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There are not many people around Song Lan right now, a few dozen at most. She has classes with more people. During the daytime, this cafe-turned-bar-at-night is a squeeze. Now, it’s impossible to escape the brush of a stranger’s arm or the bump of their shoulder.
But Xingchen loves it — the mismatched second hand furniture, the walls covered in art by local artists, the crowd of disparate faces. The Burial Mounds is two blocks from Xingchen’s apartment complex and she regularly brings Song Lan coffee and baked goods from there.
Today, she brought Song Lan a flier instead.
They’d been in the practice room late again. The sky was a rusty red and the shadows long. Before this thesis project, Song Lan and Xingchen reserved Friday nights for date night. A trip out of the walls of the city or a dive into its nooks in search of concerts and galleries. Lately, clicking through Netflix while eating takeout took too much energy.
Something was wrong with their composition. It felt monotonous and uninspired, and perhaps they felt monotonous and uninspired.
“It’s been a while since we’ve gone to a concert,” Xingchen said, passing Song Lan the flier. “Well, one we weren’t obliged to attend, at least.”
Obliged to attend made something in Song Lan’s stomach turn over. Music had been her first love. She spent her early childhood shuffled from foster home to foster home until she was ten years old and unlikely to ever have a true family.
Song Lan had always been a quiet child, but she’d pulled into herself, stopped speaking. She expected, after the string of families who’d tired of her, that her newest foster father would too.
Han Tenghai ran the White Snow Music School and was no more of a talker than Song Lan. Mornings in his house were silent affairs, until after Han Tenghai finished his breakfast and morning paper, and sat down in front of the piano. Song Lan would creep up to the doorway to listen to him play. She thought he didn’t notice her. Then, one morning, he sighed, telling her to come in.
“You want to learn, kid?” he asked.
Song Lan nodded.
With her foster father’s words guiding her hands, her first few fumbling notes stirred feelings of warmth and connection that ten-year-old Song Lan thought herself incapable of. As she grew and found her friendships as lasting as autumn leaves, music kept her rooted.
Now she had Xingchen. Now she had years of compositions where Xingchen’s notes wove so tightly with her own that it’d be impossible to pluck one out and see whose it was. What did it mean when Song Lan still smiled every time Xingchen walked into the room, but felt cold touching her piano’s keys? What did it mean that Xingchen’s normally uninhibited hands would hesitate before she picked up her violin? They didn’t talk about it.
But the thought of falling out of love with music was even more horrifying than the thought of falling out of love with Xingchen.
So Song Lan had glanced over the poster with its list of local punk rock bands and thought, why not? Something different could be good.
Now they’re here. Xingchen has never favored one genre of music. Along with the expected classical, her collection is an array of mainstream pop, techno yodeling, German synth-pop, old school punk and music Song Lan can’t put a label to. She stands out everywhere, but especially here. As she comes back with drinks for the two of them, her soft pastels and fluttering skirts flow through a sea of dark shirts and stiff leather.
Song Lan blends in more — there are at least three other women with shaved heads and heavy boots, though Song Lan’s below average on the piercings and only has one prominent tattoo. She takes the drink Xingchen offers and presses a kiss to Xingchen’s temple before pulling away. Were they alone, Song Lan might reach out and lace her fingers through Xingchen’s. In this loud, crowded place, Song Lan’s too overstimulated. Xingchen understands that — she stays close, an anchor — but doesn’t touch Song Lan.
Instead, she chats with their neighbor about the last band. They’d been an interesting group, using projections and earnestly cheering themselves on when their images came on screen. Their music had been a little rough and unpolished. They’d stopped and restarted in the middle of a song, but there was enthusiasm and care. By the end, Song Lan thought the lack of polish had been part of the charm.
Their neighbor, a person wearing red eyeshadow like a mask over their eyes, taught the band how to do the projector work. Xingchen’s in the middle of asking them about it when the owner of the cafe, Wei Wuxian, steps up to announce the Disaster Bringers.
