Three days out from the Big Karaoke Event, disaster struck.

“How the fuck,” Xi couldn’t help but hiss, “just how the ever-living fuck do you catch this kind of motherfucking cold when it’s this hot outside?”

“Easy, Xi, easy,” Bertram said, “we’re all in it, you know, the pressure’s on—”

“What motherfucking pressure! It’s three songs! Three that have serious rap requirements, requirements she insisted on, are you fucking saying you’ll take over her lines?!”

“No, no, I’m just saying—”

“Move,” Janey said, pushing her way into the messy circle they’d all formed around the red-faced Ursula. “Xi, you need to step out with me for a sec.”

“Step out?” Xi said, his voice cracking, his tone dark—okay, murderous, from the way Yuri was giving him the eye. “Fine, fuck, fine.” Janey, being her usual tyrannical self, had already begun dragging him off the stage and toward the storage room door. He went along with her with bad grace, still fuming, one more stimulant away from grinding his teeth for real. “Okay, okay, I’m out of line, I know.”

“You think?” Janey retorted, even as she shouldered open the slow-moving sliding door. “Ugh, do they ever air this fucking cupboard out?”

“It’s soundproofed,” Xi muttered. “That’s good.” He’d been feeling the urge to scream since they started practice, lacking Ursula but still not knowing they’d likely be lacking her on the actual day. Screaming his lungs out in a shitty soundproofed cupboard was more appropriate than screaming out in the main room, where his friends could see him and be alarmed. “What do we do? What the fuck do we do?”

“Nothing. It’s just a livestream, it’ll be fine.”

“I already paid the fucking deposit, if we can’t, if we can’t make it back…”

“I’ll cover it.”

“I can’t, I can’t ask you to—”

“Xi!” Janey’s hands gripped his shoulders, hard. “What is the actual problem here?”

Xi, breathing hard, couldn’t meet her eye. Silence settled on them, one broken only by his unsteady breaths and the faint, heavily muffled sound of the music being turned back on in the main room. “I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.”

He knew the song that was playing, just from hearing the stirring beat. Stupidly, just hearing it brought tears to his eyes, half because he knew it was one they could sing with or without Ursula, and half because it was an old standby they all knew like the back of their hands. Substituting it for one of the newer songs they’d prepared would be no problem, even if doing so meant they wouldn’t have it in their back pocket as a possible encore or raffle song, and just hearing it should have made Xi feel supported and reassured, not…

“Xi,” Janey muttered, dragging him into her arms. “Crying over this—”

“I know,” Xi whispered, struggling to keep back the treacherous tears. “I know, it’s, it’s just, he’ll be here, he’ll see me like this, and I can’t.”

Janey’s arm tightened around his shoulders, and her free hand patted his back. “Mike’s coming?”

Xi nodded, wiping fiercely at his face. Somehow, hearing people call the captain his real name now felt wrong. “Even worse, he’s bringing friends.”

“Pro gamers?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Silence fell again, followed by an abrupt decrease in volume of the music from the main room. As if by mutual agreement, both him and Janey looked over at the door, momentarily frozen, until the music kicked back into gear again, and they could assume the problem that it had been stopped for was solved.

“I’m not even—no, fuck, I know exactly what I’m afraid of, I’m afraid they’ll all of them come in and laugh,” Xi muttered, hating himself, hating that all his hard-won confidence and shamelessness couldn’t always be endless, couldn’t always shield him from the chill of the moment of truth, when he stepped out in front of an audience he wasn’t completely familiar with. “It’s stupid, but it won’t go away, and I haven’t seen him in weeks, and if this is how it happens, and it goes wrong…”

“Xi,” Janey said, pulling a little way back from him, her hand rising to cup his cheek, her expression fierce, “if it does go wrong, you always have a way out. You know that.”

Xi, hearing her dead serious tone, couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the fact that she’d bring this well-worn joke into it. Sometimes, he wished the most popular depiction of a ‘true’, full-blooded siren wasn’t that of a scheming imperial consort whose overdramatic lines were a match for her ridiculously makjang1 life story. “Right, yeah, got it.”

“No, no, you have to say it, or it doesn’t count.”

“Jane—”

“Say it! And do it properly.”

“All right, all right,” Xi muttered, shrugging off her teasing grasp. “If the worst happens, my voice’ll be the last thing they hear.”

