Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Sometimes, his knee still aches.

It's almost automatic now, the way Lan Zhan scoops it up, resting all the weight in his hand as he levers his leg onto the ottoman in front of his sofa that, until his accident, had largely been for show.

It's been six months since he came off crutches. Eight since he was told that he might not ever dance professionally again. Ten since the last time he was on stage.

It's the closing night of Don Quixote tonight. He'd been invited to the closing gala because – well, because originally he would have been there. And after the accident, it would have been awkward to disinvite him.

Instead, Lan Zhan is in his apartment, listlessly trying to distract himself from thinking about Su She in a tuxedo and smarmy smile, talking to all his patrons. He doesn't want to read, because he's spent months reading for lack of anything else he was allowed to do. He can't go for a walk, because his leg is already bothering him after the stretches he'd tried to put it through this afternoon. He can't eat anything, because he's trying to get back into dancer shape and he's already hit his intended calorie quota for the day. And he can't talk to anyone, because everyone he knows and interacts with on any regular basis is in Don Quixote.

He resorts to sulkily sipping water through a squidgy straw that he chews, and turning on the TV. He owns one, because that's what people do when they rent an apartment by themselves for the first time, and also because Nie Huaisang had come over to see his sofa facing an enormous stretch of empty wall and asked point blank if he was a sociopath. He's not really sure if he is, but if he can avoid the question again by buying a TV, it's a small price to pay.

It takes him ten minutes to figure out how to switch it on, and that's because it turns out that the batteries in the remote are still shrink-wrapped. That answers his idle question of whether he's actually used this thing before.

The first channel has a movie on. The soundtrack is good – suspenseful, lots of minor piano chords from what he can hear – but every scene is so dark that Lan Zhan has no idea what's happening, because he can't see anything. The second channel is some sort of game show, based on popular media. As established, Lan Zhan knows nothing about popular media. The third channel is of an outdoor concert, still daylight wherever it is, and he's about to click away from that as well when the camera goes to a close-up of the lead singer.

Lan Zhan knows that face. It's Wei Ying.

His head is thrown back, eyes closed, baring a long line of throat interrupted only by his adam's apple. He's pulling the mic stand towards him as he belts out a high note, long and piercing, the crowd screaming along with him. He cuts it off and snaps his eyes open – the camera catches it head on and for a single breath, it's almost as if he's looking straight at Lan Zhan.

His leather jacket is falling off his shoulders, dragging one strap of his tank top down with it, and his skinny jeans look far too tight for the full body roll and hip thrust that he makes. And then he looks away, a smile curling over his lips as he brings his voice low, a growl that crawls into the mic and sends frissons up Lan Zhan's spine.  

At the end of the song, Wei Ying loses the sultry look as he shrugs the jacket back on, and a wide grin pulls at his face as he thanks the crowd, an expression suddenly so familiar that Lan Zhan inhales. He realises that he's leaning forward, his mouth half-open. Even though no one is here to see his moment of fluster, he picks up one of the decorative cream cushions from his sofa and tucks it his into his lap. He leans back, clutching the cushion, and smooths himself out.

He's not seen Wei Ying in over a decade now.

They used to have dance lessons together. Or, more accurately, their separate dance lessons (ballet for Lan Zhan, hip hop and street dance for Wei Ying) had been held in the same studios and they crossed paths in the smallest of ways: while stretching in the corridor as they waited for their respective classes to begin, waiting backstage together at recitals, or walking part-way home together when heading in the same direction.

Lan Zhan had been entirely focused on ballet – has always been and still is, he supposes – and could never quite understand how someone like Wei Ying could be so talented and in advanced classes and still not take it seriously. He had asked, once, and Wei Ying had laughed that bright laugh of his and asked in return, 'What's serious about dance? It's meant to be fun.'

It had riled a teenage Lan Zhan up all the wrong way, and he hadn't had the wit or quickness of mind then to come up with a retort, especially not when ballet was his whole life, so he'd stewed upon it in sullen silence instead.

Did you know that Wei Ying is in a band? Lan Zhan texts to Nie Huaisang, who doesn't reply because he's the representative of Qinghe Arts Foundation and therefore at the gala that Lan Zhan is meant to be at. Lan Zhan stares at his phone hopefully for a few minutes; Huaisang is so attached to his phone that he might well receive it anyway. Alas, no luck.

He realises that this text comes with no context – their last exchange had been about the progress of Lan Zhan's physiotherapy – and he's not really sure how to provide any. You remember, Wei Ying who used to be at the dance studio. I haven't spoken to him in over ten years but I saw him on TV tonight and he performed a very evocative hip thrust.

Perhaps he will just leave it be.

The concert – or festival, as Lan Zhan now realises – has moved onto the next act, who are warming up, and he scans them very quickly for any other signs of old friends. With none found, he realises that his interest has gone. He pulls his laptop towards him instead, not quite sure what to search. Perhaps just 'Wei Ying' to start? He hadn't managed to catch the name of the band.

Wei Ying has a Wikipedia page. It has different sections for 'early life', 'personal life' and 'discography' and everything. Their dance school – Cloud Recesses – is named as somewhere he studied and Lan Zhan finds that his heart skips a beat at even the hinted proximity of a mention.

Their four-member group is called The Remnants, formed from friends who met each other at university. They have released five albums, and three of their singles have been certified Platinum. Lan Zhan glances ruefully at the text he sent Huaisang. It now seems rather likely that he has, in fact, noticed one of their old acquaintances being in a world-famous band.

YouTube is next. The Remnants have plenty of performances uploaded, ranging from dingy bars in their early days to arena concerts – Lan Zhan has a vague idea that he might start with older videos and make his way to more up-to-date ones but that idea quickly goes out of the window as the YouTube algorithm and auto-play sucks him into a spiral of performances, interviews and chat shows.

They're good. They're fun, and funny; charming on screen and engaging with fans and able to bounce off each other when they talk. The ballet world is... not quite so exuberant, and Lan Zhan has certainly never done anything as mainstream as Good Morning America, but he is well-known and respected within ballet, and he has never managed quite this amount of ease when talking to someone else about his art.

Lan Wangji looks up from his laptop when his phone buzzes – and oh, it's 1am. That's... that's probably why he's feeling slightly fuzzy.

It's a text from Huaisang: Yeah?? Did you not??? Getting tix for their next gig, thought you wldn't be interested but wanna come with?

A second text: OT but you missed a great party, know you didn't wanna be here but we missed you

There's a photo that takes a moment to load, and then it comes up as one of the giant bouquets that people send for the closing galas. They're usually displayed around the edges of the venue with notes upon a variation of 'Congratulations on a wonderful performance', except this one has 'For Lan Wangji, the most exquisite Don Quixote – wishing you a speedy recovery and return' written on the note, which is... just excessive. He only performed with the company for a month before he'd had to be replaced, after all.

But nice. Excessive but nice.

He carefully saves the photo, and types back to Huaisang: Yes, please do let me know about the tickets.

He looks back at his laptop, noticing that The Remnants have their own video channel. He opens it up in a new tab, ready for tomorrow, and then reluctantly heads to bed.

*

By now, ballet stretches and basic forms are second nature to Lan Zhan. He's been doing them for almost twenty years, and his body falls into the routine of them easily. He likes to start his day off with these, the exertion on his body clearing his mind for the day in time for daylight to emerge from a hazy pigeon-blue sky.

What he's not used to is fighting his body for it. He's been stringent with his diet and working out while he was on crutches, and he's not out of shape by anyone's standards apart from a professional ballet dancer's, but the fact of the matter is that his pliés look and feel lopsided.

He scowls at himself in the wall-length mirror, and then smooths his expression out when he catches his own eyes. Before moving in, when he'd first viewed the apartment, he'd been drawn to the obscenely large wardrobe with its mirrored sliding doors that he'd be able to practise his form in front of. The estate agent had mistaken his interest and said something about being 'a man of fashion, eh?' and Lan Zhan had blinked at her, uncomprehendingly, not sure how to tell her that mostly he wanted it to stare at the arches of his own feet.

There's something thrumming in his brain today though, distracting him from the quiet meditation of pushing his body into the perfect pose and trying to make him go faster. It's not until he's finished, and making himself breakfast and some tea that he realises he's humming a tune. He can't quite remember what song it is, but it must have been one of the videos he watched yesterday.

He makes himself eat first, before flipping his laptop open to the channel he'd set up the day before. The Remnants YouTube channel is a mix of things - music videos, Making Ofs, interviews and each of them has a playlist where it looks like they do their own thing. Wen Qing, the guitarist, has a playlist of videos where she does acoustic covers; the bassist, Luo Qingyang, apparently likes to watch videos of people reacting to their songs and then record her reaction to their reactions; and the drummer, Wen Ning, mostly has short videos of his dwarf hamsters in increasingly complex mazes made out of household items.

Lan Zhan clicks on Wei Ying's playlist. It's mostly of him doing a capella covers of songs – and dance covers. Lan Zhan clicks on one of those. It's choreography to one of their songs, a slow, rhythmic piece with an almost overwhelming bass drum that reverberates around the cavity of his ribcage. Wei Ying is in a dilapidated warehouse with exposed metal beams and dust motes hanging in the air as he slides across the floor wearing grey ripped jeans and boots with no shirt, and Lan Zhan fumbles for his glass of water when he finds that his mouth is dry. Wei Ying definitely doesn't look fifteen anymore.

The video ends and the next automatically begins, and Lan Zhan finds himself hunched over on his sofa ninety minutes later with a very full bladder.

The dances range in style - yes, most of it is hip-hop based but Lan Zhan can see a lot of contemporary influences, and even some ballet forms. Wei Ying had always seemed too cool for ballet when they were kids. Lan Zhan had picked it up because everyone in his family was involved in ballet, but by the time they'd hit the advanced classes, he was always one of the only boys left.

His phone alarm goes off halfway through a video, startling him enough that he nearly knocks it off his lap. He normally doesn't need this alarm to tell him to get ready for his physiotherapist, because he's always keen to get there on time, but he finds himself pausing the video with regret.

Lan Zhan downloads their latest album while he's waiting for the bus, and then remembers that he'd told Huaisang that he's interested in going to their next concert. They'll probably play some older pieces as well, right? He ends up downloading all five albums.

The physio appointment is both encouraging, and not. He needs to schedule some more massage appointments for his calf, but the twinging muscles essentially indicate that they're healing. He's still not allowed to do any leaps off his left foot, or participate in any lifts. He is very tentatively allowed to try some hops off his left foot. Lan Zhan's spent a lifetime in and out of physio appointments, so he furiously chews the inside of his lip, and says nothing. It grinds on him, the waiting, the uncertainty - but every dancer has heard horror stories of that person who tries too much after an injury and ends up aggravating it into an even worse state.

By the time he gets back to his apartment and makes lunch, Nie Huaisang has woken from what is probably a post-gala hangover. Lan Zhan pauses the dance video he's watching (the first one, with the shirtless - uh, with the warehouse is his favourite so far) and answers the phone. "Huaisang."

"Lan Zhan! Morning."

Lan Zhan doesn't bother to correct him. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, fine. It was a good closing performance. How was the physio?"

"Still an indefinite timeline," he says, closing his eyes. He can't dance professionally if he can't do jumps or lifts.

Huaisang hums sympathetically. "You deserve a break, you know. You've been in shows non stop for almost ten years."

"I'll rest when I'm retired," says Lan Zhan, which is what he says any time anyone alludes to it. He's at the age where he's starting to slip into the bracket of older dancers now – if he stays out of it for too long, he won't be able to get back in. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he fears that Don Quixote was his last principal role.

"Of course, of course," says Huaisang. "But you know, I'm actually calling because of this text you sent me last night! I know your entire mind, heart and soul is devoted to ballet, but how have you never heard of The Remnants?"

"I don't watch TV," he says, slightly defensively. "Or listen to the radio. Or watch YouTube videos." He stops, because he's aware that it's making him sound like a sad, sad man with no hobbies, which he is, but still.

"Yeah, but you and Wei Ying were friends."

Lan Zhan stares up at his ceiling. There's a spiderweb in one of the corners. He'll have to get the broom out. "That was... a long time ago."

"You didn't fall out, did you?"

"No, we just didn't keep in touch after I left."

"Okay, good. Well, they're in town next month, what works better for you, the fifth or the sixth?"

So soon? Lan Zhan knows nothing about getting tickets for gigs, but given their popularity, he would have assumed that tickets went on sale months ago. He waves an arm around at his empty and silent apartment, despite the fact that Huaisang won't see it. "I'm currently unemployed and have no plans," he says dryly.

Nie Huaisang is silent for a moment. "You need to stop saying things like that or I'll start feeling sorry for you. Okay, the fifth it is. I'll text you details."

"How much is it?"

"Don't worry about it," says Huaisang, and Lan Zhan squints suspiciously at the offending spiderweb.

"Why should I not worry about it?"

"Come on, Lan Zhan, I'm not paying for these tickets. I have my ways, you know. So you don't owe me anything, apart from the pleasure of your company."

"Mn," says Lan Zhan dubiously.

"You could at least pretend that your company is pleasurable."

Lan Zhan doesn't bother replying. Huaisang chuckles at him, and hangs up.

He turns back to his laptop. As suspected, tickets for this tour went out almost a year ago, and had sold out within the week. Extra dates have already been added. The reviews for the cities they've already played are raving, and prices for resold tickets are astronomical. Lan Zhan is not going to question Huaisang's little spidery connections.

Speaking of which – he goes to get that broom.

Chapter Text

Three weeks later, Lan Zhan is cleared for jumps, but not lifts. He doesn't have any to practise, because he's still unemployed; his company's already held auditions and started rehearsals for Cinderella. But he does have a spreadsheet of troupes or productions with upcoming auditions, and he's sent off his photos and video reel for anywhere that has open company classes. He also has a gentle standing invitation from his brother to teach at Cloud Recesses, a completely ruined YouTube recommendation page, and absolutely no idea what he's doing.

He'd looked up directions to the arena for this concert, which had been unnecessary because the moment he gets off the train, there are about three hundred other people streaming in the same direction. They'd arranged to meet near Entrance G, and while Lan Zhan had given himself plenty of time to arrive early, he clearly hadn't calculated how much longer it would take to weave his way through huddles of excited fans who keep stopping in the middle of the road to take selfies.

He arrives on time, barely. Huaisang is late.

"Sorry, sorry," the man himself says as he eventually dashes up. "Whew, it definitely wasn't like this the first time they played. Let's get inside, or we'll be late."

"It doesn't start for another two hours," says Lan Zhan. "The website said the doors open at half past."

"Yeah, but–" Something makes Huaisang pause halfway through ushering Lan Zhan towards the doors. "Wait. Do you not know how concerts work?"

Lan Zhan did not know that there was a how to know.

"Is this... your first gig?"

"Of non-classical music, yes."

Huaisang winces. "Alright. Let me explain on the way."

They queue to get inside, where they queue again to get further inside. There are people here who have apparently been here the whole day, queuing to secure their place at the front of the standing area. Lan Zhan vaguely wishes that people were that enthusiastic about ballet.

They pass by a merch stall, where people are buying new band t-shirts to immediately put over their old band t-shirts. Huaisang scours the display for a long moment, before finding what he's looking for – a t-shirt with an enormous picture of Wei Ying's face across the front of it.

"He'll think it's hilarious," he assures Lan Zhan, before ordering one for him as well.

"Will he see it?" Lan Zhan wonders as Huaisang flaps his hands, indicating that he should put it on. There'll be thousands of people in the dimly-lit arena, he hardly expects Wei Ying to see someone specific.

"Yeah, he's probably still goofing off backstage. They probably won't start getting ready for another hour or so," says Huaisang, fishing his phone out.

Lan Zhan frowns. He's not sure they're having the same conversation.

