#but when it comes to rou i just want to be squished to death

[saxifactumterritum]

I just shoved this on here, but then there was MORE, so now i put a thingy at the top and a read more and complications. google docs hiding things. Anyway, little fic about smc. it's fluffy and cute and vaguely angsty? but soft. canon death mentioned.

One.

Su Mucheng, Chen Guo, and Tang Rou are sitting up above the internet cafe, they’ve pulled the sofa across so they can put their feet against the radiator, because it’s really cold. They were out all morning and now they’re collapsed in a lazy row on the comfy sofa, and Su Mucheng thinks that this is a good kind of life. She has the soles of her feet against the hot radiator, her socks thick enough for it to be just this side of too much.

“Do you ever feel like falling in love?” Su Mucheng asks.

It’s sort of like being in love, this feeling that okay, sitting like this with her friends is afterall the only thing she wants. To be in this moment, with these people, is as big as the entire world, this feeling is so big. It’s like she has a big, purring monster full of content, sitting on her chest and spreading warm all through her like she’s lying in sunshine.

“Just as something to do, to pass the time,” Tang Rou says, nodding.

“That’s right,” Su Mucheng says. “To pass the time. I will take up falling in love as a hobby.”

“Who will you fall in love with first?” Tang Rou asks, tipping her head back, slow, her cheek against the sofa, looking at Su Mucheng behind Chen Gou’s shoulder. Su Mucheng rests her head back, too, and looks across behind Chen Gou, meeting Tang Rou’s gaze. They grin at each other.

“You,” Su Mucheng says, and they laugh. It’s not serious, but it’s true. She does love Tang Rou. She marvels at how safe it is to love her.

“What are you two talking about? Is falling in love a hobby? You’re being philosophical again,” Chen Gou says, grumbling and shoving herself between them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Su Mucheng loves her as well, grouchy and complaining and sharing chocolate while she complains about them talking nonsense, warm between them. It’s not a big sofa, they’re squished together, Chen Guo’s grumpy wriggling shifts them about until Su Mucheng has her cheek against Chen Guo’s shoulder and her arm around Chen Guo’s waist.

“I like falling in love,” Tang Rou says. “I think I’ll fall in love with you, Guo Guo.”

“Hey! You’re meant to already love me,” Chen Guo says.

“Ok, I’ll fall in love with you again, then. Why not?” Tang Rou says.

Chen Guo complains some more about it being nonsense but she’s got pink cheeks and is pleased about it. Tang Rou smiles a smug little smile. Su Mucheng yawns. It’s so warm and Chen Gou is very comfy to curl against.

Two.

Xiao Shiqin is standing awkwardly outside the tea place. His trousers are a little bit too short. He’s holding onto the edge of his jacket for something to do with his hands. He spots Su Mucheng coming down the pavement and raises a hand, holding it at an odd angle. She has stopped to take in his gawky awkwardness, and now she is stood there and she can’t fight the smile, and people have to walk around her, and Xiao Shiqin is rubbing at the back of his head and looking around like he’s not sure what to do. Su Mucheng laughs, bending with it, and has to rush the last few feet between them. She comes to a stop just in front of him, bouncing with her momentum, tucking her hands behind her back and grinning up at him.

“Hi,” Xiao Shiqin says, amusement not managing to wash away his awkwardness, but it softens him. He has his hair unstyled, a bit messy. “I think I got the time wrong.”

“No, I’m late,” she says, and laughs at him for assuming he’s the one who got it wrong. “Come on, I’m hungry, I’m going to buy snacks as well as tea. Did you stand out here the whole time? You could have gone inside and sat down.”

“I wasn’t sure…” Xiao Shiqin trails off.

It’s funny. When he plays Glory he’s so self-assured, and most of the time he’s like that out in this real world, too. He’ll give out reassurance, or stand up to Tao Xuan for her, or take his own initiative and go to fight for Ye Xiu and Glory. He has that same conviction Ye Xiu has, that Glory is a good place and brings good to the world. But he’s this, too. This tall awkwardness, trying to give way to her when he’s clearly not sure what she wants from him. This edge of uncertainty, she likes it. She likes his convictions, too. And his clever manipulations, hiding his soft, soft heart. But she likes that she has this power to make him so artless.

They find a window seat, and the spring sunshine falls across his face. He’s looking out at the street, distracted, and while he’s not paying attention his hands are busy on their own, building something - he’s tearing up a sheet of paper, folding so he has tent-shapes, balancing them on each other. Su Mucheng watches, happy with the quiet between them. It’s not a bad sort of quiet, it’s a settled kind of quiet. He has his grace back, now, used already to her company again. She finds herself breathing in sync, the flower pattern on his cup is pink against his hand when he reaches for it, and she finds herself falling in love with that.

Three.

“Oh, you’re here,” Su Mucheng says, when Happy plays Tiny Herb and she walks around a corner and finds Ye Xiu sitting on a step, waiting for her.

“Yep.”

They walk, they don’t need to think about it or talk about it - they’re going for ice cream. It wasn’t until she was older that she realised just how young Ye Xiu was, when Su Muqiu died. Even then she knew how thin the obligation was which tethered him to her, and he knew it too. But he was so young, and he didn’t know how to make her the promise he wanted, it was too big for him. So he just bought her ice cream, and said that he would get her ice cream every time one of them won in Glory. She knew she couldn’t play until she was eighteen, and she was young enough that eighteen seemed like an eternity away. He’s thirty, now, and hasn’t won a professional game since he retired, and they get ice cream when they lose as well.

“I’ll beat big-eyed Wang next time,” Su Mucheng says.

“He’s retiring, at the end of the season,” Ye Xiu says.

“I’ll definitely beat him,” Su Mucheng says. “I will send him off well.”

“I’ll rely on you, then,” Ye Xiu says, as if it was him who asked her to beat Wang Jiexi.

Stepping into the ice cream shop, it’s the same as so many times before, it’s always the same, each time it’s like a pin stuck into her life, something firm and certain to hold the pieces together. Ye Xiu talks about a game, analysing how she can beat Wang Jiexi. When he talks about Glory he has a different tone than when he talks about anything else. It’s just a game, but she never reminds anyone of that. She doesn’t love Glory, she loves them. She loves Ye Xiu, who buys her ice cream and makes her silent promises and always stubbornly refuses to leave her behind even if it’s harder.

“That Gao Yingjie is difficult,” Su Mucheng says, and Ye Xiu smiles at her like she’s solved the problems of the universe.

She knows how much Ye Xiu loved Su Muqiu. Sometimes, when he looks at her, he sees him. He doesn’t mean to, and he tries to hide it, and he never lets himself forget that she’s an entire person of her own, but she catches it sometimes. In the very edges of his eyes, this tucked away grief that she isn’t him. So, so tiny. She can turn away to her ice cream and find the guilty echo. He’s not her brother, her brother is gone. Su Muqiu left them and isn’t coming back, and neither of them are him, they can’t live up to him, and they can’t stop trying.

“I’ll beat them next time,” Su Mucheng says.

Ye Xiu never tells her that she doesn’t have to, but he turns up when she loses, and he loves her even when she loses. This, this is all they have to do. Su Muqiu was a boy who did everything in the world to take care of them, so all they have to do is take care of each other. They can do that for him, even if they can’t always win.