Archive of Our Own ^beta

Guang-Hong wakes up with a splitting headache and someone else’s hair in his mouth. He stares at the back of a familiar head entirely too close to his face and tries to remember where he is.

Quebec...the official hotel. Probably. Not his room though, judging by the view from the window he can see over Leo’s head. Most likely Leo’s then, not that he can remember how they even got back to the hotel, much less to one of their rooms. He groans and rolls onto his back, spitting out a stray hair still stuck to his lips. Going out to a club to celebrate after the final day of Skate Canada had probably not been their best idea ever.

His phone buzzes insistently off to one side of the bed and he gropes for it, staring at the screen blearily. He has...a lot of notifications. Even more than when he’d taken silver two days ago. He scrolls through his feed, trying to see what’s set this off, but as usual the app is loading posts at random rather than in chronological order. He groans again and continues scrolling with a sinking feeling, the first fuzzy tendrils of memory from the night before beginning to return. After a moment he realizes his isn’t the only phone buzzing - he can hear Leo’s going off in bursts on the other nightstand, and he nudges Leo, whose groan sounds about as pained as Guang-Hong feels.

“Hey, Leo, I think…” words fail him, and Guang-Hong mutely waves his phone instead. Leo’s expression moves slowly from confusion to something akin to horror as he realizes what Guang-Hong’s trying to get across. Guang-Hong knows how he feels. “Ah...do you have painkillers anywhere?” Leo struggles upright, his hair in a tangle that makes Guang-Hong’s fingers itch to smooth it out.

“On the counter in the bathroom, yeah. Could you-”

“I’ll get enough for both of us,” Guang-Hong reassures him as he gives in to the urge to finger-comb the worst of the tangles out of Leo’s hair, who leans into the petting with a quiet sigh. Guang-Hong drops a kiss on his forehead, futilely fighting a blush. It’s not like this is the first time they’ve woken up together, but it’s been months since summer training and the last time they’d been able to be together. He drags himself out of the bed and to the bathroom, falling on the promised painkillers with relief. He’s pretty sure he’s never been this hungover before, and that’s on top of the persistent twinge in his left knee. He delivers Leo’s painkillers, who swallows them down and leans his head on Guang-Hong’s as he settles back down on the bed, propped against the headboard. Guang-Hong leans back against him, dropping his head on Leo’s shoulder with a sigh.

“We’re going to have to check eventually,” Leo points out after a minute. Guang-Hong makes a face that Leo can’t see, but he knows he’s right. Memories of last night mostly exist in rapidly returning bits and pieces, but he’s unfortunately aware that he’d had his phone out for almost all of it. Hopefully they hadn’t posted anything too bad, but they must have done something for their accounts to have blown up so fast.

He taps through to Leo’s account first and scrolls down, then pauses. “Leo, was I trying to teach you Mandarin last night? You posted something, but it doesn’t actually mean anything. I didn’t even know you had a Pinyin keyboard installed on your phone.” Guang-Hong holds up the phone so that he can see the screen - it’s a selfie of the two of them with a string of Chinese characters underneath, and Leo goes pink.

“I don’t remember what I was trying to say, but most of the phrases you tried to teach me were pretty embarrassing. It’s probably for the best that I mangled it so badly.” Guang-Hong laughs. He does remember, a little - they’d been trading the silliest endearments they could think of in Mandarin and Spanish and completely destroying the pronunciation in the process. In fact - he switches to his own account to check, and yes, there’s another selfie posted at the same time with some truly incomprehensible Spanish underneath it. Leo squints at it, then laughs himself.

“My grandmother would kill me if she knew I was so bad at teaching her language. Most of that is nonsense, and then at the end you called me a chicken.”

“Ehhh, you said you could use that word to mean that someone was adorable.”

“Not the way you used it, though,” he points out, and Guang-Hong lifts his head to pout. Leo leans in to kiss him instead, and he blushes. He still can’t keep up with how cool Leo is, sometimes. He settles back onto Leo’s shoulder and resumes scrolling through his posts. Leo’s mostly abandoned his own phone to watch what Guang-Hong’s doing instead, hand running aimlessly down Guang-Hong’s arm in a comforting gesture.