"Here, smile," Huaisang says once they're both wearing them. Lan Zhan blinks as Huaisang snaps a selfie of the two of them and sends it to someone. Or, more specifically, to Wei Ying.

"You sent him the picture?" asks Lan Zhan, who is definitely not internally panicking or anything of the sort. It's just that the picture has him with a bemused expression and his eyes lowered half-way through a blink, and he doesn't really want the first impression Wei Ying has of him in ten years to be a frown. More importantly: "You're still in touch?"

It's Huaisang's turn to frown at him. "Yeah, how do you think I managed to get VIP tickets less than a month before the date?"

They're met inside the arena by Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, who evidently came through from the backstage area, and Lan Zhan realises that he hadn't asked who else would be here.

"It's so good to see you," says Yanli with a smile, or that's what Lan Zhan thinks she said, since it's already too noisy in here for him to hear speech at a normal volume. They'd had ballet together for a while, and even when Lan Zhan's skill had got him accelerated into the Advanced classes past her, he still saw her occasionally picking up one of her brothers or at recitals. "I heard about your leg, how is it?"

"Recovering well," he says, awkwardly returning the hug she goes up on tiptoe to give him with a single pat on the back. "Do you... still keep up with ballet?" Why is he so bad at small talk?

"Watching it only," she laughs, as they cram their way in towards the front of the standing area. "Will you be all right standing for the whole concert?"

Lan Zhan nods – he's got a knee brace and ankle brace on for this very reason, but he's slightly astounded that after so long of not knowing him, she's still so concerned.

Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, merely nods at him. "Can't quite believe you're here. I didn't think you were into this sort of crowd."

"I'm not into any sort of crowds," Lan Zhan says, mildly pleased with his own joke and equally mildly miffed when it sails right over Jiang Cheng's head. He adds, "I like music that evokes emotions. The Remnants have very thoughtful lyrics."

"Thoughtful lyrics, huh," says Jiang Cheng.

"I think they're very thoughtful!" chimes in Yanli brightly. "A-Ying writes most of their lyrics, you know, and you can really tell his personal connection to them when you hear him sing live."

Jiang Cheng is still looking at Lan Zhan like he's a particularly large bug and he's trying to decide whether to just stomp on him or trap him under a cup. His mouth works for a moment, and then he points at Lan Zhan's t-shirt. "Also can't believe Huaisang talked you into that."

Now that Lan Zhan is standing next to Wei Ying's brother, it does seem slightly embarrassing to be wearing a t-shirt with his face over his entire chest.

"Hey! Maybe it was his idea," says Huaisang, but even he seems to give up on that point halfway through the sentence; it's too unbelievable.

"He said Wei Ying would find it funny," says Lan Zhan.

"Oh, he will," says Jiang Cheng, somehow managing to make it sound like a threat, and then promptly leaving it at that.

They manage to elbow their way to a few rows away from the front, as the opening act, Ghost City, plays. The music makes further conversation impossible, which suits Lan Zhan just fine. But when the trio (two guys and one girl, all of whom look too young to be professionally touring) make their bows and disappear off stage, the atmosphere noticeably thickens, and Lan Zhan braces himself for the too-warm, sticky feeling of people pressed up against him for the next few hours. He's used to having no personal space – he has to, as a ballet dancer who spends his days being prodded, poked and manipulated into shape by other people – but that's impersonal, detached.

Wei Ying is the first to bound on stage. He waves at the crowd, nearly trips over a bundle of wires, and rights himself with a laugh that's half caught on the mic, and it sounds like scattered sunshine after a rain shower. "Oops! Guess I was too excited. How is everyone tonight?!" The crowd screams. Lan Zhan also does, but only internally, and for a completely different reason. He is... not good at things that require audience participation.

Wei Ying's voice echoes around the arena, filling the air to the rafters. "Thanks for coming guys, we're definitely feeling the love tonight. There's something really special about doing a show in your hometown, where you grew up going to gigs and wishing it could be you. So it makes sense, I think, to start with a song about nostalgia. You'll know this one. Here's teenage infatuations and differential equations."

There's a murmur that ripples through the crowd, catching like a wave and growing into a heady roar of approval. Lan Zhan knows, from having read probably far too many reviews of this tour already, that this is a change from the set list order they've played so far.

"I love this song," yells Nie Huaisang over the crowd.

"I hate this song," yells Jiang Cheng back at him. His eyes flicker over to Lan Zhan, and he suddenly scowls when they accidentally make eye contact.

Lan Zhan blinks. Is his opinion expected? "I enjoyed it."

"Ugh, you would," says Jiang Cheng. Jiang Yanli pats his arm consolingly, but she's already bouncing on the balls of her feet to the opening chords.

It takes all of twenty seconds for the entire crowd to become a pulsing, amorphous mass. The speakers are obnoxiously loud, but it means he can actually hear the music over the people screaming along. He didn't come to hear them sing, he wants to tell them.

He moves with the crowd, like a minnow caught in a current. Yanli was right – Lan Zhan has been continuously listening to their music for the last three weeks, and yet it's almost entirely different live.

Wei Ying's voice is raw like electricity in one song, and then a croon that tickles the shell of Lan Zhan's ear the next. He flings himself around the stage, draping himself over the other band members and dancing with them. His hair is half pulled back into a ponytail high on his head and he's dressed in a t-shirt with the neckline cut out that's soaked through by the second song and ripped jeans that show a far too large expanse of pale inner thigh that makes Lan Zhan feel like one of those men in period dramas going feral over a glimpse of a well-turned ankle every time he sees it.

Lan Zhan has no idea how the passage of time works in concerts, it's not like there's a handy programme to tell him the running order and beside, this set list has had everything out of line with previous stages anyway; he could work it out if he tried, he's sure, at roughly four minutes a song, but he simultaneously feels like he's been here forever, and that the evening has only just started. His knee is a dull ache despite the supports; there's a stranger who won't let go, clinging to his arm and crying; and Yanli on his other side who might also be crying; and he's swaying. They're all swaying.

Lan Zhan has never quite understood non-classical music. He appreciates the skill and talent that it takes to master an instrument – for example, each of the members take turns doing solo sections that show off their skills – Wen Ning with a roiling drum solo accompanied by headbanging that makes Lan Zhan fear for his neck, Luo Qingyang with a ricochet-fast technique he later learns is called slap bass, and Wen Qing shredding through high notes while not even looking down with a straight, almost bored, expression.

But Lan Zhan doesn't quite get what makes non-classical music itself good if there are no objective measures of 'good' songs. He certainly doesn't know what the difference is between pop punk and emo pop and pop rock or whatever else The Remnants' Wikipedia page uses to describe them – but he's starting to realise that it doesn't really matter. What matters is that he's standing here, listening to Wei Ying sing about the feeling of climbing out of a window and balancing on a rooftop to be closer to the stars, with the bass vibrating up his very bones, and he thinks that this could consume him alive.

The final notes of the song waver gently in the air, fading until all that's present is the hushed silence of ten thousand people collectively holding their breath.

'MARRY ME!' someone screams from the back and the silence spills, like water over the edge of a too-full glass, and the arena breaks into laughter, and then thunderous applause and whooping.

"Thanks guys," says Wei Ying into the mic, voice throatier than it was at the beginning of the evening. He waits for them to settle down a bit, wiping at the sweat dripping down his face with a towel draped around his neck and Lan Zhan supposes that it must be near the end, now.

"You've been real good to us tonight. If you've been with us a while, you've probably seen our music change as we've grown, I think, as people and musicians and as a group. It's got harder to connect with you personally as we've become more well known over time – I'm not complaining obviously, it wasn't that long ago we were doing empty bars and underground clubs, so being able to afford rent and stuff is great – but my point is. My point is that we all got into music to connect with people somehow, to be able to share experiences and joy and grief, and we hope that no matter where our careers go, we can continue to do that."

The other three members have headed off stage at some point during this speech, and reappear with chairs and new instruments – acoustic guitars and a cajon – and Wei Ying joins them to form a loose semi-circle near the centre of the stage. "We're gonna do a couple of our earlier songs before we leave you for the night, thanks for sticking with me. This one's Untitled."

The crowd goes wild.

Untitled is the hidden track on their second album. Lan Zhan, who hadn't even known about the existence of such things three weeks ago, has since read about how it's a heartfelt love letter, penned and unprofessionally recorded from the back of their tour bus. It's never been performed, live or otherwise.

This performance is not like the others. Wei Ying's voice crackles like a bonfire in the late hours of the night. It doesn't sound as rehearsed, as finished. It sounds like a heartfelt love letter performed from the back of a tour bus. Lan Zhan can barely breathe, because it feels like his entire heart is in his throat, constricting and depriving it of air.

The final half hour of the concert goes in a haze.

It feels like someone has thrown a bucket of water over his head when it's finally over and they leave after the encore, after the second encore, when the lights go up and Lan Zhan is relieved to see other people who look like he feels, shell-shocked and emotionally drained, damp hair clinging to necks and foreheads, mascara and eyeliner trails down their cheeks, eyes glazed over.

"Come on, backstage is this way," says Nie Huaisang, who knows better than to try and grab Lan Wangji's arm, but does gently steer him with a tap on the elbow.

Backstage? Lan Zhan turns to ask, but Huaisang is already showing their VIP tickets to one of the venue staffers, who lets them through one of the side doors and points.

The corridors are an abrupt change from the heady thrum of the arena, the silence ringing in his ears. They shuffle through the liminal space with Jiang Yanli leading the way, skirting their way past the dozen crew and venue team sorting through instrument racks, thick black piles of wires, and miles of duct tape.

The dressing room is an adequate size for four band members. For four band members, plus their opening act, plus the four of them from the audience, plus, inexplicably, two small children, it's a bit of a squeeze.

"A-jie!"

Lan Zhan hears Wei Ying before he sees him, as Yanli is swept away into a hug.

"A-Xian, you saw me before the concert." She laughs.

"Yes, but now you've seen the concert. What did you think? Was it good?"

"A sold-out arena and he asks if he's good," mutters Jiang Cheng with an air of long suffering. "No, I'm not hugging you, have you seen how sweaty you are right now?"

The two men shuffle around for a bit, caught between a slap on the back, an arm grab, and eventually seem to settle on a fistbump.

"Huaisang! Oh, a-and you brought Lan Zhan." The exuberant joy in Wei Ying's voice dies out to something quieter, more uncertain, and Lan Zhan hates that he's the one who did that to him. "It's nice to see you."

"You too, Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, uncomfortably aware that everyone's kind of looking at him now.

"You knew he was here, I sent that picture," says Huaisang, his eyebrows raised high. "You're the one who gave us VIP tickets."

"Yeah, but I didn't know you'd come around afterwards. It's, er, probably not your usual thing, right, Lan Zhan?" Wei Ying gestures, and Lan Zhan isn't sure if he means the t-shirt with his face on, or the concert in general.

"I enjoyed it very much. Your singing –" And the hipthrusts, though he doesn't mention those, "—was very evocative."

"I – oh. Thanks," says Wei Ying, flustered. Lan Zhan is also bad at taking compliments, so he understands, somewhat. "Well, let me introduce you to the others."

They shuffle further in, and it becomes apparent that everyone else here knows each other already. Jiang Cheng and Yanli, he expects, because they're Wei Ying's siblings so it makes sense that they've met the rest of the band, but Huaisang knows them all as well, Lan Zhan suddenly realises that they all kept in touch. Everyone except him.

He had always thought that he was the one who left them behind when he moved halfway across the country to pursue dance professionally, joining a ballet corps at the age of 15. He hadn't had a phone or social media then, and he was too busy anyway, trying to adjust to new styles of teaching, new living arrangements, new everything. Except now he realises that he was the one who was left behind.

They all have each other on Instagram and TikTok and there's a group chat of former Cloud Recesses students, most of whom have gone on to do things completely unrelated to dance. The only one he still talks to is Huaisang, and that's really more because their brothers are friends so they end up at the same family gatherings and Huaisang is involved in funding for ballet programmes so they talk shop too.

He tries to not let his bewilderment show and instead nods along as he's introduced to the rest of the band ("Ah," says Wen Qing, "so you're the reason we had to change up our entire set list an hour before opening.") as well as Ghost City – Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan and A-Qing (only one name, like Madonna) – and then Little MianMian who is Luo Qingyang's daughter asleep on the chest of her husband (he waves wearily from the sofa) and A-Yuan, who squirms out of Wen Qing's arms and comes running over when he hears his name called.

"'lo," says A-Yuan with a beaming gap-toothed smile as he comes crashing in to hug Lan Zhan's bad leg.

Lan Zhan flinches before he can help himself as pain twinges across his knee and Wei Ying is suddenly there, holding his elbow and leaning him against his side.

"Lan Zhan? Oh, shit, was that your injured leg? A-Yuan, gege's leg is hurt, come here."

A-Yuan looks up at him with wide eyes. "Did I hurt gege?"

"No," Lan Zhan says quickly. "It was already hurt. And it's much better now."

A-Yuan peels himself off Lan Zhan's leg hurriedly, and Wen Ning gets up off one of the chairs, insistently standing until Lan Zhan sits down.

Wei Ying scoops A-Yuan up into his arms when he waves his chubby fists and smiles weakly. "Sorry about that, Lan Zhan. It's rare that he likes strangers though."

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan slowly as A-Yuan peeks out from where he's hidden his face in Wei Ying's neck to mumble an apology. "How did you know about my leg?"

It had made sense to him, earlier, that Jiang Yanli had known about it because she had always been in love with ballet, they had had many interesting discussions about productions and performances and dancers. But Lan Zhan's world hasn't crossed paths with Wei Ying's in over ten years.

Wei Ying shifts his weight from one leg to another. "I keep up, you know. With the news."

"The... ballet news?"

"Ah, well, you know me," says Wei Ying, laughing nervously. "I love ballet."

"You think ballet is for prim and boring stick-in-the-muds who enjoy having things stuck in their hair and probably up their asses," says Lan Zhan, shocking even himself with the clarity with which he remembers the exact words Wei Ying had said to him once, about sixteen years ago, the one and only time Lan Zhan had tried to convince him to do ballet classes. He hasn't thought about it for many years, but in hindsight... it had probably hurt him very much.

Everyone around them looks deeply uncomfortable.

"Oh my God, Lan Zhan." Wei Ying looks appalled. "I can't believe you remember – okay, wow, I was an absolute little bitch back then. I'm sorry, I haven't thought that in a very long time now."

"Oh," says Lan Zhan faintly. "That's good."

There's a moment of silence, where Lan Zhan is still waiting for Wei Ying to answer his question and Wei Ying is looking anywhere except at him, and everyone else is looking at him but pretending that they aren't.

"Bitch," says A-Yuan.

Jiang Cheng lets out a wildly undignified snort, and slow claps it out for them. "Okay, as fun as this has been, I do have a job I have to get to in the morning so I have to go. A-jie, Wei Wuxian–"

"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow." Wei Ying's still not looking at Lan Zhan. Jiang Cheng makes the rounds on his goodbyes and Lan Zhan looks back at Wei Ying.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan quietly. "How did you know my leg was injured?"

Wei Ying slides himself into a seat, bounces A-Yuan a couple of times as he starts to drift off. "Is it so weird for me to keep up with ballet news?"

Yes, Lan Zhan wants to say. Yes, it is.

"I'm not completely uncultured," says Wei Ying, and oh, no – that wasn't the implication that Lan Zhan was trying to make at all.

"I have never thought that," he says, not sure what else to say. It's just that... Lan Zhan is a big deal in the ballet world and the ballet world isn't that big. If Wei Ying is interested in ballet then he's interested in Lan Zhan, and he knows that Wei Ying isn't interested in Lan Zhan, because it's been ten years since the last time they spoke. It makes sense in his head.

