[ It starts as what feels like a cold. Dan Heng wakes with a sore head and a fever, and no matter how much water he drinks it doesn't feel like enough. He messages March and Stelle to tell them he won't be coming in, and curls up under his covers, textbook next to him. It's an attempt to prevent himself from getting left behind, but he's shuddering with cold and sweating with heat all at once, and the words seem to blur on the page.
He can't focus, and in the end he tosses the book out of the bed, hears it thump on the floor in finality.
He falls asleep somewhere after that, dozing in and out of consciousness, fitful little starts that somehow seem to make things worse. He goes through three sets of home clothes, each sweated right through and left in a tangled pile on the floor, before he gives up on clothes at all and just lies in a heap on his bed, panting and barely conscious. The only real lucidity he has is to think bitterly that he's never been quite this sick before—
It's not until his phone lights up with a message from Yingxing—something silly about being bored, a picture of whatever he's drinking right now—that Dan Heng realizes with a sickening jolt that he's not ill.
In the end, he doesn't quite know how he makes it to Yingxing's apartment block, only that he's there, and that he hasn't thought to tell the other he's coming. His car fits terribly in the parking space, and by the time he staggers off the elevator, even his cloudhymn magic is failing him—his ears are too pointed to be human, his hair longer than normal in places, horns seeming to flicker in and out of reality as he stands in front of the door.
He knocks, and all but slumps against the doorframe. ]
Forever we're together bound in madness
He can't focus, and in the end he tosses the book out of the bed, hears it thump on the floor in finality.
He falls asleep somewhere after that, dozing in and out of consciousness, fitful little starts that somehow seem to make things worse. He goes through three sets of home clothes, each sweated right through and left in a tangled pile on the floor, before he gives up on clothes at all and just lies in a heap on his bed, panting and barely conscious. The only real lucidity he has is to think bitterly that he's never been quite this sick before—
It's not until his phone lights up with a message from Yingxing—something silly about being bored, a picture of whatever he's drinking right now—that Dan Heng realizes with a sickening jolt that he's not ill.
In the end, he doesn't quite know how he makes it to Yingxing's apartment block, only that he's there, and that he hasn't thought to tell the other he's coming. His car fits terribly in the parking space, and by the time he staggers off the elevator, even his cloudhymn magic is failing him—his ears are too pointed to be human, his hair longer than normal in places, horns seeming to flicker in and out of reality as he stands in front of the door.
He knocks, and all but slumps against the doorframe. ]