"Xiao Xingchen. Your hair is a mess."
It wasn't. But he'd said it, and Xiao Xingchen was going to believe him.
"Is it, now?" Xiao Xingchen said.
Xue Yang smiled. It was a good thing, to be believed.
"Come here and I'll fix it."
Xiao Xingchen came toward him, so pretty, he was so pretty. Whenever he came over it was like he was HIS.
Xue Yang reached for the blindfold first. His hand touched Xiao Xingchen's, already on the string.
He let Xiao Xingchen have it, this time.
He didn't know why, but he really wanted to take it off.
"Give me that," he said instead.
And Xiao Xingchen didn't stop him from taking it. It was warm and not completely dry.
In some ways, wanting a person alive was like wanting them dead.
He wrapped the cloth around his wrist and got to work.
Actually Xiao Xingchen kept his hair very nice.
Xue Yang unfastened it from the top.
"You hopeless little wretch," he said, the way you would talk to a horse or a dog or anything that could understand your sound but not your words.
Xiao Xingchen laughed, a little bit.
"Where would I be without you?"
Xue Yang laughed too, but not for the same reason.
He started unweaving the strands. They were warm underneath, further down. Warm and smooth and combed less than an hour ago, beautiful.
He ran a handful through his fingers. Didn't even catch. But he ran it through again and again, because Xiao Xingchen had done his hair badly that day, because he had told him that and he believed him, because he was here to fix it for him, it was warm and smooth and it was all he wanted to do right now.
It was the kind of thing you would see animals do. Animals who killed and fucked and sometimes killed what they fucked or fucked what they killed.
He liked animals.
He wasn't going to use a comb.
He did have a comb. It was Xiao Xingchen's.
He'd taken it when Xiao Xingchen had put it down once. It was brilliant, he was gonna wait for Xiao Xingchen to tell him he'd lost it, and then he'd say, Well, I guess you'll just have to use mine now, and then every day after that Xiao Xingchen would come to him and ask for a comb.
It was gonna be wonderful.
But the son of a bitch had gone and bought another one without complaining that he'd lost the first one.
So now Xue Yang had a comb, and he wasn't going to tell Xiao Xingchen.
Xiao Xingchen, now, Xiao Xingchen still hadn't asked him to use anything but his fingers. A man could be as beautiful or as refined as anything in the world, but a man was just an animal, no matter how he tried to forget it.
Xue Yang didn't forget that about himself, but sometimes he forgot it about Xiao Xingchen.
"Did you know that you're beautiful?" Xue Yang said.
Xiao Xingchen shook his head just a little beneath his hands.
"Thank you for reminding me."
Xiao Xingchen was never going to call him beautiful, but that was all right. He was something other than beautiful.
There, a single little knot, no more than two strands. The man was fucking hopeless.
He pulled out a hair, just because. Xiao Xingchen didn't flinch. It was only one, after all.
He loved that about Xiao Xingchen. You could hurt him just enough, get that downward twitch of his mouth that made your insides feel giddy, but Xiao Xingchen wouldn't say anything, he knew you didn't MEAN to do it, and you didn't mean to do it, you just loved it too much, you didn't mean anything you did, except when you did, which was always.
He wrapped the hair around his finger. He couldn't feel it anymore.
He loved Xiao Xingchen so much it made him laugh.
"Why are you laughing?" Xiao Xingchen said.
He could tell he was smiling.
"Oh, you know," said Xue Yang. "Just remembering something."
And Xiao Xingchen believed him because he'd said it.