Summary:
Vein inhabits every space like he owns the place, shining beneath a faulty, fluorescent light. He whistles as they wait, the crisp tap tap tap of a loafer against the ground, out of time with the thundering of the incoming train. Filling the not-silence. Xia Fei expects a reprimand: you haven’t been answering my calls, or my messages, a cool laugh low like the rumbling of metal, are you trying to provoke me, Felix? A firm hand on his shoulder, or a softer, still calloused one tilting up his chin, directing Xia Fei’s defiant eyes right at him.
Or, Xia Fei hasn't been taking care of himself, and ignoring Vein. After fainting on set, Vein comes to him, and takes him home.
notes yayyyy i finally posted another fic over 1k words LOL. i had absolutely no plans to write this fic, and then end of may/early june i was doing a short fic challenge and one of the prompts, journey, ended up becoming this! i keep on joking about this, but this fic is very much following the trend of xia fei being in Situations, and vein kind of coming to his rescue a little bit? i always think back to feifei's character profile and how under dislikes it says "owing people" (am paraphrasing). and that feels so at odds with the casual way he calls up vein in yingdu and essentially goes "come save us Now." i ALSO think a lot about LH0 saying that vein approached xf out of pure amusement and curiosity, and that his reason for coming so quickly to save xf was simply Because xia fei called.
anyway so that stays in my mind, and heavily informs my writing of veifei's dynamic (in this fic and others).
because i have the Ambiguity Disease, there are things hanging in the air between them--i wanted the stuffy scenery and atmosphere of the
london bridon underground to reflect this, partially because i read an
excellent substack rec'd to me by a beloved tumblr mutual, and am trying to balance out exterior and interior, plus writing one in service of/feeding into the other. did i do that? who knows. i do like the scene in the underground, the details of how vein exists easily in the space, the "grime and dirt of the underground", in spite of xf placing him on a sort of pedestal. i do struggle with setting and external details though, because i get too caught up in the little things and am unable to create a bigger picture, so to speak. additionally, i lack common fucking sense and don't know How Things Work (thanks autism).
moving on though, it's clear that there's a lot of internal conflict in this one i think: xia fei wants more from vein, and he thinks the best way to go about that is pulling away from him.
he thinks he's ignoring vein in protest--he just wants time off--but he's running away from the possibility of vein denying him something (from rejection, from vein finally putting his foot down and not giving into xf's wants). what vein says, it being a bid for attention, isn't wrong exactly either. because xf Knows vein; knew vein would eventually show up and, in xf's mind, reprimand him. also vein is his boss (and seems to be intent on personally overseeing xf's modelling activities). so. lmao. i think this melting pot of internal conflict is what spurs on the overwork, leading to the fainting. and then vein is there, like he wanted, but not JUST like he wanted. plus this means he has to face what he has being intentionally avoiding, yet also reckoning with having dearly missed vein (it's legit been a few weeks but i imagine they find an excuse to stay in touch fairly regularly).
what's funny though is how much xia fei seems to want vein to punish him lmaooo. to be unfunny, i think really he wants proof vein cares as much as he does.
unlike some of my other fics, there is a sense of resolution, at least in that small scale way i like-- the comfort to the hurt, that moment for xia fei's doubts are assuaged by vein's words, the win that is vein being able to come in and stay awhile, even if it's not for long.
i do enjoy these kind of delicate character/dynamic explorations, but it's made more fun by slipping in some vein freakisms in there. i'm all about the implications of vein Somehow knowing what xia fei has been up to recently, and playing that off as completely normal (and feifei just going with it). also it Never Is mentioned how vein go there so soon after xf fainted....in future though, i do wanna up the freak4freak flavouring of vfei in my fics ! and i may have a chance to do that with the next work up in the queue, which is a vampire au for the fic week coming up next month that im wholly unprepared for. rip.
i will probably have thought of more to say after posting this, but i'll cut myself off here i think! overall, this isn't actually one of my fave fics i've written, but i'm glad i got it written and posted! it's always fun digging into xia fei's psychology and thought process too. fun fact, this is also the second vfei fic i've set on the tube, for some reason.
p.s i couldn't for the life of me think of how to tag this at first, and i feel like with my veifei fics i always struggle with additional tags so much....
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