to meet his idol, it would be in a controlled space. He would have said something normal, like, Your music means a lot to me. Then he would’ve shaken Barbatos’ hand, gotten an autograph, and lived out the rest of his life in peace.
Xiao’s idol had watched him punch a guy in the stomach. And then he’d been weird and stand-offish. Xiao groaned aloud. He hoped that any minute now he would open his eyes and everything that had transpired had been just a weird dream.
By the time he’d gotten back to the apartment, he’d been exhausted enough to fall asleep on the living room futon. He had woken up again three hours later in a cold sweat and gone into his bedroom, where he had so far failed to drift off again. All he could do was stare at the ceiling and loop everything Barbatos/Venti/whatever he really called himself had said.
I've decided that we should be friends. He'd really said that. To someone he'd just met. Xiao couldn’t figure out if Barbatos was actually very different in person, or if he was exactly who he appeared to be in the media. The question would likely haunt him until the day he died.
Xiao covered his face with his hands. At least the chances of running into Barbatos again were astronomically low. He wouldn’t get a second chance to put his foot in his mouth.
But he was completely wrong about that.