#For those unaware “Gimme some sugar��� means “Give me a kiss”

[xxinksxx]

I just showed this post to my friend and he replied "They're attracted to the smell of sugar." completely missing the humor in the post. So I responded "Stop kissing then. God damned allos."

hello my name is Very tiny flying insect i see you’ve got an uncovered beverage outdoors. Can i fall into it and kill myself please please please please please please please please please please

[antiquecompass]

So I couldn’t help myself and here’s the second part of today’s Dynamic post for The Untamed Fest

See, the thing was, Lan Sizhui was easy to love. With his soft smile and kind eyes and always smelling like fresh cotton and good things. He wasn’t arrogant, even if he had every right to be, and he quietly led by example, totally unaware that he had most of the school, the town, and generally anyone he met, wrapped around his fingers.

So no one, least of all Jingyi himself, would be surprised to find out Jingyi loved Sizhui. In fact, when he sat back and really thought about, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he didn’t love Sizhui. 

Being in love with Sizhui? Now, that was an entirely different matter.

It was hard as hell.

It was hard as hell to not lean over the table while they studied and kissed that spot on his cheek, right over his mole. It was impossible to not reach over and grab his hand as they walked, a constant anchor since they were kids, that had started to mean so much more to Jingyi as they grew older. Every single time Sizhui laughed or smiled or did anything to cause his eyes to crinkle up in joy, Jingyi had to pinch himself or bite his own tongue to not just scream, I love you I love you I love you, over and over again.

His parents had been absolutely no help when he went to them with his problem. He should’ve seen that coming considering who they were--the most flighty of artists who raised him to believe in things like, truth, valor, true love, soul mates, and romance. They were loving parents, but also absent, as they spent more time traveling the world in pursuit of finding their bliss and following nature’s true beauty or whatever other bullshit they’d decided on that month to justify their traveling of the world. And even though they’d left Jingyi behind (granted with the family to be raised in a normal, stable, childhood), they always answered his calls.

When he’d called them with this problem, his father had sighed dreamily into the phone about young love while his mother told him how much she’d always liked Sizhui. So, no help there.

Great Uncle Lan was an option Jingyi refused to even think about. The man would probably give him a detention for daring to have emotions.

Headmaster Lan, Cousin Xichen, would be kind and understanding and offer him some sort of baked good that he’d tried to make on his own, but would in fact taste like concrete, because Cousin Xichen was a disaster in the kitchen. And the laundry room. And a menace in general to household chores, even though he really, really tried. So Jingyi would probably go over there for advice, end up eating a brownie made with salt instead of sugar, and fixing Xichen’s dishwasher. Again. For the fifth time. All without actually getting any helpful advice besides a pat on his shoulder and an assurance that he was a good kid.

Auntie Molly, proudly named after Molly Brown and the breaking of over a couple centuries of family naming traditions, was the one currently boarding him during his parents latest adventure. She was one of the more unique Lans. Free-spirited. Communed with nature type. Claimed she could talk to ghosts and see past lives, and Jingyi would call bullshit, but the woman had a talent for guessing the lotto numbers right. She never played, because she claimed it would be unethical, and besides Lans didn’t gamble, but she hadn’t been wrong yet. She’d probably take his hand and try to predict his future and Jingyi didn’t want to know yet if Fate wanted to fuck him over or throw him a gimme, so she was a hard pass.

There was one solution. Perhaps obvious, but so, so awkward.

So with no other viable options, it was time for Jingyi to undertake Mission Ask My Best Friend’s Father If He Thinks I Have Even An Iota Of A Chance In Dating His Son. 

************

“Jingyi, is that a golf cart?”

Jingyi turned from the entrance of the Lan-Wei greenhouse, where his teacher, his best friend’s father, who was also his pseudo-cousin, stood with a garden apron covered in flying pigs over his clothes and lime green work gloves on his hands.

None of his fellow students would ever believe how relaxed their exalted Hanguang-Jun was in the confines of his own home. Jingyi had seen him in bunny slippers. Multiple times.

“Jingyi?” Cousin Zhan asked.