“Oh, Xi, you didn’t even bother to—”

“Are you finally done kissing and making up?” Bertram called out, the moment Xi ducked back through the storage room door. “Though I suppose you should technically be doing all that with Ursula.”

“Ursula,” Xi said, approaching the stage, “I was out of line—”

“Too right, you were,” Bertram said, glowering in his direction. “Really, you should be kneeling, why aren’t you?”

“Shut up, you ruiner,” Ursula hissed, stepping on his foot deliberately. “You were saying, Xi?”

“I’m sorry, I know you were looking forward to singing with us too, get well soon…?”

For answer, Ursula kicked Bertram in the ankle. “See? Ruined the moment, ruined his rhythm completely.”

Which meant Xi had to try again. “Really, Ursula, and, and everyone other than Bertram—”

“Hey!”

“—I’ve been a total cock today for no reason, and I’m really sorry. It’s unfair to treat you all that way when we’re all in this together, putting in the effort, taking time off and so on.”

By now, the music had long been paused, and the formation his friends were in had completely fallen apart, half because Bertram was busy making a production of massaging his ankle, and half because Yuri was sidling right up to Ursula’s slightly drooping frame and giving her meaningful looks. When Xi finally finished his apology, he realized he had become the one surrounded in a predatory circle of friends, and had to smother the urge to take a careful step back.

“It’s nerves, then, is it?” Yuri said, her tone sympathetic, her gaze sparkling with interest. “Pressure getting to you?”

“It’s only that we haven’t done a real live performance in ages, Yuri,” Janey said, her soothing tone and gentle misdirection making Xi’s tense shoulders droop a little in relief. Then she cleared her throat again, and dashed his hopes entirely: “It’s just that, you know? Live performance, live audience…”

“Oh my god, he’s coming?!” Bertram straightened, immediately abandoning his pity-me-I’m-hurt play in favour of gossip. “Oh my fucking lord, that prick will go mad with jealousy, I can’t fucking wait—”

“Do you mean it, JJ?” Yuri bypassed the blank-faced, panicking Xi to clutch at Janey’s hands. “You actually confirmed…?”

“Of course,” Janey said, smirking. “Told you he’d admit it eventually.”

“Well, well,” Ursula said, her voice now suddenly much less hoarse than it previously was. “I owe you, J.”

Xi gaped. “Y-you—”

“Still have a cold, a real cold,” Ursula said, but her hasty sideways movement out of Xi’s reach confirmed his sudden, awful suspicion. “Xi, don’t.”

“Stay still!” But of course the girls conspired against him, or at least Yuri did, cleverly stalling his momentum and getting in the way of his awkward, stop-start chase of the slightly guilty-looking, exaggeratedly coughing Ursula. “Yuri, Ursula, you complete, absolute fucking—”

“Oh, you’ll call us names, but Janey gets off?”

“Oi, oi, I’m miserable, all right?” Janey said, now also retreating from Xi’s grasping hands. “I’m, I’m tragically unemployed, my career’s—tragic end—”

“Tragic? You’re having a fucking laugh at my expense, at all our expense, aren’t you?”

She was already laughing, but of course she still shook her head and did her best to swallow it back: “Xi, I would never.”

“Oh, bullshit!”

“How’s it,” Bertram gasped, through his own strangled, malicious laughter, “how’s it at our expense, anyway, instead of just yours?”

“Yeah, as far as I can tell,” Yuri said, “it’s really, really just you, Xi. And I’m not, y’know, I’m just, I’m really only stating facts, here.”

Janey, at this point, was giggling nearly too hard to breathe, and Ursula was very much in the same way, only with a few more coughs mixed in. With all that snickering as a background, and Yuri’s distorted, insincere expression of concern right in front of him, the last thing Xi could bear to do at this point was try to carry off the additional announcement that MrJiong—yes, that MrJiong—was his mysterious plus one, the man that his friends were eager to see at the event. Which he really truly had planned to do, once he’d got up the courage to confirm to them that Jiong was definitely going to be there.

In the end, Xi could only mutter that he was taking a motherfucking break, and slink off out of the room to see about soothing his bad mood with some snacks.