"I had tickets for Don Quixote. I was pretty stoked."

"You... had tickets?" Lan Zhan knows, logically, that what Wei Ying is not using complicated language. The meaning is clear. It's just that there's a complete disconnect between his ears and his brain and the rest of him right now.

"I ended up giving them away. They were for a few weeks after your car accident."

"You never got in touch," says Lan Zhan numbly. To think that Wei Ying could have gone to see him dance, they'd have been in the same room and Lan Zhan would never have known he was in the audience because Wei Ying hadn't said anything.

Wei Ying laughs, more an exhalation of nervous energy than anything else. "I didn't know what to say. I mean, was I going to send fanmail in to a ballet company and say that I was an old dancing schoolmate of their world-class principal danseur who hasn't been in touch in a decade? They probably would have thought I was a weird stalker."

"...I had a similar problem," admits Lan Zhan after a moment, thinking of the thirty or so half-written messages he has considered sending on YouTube, ranging from 'Hello, it's me, Lan Zhan' to 'Dear The Remnants, I hope you are well. I am getting in touch since...'

The room is getting steadily more quiet as the adrenaline rush from the gig wears off and weariness sinks in, instead. Everyone looks like they're heading out, Luo Qingyang and her husband and daughter having slipped out quietly already.

"Do you want to come back to my place?" says Wei Ying, suddenly. It rings a little too loudly in the small dressing room. "I mean – aha. I mean. To continue this conversation. To catch up. It's just that – tomorrow I have to see the Jiangs, and then we've got the second show in the evening, and then after that the rest of the tour, so we won't be back here for a while."

"Three months."

"I - yeah, exactly. Three months. And then maybe you won't be here by then. But I know it's getting late, and you don't—"

"I would like to," says Lan Zhan.

"You - really?" says Wei Ying, eyes widening.

"Yes," says Lan Zhan firmly.

Chapter Text

They get a cab back to Wei Ying’s apartment. They sit on opposite sides of the back seat and while Lan Zhan normally relishes the quiet of a car journey with no obligations to say anything, he can tell that Wei Ying doesn’t feel the same. It's already later than Lan Zhan would normally go to bed, and the white noise of the radio plus the hypnotic rhythm of streetlights passing them is making him drowsy, content to look at Wei Ying from under his eyelashes, where the side of Wei Ying's face is lit sporadically in orange and neon, shadows stretching his features and making his face inscrutable when he looks back at Lan Zhan.

The chill whip of wind in his face when they finally get out is welcome.

They’re at a gated apartment complex, and while Wei Ying’s apartment is not quite a penthouse, it’s close. Wei Ying actually looks slightly embarrassed as he shuffles Lan Zhan through the security desk, the lobby with its high ceilings and marble flooring, the elevators with gold rimmed buttons.

Wei Ying bobs on the balls of his feet as he digs for his keys, and then pauses with the door cracked slightly open. “It’s, uh, quite new. I used to have something more normal, but then I had a thing with reporters and fans, and this place has 24-hour security, and they’re really good with my post if I’m on tour for months, and they let me soundproof so we can practise and stuff, and. You know.”

Lan Zhan blinks, slowly. “I do not know,” he says. “Are you apologising for being successful?”

“Uhhhhh, maybe?” Wei Ying flashes a pained smile at him, and then opens the door all the way.

"We attended dance school at my family owned dance company, in my family owned studio, converted from the old family mansion, based on my family estate," points out Lan Zhan. The estate enveloped the entire top of the hill that the dance studio was part of, and its classical architecture and carefully cultivated traditional gardens left absolutely no doubt that it was owned by a family of very old money.

"Oh, ha." Wei Ying huffs, and hands Lan Zhan a pair of fluffy slippers that look like they've been stolen from a hotel – The Langham, actually, according to the stitching on it – and crams his own feet into a pair of hideously battered, hideously orange slides. "Yeah, I guess you're used to it. Would you like a drink?"

"I don't drink."

"Oh? Huh," Wei Ying squints at him for a second. "Tea? Coffee?"

"Tea would be nice," says Lan Zhan.

The entrance of the apartment leads into an open plan kitchen and living area, and it's eclectically decorated. There's a three-piece sofa set with matching decorative cushions straight out of a catalogue, with a frayed patchwork blanket thrown over the back; there's mounted The Remnants memorabilia on one of the walls, as well as a multicoloured string of crayon scribbles on the same wall, about a foot off the ground. There are no curtains, but there is a life-size cardboard cut-out of Wei Ying standing next to the four video consoles. There is at least one item of discarded clothing on every available surface.

Lan Zhan finds himself oddly charmed.

"Heh, like I said, it's quite new. And we've been on tour!" says Wei Ying, tracking his eyes as Lan Zhan looks around.

"I also travel for work," says Lan Zhan, hoping that conveys how not bothered he is by this. His own apartment is also sparse, furnished only as much as it needs to be for his functionality in the snippets of time he gets to stay in it.

Wei Ying turns towards the side of the room with the kitchen area. "Anyway, let me just put the kettle on, and – oh, shit. Ah. I forgot about that."

Lan Zhan turns, catches up with him. It takes him a moment of staring to comprehend what his brain is seeing. There is brown mould over… most of the sink, where there are lumps that Lan Zhan assumes used to be mugs. And also some of the kitchen counter. Globs, his mind helpfully supplies the right word. Brown globs, that also happen to be mouldy. They jiggle when Wei Ying tentatively gets out a chopstick and pokes it. A sour sort of smell starts leaking out if Lan Zhan breathes too deeply.

"I, ha. You know what, let's not go too near that in case it's grown sentience," says Wei Ying, shooing him with flaps of his hands back into the living room area. "Let me just check the fridge, I'm sure I have something in there."

Lan Zhan waits near the sofa – it seems odd to sit down on it first – and takes a look at the bookshelf instead as Wei Ying rummages around in the depths of his fridge. He finds it fascinating what people's bookshelves tell him about them. There's a mix of battered fantasy novels and dog-eared non-fiction, running quickly into CDs and DVDs on the same bookcase. A number of larger booklets are crammed around the edges, and Lan Zhan recognises one just from seeing the top inch of it - recognises it because he has a copy himself, he has a copy of all the programmes of the productions he's been in, and he's reaching out to touch it before he registers how rude it would be to randomly pull things off a bookshelf at someone else's house.

"Aha!" Wei Ying emerges triumphant with two bottles of iced tea in his hands, and looks over him with all the pride of a toddler who has just figured out how to open the latch on the safety gate. "Honestly, sorry about this. I'd forgotten about that mess. I wanted something nice the night before we left on tour, just to settle myself and enjoy the last night home, you know. So I was going to make some proper hot chocolate, with melted chocolate and milk? And then the only block of chocolate I had was one of those big chocolate bunnies, which was obviously way too much chocolate so I had to add loads of milk, so there was loads left, and, uh. I meant to clean it all up in the morning before I left except my alarm didn't go off so I woke up late and I hadn't finished packing, and then we had to leave and I just. Forgot."

There's nothing about this story that should make Lan Zhan smile, but he does. It makes Wei Ying seem a little more real in front of him. Wei Ying closes his eyes, and sighs. "It's usually not this bad, I promise."

"Iced tea is fine," says Lan Zhan in what he hopes is a reassuring manner.

Wei Ying laughs, at least. "Ugh, I don't even have time to deal with it before I leave again. I'm going to have to call Jiang Cheng."

"You're making your brother clean it up?"

"Oh, fuck no. He would never. He just has a spare key, so he can open the door when I hire professional cleaners. See anything interesting?"

Lan Zhan realises that he still has one hand outstretched, his fingertips still brushing the programme of Giselle. "You really do like ballet," he says, and winces at the surprise in his voice.

"What? I - oh, you found the programmes." There's something about Wei Ying's nonchalant tone, the way his eyes skitter past Lan Zhan's as if afraid to make proper contact, the way he hugs the two bottles in his hands to his chest until the condensation leaves damp marks on his grey t-shirt.

Lan Zhan goes to pull out the programme for Giselle, except it's wedged in tight among all the other booklets, and Lan Zhan finds himself with not just Giselle in his hands but also programmes for all the other shows he's been in. Even The Rite of Spring and Robin Hood, when he hadn't even been the principal dancer. He looks back at the shelf. There are other programmes for musicals, plays, but none others for ballet. Apart from the ones he's been in. He looks down at the cover for Giselle blankly, and his own face made up in pale make-up with dramatic dark shadowed eyes and slicked back hair stares him down.

"I do like ballet, in general," says Wei Ying weakly, because of course he can keep up with Lan Zhan's train of thought.

"You went to... all of these?" asks Lan Zhan, dumbfounded. How had he never known? How had he never asked? His mind wants to blame Nie Huaisang, the common thread between them, but it's not Huaisang's fault that he keeps in touch with his friends and Lan Zhan does not.

Wei Ying points at The Nutcracker. "I didn't get a chance to see that one. It sold out really quickly and we released a Christmas single that year and were doing promo so I didn't have a lot of dates free. But a-jie went and she got me a copy of the programme, and I got to see it when it was streamed in cinemas."

Lan Zhan hates The Nutcracker with a burning passion. Every winter, he hears snippets of it floating out from shops as he's walking down the street, and his entire body twitches with the need to fall in line with the music. (He retains the same muscle memory for all his past productions, but at least he's not likely to hear Coppélia randomly when he's just out trying to find a new scarf.) He would dance it now for Wei Ying if he wanted to see it live.

"You followed my career. You never said anything," says Lan Zhan. He's aware he's repeating himself, but it's just sinking in how many lost opportunities he's had over the years. He shuffles through them all, his career for the last eight years laid bare. Wei Ying has been within touching distance all this time, and he never even knew. He certainly hasn't spent years of his life following Wei Ying's career – he didn't even know there was a career for him to follow.

He looks up and Wei Ying's mouth is twitching, like he wants to say something but doesn't know what. Eventually: "Iced tea?"

Lan Zhan nods. They shuffle over to sit on the sofa, which creaks from lack of use, one person at each end, with less than a metre but what feels like an entire world's length between them. Wei Ying perches on the very edge of the cushion, as if it's not his home, his sofa. There's no excuse of endless shadows streaming past the window to obscure his face this time.

The iced tea is oddly reminiscent of his childhood, the kind that his family had stocked at home all the time and he'd assumed was ubiquitously available to everyone's family and then discovered that it was a Chinese thing and he could never find it again after he joined the company.

The condensation on the iced tea trickles a cold trail down his hand. "You must think I'm a very poor friend," says Lan Zhan quietly, and then closes his eyes. No – that's not what he meant. Or rather, he meant it, but he didn't mean to make it sound like he's accusing Wei Ying of anything. He inhales, and tries again. Opens his eyes. "I have been a very poor friend."

Wei Ying picks at the plastic label of his own iced tea, and laughs nervously. A wisp of hair escapes his ponytail and curls under the line of his cheekbone and Lan Zhan wants to tuck it behind his ear for him. "Don't say it like that, Lan Zhan. It's not like – hmm. No one expected – wait, I'm not saying it right either."

No one expected you to be a good friend, hears Lan Zhan. It's true. But it still hurts.

"I know you only put up with us because we occupied the same space at the same time," says Wei Ying eventually. It's not a reprimand, coming out of his mouth, just slightly sad. "You don't have to refute it, I know how much you hate lying. I think if you could have had private lessons and not seen a single other person when you were just trying to focus on your dance, you would have."

Lan Zhan feels very seen, because - actually, yes. There had been a period where he'd clearly been better than everyone else, and he'd got increasingly irritated with everyone who wasn't intending to pursue ballet as a career and therefore didn't take it as seriously as he did, and he had asked if he could just have private lessons. His uncle hadn't been against it, but it was his brother who had gently said that ballet wasn't a solo activity. He needed to learn how to dance with other people even if he was going to be the principal (and none of them had had any doubts that he was going to be a principal danseur), attune himself to everyone else's lines and shapes, and also learn how to work with them outside of the studio if he was going to live with a troupe or tour with a company.

"It made sense at the time," says Lan Zhan, and hates how defensive it comes out. He can even feel his shoulders starting to hunch up around his ears and pulls himself up straight instead, except no, that's too straight, now he just looks robotic, and why can't he do this right?

"I know," says Wei Ying, "And I'm not just saying that. You had ambitions and you were going for them. We all thought that was amazing, you know. When you moved away, none of us were surprised you'd got in. None of us had that kind of drive. We were all going to become like, accountants or something."

It's rude to talk about people behind their backs, thinks Lan Zhan despairingly, except he also desperately wants to ask details about what they all thought. "You were going to be an accountant?" he says instead, because he can't imagine Wei Ying with his undercut and ponytail, oversized t-shirts that fall off one shoulder and ripped skinny jeans as an accountant.

"I know, right? Awful idea. I mean, I'm not bad at it, I just don't find it interesting. I did economics at uni in the end. Except then I met the others and we started the band, and it wasn't serious, just a way to relax outside of lectures, and then Wen Ning uploaded something to SoundCloud and people actually liked it, and Mianmian had a friend who had to pull out of a gig at the student union so we took their slot instead, and it all just went from there."

Lan Zhan does not say that he knows all of this, which he does, because he's had three weeks of Youtube spiralling to watch all and any interviews, but it's different when Wei Ying is telling the story to him, just him. "You could always fall back on accountancy if the singing doesn't work out."

Wei Ying laughs. "Was that a joke? Lan Zhan!"

"Since I broke my leg," says Lan Zhan, and oh, it's still a little painful to say those words out loud, "I've realised that I don't have much outside of ballet."

Wei Ying, thankfully, does not chime in with any platitudes like 'I'm sure that's not true', because then Lan Zhan would be forced to demonstrate to him how it was, has been, painfully true.

"So what have you been doing since?"

Lan Zhan racks his brain for enough activities to fill a whole sentence. "Physiotherapy and reading. Youtube, recently. My brother has said that if I wanted to, I could teach a course or run a masterclass at Cloud Recesses, but I haven't done that yet."

"You haven't gone back to Cloud Recesses? I'd bet they'd be honoured to have you do a masterclass. Or teaching little kids, that's got to be fun."

"There is nothing fun about Chinese dance parents."

Wei Ying laughs, a burst that spills out from his chest and dissolves into giggles. "Oh, oh! That is so true."

Lan Zhan has complicated feelings about Cloud Recesses. On the one hand, it's his home, where he grew up. On the other, he hasn't lived there in years, and he's become more aware over the years how the strictness, the simple lifestyle and the dozens and dozens of rules that he found solace in guiding his growth have led exactly to his current situation - a twenty-something man with no friends, no hobbies, no attachments, no social skills and no skills outside of ballet.

And, more importantly... "I can't teach. I don't know how to choreograph," he adds sheepishly, and he can already feel his cheeks burning with the embarrassment.

"You what?" says Wei Ying eloquently.

"I don't know anything about choreography," says Lan Zhan again. It's something that he's never really had to think about before - dancers for other forms of dance almost definitely have some experience of choreography, and it probably seems ludicrous to Wei Ying, who did the hip hop and street dance classes, that Lan Zhan has never choreographed anything himself before, but ballet is just not like that. He'd never considered it a deficiency in his skillset until he was told by his physio that he could start practising again but only with some easier choreography, something short, and he had drawn a blank on what that would look like outside of drills because he's never put something together by himself before.

Wei Ying looks at him curiously. "That can't be right. You've never heard a piece of music and thought about how you'd dance to it?"

The very idea stresses Lan Zhan out. He's been to a club exactly once in his life, with some of the troupe about three days before opening night a couple of years ago, and it had been loud and sticky and Lan Zhan does not know how to dance to something that is not choreographed. If someone yells at him 'raise your shoulders!' he somehow knows exactly what that means. If someone tells him to 'just do whatever you want', he has no idea what that means.