“Yes,” Jingyi said, turning back from the golf cart he’d parked in the driveway. “Well, you know, I can’t drive a real car yet, and I wasn’t going to skate or bike here, and my dirtbike is still recovering from Zizhen’s attempt to ride it. So, I borrowed Aunt Molly’s golf cart.”

“And they let you out of the neighborhood with that?

“Me and Officer Shelton have an understanding,” Jingyi said.

Cousin Zhan had that look on his face that meant he was debating if he needed to give Jingyi a punishment for whatever he’d done this time. He finally shrugged.

“Not your circus, not your monkeys?” Jingyi asked.

Cousin Zhan nodded before returning his greenhouse. “I assume you know Sizhui is with his cousins in Boston for the weekend.”

“Yes. I actually, I came here to see you, Sir--Teacher--Mister--Cousin.”

A clatter of garden shears and a broken pot made Jingyi wince as Lan Zhan turned back to him, eyes wide and face almost stunned.

“Is it happening?” he asked.

“Uh,” Jingyi looked around for anyone who might be of help if he was about to be killed with a rake. “Is what happening?”

“Are you not here to ask if you can date Sizhui?”

“How do you know that!”

Jingyi only yelled loud enough to startle the crows in the garden. Hopefully Sizhui’s dad didn’t hear him, locked up in his tower working, or else he’d never live it down.

************

A warm cup of tea and a plate of gingersnaps were set down in front of Jingyi. He didn’t like gingersnaps or fruity teas, but all of the Elder Lans tended to default to them when it came to comfort food. Or when they thought someone needed to be calmed down.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” Jingyi said as he put a sugar cube in his tea under his cousin’s judging eyes. 

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said. 

The flying pig apron and green garden gloves were gone to leave a man in worn jeans and an old Vanessa-Mae t-shirt. He looked far less intimidating now. More like the family member who had hugged Jingyi and rocked him back to sleep the first time his parents had dropped him off before going to see the world. He was the adult who always took him to the dentists and the doctors and tried to include him in as many family events as possible, even now when it was obvious he knew how Jingyi’s feelings had started to change towards his one, and only, child. 

“I do want to date Sizhui,” Jingyi said, the words starting to tumble out of his mouth under those trusting eyes. “And I know it’s up to him, how he feels, that it’s his decision. That he’d respect what you and Mr. Lan-Wei would feel, but in the end would follow his own heart. He’s fair like that. And I don’t know, maybe part of me came here in the hopes you’d talk me out of it, because, l, honestly, Cousin, I’m fucking terrified.”

“I know,” he said. Warm fingers patted Jingyi’s wrist. “It’s a leap of faith, even when you’re in love with someone you know and trust. That fear lives in you, the doubt, that maybe you’re not good enough for them, or exciting enough to hold their attention, or that they’ll move on from you, getting tired of waiting.”

That all sounded pretty damn familiar. 

“But Jingyi, you also have to remember who Sizhui is.”

Kind. Caring. Trustworthy. Gentle. Determined. Stubborn. Defiant when he felt he was right and someone else was wrong. Quietly sarcastic in a way few got to hear. And while polite and willing to listen, would never bend from the beliefs he held true to himself.

“I think it’d break my heart even more if he lets me down all gentle and nice. Because, like, I couldn’t even be hurt. I shouldn’t be anyway because his feelings are his feelings and they’re valid, but I’m like a little moth flitting around and he’s the friggin’ moon.”

“Then perhaps you need to fly higher,” Lan Zhan said with the small quirk of a smile. “Is he worth trying for? Even with the risk of failure?”

“How is that even a question?” Jingyi asked.

“Then you have your answer,” he said. 

“Right,” Jingyi said. “Right. I do. I can do this.” He looked down at his hands. “A timeline. I need a due date. Halloween? No, that’s his dad’s birthday, that would be awkward. The 21st. I’ll ask him out on the 21st.”

His cousin looked seconds away from laughing at him, but he just lifted his own cup of tea and took a sip.

“The 21st,” Jingyi repeated. “I can do this.”