With a so-so custard tart and some slightly too sweet bubble tea under his belt, Xi found himself better able to weather the teasing and bickering of his friends. They practised late into the evening, fuelling themselves on tea and kebabs from the tiny shop across the street from the karaoke club, a situation only vaguely reminiscent of their former days as an honest-to-god, occasionally high-trending karaoke group.

For one thing, they had a bit less energy now, and far more money, and not just because the technology for the then top-notch VR suits and recording gear had naturally dwindled in price. Only Ursula had needed anything in the way of upgrades, and in her case, she’d only really needed a high-tempo skin for her already up-to-date suit, since she and her partner were die-hard VR fiends with an equipment budget twice the size of what Xi would consider to be his absolute upper limit.

In a way, despite the underlying nerves and tension that Xi couldn’t quite shake, it was a much nicer experience than any of their late night karaoke cram sessions had used to be. They could order alcohol without Ursula having to be the one to do the honours, and navigating the problem of suspicious store clerks checking and double checking that a girl that short could really be old enough to buy hard drinks. They could party all night, wasting time on tearjerking attempts at the newest ballads, spending money like water for the expanded score of any song that caught their fancy.

They didn’t do any of that, mostly because, in a hobby that would guzzle credit at light speed if you let it, the urge to squeeze the most value they could out of every purchase had never really died. And also because most of them had work tomorrow, and no time or allowance for drunken binges, but still. Just knowing they could have indulged themselves in such a binge was nice.

“Anyone who fucks up on the day of can consider themselves permanently off my extras list,” Xi muttered, as he sweltered in the slow-moving lift that was taking them back to the surface. “And I mean that, Bertram, I fucking mean it.”

“Okay, okay,” Bertram said, his voice soothing. “I’ll be perfect, we’ll all be so perfect that we’ll end up stealing him from you for the night, alright?”

“You,” Ursula said, her voice now really quite hoarse, “if you dare flirt with his boyfriend—”

“Fifty cred says he won’t,” Janey murmured, with an evil little wink in Xi’s direction. “Care to try, Yuri?”

“Wait, wait, wait, how the fuck are you confident enough to bet?” Bertram demanded, his eyes narrowing. “Well?”

“Just a feeling,” Janey said, raising her eyebrows slightly, her unconcerned expression fooling no one. “You don’t need to get so het up about it.”

Luckily, even as Bertram turned back toward Xi, the lift ground to a halt, its loud ding drowning out the start of his indignant question. “…something I don’t know? Xi?”

“Night,” Xi said, loudly, and beat a hasty retreat, making sure to temporarily block messages from Bertram in his HUD even as he hurried down the street, heading for the nearest subway station. “Christ, that’s all I need…”

Alas that said temporary block did not allow Xi to escape the fallout of Bertram’s inevitable discovery.

[jjcool]: lolol he’s still ranting!

[XiErXi]: …

[XiErXi]: seriously?? It’s been a whole fucking day

[jjcool]: well, it’s, you know, there’ve been breaks

[jjcool]: he’s also changed subject a few times

[jjcool]: first, it was “WTF is it really him”, then “is Xi blind??”

[jjcool]: then “Xi’s being deceived!”

[jjcool]: THEN it was “OMG Xi’s taste…?? It’s this???”…

[XiErXi]: [sigh]. Kill me now

[jjcool]: I’m not finished~

[jjcool]: Last couple hours have been “why did I have to find out from you?”, with some of “Xi doesn’t trust me huh [sad face]” mixed in

[XiErXi]: 囧

[jjcool]: *wicked laughter*

[jjcool]: can’t wait to see what Claire will say…

[XiErXi]: !!

[XiErXi]: Do not!!! Absolutely don’t!!!!!!

[jjcool]: hm…? Did someone say something…?

[XiErXi]: *desperately kneels*

[XiErXi]: spare me! Please!! Just this once…!!!

[jjcool]: ah, but

[jjcool]: my leg’s been sore these days, I’m not sure how well I’ll do during the event you know~

[jjcool]: at that time, if I make a mistake…

[XiErXi]: hahaha what’s a small mistake ah? What’s a mistake between friends?

[XiErXi]: it’s just a small event!! A small one! You can just casually dance ah!!!

[jjcool]: ah? it’s like that?

[XiErXi]: 1000% like that! 1000000%!!!!

So there was one obvious new difficulty, though it remained to be seen whether Janey was actually going to dance casually or not. And of course, at the same time, