"Not that I know of."

"Hmm." 

Masozi mulls on the story in silence for a minute or two. 

"- Okay, I was supposed to be practicing Mandarin so maybe I should do that with the book? I can try to find all the characters I recognize." 

"If you like." He loves watching Masozi be so excited.

Masozi is getting to the point where he at least sort-of-vaguely recognizes, like, a quarter of the characters! Though often it's only 'vaguely recognizes', not remembers, and he has to paw through his notebook to find the reference, and even when he can figure out several in a row he often gets confused about the syntax and guesses wrong on what the sentence means in context, and his memory for what spoken word they correspond to is significantly lagging behind. He does have the most common twenty or so solidly down, and his pronunciation is a little better for those words. 

He's so pleased with himself about this, and also stays completely and diligently focused on the task for a remarkably long time without getting distracted. 

At one point he does mention how he wanted to start a new notebook to organize it better but needs his other one for math. Maybe someone in Shanghai would trade mana for extra paper? 

"I tell someone to give you paper."

"But -" 

Masozi swallows and stops protesting. Lan Xichen will just give him the lecture about investments again. 

"You are part of Shanghai. Shanghai is rich."

Masozi nods, seriously. "...Yeah. I - thank you. It - means a lot. ...Anyway what does this character mean?" 

Mandarin is very interesting and absorbing but it doesn't take both hands? Maybe it'll be less tempting to get distracted thinking about how soft Lan Xichen's hair is if he multitasks and uses one hand to run his fingers through it again.

He starts doing this, without particularly consciously thinking about it, and then catches himself five seconds later. "I - sorry - should I not?" It seems like maybe it was okay to do when Lan Xichen was sad and needed comforting but maybe it's not okay with him to just do it for no reason? 

"You touch me if you want to and not if you don't?"

"I just wanted to make sure it wasn't bothering you? ...Your hair is nice. My hair isn't like that at all even when I have any of it." 

"I have never touched hair of black person. I have no idea what it feels like," he confesses.

"I don't know if it'd all be the same! When mine is longer it's sort of just...fuzz? It doesn't hang down like yours, it just grows straight up. And if it gets longer than that and I go swimming a lot, then it sticks to itself sort of like fabric or strings or something. My sister's was more just really curly." 

"It is nice to touch, I think."

"When it starts growing back you can touch it if you want." It seems only fair to offer, and - maybe having his hair touched would be nice as well? 

"I look forward to it."

In the meantime, Masozi is now reassured that he has permission to appreciate Lan Xichen's hair, and will do that while he keeps puzzling over the book in Mandarin and occasionally updating his notes. 

Now that he is no longer crying about his mother, Lan Xichen is suddenly extremely conscious that he is cuddling with a very cute boy-- and not just head-on-shoulder cuddling, their bodies are pretty entangled-- in said boy's room, on his bed, and the boy's hands are in his hair, and the boy is very intently studying Mandarin and he's clever and determined and also still has a maleficer aura which shouldn't be as attractive as it is and now instead of garbage he smells like soap. 

Lan Xichen is theoretically attracted to girls but he has put a lot of work-- both magical and nonmagical-- into shutting that down, so that he could be in this situation with a girl and feel nothing but mild awkwardness. He has not at all put this effort into shutting down his attraction to boys, and all of his thoughts keep getting derailed by the observation that Masozi's mouth is right there and Lan Xichen could kiss it. 

He repeats to himself that Masozi doesn't like kissing and his entire interest in sex and romance appears to be the prospect of using it to obtain mana storage. Shanghai paid a lot to get Masozi. If Lan Xichen kisses him right now and Masozi kisses back, it won't be because he wants to kiss Lan Xichen; it'll be because Masozi thinks-- because Lan Xichen set up a situation that would cause anyone to think-- that this is the payment he wants in exchange for saving his life.

Lan Xichen says, "you know, you don't have to cuddle with me and touch my hair."

"- Hmm?" Masozi, deeply absorbed as he is, takes a couple of seconds to realize that this was not a question about Mandarin, by which point his verbal memory has dropped the actual words. "...Sorry, what was that?"

(It - would be concerning, that he lost situational awareness to that degree? He never does that. But it's okay, because Lan Xichen is a junior and powerful and Masozi trusts him.) 

"...you don't have to cuddle with me and touch my hair."

What? This really doesn't seem like the most relevant or interesting thing to be talking about right now! Has Lan Xichen considered that the book in Mandarin is right there and much more interesting as a conversation topic. 

"...I know? You said that I could touch your hair if I wanted and not if I didn't want to? And - I want to - because it's nice...?" 

Masozi trails off, having just managed to fully consciously notice that it's actually kind of mysterious how much he wants to do this? 

"I just-- don't want you to if you're doing it because I like it, and I worry because-- I have power over you?"

What????? Doing things because he wants to make other people happy is not-allowed as a reason???? This is so confusing! What is he supposed to be motivated by instead?? 

"I...don't think I want to touch your hair because you have power over me?" he says uncertainly. "I just - it makes me happy to. But one of the reasons it's nice is that I think you like it? If you want me to - ignore things where they're nice for me because I think you like it, I...can try...?" 

"If you touch my hair because you think this helps you stay in Shanghai and not die, I am sad." 

See that sounds very stupid now that he says it.

Masozi's first thought is what. His next several thoughts are variants of this. 

His third or fourth thought is that, if Lan Xichen is saying that in fact it would help his chances of staying with Shanghai if he touches Lan Xichen's hair, then he has CONCERNS? Surely is not a good basis for making strategic decisions!

...And Lan Xichen isn't stupid, so - probably Masozi is misunderstanding something again?? And the way to resolve this confusion is to say things about it, even if it's very hard to find the right words. 

"...I don't think touching your hair will help me stay in Shanghai and not die? Because that would be a stupid way for you to make decisions? I..." And now he's, again, at the limit of where he even has introspectively accessible thoughts, let alone words. "- I trust you? Because you helped me not die, because you - cared... And I think trusting you is - maybe why it's nice to touch your hair? But it's - only that direction - you already helped me not die before..."

He's so bad at talking about this and probably none of that made any sense! 

Fuck he is going to have to say this with his actual mouth isn't he.

"...you are handsome and you make beautiful faces when you are excited about learning things. And-- you remember what Nie Huaisang says, about fucking for mana storage, or fucking to be in enclave--"