Xingchen’s new friend grins wide. “Hell yeah!!!” they scream, and aren’t the only one. They turn to Xingchen, enthusing about how the Disaster Bringers are one of the best shows in town — the front woman has stage presence for days and their set is really something else and —
The Disaster Bringers come on stage. They’re all women, wearing blacks, golds and greens. Song Lan’s eyes immediately catch on the front woman. Even from the distance, her sharp dark eyes and smirk are magnetic. The set of her shoulders is relaxed and confident, her hair is swept in a messy side shave, and she holds her guitar mirrored. She’s not pretty, exactly, but Song Lan can’t help but watch the way her mouth curls as the music starts.
The first few songs the Disaster Bringers play are odd — distorted, dissonant music that is just to the left of painful to listen to. The front woman’s voice is smoky and rough, contrasted by the sweet and light voice of the keyboardist. If Song Lan wasn’t already caught by the front woman, she’d be caught by the lyrics. They tell a gory story — gruesome childhoods, revenges, a betrayal, a severed head — but with a comedic twist.
When the front woman and keyboardist turn to each other and start singing about the corpses’ bulging eyes being even bigger than her bulging muscles, Song Lan surprises herself by snickering. Xingchen catches her eyes and beams.
The next song is a darker duet between the keyboardist and the front woman.
“Hey false-faced, fair-weather friend,” the front woman sings, striding up to the keyboardist to brush a hand over her cheek.
The keyboardist catches her wrist. “Hey classless co-conspirator.”
There’s a beat of silence before their faces split into menacing grins. Then they trade a rapid volley of insults, cracks about backstabbing, thinly veiled threats and casual accusations. Still Song Lan laughs. She keeps laughing until the end of the song.
The singing cuts off when the drummer slams the cymbal. It’s quiet before the tune starts up again, but haunting, lacking the guitar. “Sorry, friend,” the keyboardist sings.
There’s little humor in the next song. A flight, followed by a terrified awakening. “You’d never guess who’d found our bitch then,” the guitarist sings, and there’s something in her voice that Song Lan can’t quite place. A bitter longing.
It’s followed by a revenge song disguised as a love song, or maybe the other way around. But in the end, the lover dies. The song after is a spiraling, cycling mess that Song Lan feels in an echoed tightness of her own heart. The crowd is silent. Then, someone yells.
“Xue Yang you fucker!” calls a man in a red shirt. For a moment, Song Lan thinks this is part of the act. But the keyboardist goes stiff, hands freezing on the keys. She’s standing an instant later, reaching out as if to grab the front woman. The front woman easily weaves out of the way. She steps upstage, smile razor thin. Crouching down so her face is almost level with the screaming man, she says something that Song Lan can’t hear.
Then it’s a flash. The man climbs on stage. The first punch he slings misses, but his second grazes the front woman’s nose. She stumbles back. A trickle of blood spills down her lips. Eyes growing wide and wild, she launches forward, tackling the man to the ground. They roll in a tangled heap of punches and screams and biting. He yanks at her hair. She knees him in the stomach.
Song Lan stands frozen, trying to will herself to move, to intervene or drag Xingchen out of there. But before she can, Wei Wuxian storms up the stage. He grabs the front woman by the collar and hauls her off of the screaming man. After he shoves her into the keyboardist’s grip, he yanks the man off of the ground.
As the front woman and the red-shirted man stand panting, Wei Wuxian gives them both a once over. Then he turns the most terrifying smile Song Lan has ever seen on the red-shirted man.
“Out,” Wei Wuxian’s voice echoes through the room.
The red-shirted man puffs himself up, his face matching his shirt. He looks like he’s about to scream again. But the drummer steps forward, pointing her drum stick at his chest. The bassist stands next to her, sneer twisted on her face. Last, the keyboardist walks up to the man to show him her phone screen. “You fucker!” he yells, but Wei Wuxian steps in front of the Disaster Bringers and repeats, “Out.”
The red-shirted man leaves the stage, shoving the crowd aside and muttering curses.
Song Lan exhales, hands unclenching.
Wei Wuxian turns back to the front woman. What he says next is hushed, and his smile is no less terrifying than it was before. The front woman grins back, showing all her teeth. Wei Wuxian says something else, and she laughs, hyena-like. Her chin and lips are smeared with blood. Song Lan has the absurd urge to wipe her face clean.
Rolling his eyes, Wei Wuxian tips his chin towards the door. He says something that might be — you know the rules — before handing the front woman her guitar. This feels practiced, like it’s happened a dozen times before.