He pauses at a video posted about halfway through. It has a lot of comments, and he taps the volume on with some trepidation. There’s a disorienting blur of the bar before the camera focuses on him, and the Guang-Hong in the video smiles shyly and a little fuzzily and Guang-Hong, watching, cringes. This isn’t even the last thing in their feeds, and he’s clearly already drunk.

“So as you know, this season Leo’s exhibition is to the theme from Pirates of the Coast, and we got into an argument-” in the background of the video, Leo is clearly trying to take exception to the word “argument” but is laughing too hard. “-fine, a discussion! We got into a discussion about which of us would be the pirate lord and which of us would be the loyal first mate he keeps having to rescue. Personally, I think I'd make a better captain-” to his mild horror, he and Leo start quoting extensively from the movie. One of the flirtiest scenes, because of course. There are overly enthusiastic arm motions. “Anyway, help us settle the argument below, everyone!” Guang-Hong decides they probably don’t want to read most of the comments on this one. Leo seems to agree.

There are several more posts on both their Instagrams, and they’ve been tagged in a few more. In the interest of neither of them just giving up in embarrassment, Guang-Hong scrolls quickly through both their feeds. The majority are just goofy selfies, thankfully, but toward the top of Leo’s feed is a video that’s clearly outstripped everything else they’d posted last night. Leo looks questioningly at Guang-Hong, who sighs, too aware of what it probably is, and taps play. The video is short, shot by Leo’s own drunk hand at Guang-Hong’s equally drunk insistence. Guang-Hong faces the camera, holding a half-empty glass of something violently pink aloft as he declares unsteadily, “my boyfriend is the best figure skater in this bar!” too loudly before blowing a kiss at him. Leo’s delighted laughter can be heard in the background. The video ends, and Leo winces.

“Hard for us to back out of that one, huh?” Guang-Hong leans back against him with a groan, and Leo puts a comforting arm around his shoulder.

The problem with all of this, even aside from the public drunkenness, is that they’d been trying to keep their relationship a secret. Some of his sponsors have played him up as though he were a pop idol - imagine dating one of the most adorable figure skaters in all of Asia! - and having a boyfriend made that a little difficult. Sure, there wasn’t anything specific in his contracts, thankfully, but the subtext had been pretty clear. Not to mention some his more obsessed fans, who are probably already trashing Leo on twitter. He doesn’t have the heart to check right now.

Guang-Hong is tired of keeping them a secret. It’s been almost a year now, since last year’s Cup of China, and he’s tired. He can afford to lose a few sponsorships at this point in his career. He doesn’t know if Leo feels the same, though, or even if he’d just prefer not to be harassed by a horde of Guang-Hong’s angry fans.

“Should we just tell everyone that your English isn’t so good when you’re drunk, that you didn’t know what you were implying?” Leo suggests tentatively, and Guang-Hong shrugs, slumping a little.

“If that’s what you want, but I don’t know how much anyone would believe it. And besides…” he hesitates, and Leo turns his head to look at him. His expression is hopeful, which gives Guang-Hong the courage to blurt out the rest of his sentence in a slightly tangled rush. “I’d rather...not hide it anymore. This. Us, that is. If that’s okay with you.” He can feel how red he’s gone, but this is important.

Leo is at least equally red-faced. “Are you sure you’re okay with that? Your sponsors…”

“The ones who care that much about my public image won’t be happy with any of this either way, and the rest don’t care if I’m dating someone.” Guang-Hong shrugs, hiding his nervousness behind an aura of nonchalance. “Besides, I think I can talk some of them around. International harmony or...something.”

“We could start a charity,” Leo offers, with a small grin. “It would look bad for your sponsors to dump you then.” Guang-Hong laughs and groans at the same time.

“Can we figure it out later? My head’s pounding too much to plan that far ahead.”

Leo turns to fold him into a full-body hug and murmurs into his neck, “you’re really, really sure?”

Guang-Hong threads his fingers through Leo’s hair, pulling him in closer. “My coach is gonna kill me, but yeah.”

Leo laughs against his shoulder, then pulls him in for a kiss.

Before they go back to sleep (blinds firmly closed against the sun, this time), they post one last selfie to both their accounts, just the two of them framed against the rising sun and a simple caption of “Good Morning!”