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modern au he xuan loves to pretend like shi qingxuan is annoying & clingy but u know he tells them the passwords to his phone & the lock on his door, lets them use his netflix account, & always lights that one lavender candle they like when he knows they’re coming over
sqx opens up hx’s phone one day when hx is busy & they’re bored, then changes the homescreen to a selfie of themself. does hx change it back later? no. does anyone need to know that? definitely not. does hua cheng find out anyway & tease him relentlessly about it? certainly.
sqx only finds out later that hx hasn’t changed the photo, & then they decide it’s only fair that they get to make their own homescreen a photo of hx in return. hx refuses; 10 minutes of negotiating later, both of them are changing their homescreen to a selfie of them together
I imagine the switch between friendship & romance being sudden yet natural; sqx just lets themself into hx’s apartment one day while he’s cooking dinner, lights the lavender candle sitting at the centre of the dining table, then leans up to give hx a kiss on the cheek
at first hx doesn’t know how to react because while sqx has always liked contact, they’ve never taken things further than hugs & handholding. & suddenly he realises that sqx knows everything about him, has their stuff in his apartment, & he feels cold when they’re not around
the scent of that lavender candle has started to bring him comfort purely because it signals sqx’s presence, & he finds himself watching all of the shows in sqx’s netflix history so that he can listen to them gush about their favourite characters
& of course there was the selfie of sqx as his homescreen that he refused to change even though he couldn’t put his finger on why. he realises, as he stands in his kitchen with his noodles burning & sqx staring up at him, that he’s been in love with them for a long time
he doesn’t know when or how it happened—he’s always found sqx’s clinginess annoying, yet he can’t deny them anything & he can’t imagine his life without them at his side. he doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t need to say anything—sqx knows him too well, after all
later that night, they both once again change their phone homescreen photos—this time, they use matching photos of the two of them, sqx beaming at the camera while hx presses a soft kiss to their temple, unable to hide the curve of his own smile