Choreography requires creativity. Lan Zhan would be the first to admit that creativity is not his strong suit. He likes that every fingertip, every tilt of his chin is meticulously designed by someone else; some ballet choreography has remained the same for decades and the idea of changing it would be preposterous.

"I don't listen to music," he admits. Probably a bad idea to admit that to someone who professionally creates music for a living. "Apart from ballets. And when I listen to ballet, I see the choreography in my mind."

"You don't listen to music? What were you doing at our gig?" asks Wei Ying, his eyes crinkling up into half-crescents like he's telling Lan Zhan he's laughing with him, not at him.

"Apart from yours," amends Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying is still looking at him like he's a puzzle to be solved. Lan Zhan thinks that he must be one of those that are entirely one colour - difficult to solve but ultimately boring and not very satisfying. "Well, I'm honoured to be your exception, in that case."

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Choreograph," says Lan Zhan. "Your Youtube channel says that you do the choreography for your dance covers yourself."

Wei Ying presses his face into a cushion. "Oh god. You've watched my dance covers? Why would you do that to yourself?"

Lan Zhan can feel his forehead furrowing. "Yes. They're very good. Your lines on the more contemporary ones are exquisite." He means to carry on, but Wei Ying clamps one hand down on his arm and flaps the other in his face.

"Stop, stop. You're a professional danseur. One of the best in the world. I took literally three classes of contemporary because Madam Yu made me. I can't have you commenting on my lines, that's appalling."

"But I like the dance videos," says Lan Zhan, quietly, confused. He blinks down at Wei Ying's hand on his arm.

Wei Ying clutches at him again, his time around the shoulders. "Oh, no, Lan Zhan, you can't do that to me. I'm going to have a heart attack if you keep on being so cute. I just need a minute, okay. Being complimented on my dance by you is like an achievement of a lifetime."

Lan Zhan wants to point out that Wei Ying is perfectly proficient at dance, he took lessons for years, and anyway ballet is different to contemporary anyway, and different again to hip hop so he doesn't see why his opinion on either of those should weigh more than anyone else's. Wei Ying eventually leans back, and Lan Zhan feels the loss of the warmth of his hands on his shoulders.

"Okay. I'm okay. I just didn't realise you'd seen the videos. All of them? Which one was your favourite? No, wait, you asked me a question first."

"No sinners, no saints," says Lan Zhan, which is the name of the song that Wei Ying had danced to in the warehouse video.

"Oh." Wei Ying's smile is like a direct beam of solar energy into Lan Zhan's brain. "I like that one too."

Lan Zhan desperately hopes he doesn't ask what, exactly, he liked about it, because it does have complex choreography that he really appreciates, but the only thing that comes to mind right now is that he could see Wei Ying's nipples for the whole 4 minutes and 26 seconds.

They sit there, sort of staring at each other, Wei Ying smiling at him, for long enough that even Lan Zhan recognises that it should be awkward, but he doesn't want to be the first to look away. Wei Ying eventually does, with an apologetic half-cough, as he talks about choreography and how he goes about it, and they both pretend it was a smooth segue.

It's nostalgic, this. Wei Ying used to talk his ear off when they were young, Lan Zhan content to sit and listen to him and occasionally offer his agreement or opinion if needed. It feels good that they seem to have slipped back into it, like maybe it doesn't matter quite so much that one day Lan Zhan left without even saying goodbye to him and didn't think twice about it.

He should go home, soon. It's way past when he normally goes to bed and Wei Ying has a full day tomorrow as well from the sounds of it, but he lets Wei Ying's voice buoy him along, bright and bubbly, as he uses his remaining energy to make mental notes on breaking down music beats and mapping out the emotions and story in the song, and he feels himself sinking back into the sofa.

"You should start a Youtube channel," adds Wei Ying enthusiastically.

Lan Zhan waits a moment, but there's nothing to indicated that he's joking, or mocking Lan Zhan. "Of?"

"You, dancing. People would love it. And! It hits so many birds with the same stone. On the base level, it means that you're dancing and rehearsing moves. You'll get videos for your showreel. And there are loads of people who would love to see you perform but can't afford it or whatever. So then on a broader level, it's about like...  bringing ballet to the masses, right? And because you want to keep your content short and snappy, you could do ballet choreography to modern songs and attract people who might not be interested in ballet because they don't know anything about classical music."

It's not a bad idea. Logically speaking, that is. Emotionally speaking... well, Lan Zhan sits for a moment, lets his initial gut reaction of no, absolutely not ferment in his stomach for a few moments. And then he realises that he's already thinking about what he might need for it – a camera, definitely. Video editing software as well. And he'll have to look at his old costumes to see what he can wear.

"I will think about it," he says faintly. This is too big of a decision to make right now.

"Ah, you're starting to space out," says Wei Ying cheerfully. "You're probably super tired after standing for the gig, I should have let you go straight home."

Lan Zhan does not mention that Wei Ying not only also stood for the whole concert but also spent much of it leaping around the stage. "I don't mind."

"This was nice though. To catch up, yeah?"

"Yes. Thank you, for the choreography advice."

"If you decide to start a Youtube channel, feel free to text me for advice. We were totally useless at it when we started. I mean, you could also google it, but that's less fun than being able to vent about how much you hate SEO, right?"

Lan Zhan does not know what SEO is. "Much less fun."

Wei Ying holds out a hand and wiggles his fingers for Lan Zhan's phone and then takes a selfie of himself to go in the profile picture bit, and just like that, Lan Zhan has Wei Ying's phone number and then Wei Ying texts himself so he has Lan Zhan's number as well.

He orders an Uber home and Wei Ying patters downstairs with him, his orange sliders slapping against the marble floors of the empty, echoing lobby as he sees him off, and then the Uber is here and Lan Zhan has a moment where he thinks Wei Ying will lean in to hug him, like he seems to do with everyone else, where Wei Ying's body sways forward – and then he pulls himself back and clasps Lan Zhan on the shoulder instead.

"Don't be a stranger," says Wei Ying, but it's gentle.

Lan Zhan goes home, showers the dried sweat and concert grime off himself, and goes to bed.

And that's it, he thinks. Wei Ying will go on to do more emotionally devastating concerts halfway across the world for the next three months, and he'll go back to wrapping a resistance band around his soles and building up his calf muscle until he also gets a job that takes him the other way around the world. Their lives are like a set of parabolas, touching briefly and then moving in opposite directions again. He enjoyed it while it lasted.

*

When he wakes up, he's been added to three group chats, and there are 58 unread messages. 2 are from Jiang Yanli, a quiet but heartfelt welcome to the group. 8 are from Jiang Cheng moaning about people who send text messages at 2am on a work night. The other 48 are from Wei Ying.

Chapter Text

"Your focus is wavering," says Lan Qiren. His bushy eyebrows draw together, and Lan Zhan folds his hands carefully, his fingers resting on the edge of the table. They do not tremble.

"It is prudent to look ahead," says Lan Zhan. His tone is even, mild. "A danseur's career is short, and I would not want to find myself unmoored at the end of it. There were moments during this rehabilitation period where my return was in doubt."

He does not add that technically his return hasn't actually happened yet. He's still unemployed, which is exactly why he's here in the first place.

One side-effect of not travelling and performing all the time is that his Uncle expects him for family dinner every week. After months of weekly family dinners, Lan Zhan has yet to determine whether this is a bonus or a drawback.

On the one hand, he left home as a teenager and has only been able to visit for brief snatches of time here and there. There are New Year and Mid-Autumn celebrations he's missed, countless birthdays and even a few weddings. On the other hand, he's spent over a decade carving out his own routines, his likes and dislikes, and coming back is like trying to wear a skin that he's outgrown. Familiar, but... itchy.

"Hmm," says Lan Qiren, and strokes his beard. Lan Zhan can tell that he understands the merits of the argument even if he does not like it. "Do not overexert yourself."

Perhaps Lan Zhan would have once thought this a strange sentence from a man who used to nod approvingly when Lan Zhan would remain in the studio by himself, hours after classes were over, working himself until the pain splintering up his shins was unbearable. But now, he hears the unvoiced concern behind it, and nods.

Every so often, Lan Zhan will stay after dinner and join his brother in some meditation or yoga, or discuss a book that his Uncle recommended, but this time he picks up his bags and heads down towards the studios after they're done for the day. If his uncle had disapproved of the idea, Lan Zhan would have likely gone ahead and done it anyway and never told him about it, but being able to use the Cloud Recesses studios without feeling like he's sneaking around is more convenient than trying to rent a suitable space.

The family estate still remains near the peak of the mountain, buildings nestled in among the trees and bamboo groves that almost hide it from sight. For most people, the Cloud Recesses dance studio on the lower boundary of the estate is the highest up the mountain that they'll ever get, and many don't even know there's anything beyond it.

The number of parents who complain about the distance of the studio from the town increases every year, but the prestige of the school and its alumni keeps the classes full regardless. Lan Zhan himself is featured prominently in the 'Notable Alumni' section of the website.

(Wei Ying, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen. Lan Zhan has tucked that away for a later conversation with his brother. First, he must broach the fact that he has seen him again.)

Lan Zhan flips the power on. The lights high in the ceiling flicker on, a warm glow that fills the air. It's cool in here; it usually is this far up the mountain, which is a blessing when it's filled with sweating children and teenagers for hours on end during summer, but Lan Zhan makes a note to warm up more carefully than usual.

But first, he sets up the little tripod he's bought on top of the piano, and attaches the new GoPro to it. There's a more professional camera set-up somewhere in storage, for students to add to their reel and the thrice yearly recitals, but that feels a little too much at the moment. His uncle hadn't really endorsed this endeavour, just not actively disapproved of it.

Besides, Wei Ying has the same model of GoPro – he'd mentioned using it in passing a couple of weeks ago, saying that it was the perfect cross between decent quality recording and portability for when he was on the road.

It's almost an hour later before Lan Zhan thinks he's ready to start recording. He's done more stretching and drills than strictly needed, but he'd needed the time to psych himself up. He's rummaging around for a towel and a fresh t-shirt when he hears the doors click open from down the corridor.

"A-Zhan? Are you in here?" His brother's voice precedes him from the lobby area. His head follows, poking into the studio. Lan Zhan's heartrate spikes as if he's been caught doing something wrong. Old habits. He's not doing anything wrong, he tells himself firmly. Lan Huan takes it all in with a smile. "Oh good, you are. I thought I had left the lights on by accident. You're filming already? I didn't expect you to start straight away."

"Hm," is all Lan Zhan says.

"Do you need any help?"

"No, thank you." Lan Zhan is usually glad for his brother's presence; he remembers that they used to exist around each other seamlessly, but right now he is an intrusion. Ballet dancers exist to be watched, but he doesn't want another person's eyes on him right now.

Luckily, he doesn't have to find a way to make that request. Lan Huan's eyes crinkle as he closes the door behind him. "Then don't stay too late."

Lan Zhan waits until the footsteps recede out all the way to the end of the corridor, folding the sweaty t-shirt into a small square and tucking it away as he listens for the click of the door on the other end. He can't find a clean one even after a bit of rummaging; he must have forgotten to pack a spare. He forgoes the shirt entirely.

Being filmed is hardly a new experience for him; he even does it himself on his mediocre phone camera often enough, though that's so that he can pore over his form. He knows how to forget that the camera is there and to focus on his dancing alone.

He breathes in time to the music. He raises his chin, and opens his eyes. He dances.

His ankle feels stiff. His back clicks when he lands a jump. He inhales the air of the studio at night and feels the chill stream all the way down his oesophagus. His hair, not slicked back as he would normally for performances, drops into his eyes when he sweeps into a kneel for his final pose, and he has to toss his head to flick it back.

The whole thing is barely two minutes long. He feels amazing. He's already exhausted. He films it five times.

-

Uploading a video on YouTube takes more prep work than Lan Zhan had expected.

He has a number of tabs open on his internet browser with 'how to' guides, methodically arranged in what order he needs to do all of these things. First, he has to set up a channel and pick a username. He tries LanZhan, which is miraculously untaken. He has to put a header picture up and he uses the photo of a dawn that is also his screensaver, because it makes him feel calm when he looks at it, and nothing about trying to set up a YouTube channel makes him feel calm.

He's told he has to pick a profile picture because that makes people want to watch his videos. He's not sure why that matters, but he googles himself for some pictures, feeling slightly foolish for being, apparently, a person who googles himself. He narrows it down to two options that he thinks looks recognisably like him under the stage make-up and sends them to Huaisang with the question Which one do you think looks better?

While he's waiting for a reply, Lan Zhan takes about twenty minutes to painstakingly type two sentences into the 'About Me' section on his new YouTube channel. Huaisang replies finally with New profile pic?

Something like that.

Huaisang sends him back a different photo entirely, one from the press production of Swan Lake where he's in a white blouse shot with silver thread. It looks fine, he supposes, and uses it.

Even when all that is sorted, Lan Zhan has to pick a title, and tag it, and... it's a lot. At least he's already read up on what metadata is. And then he clicks 'upload', and that's it. Probably? It looks like it's going to take a while to upload, so he steps away to sort out some lunch, and then he gets distracted by his daily routine.

By the time he's done with lunch, meditation, physio stretches and a grocery trip, it's already late afternoon and he figures that should be enough time to have uploaded properly. It's not until it's up and live that he texts the link to Wei Ying.

His text conversation history with Wei Ying is long and meandering, more like one long continuous conversation that picks up again where it dropped off last if one of them wasn't replying immediately.

They've talked about their past, the years in between, the cities that Wei Ying is in on tour, random anecdotes from the rest of the band and minute updates on the state of his leg from Lan Zhan's end. Lan Zhan has used his phone more in the last few weeks than he has in the whole last three years of owning this phone. Wei Ying texts a lot, and unlike the kind of conversations between his brother or uncle which are generally informational or simple questions easily answered, they are actual conversations. Similar to how Huaisang texts. Lan Zhan had always assumed that Huaisang was some sort of over-talker, but perhaps this is how everyone apart from his family texts.

The only thing Lan Zhan has deliberately not talked about is his decision to take Wei Ying's suggestion of a YouTube channel seriously. He knows, logically, that he could have told Wei Ying he was considering it right away, and Wei Ying would have walked him through every step of it and then Lan Zhan wouldn't have 34 tabs open on video editing and Becoming a Content Creator (nor the previous 16 tabs open on How to choregraph a dance). But he'd wanted to surprise Wei Ying with it.

Wei Ying is in a different timezone to him right now – six hours ahead, not that he's keeping track of what city Wei Ying is in every day or anything like that – so he's probably finishing tonight's performance or heading back to their hotel or something similar.

It's not too long before Lan Zhan's phone is vibrating. He stares down at the request for a video call from Wei Ying. That's new. They've stuck to text before this.

"Hello?"

"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying's energy somehow crosses the 4000 miles between them like a thunderbolt, sudden and effusive and all at once filling Lan Zhan's living room. He's a little too close to the camera so Lan Zhan can only see about half of his face at first, and half of that is taken up by the blinding smile that goes from ear to ear.

He pulls back after a moment, until Lan Zhan can see all of him – he's still sweaty from the concert, flushed with strands of hair plastered to his forehead and neck, little tufty cowlicks sticking out over his ears. He's got an enormous fluffy white robe on, tied loosely and haphazardly enough around the waist that Lan Zhan can tell he's not wearing a t-shirt on underneath. He can see Wei Ying's collarbones, and the robe gapes when he moves, which is all the time. It's sort of a little bit distressing.

"Lan Zhan?"

Lan Zhan blinks. Wei Ying has been talking at him, he recalls that much. "Wei Ying?"

"Ah, Lan Zhan! Sorry, was I talking too much at you?"