Next to Song Lan, Xingchen has her brows furrowed and is biting her lip. Song Lan almost asks if Xingchen wants to leave, but before she can say anything, Xingchen grabs her arm and points.
The front woman jumps off the stage, guitar slung over her shoulder. Something in Song Lan’s stomach drops. It’s not like Song Lan expected to talk to the woman. Or should have wanted to, because—
“We need to go after her,” Xingchen says, eyes glittering with the bright determination she has whenever true inspiration strikes her. Song Lan loves that look. She hasn’t seen it in forever. And it’s a relief to hear that they’re somehow in accord on this.
As they make their way through the crowd, most people look shell-shocked, but a few mutter about how every other time this happens. Song Lan wonders about the story there, about the Burial Mounds’ interpersonal politics and how something like this could be allowed regularly. But she’s too full up on adrenaline and strange need to properly consider the thought.
She and Xingchen step out into the night. It’s the crisp cold of early spring, just warm enough for no snow to linger. Song Lan unties her bomber jacket from around her waist and puts it on. Xingchen slips on her white peacoat. Their breath hovers in the frosty air, as they look around the streets for signs of the front woman.
Chicago is a big city, and she could have gone down any block. Song Lan’s sure if they don’t see her now, they won’t see her at all. But Xingchen picks a direction and walks without an ounce of hesitation.
Only a few steps later they pass an alley where the front woman leans against a wall, curled around herself, smoking a cigarette. Her clothes are skimpy under her leather jacket. On her left hand is an odd half glove, and the pinky sticks out funny. There’s a fresh bruise on her cheek and blood is still smeared between her nose and lips.
She looks up at the two and raises her brows.
“We saw you perform,” Xingchen says in lieu of any proper greeting. “You were fantastic.”
“Thanks babe,” the front woman says, smirk curling on her lips. She looks them both over with something like appraising hunger, and Song Lan would mind it if she herself didn’t feel... hungry. “You two tourists?”
It’s not the oddest question. Chicago regularly attracts tourists, though most prefer hanging around the loop, with the lake and museums and parks. They’re west of the main draw, though there is a brand of tourist that ambles their way to Wicker Park’s art scene. Song Lan and Xingchen’s first official date had been here — when one of Xingchen’s then new activist friends invited her to a gallery opening and Xingchen needed a plus one. By now, Song Lan has lost count of how many other date nights they’ve spent walking down these streets.
“Students,” Xingchen smiles. “Though, Song Lan’s local.”
The front woman looks Xingchen up again, as if searching for a weak spot. “U of C?”
“Yes,” Xingchen beams. “Music majors. Are you also—”
The front woman snorts. “Do I look like I’ve gone to college, babe?” She takes one last drag of her cigarette and flicks it aside. “So, what were you doing at the Burial Mounds? Going slumming?” She turns to Song Lan. “Showing your girl the weird parts of town?”
Song Lan stiffens, fists clenching. “No,” she says, “she picked the show.”
The front woman pushes off the wall, drawing herself up to full height. She rolls her shoulders back, as if preparing for a brawl. That answers how this woman ended up in a fight on stage.
“Wei Wuxian’s been trying to get me to see you perform for months.” Xingchen cuts in, still smiling like there wasn’t a bomb about to go off. “He said I really wouldn’t want to miss your set.”
And the front woman blinks. “You know that asshole?”
“His coffee has kept me alive all year,” Xingchen says.
And just like that, the fuse flickers out. Something in the front woman’s eyes softens and she grins. “Knew his threats of banning me were bullshit.”
What had that stage top brawl been about? Song Lan knows people see her, with her shaved head, her strong arms, her height — with her masculinity as dangerous. She’s been blamed for conflicts she didn’t start all her life, had people assume the worst at first glance. Yet, it’s tempting to do the same here, and assume that this front woman is dangerous, that her bite means the fight was her fault.
Song Lan almost says, it’s cold. Let’s go home.
But Xingchen’s always been the better woman. She laughs, warm and friendly. “That would be a shame if he did.”
The front woman cocks her head.
“I really wanted to hear the end of that story you were telling.”
