band au;

[slicings]

[ yingxing exhales hard.

his ears still ring with the music, his blood thrumming with excitement. for all the years that highcloud has been together now, he never really tires of this work. he loves what he does, loves his bandmates no matter how often they butt heads, loves everything about their music. it's hard work, exhausting even at the best of times, and there are certainly many downsides to fame and celebrity status, but this.. playing together, making music, performing, he's passionate about it. the riches and fame are secondary to doing what he loves.

they're halfway through their rehearsal now, splitting up to take a break and rehydrate, and it's as he's guzzling down some water from a bottle that yingxing spots dan heng, dan feng's quiet, elusive little brother.

they've met before, but only briefly, only in passing. while dan heng is supportive of his brother and the band, he's a bit of a recluse, and he's never really gone out of his way to interact with any of them beyond dan feng - so what's he doing here right now? yingxing can't resist the urge to pester him, not when he knows he might not get the chance to again for some time now.

so, wiping sweat from his brow, yingxing wanders toward the table where dan heng has set up shop, surrounded by books and papers, lit by the glow of his laptop and tablet. ]

Long time no see.

[ entirely uninvited, yingxing pulls up a seat across from dan heng, straddling it backwards, leaning his forearms on the back of the steel chair. his hair is wild and his skin is flushed and dewy with sweat, adrenaline still pumping, his grin broad and easy. ]

Surprised you can concentrate with all this noise.

Comments

[nonperson]

[ Dan Heng has always tried to appear as if he's the cold, aloof type. After all, when you're a high school student with a famous rockstar older brother, there's simply no saving you from the droves of teenage girls asking for information, or some sort of help getting something from him. Or, worse still, the one or two times he tried dating only to find out that he was being used to get them closer to Dan Feng.

At some point, he ended up changing schools; with that change came the decision to use cloudhymn magic to conceal the truth of his identity. People would still comment that he looked like the famous rocker, but—well, he was human, so he couldn't be related, right?

University, Dan Feng had promised, would be better, but in the end he's found it easier to maintain the disguise, to introduce himself as sparingly as possible, to stick to the small friend groups he's found along the way.

(March and Stelle are the only people who know the truth about him, too—something he regrets on occasion when March makes a silly comment far too loudly for anyone's liking, and he's forced to watch in disdain-concealed frustration as Stelle rushes to shut her up.)

So—

Right. The aloof thing. Really, it's just easier that way. And the less time he spends entangled with the band themselves, the better. It gives him plausible deniability, after all.

It also makes it significantly easier to hide the fact that he's among their biggest fans.

As it is, forced to come along to practice tonight by car troubles, he's had to cover up a laptop sticker or two, move his white-and-purple Blade wristband to an ankle, signs that in the real world aren't too obvious or attention-grabbing, but in this room will give him away faster than his tail suddenly popping back into existence. But he's done what he needed to, secured himself and found a corner and done his best to study despite the (wonderful) noise, thumbing through pages after pages of history and data analysis textbooks,

and really he thinks he's just about gotten away with it too, when a break comes and suddenly Blade, in all his glory his brother's friend Yingxing is sitting in front of him, all ridiculously-tight jeans and wild hair and wide smile.

Dan Heng's breath stutters. The wristband, hidden under his own lightweight pants, brands his skin with the heat of its burn. He tries to force a friendly—but distant—smile. What happens on his face instead is something infinitely more constipated and uncomfortable. ]

Yes... You're right. Long time no see, Yingxing. [ A breath, and he clears his throat. Saying his name sounds far too intimate—stupid, stupid— ] My car broke down, so I'm riding along with my brother for today.

I'll make any excuse, coincidence, I knew

[nonperson]

[ Somehow, he manages to live it down. He stops wearing his wristband for a day or two. March teases him for a week. Stelle's still sending the occasional meme. (And even he has to admit that the "I put some awkward in your awkward so you can awkward while you awkward" one was kinda funny, once enough time passed to take the sting out of the thing.) But he lives it down, he gets past it, and now, he's able to just write it off as something weird that happened, a strange moment of playful friendliness from his older brother's friend.

And it's not like it's Yingxing's fault that Dan Heng has had a crush on him for years, anyway.

Today, his wristband is back where it belongs, worn on a wrist as the one major outward sign of his fandom. A sign that right now is even more obvious than normal as his clothes pull away from his forearm, leaving it bare but for the purple and white knit. The culprit? A stretched arm, a book on an abysmally tall shelf. He loves this store, but how many times will he have to ask before they get stepladders or something...?

Dan Heng sighs, hand starting to lower from the book. He'll have to ask for help. Again. ]

Forever we're together bound in madness

[nonperson]

[ 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. ]

[slicings]

[ dan feng, thankfully, hadn't exploded, but he hadn't been happy either, and after harping on dan heng to be careful about a hundred times he had relented enough to allow the date.

so yingxing pulls up at exactly nine o'clock in his personal starskiff, sleek and humming at the dock attached to dan heng's apartment complex. it's a friday night, so the sky is busy, humming with activity, and the dock is packed, so yingxing is sure to take down the roof so dan heng can see him, his stark white hair familiar and easy to spot, even if he's got his sunglasses on for the moment to briefly shield his identity.

he's looking forward to this. ]

Hey, over here! Ah Heng.