"No," says Lan Zhan truthfully. His lack of attention had been entirely his own fault. "I have not done a video call before."

Wei Ying pauses in his train of thought to frown at him. "What, ever?" And then gapes at him when Lan Zhan nods in response.

"Let me know if I should be doing it differently," says Lan Zhan, before Wei Ying can offer to turn the camera off or switch to a normal phone call or something.

There's a peal of nervous laughter from the tinny phone speakers. "No, you're… you're good. Perfect, even. Just as you are."

"Hm," says Lan Zhan, and blinks.

"So," says Wei Ying, "I'm so excited you actually took me seriously about the YouTube channel thing! I can't believe you didn't tell me anything about it beforehand, we've been texting like every day, Lan Zhan."

"Surprise," says Lan Zhan, deadpan, and is pleasantly surprised when Wei Ying actually laughs at it.

"I love it. Especially when you do the thing," says Wei Ying, accompanying his words with a hand gesture. At a guess, Lan Zhan assumes it's supposed to be a visual representation of a cabriolé. Maybe a brisé. It's hard to tell from the finger flicks from the tiny on-screen Wei Ying.

"You've watched it already?" asks Lan Zhan.

"Oh like three times," says Wei Ying airily. "The head flick at the end?" He makes the motion for a chef's kiss. That's not even part of the choreography, but Lan Zhan is gratified since he also spent ten minutes debating with himself about whether to keep it in at the end or edit it out. He didn't, in the end, because it felt like a needed crack in the façade. He has always only ever been perfect on stage, every hair slicked into place, every ruffle starched, every ribbon meticulously sewn into a perfect bow. It was refreshing not to have to worry about that.

Wei Ying is still talking: "I don't think I recognise it though?"

"It's from La Fille du Régiment, it's an opera," says Lan Zhan. He'd deliberately chosen music not from a ballet – that way there would be no existing choreography to influence him.

Wei Ying lets out a gasp most dramatic. It reminds Lan Zhan of Huaisang – or perhaps it's the other way around, he's not sure. "Wait, not a ballet? So you choreographed it?"

The glee on his face is worth the hours Lan Zhan spent dissecting every beat, every transition move. "You inspired me to try something new," he says, and it comes out entirely too sincerely.

Wei Ying looks as flustered as Lan Zhan feels (Lan Zhan thinks that perhaps he does a better job of hiding it). Wei Ying's eyes skitter around the room that Lan Zhan can't see, off-camera, only darting to look at his phone occasionally. "Aha, well, you know... I'm sure you would have tried it eventually..."

He has to hang up soon after that. Lan Zhan hopes it's because it's getting late and because Wei Ying has an early wake up call tomorrow, rather than the turn their conversation has taken; Wei Ying is cheerful as ever as he waves Lan Zhan goodnight three separate times before actually hanging up.

The silence in Lan Zhan's apartment feels deafening after that. It never used to bother him before. His apartment with its relaxing minimalist lines had been his retreat after a long tour spent in close proximity to too many people. He tries to finish off the rest of his day – an ice bath, gentle stretches and meditation before dinner, the last few chapters of the novel he's reading – and feels the loneliness like an ice block slowly dripping down his spine until he gets up and puts some music.

His mouse is already over the latest Remnants album, but Lan Zhan ends up clicking away from it. That would be too on the nose, perhaps. (He is not unaware that it is a form of denial.) He ends up on a playlist of classical music instead, telling himself that he might find discover the next piece he wants to choreograph to.

He sleeps badly that night, for reasons he's not looking too closely into.

Lan Zhan had assumed that no one apart from Wei Ying would really be interested in his video. All of the online How Tos had emphasised how long it could take to build any sort of traction in a world flooded with video content. So safe to say, he's not expecting the influx of emails in his junk email when he wakes; he goes in to clear them out, wondering if someone's put his email on some mailing list, and stares at the YouTube notifications for a moment. Huh, comments.

He clicks through them methodically. At least half of them are a variation of 'Here from WY's tweet! Who is this dreamboat??' and a further third comment on his shirtlessness. One is specifically about his nipples. He makes a muffled sort of squeak, and accidentally clicks out of the browser. He clicks back in with as much dignity as he can muster, aware that his ears are burning.

There is an occasional comment from an actual ballet fan, and one particularly ardent commenter seems to be replying to other people asking who he is with information about him. Lan Zhan switches to a new tab and pulls up twitter, or at least attempts to. Wei Ying is thankfully easy to find, because Lan Zhan hates trying to navigate this website, and he discovers that Wei Ying did indeed tweet out a link to his video. It's captioned 'Lan Zhan!! How dare you be so beautiful??'' accompanied by what looks like an emoji of... water droplets? He's not sure what that's meant to mean. There's a second tweet threaded to it that says 'Lan Zhan is an old friend trying out something new, pls support him!!'

Lan Zhan switches to his phone and carefully types out Thank you for the encouraging tweet and then deletes it, because that sounds depressingly like a press conference soundbite. Your twitter followers seem to like the video is what he goes for in the end. He doesn't get a reply, because Wei Ying is probably doing a sound check for that evening's concert, and he makes his way through the rest of his comments.

There's an email nestled in between the YouTube notifications that he hadn't noticed at first, assuming that it was actually spam, but he suddenly realises that it's a response to the slew of reels and applications he's been sending out.

There's an international tour of Romeo and Juliet that's interested in him for a guest artist spot. He has an audition, if he wants it. He's reassured that it's basically a formality, more a chemistry meeting than anything else. If he's still interested, he should come packed with luggage ready for rehearsals, as opposed to an overnight bag.

It's in London, England, in three days' time. Lan Zhan books his flight before he even replies to the email.

Chapter Text

There's something familiar in joining a new company. New faces, new customs. New old buildings that have stood here for century, the history of dancers past seeped into the walls. Lan Zhan busies himself introducing himself to everyone, and spends his first few days watching. He's worked with troops trained under the Vaganova method as well as the French method before, but it's his first time where the majority of the dancers are Royal Academy.

It takes no time at all for him to be confident in his role as the outsider.

That's all right. He's the guest principal after all, it's in the title. He'll move on after a season with them and they'll stay together, more dysfunctional family than coworkers.

Previously, he'd be the one known for staying behind for extra practice, the one reviewing choreography during lunch as he leaned over his lunch, body tipped toward in a split, the one living practically on top of the dance halls for convenience.

Now, though. His workload is practically light. As a guest dancer, he's only here for this production, whereas the company is also be doing repertory for later productions at the same time. His Juliet is rehearsing three complete sets of choreo at once. Now, he goes for walks along the Thames and learns what the city looks like. He visits the V&A museum and sends pictures to Huaisang. He buys tickets for another show – a musical, not a ballet – and goes by himself and asks Wei Ying to explain jukebox musicals to him. (Wei Ying sends him links to about a dozen different albums of classic rock that Lan Zhan has only heard in passing.) He picks some music he wants to try choreographing to. He films another video.

"It's called work-life balance," says his brother on their first video call, his eyes crinkling with the laughter that he's too kind to actually laugh at Lan Zhan.

"You should add Wei Ying to the 'notable alumni' page on the website," Lan Zhan retaliates with.

"It's nice to see you make friends," says Lan Huan, which is the single most devastating thing he could have said. Lan Zhan concedes the victory to him this time.

"Have you watched the Marie Kondo series? I think you would find it calming," says Wei Ying on their video call, which is not the first but more like the tenth, twelfth, somewhere around that.

"I will look it up." Lan Zhan lets Wei Ying explain the concept of sparking joy to him. They both have the problem where their off hours are usually two to three hours snatched in the middle of the day between tech checks for Wei Ying and rehearsals for Lan Zhan, and their shows. It takes effort to be able to fit anything more complicated than an episode or two of something in.

"By the way, I'm writing a new album."

"Already?" Lan Zhan doesn't know much about music, but he at least understands that writing a new album while still on the tour for the currently new album can't be common.

"I got inspired. I was thinking about you being in Romeo and Juliet, right?" says Wei Ying, dropping that in there as if it's a throwaway line. "And then how there's so many variations of Romeo and Juliet in general, how people keep coming up with new versions to try and keep it original all the time, but in ballet there's always going to be a traditional performance of it, and there's something in how parts of the choreography are kept intact and passed along, and I was playing with that."

Wei Ying sends him a file of the first song that he'd completed. "It's just a rough demo at this stage obviously, we don't have any of the studio recording equipment, but you get the idea."

Lan Zhan does get the idea. It doesn't sound like the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet melodically, but he can hear the heavy beat, the dramatic guitar that's reminiscent of the Dance of the Knights. "Thank you for trusting me with this."

"Oh, god. I mean, obviously don't leak, it, et cetera, et cetera," says Wei Ying, looking slightly flustered. "We normally have an NDA, but–"

That's not what Lan Zhan was talking about at all – although of course he has no intentions of leaking it. He clarifies. "As a glimpse of your creative process."

"Oh! Yeah. Yeah. Any time," says Wei Ying. He beams, and Lan Zhan can feel the warmth of it through the tiny camera.

"I always enjoy hearing more about your songwriting," says Lan Zhan seriously.

He leaves Wei Ying talking on camera on the side as he runs through his evening stretches, working off the strain of the day. It wasn't until he wasn't doing anything at all that he had realised how much he had just got used to a constant low-grade level of pain all the time, and now he has to build his resistance back up again. In a strange way, he's missed his body hurting in all the right ways, the blisters on the bottom of his feet and the pull of the muscles telling him that he's been pushing himself to the limit. By the end of rehearsals, the occasional click in his ankle is just a part of the laundry list of sports injuries that Lan Zhan's waiting for his body to cash in on when he hits 35.

It's more difficult now he's 26 than it was when he was 6 and basically made of elastic.

"You talking about songwriting in a similar way to choreography," Lan Zhan observes.

Wei Ying stops his train of thought – something about the separation of music and lyrics – and makes a show of considering it. "Yeah, I guess I do. It makes sense though, right?"

"It does," Lan Zhan confirms. "It also helped me to understand why I wasn't comprehending some of your explanations."

"Oh, huh. Sorry."

"Don't apologise. It just makes me more impressed at the way your mind can hold so much at the same time." Lan Zhan doesn't think in the same way as Wei Ying, with his dozen feelers out in every direction at the same time; he can't hold that sort of holistic view in his head at the same time as nailing down the details.

Wei Ying's blush is visible even over the tiny phone screen. "Yeah, it's just a real bag of cats in here."

"Are the cats also geniuses?"

Wei Ying laughs. "Yeah, sure. Genius cats."

The video calls happen irregularly, a by-product of being in different countries as each other again. Wei Ying is doing a 3-month long US tour, going westward, and Lan Zhan is on a 9-month tour going across Europe through to Russia.

He hoards the tidbits that Wei Ying tells him about the new album. He doesn't really have any music education, but he has a generally decent idea of music just from listening to vast amounts of very structured music and offers what little insights he has.

The first track that Wei Ying sent him stays in his mind, an earworm that refuses to leave him alone even though he knows that the finished song won't sound anything like that. He gets a room to himself, as principal dancer. It's nothing fancy, but he takes advantage of the minimal space to play it over and over, discovering how he wants to move his body to it, where there's a suspended silence for a reach, a beat drop for a jump.

It's actually really helpful to have something else to focus on.

Before, he would finish a performance and then drum himself under a hot shower for as long as the water held, sitting on the floor of the shower because he knew he needed to rest his legs, melting out the spray holding his hair in place and then tumbling into bed, his body exhausted but his brain still waiting for the crash of adrenaline.

Now, he choreographs his piece six bars at a time in a hotel room in London, in Birmingham, in Edinburgh, in Paris and Lyon, in Bern. They're in Milan by the time he finishes, the stretch of the tour that's usually mentally the most difficult coming up. The excitement and novelty of a new tour has worn off, the homesickness and getting sick of small hotel rooms and musty coaches setting in, his body one constant ache even with the help of massages and physios and everything else.

He gets one day off in a stretch of ten days and takes his go pro out into the city. It's not tourist season and it's breezy out, so he does a short jog around the area to warm up as he scouts for a good place to perform. There's a small square where some of the locals shoot him bemused looks when they think he's not looking as he runs through all his stretches, and then hits record.

Lan Zhan doesn't need to play the music – it's his job as a dancer to know when and how exactly to hit all of the beats – but also he has it memorised. The track plays in his head as he dances to it, adjusting for where the path turns into grass, where there's a step up or down, where there's a bench or a person in his way.

He gets a lone slowclap when he's done, and bows awkwardly to the three people who had stopped to watch him.

Back in his hotel room, he orders a grilled chicken salad from the room service and edits the track that Wei Ying had sent him onto the video, and sends it to Wei Ying. He doesn't expect Wei Ying to be up yet, since it's still early on the West Coast, but it had made him feel jittery sitting on it for any longer. He firmly puts his phone away, and rolls out his yoga mat into the thin slip of hotel room that it fits in to do some pilates instead.

From: Wei Ying [19:31]

EXCUSE ME??

How dare you?? come and attack me? just as I'm getting up? At my most vulnerable??

How VERY dare

From: Wei Ying [19:35]

But no okay this is incredible you know that right?

I was gonna tweak it before recording but now I CAN'T OBVIPUSYL

OBVIOSULY

…you know what I mean

From: Wei Ying [19:38]

Lan Zhan are you there?

Did you hit and run me??

Did you just destroy me and then leave me HERE TO DIE??

From: Lan Zhan [20:02]

My apologies, I was showering

From: Wei Ying [20:02]

al;alsfdja I HAVE A TECH REHEARSAL STARTING RIGHT NOW AND I CAN'T SCREAM AT YOU LIKE I WOULD LIKE

[22:52] One missed call from Wei Ying

From: Wei Ying [22:53]

Oh shit I forgot you're probably asleep already sorry

"Did I wake you?" Wei Ying asks, no preamble.

"Not quite, show day rehearsals aren't until noon. Is your tech rehearsal over?" asks Lan Zhan. He doesn't mention that he's tucked into bed already, and has been about to go to sleep. He generally tries to sleep on his back, spreading out the aches and pains across the surface of the mattress, but right now he's curled on his side, the glow of the phone screen the only thing illuminating his face.

Wei Ying's shouting a little, his voice echoing like he's in a large space. "No, there was some snag in the sound system where there was a delay in the output, we're just on a break while they try and fix it and then we're going to go again. Anyway, I can't believe you just dropped that on me! How long have you been planning that?"

"Since you sent it to me," answers Lan Zhan honestly.

Wei Ying makes a very good impression of an indignant chicken. "That was months ago!"

"It would have been quicker, but I'm supposed to rest in my off-hours."

"That's not what I meant." Wei Ying's voice changes; it sounds like he's moving to somewhere more secluded. "Aiyo, you know I'm not going to be able to make any changes to the song now, right?"

"I don't see why not."

"Well. Because your choreography is amazing, and I don't want you to have to change any bit of it when you upload it."

Lan Zhan hums. He disagrees. "I wasn't intending on uploading it."

Wei Ying is quiet for a long moment. Long enough that Lan Zhan checks as to whether the call has dropped off. It hasn't.

"But you spent months working on it," says Wei Ying eventually. He sounds... upset?

Lan Zhan rolls onto his back, feeling the cool sheets slide under the back of his calves as he stretches his legs out. "You told me, back when I was still considering this, that I should just pick pieces of music that I liked and give it a go and see if I could do it."

"That's it?"

"That's it. I showed it to the person who wrote the song and he thought that it was good. I don't need anyone else's thoughts on it."

Wei Ying laughs, sort of wetly. "You're really not cut out for YouTube fame, huh, Lan Zhan. Okay, fine. I get it. I'm going to keep it and watch it over and over, you know."

"That would be all I could ask for."