“Did you now?” the front woman takes a step towards Xingchen, tipping her lips into a coy smile. Song Lan doesn’t quite bristle. Xingchen being flirted with — and flirting back — is nothing new. While neither of them has had serious partners outside of each other, their relationship has always been open. And Xingchen’s the sort who finds connection easy, can meet a person and fall a little in love with them after just a few exchanged words. Song Lan’s always admired just how much love Xingchen was capable of.
But there’s something about the front woman that makes Song Lan want to be careful. Maybe it’s the way her own eyes cling to the front woman’s form, while the front woman’s gaze is almost entirely keyed onto Xingchen.
“You got a guess for the end, babe?” the front woman drawls.
Xingchen tilts her head and hums. “I was hoping the main character would find some peace. It seems she’s been through a lot.”
The front woman laughs. “Cute. No, you think that fucker realizes she’s digging her own grave? She’s dead and buried before that happens. Poetic justice.”
“Justice?” slips from Song Lan’s lips.
The front woman blinks. She turns to Song Lan as if she’s just remembered that Song Lan is there. “What, you going to say she didn’t deserve it?” There’s something else that flashes through the woman’s eyes as she looks Song Lan over. Something Song Lan can’t read. “If someone killed your girl, wouldn’t you want them dead?”
Song Lan looks at Xingchen, and the flash of her bleeding out on the ground rings through Song Lan’s mind. Color leaving Xingchen’s cheeks, a bloodied throat. The image is bright and clear for just an instant before Song Lan shakes it off. Though a flash of rage tinted grief lingers.
Song Lan and Xingchen often speak of justice — of what forms they’d want justice to take in an ideal world, and of what it means in this one. Can there even be something like restorative justice when the system targets the weak to bolster the strong? If someone killed Xingchen, would any form of justice be done? The system would only care if it could wield its cudgel against someone even more vulnerable than Xingchen.
“Yes,” Song Lan says, “but I couldn’t claim it’d be justice.”
“Revenge isn’t justice and all that crap?” The front woman laughs. “You both are cute.”
Song Lan shrugs. It’s not the first time she and Xingchen have been called naïve. “So, how does she die?”
“Her lover’s ex-lover kills her. You know, the one she killed. Thought it’d close the circle nicely.”
“And that’s the end?” Xingchen asks.
“What, you don’t like it? Think it should be happier?” the front woman’s smile spreads into something wide and dangerous. “You know, I did think, what if she brought her lover back? Managed it for real.”
Xingchen tilts her head. Song Lan fights the urge to step back.
“I figured she’d probably end up dead by her lover’s hand instead.” She shrugs. “Kinda liked that better, to be honest, but Yaoyao told me that was ‘too dark.’” She rolls her eyes. “Yaoyao’s got some funny lines in the sand.”
“Hmm,” Xingchen hums. “What about the lover’s ex-lover? Is she happy, after it all?”
The front woman shrugs. “Never decided. It ends when the main fucker dies.” She rubs her hands together before blowing a puff of air into them. “Probably she’s alright. She got her revenge, yeah?” The chill has turned her ungloved fingers red. Song Lan rubs at her own gloves — dark leather, doing a valiant effort to fight the cold — and tugs them off, offering.
The front woman jolts and stares.
Song Lan says nothing. She continues to hold out the gloves until the front woman takes them and tugs them on. She’s shorter than Song Lan, but the gloves fit her broad, wide hands almost perfectly. “You know, you’re not getting these back,” the front woman says.
“Okay,” Song Lan says, surprised by the way the corners of her lips twitch up.
Xingchen chuckles. “I’m Xingchen, by the way. And this is Song Lan.”
The front woman looks between them. “Xue Yang. This is the weirdest fucking way anyone’s tried to pick me up, you know that?”
Laughing, Xingchen asks, “Really, the weirdest?”
Xue Yang pauses for a moment, before waving a hand through the air, “Top three, at least. The beekeeper with the cunt-bees might have you beat.”
Song Lan opens her mouth to ask and then shuts it. She’s probably better off not learning what ‘cunt-bees’ are.
“You are very beautiful,” Xingchen says. “But—”
“But your girl doesn’t share.” Xue Yang fills in.
Xingchen shakes her head. “No, no, Song Lan is very good at sharing.” And she winks. “But, your music, the way you perform — I wanted to learn more about you, if that’s alright.”
Xue Yang blinks between the two of them. “Are you two serial killers — because that’d be hot and all, but Yaoyao’d be pissed at me if I went and died on her.”
