Work Text:
“Gumi!”
Ye Xiu gets up from his seat quickly, table rocking in the process. The adorable and cute and sweet and perfect and amazing Pro Gamer goes beet red at his little mishap. “S-sorry, I was just… so excited to see you. You look amazing, by the way. What did you use on your feathers?”
I shake my head. “Honk.”
“Oh, wow! You’ll have to show me that brand some time. Maybe after our date…?” Ye Xiu giggles. “Let me help you up.”
Gently, Ye Xiu lifts me up, fingers imprinting on the soft down of my body. If geese could blush, I would be so red. There weren’t too many benefits with having such a fowl body, but now I was grateful.
“Gumi,” Ye Xiu murmurs softly, lips a feather’s breadth away from my geese ears. If he moved just a little bit closer- I closed my eyes in anticipation, heart beating faster. “Did you gain weight recently?”
“ HONK!!!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Ye Xiu places me on the table with a light plop . “It’s just a prank, bro. Besides, that kind of stuff doesn’t even matter anyways. More fluff to hold onto, yeah?:” He says with a wink.
I let out another small honk of indignation, before turning my attention to the more important matter at hand - a spread of dishes only found in goose hell. Not goose heaven.
Geese don’t go to heaven.
Ye Xiu points out each dish. “I made sure to just get your favorites; Rolled oats, raspberries, some vegetable peels, peas in a dish of water… And I know it’s unhealthy, but I even got you some chunks of fresh bread. I really, really hope you enjoy everything.” He glances back and forth between me and the food demurely, flush getting just a little bit deeper every time our eyes meet.
“Honk~ ♡”
Mmmn. Peas in water. So good.
“Ye Xiu!” A loud voice cuts into our date. I don’t mind, it’s not unsurprising for fans to find my boyfriend in public, and usually ignoring them works out better in the end. But Ye Xiu frowns and gets up, stepping in between me and the annoying brat.
“Wang Jiexi. What are you doing here?”
I peek out from behind Ye Xiu, craning my long neck to try and get a view. Wang Jiexi bows in front of Ye Xiu, thrusting out a beautiful bouquet. “Please, take me back!”
For a second, it’s like the world melts away around the duo, the sky turning a pastel pink and sparkles rising from the ground. I try to nip at one, but I miss. Turns out light isn’t tangent.
“Take you back?” Ye Xiu’s voice is filled with all the fury of a competitive Pokemon trainer losing with six legendaries in their team. “We’re over, Wang Jiexi. We were over the moment you called out a cacti’s name in bed, of all places. What the hell even is an Echinopsis bridgesii? And the utter audacity of you.”
He grabs the bouquet and throws it out into the street. A conveniently incoming truck smashes into the bouquet, filling the air with petals. “Foxglove? Lily of the Valley? I don’t care about whatever they mean, what I care about is the fact that you chose flowers poisonous to geese!”
“I can ex-”
“Shut it. Get out of here, Jiexi. I never want to see you again.”
Wang Jiexi’s retreating form and Ye Xiu’s cold face makes for a beautiful scene against the backdrop of gently falling petals.
Probably. Most of what I could see from this angle was Ye Xiu’s flat ass. But it was okay that his ass was flat! Geese don’t really have asses, anyways. What mattered was the ass of the soul, and Ye Xiu’s soul ass was juicy .
“Gumi, are you okay?” Ye Xiu turns around, concerned. “I’m so sorry…”
I give him a small honk of acknowledgement. I get it. Crazy exes were painful. Never dating a duck ever, ever again.
“Now, we can get back to our-”
A brick flies past his head, crashing into a window. Faintly, I can hear the startled screams of passersby, and the unfortunate realization that the brick landed with a soft thump gives me… goosebumps.
“HONK???”
“Yeah, what the fuck.”
“How did that miss? We’re like, three meters away.” Three meters away stands three members of Blue Rain; Lu Hanwen, Huang Shaotian, and Yu Wenzhou.
Yu Wenzhou ruffles Lu Hanwen’s hair, giving words of comfort. “It’s okay, we still have more bricks.”
“Yeah! Just do as we practiced, you’re bound to hit at least once!” Huang Shaotian hands Hanwen another brick with pride. “Good thing I brought a whole crate.”
“You- You lot are insane!” Ye Xiu picks me up, cradling me in his strong gamer arms. Yes I might have died, but now it was worth it. I give Ye Xiu a small peck on the cheek, and he throws me a small smile and holds me tighter. “Are you trying to kill me and Gumi?”
Yu Wenzhou shrugged. “Maybe you shouldn’t have cheated on us.”
“That is literally no excuse??? Murder is murder???”
“It’s fine, Lu Hanwen is throwing the bricks.”
“How is that fine?”
“Um, I’m literally a minor,” Lu Hanwen chimes in.
Damn. I shake my goose head. Lu Hanwen really got us there.
“Fine, but,” Ye Xiu glares at the not-minors. “You two are still complacent. Really? Cheating ?”
Huang Shaotian shrugs. “One of your team members has a whole bilibili channel dedicated to brick throwing. How could we resist? To be honest, the cheating was kind of hot.”
“Ugh.” Lu Hanwen groans, covering his ears. I wish I could do the same, but my wings just don’t work that way. “I’m going to get a drink, text me when you need me to throw more bricks.”
I glare at Huang Shaotian, relishing in how he all but shrivels up. Ready to honk down all my fury, I open my beak and-
“Ye Xiu!”
For what must have been the nth time today, someone else calls out Ye Xiu’s name.
Zhang Jiale comes to a full stop by Huang Shaotian, panting and heaving. “Give me a second. To catch my. Breath. I ran all. The way here. Which was painful. Never doing that again.”
Yu Wenzhou furrows his brows. “You ran?”
“Yes. That is what. I just said. My car broke. And I crashed my bike. Into a tree. Ow.”
“Why didn’t you just call a taxi?”
“...”
Ye Xiu and I just shake our heads. Now the poor man was the fourth to arrive. The fifth, technically. Not even 3.
“That is a great question!” Zhang Jiale forces out a smile, clapping Yu Wenzhou on the back. “That must be why you’re a Master Tactician, eh? … Anyways! Ye Xiu! Please take me back! I had flowers for you but I might have lost them on the way. What’s with the goose, by the way?”
“You…” Ye Xiu seethes, voice calm yet furious. “This goose is my beloved Gumi, and it would be best for you to address them as such.”
Beloved? I burrow my head into Ye Xiu’s armpit, trying to hide my face from the world. Mmmn, gamer musk.
“Wh-” Zhang Jiale sputters, pointing at me. “You’re dating a goose??? Isn’t that wrong on so many levels, holy shit.”
“Not as wrong as Huang Shaotian being into netorare.”
“It was a joke!”
Yu Wenzhou shakes his head. “Shaotian, there’s no getting out of this one.”
“Oh my god.” Zhang Jiale rubs his temples. “I’m so tired of all of you and we’ve only barely hit the minimum word count.”
“The what?”
“Honk,” I honk.
“Right? Gumi, I’m so sorry our date had to go like this.” Ye Xiu gives me a small kiss on the head. All the frustration, all the anger I felt, it all melts away. “I’ll make it up to you, promise.”
“Ye Xiu!”
Again? Really? Right when I was about to feel better? I fix my beady little eyes on the four newcomers, glaring as hard as a goose can possibly glare.
Which, to my credit, is quite a lot.
Han Wenqing and Zhou Zekai come over quickly, Jiang Botao trailing behind wearing the universal face of please help me I don’t want to be here .
Ye Xiu holds up a hand before any of the men could open their mouths. “I’ve been through this so many times within the past thirty minutes, please don’t waste my time. I’m in a wonderful relationship with Gumi right here and the six of you, eight including Wang Jiexi and Lu Hanwen, are interrupting our very precious time together.”
“ 🙁 “
“Captain says he’s very sad that you would say that after all the time that you’ve spent together.”
Han Wenqing shakes his head. “Ye Xiu… We had known each other for even longer. How long have you known that goose for? How long can geese even live, anyways?”
Ye Xiu looks down at me, and all I can do is shrug. Unfortunately, feathers do not make for good counting appendages.
“That doesn’t matter, Wenqing. Our love is true, and that’s all you need to know.”
“ 😘 ”
Cringing, Jiang Botao looks pleadingly at his captain. “Do I really, really have to say that?”
“ 😐 ”
“Fucking hell, okay.” Jiang Botao takes a deep breath. “Zhou Zekai says that Ye Xiu is the only one for him as he’s the sole person who understands how Ye Xiu demonstrates the concrete instantiation of Beauty sui generis, please don’t ask me what that means, eliding the Platonic distinction underlying the logical bifurcation of thought qua determination par excellence and the stochastic materiality of contingent being rooted in, holy shit, Copernican epistemological finitude. This Aufheben - I am not saying that right - of numerous circumstances constructed conditioned determination, but through theological import qua Ye Xiu, one forms the basis for the abstract overcoming of conceptualization qua our aforementioned finitude, accessing the Absolute in its categorical totality.”
“???”
“Yeah, I don’t know either.”
Ye Xiu looks at me, and at the group of men eagerly waiting to take Ye Xiu for themselves. “Gumi, do you want to end this already?”
I nod. “Honk.”
“Good goose.” With a smile and a pat on my little goose head, Ye Xiu places a knife in my beak. “Go wild.”
And who am I to deny my beloved Ye Xiu?