Lan Zhan leaves in his wake a trail of four- and five-star reviews, but the one he holds closest are the little comments from Wei Ying. He never knows when they're going to appear – sometimes there isn't another for weeks – where Wei Ying points out another thing that he liked about his choreography, proof that he's still watching it.

In Vienna, halfway through the tour, Lan Zhan starts getting offers of work for the off-season: a week-long run in Chicago, a production that would be combination principal role and teaching, a shorter tour that would be one or two shows a city for a month, his brother's standing offer to help out at Cloud Recesses.

In Prague, he takes one of his off days to organise all of them into his notebook. He usually uses it for notes to himself, notes about a stage in a particular city having a creaky spot, or something from the maintenance rehearsal, or a niggle to tell the physio. His notes are sparse for this tour.

He flips a new page, and lists off the dates and offers, tetris-ing his offers to see how many he might be able to say yes to. He likes to fit in about 10 weeks' worth of work into the four-month off-season, ideally with a week or so off scattered throughout, a balance that has worked well to give his body some rest, but also satisfy his need to keep dancing.

In Berlin, he still hasn't got back to any of the offers, a couple of which have emailed him to ask for a reply because they're going to need to find someone else if he isn't interested.

"Are you planning on being home for a while?" Lan Zhan asks Wei Ying on their next video call. These are a more regular occurrence now that Wei Ying is off-tour and actively working their next album.

"Yeah, probably. We've got a couple of TV appearances and charity gigs booked in, but none of them will be more than an overnight stay. Why?"

Because I want to come home, thinks Lan Zhan, and startles himself into saying nothing at all. There is nothing about Lan Zhan's empty shell of an apartment that has ever made him want to spend more time there.

And, he probes more carefully within him, he still has no intention of joining his brother at Cloud Recesses.

"Lan Zhan? Are you still there? I think you cut out." Wei Ying's waving at him on-screen, his tiny frown adorable and – well. Adorable.

"I'm here," says Lan Zhan, and pauses again. "It's the off-season soon."

"When is it? April? May?"

"April."

"Yeah, I'll be around. I've pencilled in some studio time for around then, so you can come watch us rehearse. If you'd like?" Wei Ying bats his eyelashes and tilts his head in a terrible imitation of sajiao and Lan Zhan finds himself laughing, a bubble of air that forces his way out of his chest before he can stop it. It hurts. Maybe it's because he can't remember the last time he laughed. He stops, abruptly.

"...Lan Zhan? Are you okay?" Wei Ying drops the act immediately.

"Yes," says Lan Zhan. He purses his lips. "Hmm. No, I don't think so, actually."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Lan Zhan rotates his ankles, propped up on the bed in front of him, so that they don't get stiff and watches the ways his toes flex and click. "Not yet," he says. There are thoughts tumbling over each other in his head now, perhaps thoughts that have been fermenting and bubbling away in the back of his mind for a while, waiting for the moment for them to come to life. He needs to sort through them first. "But – maybe soon."

"Okay," says Wei Ying. "Call whenever. I mean that."

The call finishes after that, more subdued than their conversations usually are. Lan Zhan gets out his notebook, the one with his provisional plan for the off-season, the offers he still hasn't responded to yet. The tour – he crosses that off. Cinderella is a beautiful ballet but there is almost no emphasis on the male lead. He doesn't want to teach, so the joint teaching and dancing gig goes. He goes down the page and there's a reason, however feeble, that makes him cross each one off the list. Cloud Recesses is the last one, and he crosses that off too.

Lan Zhan sits back heavily, and looks at the scribbled-out page. He doesn't know what he does want, he just knows that it's none of these things.

It's fine. There are plenty of dancers who take the off-season entirely off ballet, pick up some part-time jobs or university credits or just go on holiday. Except it's not fine, because he's never taken the off-season off completely before. He doesn't even have a company to go back to after the off-season. He's just going to be unemployed again.

It's not burnout. Lan Zhan knows that that feels like – has never burned out completely, but had definitely felt the edges of him singed a little by the end of the season once or twice when he was packing in as many performances and productions in as possible.

Lan Zhan once thought that he would dance until he wasn't able to anymore. His career was only going to end in one of two ways – an injury that rendered him unable to dance anymore, or getting past his peak and taking on increasingly smaller and smaller parts until no one would hire him anymore. He'd long resigned himself to that. He always thought that he would have ballet for as long as ballet wanted him; he never thought there would be a time when he would be done with ballet first.

And now... no, Lan Zhan does still want to dance. It's just that none of these things spark joy. And he doesn't feel obligated to do them anymore, to fill his time just because it's there.

He's not sure when or how this switch got flipped, when he'd been itching to get back to dancing for the entire period he was off, but it feels like someone overloaded a circuit and flipped his entire fusebox.

He taps the only thing in his notebook not completely crossed out with the end of his pencil. He's always wanted to try The Firebird, but he'd want to do it for longer than a week. It's the sort of work he could do for a full season. He closes his notebook, and emails back all the offers, politely turning them down before he can overthink it. He mulls it over some more.

In Moscow, on the one clear day they get between snow flurries and slush, Lan Zhan asks his Juliet for a favour. Yasmine agrees, and ends up bemusedly huddling in the cold in front of St Basil's Cathedral holding the Go Pro for him as he dances Swan Lake.

He's played Siegfried before, but this time he dances Matthew Bourne's Swan, dressed in grey sweatpants and a long white coat that he leaves unbuttoned. The choreography is unlike anything he's done before, more modern dance influences than any other production he's done. It's why he chose it to learn.

He uploads it to YouTube and then texts Huaisang to ask about how putting on a production works, specifically around funding and sponsorships.

Huaisang points him towards various pages on the Qinghe Arts Foundation website, and adds at the end of his messages, You're rich, you can do whatever you want.

Lan Zhan texts him back a picture of himself doing an arabesque in front of St. Basil's.

I hate you, texts Huaisang.

In St Petersburg, they close out their tour. The lingering pain in Lan Zhan's muscles are like second nature now. He takes his bows and his flowers and he wishes the company well and he goes – home.

Chapter Text

The Remnants rehearse in the Wens' basement. Wei Ying ushers Lan Zhan into it and points out the couch on the side excitedly.

"We didn't have a couch when we first started," he explains, rearranging the cushions on one end for Lan Zhan to have a seat. The couch looks worn in and well-loved, unlike the sparsely used couches in both Lan Zhan and Wei Ying's apartments. On the other end, little Mianmian waves at Lan Zhan from behind the cushion she's hugging. He attempts a wave back.

"We didn't have anything when we started," says Wen Qing as she tunes up quickly. "Are you sure you want to be here, Lan Zhan? It's just a normal rehearsal."

Lan Zhan nods. "Thank you for inviting me into your home."

They don't match the image that Lan Zhan has in his head of rockstars. But then again, he doesn't know any other rockstars, so what does he know? But they have an agenda and a timetable for their rehearsals and everything. They run through specific parts of specific songs, they make notes individually, and Wen Qing moves them through the agenda points with alarming efficiency.

It reminds him a little of a ballet rehearsal, actually – and now he understands what Wen Qing means. He has also never quite understood the popularity of open rehearsals, where students or members of the public are allowed to spectate. He's just there to run through his barre routine, it can't be that interesting.

Except now he's on the other side, and he gets it.

It's interesting, seeing the way Mianmian drags them all back to the beat when one of them starts trying to pull at it, and the way Wen Ning likes to jot down his notes and ruminate over them before bringing them up to the group. Even though they're repeating the same verse over and over, he's still watching the way Wei Ying and Wen Qing talk to each other in half sentences, the way Wei Ying waves his hand when he has an idea, the way Wei Ying starts speaking at the end of a sentence because his brain is moving faster than his mouth.

The way that Wei Ying – oh. Hm.

He glances over to little Mianmian, who has a pair of noise muffling headphones on that are as large as her head, as she turns the pages of a book, muttering herself, not watching Wei Ying at all. Right.

A comfortable sofa is as good a place as any to have an existential crisis. Lan Zhan watches the rest of the rehearsal, detached. If Wei Ying asked him what material they covered, he's sure that he couldn't say. But he knows that Wei Ying laughed so hard he clicked a vertebrae in his neck, and then he nearly tripped over a stray power cord, and then he shook his wrist out like it was getting tired.

He feels like a fiddly combination lock with one number that's been a millimetre out of alignment, and it's like he's spent the last few months frustratedly trying to jiggle it so that it lines up properly and all this time he's been so, so close to figuring out what's happening inside his head. And he's been occasionally experimenting with some of the other numbers just to check, and finding out that no, they are properly aligned, it's just this one number that won't – and then finally, finally, it clicks, all the tumblers open and the lock swings open.

His metaphor is, possibly, getting a little too complicated. But the point is – the point is that he's been worrying about his ballet all this time. And there's nothing wrong with his ballet, he still loves ballet, loves the way it feels when he knows he's hit his lines, when he executes a particularly difficult move, the excitement of when the curtain rises and the expectations land on his shoulders. There's a swell of relief so strong that Lan Zhan's throat clenches shut.

On the back of that comes the giddy sense of complete embarrassment. Because – well, other people had figured it out before him, hadn't they? Huaisang implied as much. His brother, too. His uncle, even. Oh, that's a dreadful thought.

I'm in love with Wei Ying, he thinks to himself experimentally, and feels like an exposed live wire. It's too much.

"What does this say?"

Lan Zhan mentally jolts back to himself. He looks over at little Mianmian, who is holding out a page of her book and looking at him expectantly; he must not have physically started, which is a miracle.

"I," he croaks out, and then has to swallow several times. And even then, his voice comes out croaky and strained. "It says 'beautiful butterfly'."

"I can't hear you," she says, simultaneously patiently and also definitely judging Lan Zhan. Children are vicious.

"It says 'beautiful butterfly'," he repeats the next time The Remnants finish playing a section so that he can pull one side of her earmuffs away from her head.

"Thank you," she says politely, and goes back to ignoring him. It's actually very useful; Lan Zhan might have sat on that sofa sinking further into mental turmoil forever if she hadn't interrupted him.

Lan Zhan is not a man who does things by halves. His career is proof of that. He marvels at the idea that on some level, he already knew about his feelings about Wei Ying, and he has been trying to make important decisions based on this. The reason he's been feeling antsy about his usual off-season plans is because he wanted to see Wei Ying again, and his brain was struggling to reconcile the usual career moves of a principal ballet dancer with the usual career moves of an international rockstar. They're just not compatible.

Now that Lan Zhan knows what's going on inside his own head, he can plan accordingly. He's already got bits and pieces of it underway - the first step into choreography, the enquiries into Nie Arts Foundation - but it feels like the most important thing has yet to be addressed.

They have dinner with the Wens after rehearsal, crammed around the dinner table that's slightly too small for eight. Wen Ning awkwardly apologises for the plastic stool that he offers Lan Zhan as a seat. "We never moved house after the band took off, so it's probably less nice here than what you're used to."

"No problem at all," Lan Zhan reassures him.

It means that his knees knock against Wei Ying's as they perch on adjacent sides of a corner, and Wei Ying constantly picks food up from further down the table to put in Lan Zhan's bowl. Dinner conversation is part in-jokes and easy familiarity and part business meeting as they debrief after the rehearsal, but somehow Lan Zhan doesn't feel like an intruder looking in.

They walk together from the Wens to the station, and then through the barriers and until they're at the split between their two platforms. Lan Zhan could wait, and text Wei Ying later when he has time to process and properly formulate a plan, but there's something about the immediacy of separating that prompts him to ask:

"Would you like to get lunch with me tomorrow? Or dinner, perhaps."

Wei Ying blinks, already having pulled a half step away before he rocks back into Lan Zhan's orbit. "Oh! Yeah, sure. We don't have a lot of scheduling in at the moment."

Lan Zhan nods. He knows this about Wei Ying already. "I have a meeting with Huaisang about some grant applications in the afternoon, but before or after it would work for me."

"Sure, dinner then?" says Wei Ying, and that's that.

Lan Zhan spends the train home coming up with a shortlist of places to take Wei Ying, an endeavour that only highlights to himself how little he really knows the city he's lived in for years. There are so many places that he's heard of, or people have said that he should visit, or he's walked past a hundred times, and yet here he is, relying on reviews from the internet.

What sort of food are you in the mood for? He texts Wei Ying, and doesn't quite expect that instantaneous reply. He's got used to shooting off messages to Wei Ying into the ether and knowing that because of their tours or their timezones, he won't reply for a good number of hours yet. He doesn't need to worry about that now. Wei Ying gives him a short little paragraph with a whole bunch of options, all of which are caveated with 'But obvs just pick something you like and I'm sure it'll be fine!'

He finds himself smiling at the text, which is how he knows it will absolutely not be fine.

-

Huaisang can detect something is off in their meeting.

"I can't believe I'm more invested in this paperwork than you are," he remarks, using said stack of paperwork to waft a breeze in Lan Zhan's direction.

"I'm sorry," says Lan Zhan, smoothing out his copy of the forms in front of him.

"Are you thinking of retiring?" asks Huaisang, which is so wholly unexpected that Lan Zhan stares at him.

"No!"

Huaisang hums. "A quarter-life crisis then. Adjusting for relative retirement age for ballet dancers, possibly even a mid-life crisis."

Lan Zhan narrows his eyes. "There is no crisis."

"Then what," asks Huaisang, spreading his arms around to encompass the multiple stacks of printouts on the coffee table, "is this?"

Lan Zhan looks at it all, and pushes the corner of one of the stacks so that it doesn't stick out so precariously over the edge of the table. "Unenvironmentally friendly, that's what."

Huaisang laughs softly, like the babble of a brook.

"There is no crisis," Lan Zhan reiterates. "Just additional factors."

"Alright then, if you say so," says Huaisang agreeably as he highlights several paragraphs of text and points it out to Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan can tell that he doesn't believe him in the slightest, and is just humouring him. He's intrigued to discover that he has the tolerance to be humoured, these days.

"Do you have any recommendations for people who would be interested?" He asks.

"You underestimate yourself. I know people who would drop contracts they've already inked and dotted to summer with you."

Lan Zhan merely nods. "That would be very useful."

To say that Huaisang stares at him would be a disservice; it's more like he mildly peers at Lan Zhan like he's an Unknown Glazed Pottery Fragment #274 in a museum exhibit. "You know, Wei Ying says that you're funny. I'm gutted to find out that he might actually be right."

"Gutted?"

"Crushed. Devastated. Dumbfounded."

Lan Zhan gives up trying to understand. Huaisang is smiling at least, so it's probably not an insult. "When you need this paperwork filed by?"

"The sooner the better."

-

As Lan Zhan heads towards the restaurant to meet Wei Ying, paperwork all safely stowed away in his backpack, it occurs to him that perhaps Huaisang doesn't only tolerate him because their brothers are friends. It's like now that he's had enough time for things other than ballet to fill his every waking moment, he's having epiphanies twice a week. It's very tiring.

"Lan Zhan!"

Lan Zhan turns, and waits for Wei Ying to catch up, weaving in and out of the other people on the pavement. "Wei Ying."

"Oof! I hope you didn't have to wait too long."

"I just got here," says Lan Zhan, and looks Wei Ying up and down. "You look – nice."

It's true. Wei Ying is in a button-down shirt and fitted grey slacks, although the sleeves are rolled up at the forearms. He's even wearing a matching waistcoat with the jacket draped over one arm. Lan Zhan is certain he's never seen Wei Ying dressed up before.

Wei Ying tugs the bottom of the waistcoat where it had started to ride up from his dash over. "Yeah, well, you picked a fancy restaurant and I didn't want to be underdressed. Except now you're not dressed up and I feel ridiculous."

Lan Zhan is in his usual off-season clothes of leggings and a t-shirt that more or less covers his ass. ('More', because apparently leggings don't count as actual pants and dancers who spend their lives in translucent clothing don't have a good baseline for what's normal, and 'less' because, well, he has an ass.)

Except now he turns, and oh, there's a maître d' inside the restaurant. Alright, yes, he is quite definitely underdressed. That's embarrassing. Lan Zhan usually has a very good grasp of what occasions require formalwear – he's the one who often has to do charity galas and so on, after all.

"I didn't look it up beforehand," he admits to Wei Ying. "I've just heard my brother mention it a couple of times that he liked it. They might not let me in if I don't meet dress code."

"You didn't tell me you were coming today, Lan – Zhan?" The lilting voice from the bar pauses on that last word. "Ah, I'm sorry. You must be Lan Zhan. I thought – from the side, you really do look like your brother."

Lan Zhan looks over. The barman has a welcoming smile on his face, but there's something a little bit stilted about it that he can't put his finger on it. Perhaps it's because he spends so much of his professional life with a fake smile on that he can recognise it in other people.

"You know my brother?"

"He comes reasonably regularly. I'm Meng Yao."

"Oh. Nice to meet you." Lan Zhan holds his hand out for a polite shake, because that's usually a safe action to make when meeting someone he has never heard of. That also tends to happen a lot at charity galas.

There is a moment where it seems like the maître d' is going to clock Lan Zhan for his dress code violation, but Wei Ying vaguely drapes his jacket over Lan Zhan's shoulders. It doesn't fit properly, of course, because Wei Ying is narrower through the shoulders than he is, but he leaves it there and stares placidly at the maître d' until the man clearly decides that it's not worth it. Maybe he's recognised one of them, although Lan Zhan couldn't say which one it might be.

"Well I guess we found out why your brother likes it here," says Wei Ying as they get seated in a corner table out of the way.

Lan Zhan frowns, and scans the menu. There are no prices on this thing. "I haven't had a chance to read the menu yet."

"I meant Meng Yao."

"Oh. I see." Lan Zhan studiously does not turn to look at the bartender again.

It's not until after they've put in their food orders that Wei Ying looks at him, head tilted like a bird, and asks, "Are you all right?"

"Yes," says Lan Zhan.

"Huh," says Wei Ying.

Except now that Wei Ying has asked, Lan Zhan is starting to doubt himself. He's not even sure of what it is, exactly, that's niggling him but evidently Wei Ying could see it on him easier than he could see it on himself.

"I'm not used to coming in wrong footed," he says slowly, trying to parse it out in his head as he verbalises it to Wei Ying. "I hadn't done my research on the restaurant, and then I didn't realise that ge would know someone here."

"We could have gone somewhere else if the dress code thing bothered you, I don't mind," says Wei Ying equally slowly, like he's trying to give Lan Zhan the time to figure himself out. This is one of the things he likes about Wei Ying, that they match each other naturally in their conversations.

He shakes his head. "I don't care that I'm not adhering to the dress code. But I wish that it had been a deliberate decision, rather than an accident. Neither of these things matter to me, not really, only that it throws off my expectations for the evening."

That's it – Lan Zhan has pinpointed his discomfort now. It's not that he's made some sort of social faux pas; he couldn't care less what other people thought of him. It's only that he likes to know the setting, the situation, the rules beforehand so that he can decide by himself whether to adhere to them.

Wei Ying leans back as the waiter arrives with their starters. "Oh? And what were your expectations of the evening?"

"To have an enjoyable evening with you."

Wei Ying laughs, a little too loudly for such an upscale restaurant, and several tables look over at them. Lan Zhan is looking at him too.

The food is delicious; the table in the corner shelters them from the chatter of the other diners; Wei Ying is enjoying the wine that Lan Zhan insisted he order even though he's the only one drinking. It's so picturesque that Lan Zhan feels it's like a scene out of a movie, a little too polished and clean at the edges.

"So tell me about your meeting with Huaisang," says Wei Ying as he steals a green bean off Lan Zhan's plate.

"It's for an off-season production. He suggested that I do one in conjunction with the Qinghe Arts Foundation."

"You're directing a ballet?"

Lan Zhan lifts one shoulder. "Not necessarily. But I would presumably have more creative control than usual, yes."

"Wow. I would have thought you had a list of off-season offers a mile long."

"I did," Lan Zhan admits. "But I found I wanted something very specific this year that I couldn't get with any of the offers I had."

"Oh? Like what?"

Lan Zhan wipes his mouth and sets his napkin down carefully. "There were the things I knew I immediately didn't want – I didn't want another tour and I didn't want to teach. I wanted something with a prominent male lead. There aren't a lot of those, most ballets are more challenging for the women's parts. I wanted to do something with a charity, to broaden out ballet to a wider audience. And I – I wanted to be near home for a few months."

"Yeah, I get that. You probably haven't had extended time with your family for ages, right?"

That's true, but that's not why. "Every time one of us moved into yet another timezone, I found myself wishing that I could reply to your texts in real time, and not just wake up to them. I hoped that we could do more of – this." He rotates his wrist slightly so that his palm faces upwards; enough of a gesture, he hopes, to encompass all of this: the dinner, the time, the company.

Wei Ying's leg stills under the table. Lan Zhan hadn't even noticed that it was jiggling, such a normal part of Wei Ying that it is, until he feels the absence of it.

"Lan Zhan. Is this a date?" asks Wei Ying carefully.

The world stills around Lan Zhan, everything distilling itself in sharp, over-focused detail like the patterns on the diamond cut crystalware on the table.

"If you would like it to be."

Wei Ying flushes.

Time stretches, like the moment after landing a series of increasingly difficult jumps across the stage, when the music trails off the last note into silence and he's frozen in his ending pose, chest heaving, waiting to hear if the audience will respond.

"Lan Zhan, I –" Wei Ying's voice is tinny in his ears, distant even though he's only across the table. "Lan Zhan, I don't think I like men."

Lan Zhan, who spends his entire life hyper aware of every infinitesimal movement his body makes, does something but he's not quite sure what. He must do, because Wei Ying reaches his hand out across the table, face up.

"I didn't mean to lead you on, Lan Zhan. I just – I do like talking to you a lot, I like that we chat now and I look forward to your texts, and it makes me happy when you watch my videos, and I've always loved watching you dance, you have such beautiful lines, you know? And it was important to me that you met the rest of the band and Popo and A-Yuan and they got the chance to know you. And I enjoyed dinner with you even though I didn't know it was a date. And when we're on opposite sides of the world I like that you always call when I'm in bed and we get a chance to talk before I go to sleep. And I would like to carry on doing that." He's quiet for a moment; just long enough for Lan Zhan's hearing to fade back in to normal like a bad surround sound adjustment. "Is that a bit gay?"

There are a dozen things that Lan Zhan could say now – he should verbalise his support, that he values his relationship with Wei Ying no matter what, that it's all right to not know, that he hasn't been leading Lan Zhan on with anything other than kindness and friendliness, that he also enjoys their newly found relationship and doesn't want to jeopardise it.

Instead, he presses his hand over Wei Ying's outstretched hand solemnly. "That is a bit gay, yes."

Wei Ying lets out what is possibly a tiny scream, and then turns it into a shaky laugh. "Oh my god. Oh god, Lan Zhan."

He curls his fingers around Lan Zhan's hand, and then chews his bottom lip for a moment as he exhales the nervous energy out, his face settling into serious lines the same way that Lan Zhan does right before he walks on stage. "Alright then."

"Alright then?" asks Lan Zhan.

"Yeah. Alright then, it's a bit gay."

"And you would like to carry on doing it?"

"And I would like to carry on doing it," confirms Wei Ying. He's smiling now, just a small twitch of his lips to begin with but that slowly spreads out and up until his eyes are scrunched little half moons.

Lan Zhan breathes, finally. "Alright then."

Chapter Text

Lan Zhan is not made for management.

"I know what you're doing," says Huaisang from Lan Zhan's rug. The rug is new, and very comfortable. Under duress, Lan Zhan might even say that he bought it to encourage Huaisang to sit on his floor and spread his notes out around him.

"I'm putting on a ballet," says Lan Zhan, which is actually a gross overestimation of what he's actually doing and they both know it. Huaisang squints at him, and it's delightful to see the little cogs spinning in his mind as to how much of the current events were all planned out in advance by Lan Zhan.

"I think you'll find that I am putting on a ballet," mutters Huaisang, which is exactly what he's doing.

Ever since Lan Zhan expressed that he was definitely 100% serious about organising his own production, Huaisang has been instrumental in organising everything, from venue and funding and sponsorships to staff members and rehearsal space. And in truth, Lan Zhan hadn't really planned for him to do so, but Huaisang's knowledge had been invaluable and he does seem to enjoy running things even if he talks about it like it's the worst thing that's happened to him.

"I approve all of these," says Lan Zhan, sliding the stack of papers that Huaisang had brought over for him to read through without reading them through, which means that Huaisang will read through them all carefully instead and make the decisions he think best instead of bothering Lan Zhan about it, which is the ideal result.

Huaisang hisses at him.

"I trust you," says Lan Zhan serenely.

"Noooo, that's worse," says Huaisang.

The door clicks, and Huaisang swivels his head towards the front door as Wei Ying pushes his way in.

"He has a key? It's only been a month," mouths Huaisang incredulously at Lan Zhan where Wei Ying can't see as he scrubs his shoes of mud on the mat and hangs his coat up on the coat stand. That's too fast goes implied and unsaid.

Lan Zhan doesn't get a chance to reply – not that he's sure what the reply would have been – before Wei Ying is bounding into the living area. "Huaisang! Hi, Lan Zhan."

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan.

"You have a key? It's only been a month!" says Huaisang towards Wei Ying, and this time the unspoken sentence is you old dog! It's nothing short of miraculous how he can make identical sentences sound completely different. He waggles his eyebrows approvingly, and Wei Ying splutters.

"It's just – more convenient," Wei Ying says. "Last time I almost got clocked by paparazzi while I was waiting for Lan Zhan to open the door."

"I have one for Wei Ying's condo as well," says Lan Zhan mildly. "In case he ever forgets about leaving sentient milk growing in his kitchen."

Wei Ying laughs like he trekked sunshine into the flat along with the mud and rain, as Huaisang settles for the acknowledgement that there's an in-joke here somewhere that he's missing.

"Nauseating," says Huaisang, but he's smiling as he does so. "Well I think we're done here."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean to interrupt. If you need to have serious business meeting time, just ignore me," says Wei Ying.

"No, it's not you, it's Lan Zhan's fault. What if you end up performing this out of some school hall with half the cast missing and not even a live orchestra, Lan Zhan, what then?"

"That would be a shame. It's a good thing I have you to look out for me."

Huaisang throws his laptop bag at Lan Zhan in retaliation, and gathers up all his papers and leaves, muttering something about how it's going to be the best ballet on in the tri-state area next season, goddamnit Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan sees him out, makes a detour to the kitchen to grab a bottle of iced tea for Wei Ying. "How was rehearsal?"

"Weird. It always is when it's more than just us four." Wei Ying makes grabby hands for the iced tea, the line of his thigh overlapping Lan Zhan's, close enough to be friendly or friends or more than friends. "Wen Qing always has to do the talking since she knows music terminology. Like who am I to invite proper professional musicians to work with us, and I don't even know the names of music terms or anything."

Lan Zhan understands. Ballet is rigid in its methods of teaching; the idea of learning a discipline so imprecisely would be unfathomable in an art where teachers put together choreography by calling out a string of move names and expecting students to string them together. But he can be lenient to Wei Ying in a way he still hasn't quite learnt to be towards himself yet. "You are also a professional musician," he says merely.

"I know, I know," says Wei Ying. "It's just that classical musicians to rock artists feel like the difference between ballet and hip hop, you know?"

"Do you want to see my attempts at hip hop?" asks Lan Zhan dryly.

Wei Ying laughs again. Lan Zhan is finding that he's good at making Wei Ying laugh, and relishes it each and every time. "I'm going about this all wrong, you know."

He gets up off the sofa and shakes himself down like a full body shiver until he wobbles on his feet and mimes kicking it off – whatever 'it' is. "Let's try that again. Hi, Lan Zhan. How was your day?"

"Good," says Lan Zhan, playing along. He gets up to get his dark grey house cardigan from the bedroom for Wei Ying – his favourite, as opposed to the light grey cardigan or his slate grey cardigan.

"You look so organised," calls Wei Ying from the sofa, where he's already rifling Lan Zhan's notes. (He will read them, eventually, but best not to look too eager in front of Huaisang in case he tries to make him do more work.) "When will you be leaving?"

"Leaving?" He leans out from the bedroom, in case he misheard.

"Yeah? Will you set off a few days before the first show?"

"Set off where?"

"To – wherever your first tour stop is."

Lan Zhan puts both wrong cardigans down, and walks out of the bedroom. This doesn't seem like an 'across the apartment' sort of conversation. "We're not doing a tour."

Wei Ying looks up. "What? You're not?"

"No. We're doing the full season here. I hired an orchestra." He thought that Wei Ying knew that. Lan Zhan folds himself onto the sofa, and then wiggles closer to Wei Ying. Wei Ying wiggles closer back, until they meet in the middle, which would normally spark a warm little glow in Lan Zhan's belly, but Wei Ying is frowning at him right now.

"Huh," says Wei Ying, and then says it again. "Huh. I knew that. It just didn’t twig that you probably weren't going to travel all over with a full orchestra in tow."

Wei Ying has been paying attention to the production, Lan Zhan knows this. Surely he must have noticed at some point that Lan Zhan never mentioned different cities or travel arrangements or multiple venues or any of those things?

"Sorry," says Wei Ying, as if his thoughts are running parallel to Lan Zhan's. "I didn't mean to make you think – I have been paying attention when you talk to me, I promise."

"I know."

"I just – there were just a couple of bits I tuned out. Like that you were gonna be here for the whole season. Because I just assumed? That it was a tour and that you'd be away for months and months and I was trying not to think about it too much."

Wei Ying grabs a cushion and presses it over his face. Lan Zhan tugs at the corner of it until Wei Ying lets it drop enough for Lan Zhan to see the redness in his cheeks. Lan Zhan understands, he thinks, because he had this exact train of thought; he was just afforded it in privacy where he could stare, dazed, at the wall before having to confront his own feelings.

"I decided to perform here because I also didn't want to be away from you for months and months," says Lan Zhan.

"That's so embarrassing," says Wei Ying, muffled over the top of the cushion.

"I thought that we could stagger it," says Lan Zhan. This isn't when he thought they were going to have this conversation; he thought he'd have a bit more time before they got there. "So I would be here for the season to make the most of it before you had your next album tour."

"Oh, so you thought I was going to be the one who went away!" Wei Ying smacks him with the cushion, but at least he's smiling now.

Lan Zhan catches his forearms, and presses a soft kiss to the inside of Wei Ying's wrist. It's an unfair move, he knows, because Wei Ying is still susceptible to this sort of affection.

True to form: "Nooooo!" Wei Ying wails, flopping forward to collapse against Lan Zhan's chest. "That was so cute, how dare you!"

Lan Zhan tucks him up against his chest, and waits for a moment before explaining. He doesn't want to destroy the mood. "We're both professionals with jobs that involve a lot of travelling. I love what I do. And you also love what you do. And I didn't think it would be fair to either of us to give it up."

"But the travelling is part of what you do," says Wei Ying.

"It's part of what you do. It doesn't have to be part of what I do. There are plenty of cities with standing ballet troupes. I thought I could do the season and then if you were amenable, I could travel during the off-season. With you."

"You had it all planned out in your head? Were you planning on telling me?" asks Wei Ying from somewhere around Lan Zhan's neck, but he's teasing so it's all right.

"Only if the timings worked out. If you wanted to release your album earlier or travel earlier, then... of course, you should. I also enjoyed going to sleep after a conversation with you or waking up to see your messages left for me."

