Fu Jing finds Xuanyi staring at her phone screen with an expression halfway between a frown and a pout.

“What is it?” she asks.

Xuanyi flattens her hands against her abdomen. “Do you think my stomach looks big?”

Fu Jing gives her a look like she’s crazy. “What, is another Chaoyue growing in there?”

Xuanyi snorts and swats her, and Fu Jing loudly complains “ow” but doesn’t move away from her touch. “I’m being serious here!”

“So am I! Should we start using protection? I’m not sure I’m ready for another kid. I think we’re overstretched as it is.”

Xuanyi shows her screen to Fu Jing, where she’s looking at comments on Man Tang Xuan Yan. “Look, a lot of fans are saying that my stomach looks really prominent in that dress. I mean, I thought I looked nice in it.” Her expression is definitely a pout now, and Fu Jing can’t resist leaning in to kiss it away.

“You do look nice in it. But you’d look nice in anything.”

“Well, evidently not a crop top.” Xuanyi lifts up her shirt and in a breath. “I wish I had abs like you.”

Fu Jing runs a hand across Xuanyi’s stomach. It’s definitely not pudgy or anything, but it’s always a little soft, not taut with muscle like Fu Jing’s, and she loves it. She loves how Xuanyi is built: long, lithe limbs and a soft, supple centre.

“Not everyone can have abs like me, don’t feel bad about it,” she tells Xuanyi, who rolls her eyes and mutters something about humility, but Fu Jing can still see the hint of darker emotion in her face. “Xiaoxuan, are you really upset over this?”

“It’s just.” Xuanyi bites her lip. “I want to look the best I can, that’s all. Since I don’t have much going for me except that,” she adds, almost under her breath.

“What?!” The question leaves Fu Jing’s mouth like a whip snapping through the air, sharp and lashing. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on. You know it’s true. If I didn’t look the way I do, do you think I’d be where I am?”

“You can say that for all of us.”

“Well, the rest of you have talent to fall back on.”

“And you’re not talented?” Fu Jing wants to grab Xuanyi and shake her. “Do you really think that?”

“Having a nice smile hardly counts as being talented, does it?” Xuanyi says with a wry quirk of her lips. “Although I’ve worked hard and long at it, so I guess you could call it a skill by this point.”

Fu Jing takes a breath. Tries to remind herself to be calm, to be rational, because Xuanyi needs calm rationality right now, needs someone to refute her points as if they’re engaging in a debate. Xuanyi can be almost coldly logical, and Fu Jing knows she has to appeal to her logic right now, not her emotions.

“We’re idols, not just singers or dancers. It’s about being a whole package. Looks, whether for the better or not, are part of that package. So is personality. And yes, so is talent, but honestly, we went on Produce 101, not The Voice or So You Think You Can Dance. People look at idols to make themselves happy, not just to admire their voices or dancing. And even so, you’re a great dancer and you’ve improved so much at singing and you don’t need me to praise your variety skills. You should be proud of yourself, Xuanyi, not…not this.” Fu Jing had aimed for a matter-of-fact voice, but by the end she sounds close to pleading.

Xuanyi stares at her for a long moment, gaze completely inscrutable, and Fu Jing finds herself holding her breath.

“Thank you,” she finally says, quietly. “That-that means more than you know.”

“But not as much as what complete strangers are saying over the Internet.” It’s not a question.

“That’s different. They’re objective. You’re not.”

“Just because I’m in love with you doesn’t mean I’m incapable of being objective.”

Xuanyi gives her a startled kind of look, and her cheeks warm but she holds her gaze steady. It’s not like they don’t use the L word around each other, but they don’t say it very often. They’re not the super verbally expressive kind of couple; they express their affection in other ways, in a warm bowl of food waiting after a late night filming, in nagging reminders to bundle up during cold days and to slather on sunscreen during hot ones, in glances and touches that linger where nobody can see.

“I think it does,” Xuanyi says, not ungently, “but I hear what you’re saying.”

“Do you believe me?”

“To an extent.” At Fu Jing’s look, Xuanyi sighs. “Jing, maybe I’m being too cynical, but you’re being too-too—”

“Yiyuanical?”

“Yes, that,” Xuanyi says, the corners of twitching. “Have you been signing in to my supertopic?”

“Of course, I can’t break my streak,” Fu Jing says, and Xuanyi laughs in that effervescent, Xuanyi way of hers. Fu Jing thinks that smiling surely has to count as a talent because nobody could just practice to have a smile like Xuanyi’s.

Xuanyi leans in and buries her face against Fu Jing’s shoulder, and Fu Jing’s arms instinctively come around her, holding her, sheltering her. “Sorry,” she murmurs into the crook of Fu Jing’s neck, like she’s confessing a secret.

Fu Jing’s breathing hitches. “For what?”

“Worrying you,” Xuanyi says, looking up through her lashes.

Fu Jing takes Xuanyi’s hands and guides them over her stomach, her fingers laced over Xuanyi’s. (In a corner of her mind, she registers that they must really look like parents-to-be right now.) “I love your stomach,” she says seriously. “Okay, it might not be defined abs, but it’s…you. I’d never want you to change.”

Xuanyi’s eyes look very bright.

“I mean,” Fu Jing adds dryly. “You’d say the same about my nose, wouldn’t you?”

Xuanyi’s eyebrows pull together. “I love your nose.”

“Well, there’s a lot of it to love.” Fu Jing holds up a hand as Xuanyi looks like she’s about to argue. “I’m not opening a debate about it. I’ve made my peace with my nose. It’s not the greatest nose out there but—”

“It’s you,” Xuanyi says. “Maybe imperfection is perfection, right?”

Fu Jing rolls her eyes, but she can’t help the way pulls up at the corners. “I can’t believe you’re quoting my own song at me.”

“You’re welcome to do the same.”

“I always get hungry when I sing Man Tang Xuan Yan. I crave macarons and mocha.”

Xuanyi bursts into laughter. “Let’s go get some then.”

“Right now? We’re going to put on so much weight.”

Xuanyi links an arm through hers and starts pulling her towards the door. “If I can’t have abs like yours, I’ll have to feed you until you have a stomach like mine.”

“What is this sabotage?” Fu Jing complains, but she goes along willingly enough. She’d follow Xuanyi anywhere.

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A/N: I remember when Xuanyi was promoting some cream she showed her stomach to rub it on, and it really was like soft and not super flat and omg I loved it and the fans in the comments did too. It's just very her. The "maybe imperfection is perfection" line is directly translated from Alita. I wish I could find a complete English translation but I can't seem to. The song is just very her.