Xingchen shakes her head. “Your first song — the music felt terrifying, and I was laughing the entire time.”
A gust of cold air blows by as Xue Yang stares. Then she inhales, shaking her head.
“So, you know how in horror movies, the cheap, campy ones, they chop a guy’s head off and blood just spurts out?” She says slowly, eyeing Song Lan and Xingchen.
Song Lan tips her head.
Xue Yang straightens, a new kind of grin tugging on her lips. “And the music’s there telling you ‘be scared’ but you’re looking at it and laughing your ass off? Thought it’d be fun to do it on purpose.”
Eventually, Song Lan has to stuff her hands into her jacket pockets to keep them from turning red. Xue Yang breaks off from spit balling about how the middle of her set could benefit from a softer, quieter build or maybe quieter end — she can’t figure out which — to tell Song Lan, “I told you that you’re not getting these back.”
Song Lan can’t help but laugh at that. “I know.” Though she’s no longer able to fight off the shivers. They’ve been out here long enough for the rush of evening traffic to become a trickle of cars .
Xingchen looks at Song Lan. She’d been wrapped up in the conversation, going from asking Xue Yang questions, to helping Xue Yang brainstorm ideas for how to polish her set. Song Lan had been content to watch them, only throwing in the occasional thought when both seemed tangled up in ideas.
But now, free from the creative spell, Xingchen wraps her arms around herself and shivers. “You’d think, with the equinox passing...”
Xue Yang snorts. “Chicago, babe. Who knows, we might get another snowstorm.”
A look of horror passes Xingchen’s face. Song Lan shakes her head. “Don’t terrify her, she’s Californian.”
Xue Yang cackles. “Well, California girl, let’s get some drinks. Warm ourselves up.” She tilts her head towards a liquor store illuminated by flickering neon lights.
Song Lan almost points out that alcohol doesn’t actually warm you up, but stops herself. She doesn’t want to sound like a smart ass. “We live nearby,” she offers instead.
Xue Yang cocks her head. “So, you were trying to pick me up.”
Song Lan deliberately drags her eyes up and down Xue Yang’s narrow form, catching Xue Yang’s gaze to make sure Xue Yang sees. Unlike Xingchen, Song Lan doesn’t hook up much, but she’s not shy when she wants someone. “You look like a popsicle.”
Xue Yang raises her brows.
“It’s cold, but I’d like to...” Xingchen catches Song Lan’s eyes and smiles. “We’d like to keep talking. Though if you’d like to grab some drinks on the way there...”
“Babe, I always want drinks when I’m heading to a serial killer’s house.” Xue Yang winks and Xingchen’s laughing again, giggles spilling out of her. It’s been so long since Song Lan has seen Xingchen laugh like this. Xingchen had kept up a smiling face, but seeing her laugh now, it’s clear that the stress has been eating her.
Smiling, Song Lan says, “Alright,” then turns towards the store.
While Xingchen and Xue Yang debate the merits of two different brands of hard cider, Song Lan quietly pays for their small hoard of drinks — more than enough for three nights. The cashier raises her brows as she rings Song Lan up. Song Lan shrugs. She bets the cashier has seen stranger sights.
“Come on,” she calls out to Xue Yang and Xingchen, who are now engaged in a debate about... Pear cider? Cute. “I bought our drinks.”
“Oh!” Xingchen says at the same time as Xue Yang narrows her eyes. “I’m not paying you back.”
“Wasn’t expecting you to,” Song Lan says.
Xue Yang’s glower grows darker, but Xingchen takes her hand and tugs her over to Song Lan.
“Hey!” Xue Yang yelps, but that cat-who-got-its-tail-stepped-on look vanishes from her face. She doesn’t let go of Xingchen’s hand for the two blocks it takes them to get home.
After Song Lan turns on the lights, she watches Xue Yang’s gaze circle the apartment. It’s clean, as stress only ever makes Song Lan more fastidious, and small — a studio apartment. Their furniture is an eclectic clash of secondhand items. Xingchen picked most of it out in a flea market the weekend after they moved in, though the taxidermy furby sitting on the bookshelf is Song Lan’s buy.