Wei Ying hums, in a way that means he's thinking. "I think the others will be fine with that. What's the point of being self-employed if you can't do things exactly when you want anyway. But Lan Zhan... this isn't just a production then. You're hoping to make this a permanent troupe. That's... a lot of change."

"One production at a time," says Lan Zhan. "We see how this one goes and then we take it from there."

In truth, he knows that Huaisang is already thinking ahead – finding a permanent venue, putting together the kind of infrastructure that will form an actual business and management and all of that sort of thing instead of a one-off – even though Lan Zhan has never asked it of him.  

"Oh shit, does that mean I'm dating a CEO?" asks Wei Ying. "Am I consorting with an entrepreneur? A self-made–"

"Wei Ying," interrupts Lan Zhan fondly, and then adds, "I'm trying to ease Huaisang into it without him noticing."

"Evil. Nefarious. I love it."

"I do want more say in the creative process, but for the sake of everyone, the day-to-day running should fall to someone else. I'm just finalising the final list for auditions, do you want to come and watch?"

Wei Ying tucks his feet up and squidges them under Lan Zhan's thigh. "If you're sure I won't be a distraction, I'd love to."

It has been like this for a month now, since the moment of realisation for the two of them in the restaurant. There have been moments near the beginning where Lan Zhan has felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, teetering, ruminating over his every action and whether each call, each confidential conversation, each touch was going to be the thing that was too much, too fast for Wei Ying and send them careening over the side.

But now, it's like they looked at that cliff and decided to sit down instead, their legs dangling as they sit side by side looking out over the cliff face and watching the sun fade.

"Not a distraction," Lan Zhan confirms, stroking Wei Ying's ankle.

"No?" asks Wei Ying. "Not even a little bit?" He bats his eyes, and this is new. So far, it has been Lan Zhan initiating the contact, the hand holding, the casually measured hands on the knee, the arm around the waist. Wei Ying reciprocates and leans into it all, but for all of his usual flirting he has never started it, not with Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan considers it, his thumb running circles around Wei Ying's ankle bone. "If talking to my uncle, then no, not even a little bit."

"I'm not talking to your uncle." Wei Ying props his head on Lan Zhan's shoulder, the tip of his nose cold against Lan Zhan's cheek as he traces the line of Lan Zhan's cheekbone.

"Then I am happy to admit that you are always distracting," murmurs Lan Zhan, closing the rest of the distance in a kiss.  

Wei Ying still smells of the outdoors, the brisk wind and fresh air, his lips cool to the touch. Lan Zhan's hands pull through his layers, first cool, then warm until he reaches the heat of his bare skin and presses his whole palm against Wei Ying's side and Wei Ying shivers into it.

Lan Zhan is trying, has been trying, to keep himself restrained so as to not scare Wei Ying off. But it's Wei Ying who climbs into his lap, pressing Lan Zhan back into the back of the sofa as he deepens the kiss. Cool hands cradle Lan Zhan's jaw to adjust the angle to let Wei Ying's tongue slide against his. Wei Ying's lips are soft and quick to plump under the sharpness of his teeth, and Wei Ying himself is eminently biteable, little gasps huffing out of him each time Lan Zhan does it, until his breath is heavy, warm exhales against Lan Zhan's skin. Lan Zhan pulls back for long enough to see what spot he has missed, and then reels Wei Ying back in.

Wei Ying groans at him, melting until his chest is plastered flat against Lan Zhan's. So flexible; his hips must be rolled so far forward. Lan Zhan's ballet dancer brain, which refuses to rest even now, supplies that this bodes well for other activities. His cock grows heavy at the thought. Lan Zhan curls his fingers into Wei Ying's hips hard enough to leave little dotted bruises as Wei Ying rubs against him, just slightly - he's probably not even aware he's doing it, just trying to press themselves as closely together as he can. He can feel the slightest bulge of Wei Ying against his stomach. It's barely anything at all, hidden by the folds of stiff denim, but Lan Zhan knows it's there, and that's enough to ignite a fire low in his belly.

He tries to lean back - but can't, Wei Ying is still pressing his head into the back of the sofa - and tugs his hair instead.

"Mmph," says Wei Ying, his lower lip stretching from where it's trapped between Lan Zhan's teeth.

Oh, yes, he should probably let go.

"Ouch," says Wei Ying admiringly, running his tongue across the puffiness of his lip.

"Bed?" asks Lan Zhan, his voice shocking himself with how hoarse it is.

Wei Ying blinks, and really looks at him then, up and down. Lan Zhan is a master of his own expressions - he has practised each and every one of them a multitude of times over in the mirror until he can pull out any emotion on demand - but he has no idea what his own face looks like right now. Whatever it is makes Wei Ying laugh nervously, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's - yeah."

He makes to climb off Lan Zhan's lap, but Lan Zhan grabs his ass and pulls him in tight instead, standing straight up from the sofa. His cock brushes against the inside of Wei Ying's thigh when he stands, giving a delicious frisson of pleasure, and he exhales, taking a moment to relish it. Wei Ying gasps and wraps his legs around Lan Zhan's waist as Lan Zhan crosses the room in three, four efficient strides into the bedroom, a benefit of a small apartment that Lan Zhan appreciates very much right now.

Wei Ying bounces when he hits the bed, and laughs when he nearly falls off the other side, kicking out to balance himself. Lan Zhan grabs his foot to drag him back, and that laugh turns into a gasp when Lan Zhan jumps on too, bracketing him into the duvet.

"Hi," says Wei Ying when Lan Zhan crowds into his space, linking his arms around Lan Zhan and letting him haul him around the bed to his satisfaction. Lan Zhan kisses him again, another bruising bite on the lips, across his jaw and down his neck as he reaches for the button of Wei Ying's jeans. Wei Ying arches up to let Lan Zhan drag them off, jeans and underwear and socks too in one go. He props himself up on his elbows to watch as Lan Zhan kisses him back up from the ankle, up the muscle of his calf, the side of his knee, up the warm, sensitive skin of his thigh, pulling a little of the flesh between his teeth for a little nibble.

"So bitey," Wei Ying tries to say, but his mouth is dropped slightly open, and he has to wet his lips with his tongue several times before the words come out.

Wei Ying's legs fall apart naturally, giving Lan Zhan the space between as he hooks Wei Ying's knee over his shoulder and settles in to give him a satisfactory bite mark that will stay.

This is as far - further, in fact - as they've been before. They've undressed near each other, getting changed into shorts for sleeping. They've seen each other naked, more or less. They've kissed, a lot. Enough for Lan Zhan to know that Wei Ying likes the bitey thing. But now, Lan Zhan watches Wei Ying's face as he reaches and flips up the hem of Wei Ying's oversized knitted sweater that dips below his hips, tucks it up over his hips to expose Wei Ying's cock. It bounces as the hem catches against it and Lan Zhan pulls it free, sneaking in a drag of his thumb up the length.

Wei Ying inhales through his teeth.

Lan Zhan finishes up the lovebite on the inside on his thigh and continues to move up, soft kisses against the crease of where hip meets leg, and then just breathes along the length of Wei Ying's cock.

Wei Ying laughs shakily and Lan Zhan gets it, because he feels exactly the same. He slides the tip of his tongue experimentally against Wei Ying's cock and then dabs it inside his mouth like a kitten. That's what Wei Ying's cock tastes like. Lan Zhan has to taste it again. It tastes like... like... nothing else. Lan Zhan has no comparison. He's never had another man's cock in his mouth before and he's never tasted anything quite like this before. He likes that. That makes it just the taste of Wei Ying.

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying, a note of pleading in his voice, breaking Lan Zhan out of his moment.

"Sorry. I just -"

Wei Ying is smiling. "Yeah. I know. It's kinda a lot?"

Lan Zhan rests his cheek against Wei Ying's thigh. "A lot," he confirms. He's determined though. He's going to savour every moment of this. The way that Wei Ying's cock twitches if he rubs the sensitive head enough, the way his foreskin moves when he drags his lips across them, the way he hears Wei Ying stop breathing when he gets his mouth over the tip, the way it fills his mouth and stretches his lips and drags across his tongue.

He marks how much he can get into his mouth with a ring of his fingers around Wei Ying's cock and uses his hand to pump the rest. He eyes it critically. There's room for improvement, he thinks, even though Wei Ying is already watching him with his bottom lip drawn between his teeth. He moves faster, tightening his mouth around for better suction.

Lan Zhan is no stranger to the practicalities of the human body – the smack of sweaty flesh against flesh, the slide of bare skin squeezed into skintight spandex, someone else's fingers sculpting his hair into place. But still, every touch of Wei Ying feels completely new. The way he moans from the back of his throat, the way he squirms his hips and pushes his cock an extra half inch into Lan Zhan's mouth, the way he smells, a mix of sweat and cologne and residual fresh air.

"You move so much," says Lan Zhan as he pulls off for air, already missing the feeling of too much cock stretching his mouth.

"I'm supposed to just lie here all still when you're doing such wicked things to me? " Wei Ying pouts, like he's trying to goad Lan Zhan into getting further down his cock. It's working, damn it.

"I could hold you still," says Lan Zhan. Wei Ying narrows his eyes at him. Lan Zhan narrows his eyes back. He locks eye contact with Wei Ying as he lowers his head onto Wei Ying's cock and simultaneously raises his leg.

Lan Zhan has stretched every day of his life since he was four. Lifting his leg above his head into a split doesn't even count as difficult. He presses his foot down onto Wei Ying's chest, and allows himself to smile a little around Wei Ying's cock as Wei Ying stares at his foot, swallows audibly, and lets himself get pushed back onto the bed.

"Holy fucking shit," breathes Wei Ying to the ceiling, like he's only just realised the benefit of dating a professional dancer.

Lan Zhan breaks the eye contact and goes hell for leather on the blowjob, twisting his hand up and down as he bobs his head up and down.

He scrapes his teeth – accidentally – against the delicate skin and Wei Ying screams a bit and bucks up. Lan Zhan presses his heel down and holds him down; he hears Wei Ying's back smack into the bed and he can feel Wei Ying's chest straining against his leg.

"Lan Zhan – oh shit –" The rest of it gets muffled as Wei Ying stuffs something into his mouth, and that's all the warning he gets before Wei Ying comes in his mouth, hot and messy and uncoordinated.

He uses his hand to tease out the last of the orgasm until Wei Ying is twitching, and then crawls up the bed with Wei Ying's come in his face and on his lips and across his cheek. Wei Ying pulls his fist out of his mouth, angry bite marks across the side of his own hand. He has to blink several times before he can manage to focus on Lan Zhan, and there's a looseness in his muscles that makes him melt a bit into the bed. Lan Zhan drops himself next to Wei Ying.

"Satisfactory," he murmurs to himself, already making performance notes for the next time.

Wei Ying laughs, a tired little huff, as he reaches out to wipe the smears of comes off Lan Zhan's face and then holds his hand out as Lan Zhan dips down to lick it off his fingers. "You're ridiculous."

Lan Zhan is still hard, but all of a sudden he's exhausted, like he's been feeding off Wei Ying's energy. Wei Ying rolls himself onto his side with a bit of effort and presses himself up against Lan Zhan's side, winding his legs around Lan Zhan's like he can't be content with anything less than as much contact as possible. He lazily sticks his hand into Lan Zhan's leggings and pulls his cock out, jerking him off unceremoniously like he knows Lan Zhan needs the orgasm more than the process right now.

"You're so big," says Wei Ying wistfully. "Next time."

The orgasm, already built up, hits Lan Zhan all at once, Wei Ying's long fingers wringing it out of him. He whites out for a moment, and comes back to himself with Wei Ying's face hovering over his, caught somewhere between amusement and concern.

"Next time," he croaks a promise.

They make a half-hearted attempt between the two of them to clean up, each batting at the other – Lan Zhan's leggings get sacrificed in the process – and then roll under Lan Zhan's cool duvet to cuddle up.

"Welcome home," says Lan Zhan into Wei Ying's hair, and it feels right even though it's only been a month.

-

Epilogue

The lead up to Opening Night is always fraught, and especially now more so Lan Zhan is not only the principal danseur but also the Creative Director. But he gets in early in the day, hours before anyone else is meant to arrive and putters around the eerily quiet halls meant to house almost 50 dancers.

It feels like the night before Christmas, not that he has ever celebrated Christmas: the costumes for the corps neatly racked away, rows and rows of props and accessories laid out neatly, little pockets of space made ready for the dancers to arrive and leave their things; the orchestra pit is prepped, music on each of the music stands. And in a less traditional vein, cameras and mics around the orchestra pit and a recording set up to continue on his ambition to make the production accessible.

It's not until he walks around to the gala hall that there's signs of life, where the caterers and bar staff are setting up for the welcome reception, lines of gleaming glasses and champagne bottles being set up. The furniture has all been moved out, and some of the staff are carrying in the enormous standing bouquets to line the room.

It's not a sold-out night – Lan Zhan had expected that, this isn't New York or Paris after all – but a gratifying amount of press and people interested in his dancing have still RSVPed. Jiang Yanli said in the group chat to say that she and her husband got tickets (Jiang Cheng replied to say that he would not, since he was the one babysitting their baby Jin Ling). His uncle and brother and a solid number of cousins will all be here tonight. He reads the notes on the bouquets out of curiosity. Most are generic, expected. Some are from various other patrons that Huaisang has rustled up, there's one from the Qinghe Arts Foundation, and another one from Cloud Recesses dance school. 

There's one that reads:

May you set the sky alight.

LAN ZHAN YOU'RE GOING TO BE AMAZING!!!!!!!!! ♥ ♥ ♥

Lan Zhan smiles. Wei Ying, of course. A thematically beautiful crush of red and orange flowers among a sea of paler greens and creams. It sets off something in the back of his memory, and he pauses to dig his phone out, scrolling back past months of messages to find it, from before all of this, when he was still alone in his apartment waiting for his leg to heal.

There it is – a picture from Huaisang from the closing gala of Don Quixote of a standing bouquet. He didn't think twice about it then, but the note that says 'For Lan Wangji, the most exquisite Don Quixote – wishing you a speedy recovery and return'? He holds the tiny photo on his phone up next to the bouquet from Wei Ying here and matches the handwriting.

He allows himself a moment to marvel at how far he's come, they've both come, since then. Even then, Wei Ying had paid attention to him, and it would have been so easy for him to have never known.

As if on cue, his phone buzzes with a text notification, and he swipes over.

I just found out you're supposed to not have sex the night before opening night??? Lan Zhan?? Did I curse you with my asshole?????

Lan Zhan is aware that he's standing in the middle of a room surrounded by people who have to walk around him as they try to get on with their jobs as he smiles foolishly at a text from his boyfriend. He's never had to worry before, about that superstition about abstaining before Opening Night. And now he has the opportunity to, he can't bring himself to care about it. This new venture is all about trying something new, after all.

He snaps a picture of the bouquet, and sends it as a reply to Wei Ying's text along with It's beautiful, thank you. And then on a gut feeling, adds: And for all of the previous ones.

Wei Ying replies with a blushy face emoji, and then also: Okay, but srsly, 🍑 🍑 ☹??

Lan Zhan thinks about explaining the origin of the superstition, or reassuring him that it's okay, and eventually settles on asking, What time are you arriving at the theatre?

??

I have a private dressing room. He carefully hunts down the right emoji, and then sends it back to Wei Ying. 🍆

He smiles at the mere thought of Wei Ying reacting to his use of the eggplant emoji, and slips the phone back into his pocket. He tugs the lapels of his suit straight, continues around the reception hall and suggests that they move the ice buckets to a different corner, nods to the manager, and heads back upstairs.

The scene is set. Now just to wait for the curtain to drop.