tucked in small moments

“Can I kiss you?” Xiao blurts. “Not—not because you called me beautiful,” he feels the immediate need to clarify, for some archon-forsaken reason. He then seriously considers spearing himself through the throat.Aether blinks. “You—you’d want to do that?” he asks, and it hits Xiao, all at once, how this boy doesn’t know. Doesn’t realize he’s been making Xiao question everything he thought he knew about himself. Everything that he thought had long been set in stone.“I do,” Xiao whispers, like he’s scared of it, because he is. (A little. Just a little.) “I really do.”“Oh,” Aether says, “that’s—that’s great. Because I do too. In case that wasn’t, like, pathetically obvious. I like you a lot, Xiao.”Or: Two boys sitting on the same bed, braiding each other's hair, because they are, in fact, gay.