“Nice place.” Xue Yang shucks off her boots, sets her guitar down and flops onto their couch. She stretches out, claiming as much space a short, scrawny woman can. Song Lan snorts and sets the drinks down on the kitchen counter.
She grabs two bottles of cider, for Xingchen and Xue Yang, and an IPA for herself. Then she sits down in the beanbag chair next to the couch. Taking her drink, Xingchen picks up Xue Yang’s legs and slides herself under them, before setting Xue Yang’s feet down in her lap.
Jerking up, Xue Yang stares at Xingchen, who offers an innocent smile back.
“Cider.” Song Lan presses the cold bottle to Xue Yang’s thigh.
Xue Yang grumbles something incomprehensible before taking the cider.
On the wall, the clock reads 3:25, and Song Lan should feel tired. It's long past when even she, with her chronic insomnia, goes to bed. But all she feels is a soft sleepiness that lets her settle down with her drink.
There’s a moment of quiet, while they all get comfortable, then Xingchen picks up the conversation outside like there’d never been a pause. “You said you wanted some quiet after the lead’s lover dies?” She rubs her chin. “The lover’s ex, her tongue’s missing right?”
“Yup,” Xue Yang drawls, then she blinks, eyes brightening. “You think I should give that bitch a song?”
Xingchen smiles and shrugs, but Xue Yang goes on. “Yeah, yeah, that works. Only other bitch left, ‘cept for maybe the kid, who really gets what’s lost.” She slings her feet up off of Xingchen’s lap and looks over across the table. Her eyes land on a pile of scrap paper. “Hey, is this important?” She asks, picking a page up.
Then her gaze slides down it.
Song Lan tries not to wince. Xingchen hadn’t let her throw away their old drafts — hadn’t wanted to risk losing anything they could reuse. But their drafts are a mess. Each one feels more soulless than the last.
“Ah...” Xingchen says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s a composition Song Lan and I are working on.”
Xue Yang looks through it, humming under her breath. It’s the middle song in their senior performance, the one that makes Song Lan cringe the hardest.
Their first song, Song Lan likes. It’s a slow, sweet thing — blending a steady, cautious tune from Song Lan’s piano, with a fluttery lightness from Xingchen’s violin. Song Lan likes to think about it as their meeting, as that day when she first talked to Xingchen. Song Lan had mostly tolerated conversations with strangers then, but Xingchen had come up and spoken to her with neither intrusive assumption nor awkward shyness.
And somehow, Xingchen drew her into a conversation that started with why Song Lan loved music, and sailed through ideals of justice, of dreams for a better world, and of what they both hoped to do outside of music. They’d talked until long past sunset, souls spilling out into each other’s hands like they belonged there. But eventually, Xingchen’s stomach growled, and it turned out the dining commons had closed. So, Song Lan treated Xingchen to dinner. Being in love with Xingchen had been as easy as breathing since.
If only music felt nearly as easy.
Their closing song isn’t bad either. It’s a tenuous reconciliation. The violin and piano attempting to rejoin in harmony, but not quite managing. It’s sad and uncertain, lingering, which Song Lan hopes works. Hopes makes sense and doesn’t just sound like dissonance for the sake of it.
But she mostly likes it. It mostly feels right.
It’s the middle that she hates. They tried to ease into a break, music growing progressively more brittle. And they’d tried to have the break be a sudden jolt. But both felt off in ways Song Lan couldn’t place.
“So, this is a fight, yeah?” Xue Yang asks.
“Something like that,” Xingchen says, scooting closer to Xue Yang. She peaks over Xue Yang’s shoulder, frowning at the composition.
Song Lan and Xingchen agreed it had to be that — the fight. There had to be a break, and it had to be loud. But after...
Xue Yang picks her guitar case off the floor. Song Lan sits up as Xue Yang plays something akin to their tune. It’s a little strange — her guitar doesn’t sound right without the amp, and she’s obviously guessing a little on how to convert the arrangement for piano notes to guitar chords — but it’s most of the way there.
She plays the first few bars, then frowns, somewhere right around where Song Lan starts hating the song.
“Yeah,” Song Lan says. “It’s not... right.”
“What are these bitches fighting about?” Xue Yang asks.
“Well, it’s kind of a betrayal,” Xingchen says, wincing as Xue Yang hits a high, loud note. “Unintentional, but one hurts the other, and they split up.”
Xue Yang keeps playing the song, to the flat, fizzled out end. “They don’t really sound pissed.”
“I think they’re more hurt than angry,” Xingchen says.
“You can be hurt and pissed,” Xue Yang points out.
“So, what, make it angrier?” Song Lan asks.
“Fuck if I know,” Xue Yang says. She starts from the top, speeding up the pace, adding a harsher edge. It’s not right either, but the little frown on Xue Yang’s face, that bright curiosity in her eyes, has Song Lan wanting to join.
She’s played so many variations of this same song that it makes her feel sick, but she could play most of the older versions in her sleep. Glancing up at Xingchen, Song Lan stands, then walks over to her keyboard.
The version Xue Yang is playing is one of the most recent ones. Song Lan doesn’t remember all the changes, but she joins Xue Yang anyhow, following along more with the tune than with what she remembers.
Xue Yang meets her gaze and small smirk curls on her lips. She speeds the song up further, so fast Song Lan — half asleep, hands still chilled — fumbles the notes. But every note she fumbles, Xue Yang echoes, as if challenging her. So Song Lan improvises, stops thinking about effect and theory and intention and goes with what feels good.
And it does feel good. She hasn’t played music like this, informal and loose, since she’d first started trying to piece together her own compositions. There’s no other way to do it when Xue Yang’s taken her song out of her hands.
The keening of the violin cuts through the air as Xingchen joins them. Song Lan looks up to see Xingchen’s eyes sharp with concentration as she tries to keep up with the pace Xue Yang has set. Xue Yang laughs and takes a turn, weaving in one of the songs they’d heard tonight. The one she’d been complaining to Xingchen about earlier, that spiraling song they never got to hear the end of.
So, what had Xue Yang wanted to try — giving the lover’s ex-lover a voice? Song Lan tries to imagine losing Xingchen, then finding her again only for everything to collapse. She tries to picture a world without Xingchen’s gentle smile and steady hands.
All too easily she can see it, and spins that in, grabbing that fight they’d been writing and pulling out a painful, hopeless longing. It slows the beat, and when Xue Yang fights and tries to rush her, Song Lan slows down further, letting the notes breathe.
It does not sound good — the two clashing, arrhythmic tunes — but it feels good. It feels like screaming into a pillow after a long, frustrating day. Maybe that’s what this is, screaming. All of them screaming.
Xingchen’s violin comes in more firmly. She’s been following Xue Yang, but now she breaks from her, slows down. Not to Song Lan’s pace, but her own, somewhere in between the two of them. Her song isn’t fury or grief. There’s something sweet and almost hopeful there, and maybe a little chiding. Get along.
Song Lan laughs and picks up the pace. Xue Yang rolls her eyes but slows down.
They trade off — one leads as the other two follow. A terrible mess of a song, with Xingchen’s violin scraping and Song Lan fumbling notes and Xue Yang occasionally throwing them off for fun, but it’s their mess.
When they finally stop, Song Lan exhales. “Fuck.”.
Xingchen giggles. “I think the neighbors are going to murder us tomorrow.”
“Murder them first,” Xue Yang suggests, slumping down against the couch.
“Maybe we should offer this one as a sacrifice,” Song Lan tilts her chin at Xue Yang. Her heart’s still racing. She feels like she’s run a marathon, endorphin rush and all. Maybe tomorrow, or in a few days, she and Xingchen could look at their song with fresh eyes.
“Who says I’ll be here in the morning?” Xue Yang asks.
“Won’t you?” Xingchen asks. She sets her violin down before sitting next to Xue Yang and dropping her head on Xue Yang’s shoulder. “We’d like for you to stay.”
“You think I got energy for a fuck after all that?”
“We didn’t say anything about fucking,” Song Lan says, making her way back to the beanbag chair. She drops and spreads her legs, letting her knee rest lightly against Xue Yang’s calf.
Xue Yang scowls. “If I stay, you two are fucking me in the morning.”
“Demanding,” Xingchen says, lacing her fingers through Xue Yang’s.
“You know it.” Xue Yang tips her head back and shuts her eyes, chest rising and falling too fast for her to be asleep yet.
In a moment, Song Lan will insist on migrating to the bed. In a moment. Right now, she wants to rest in the comfortable buzz of new acquaintance and new connection.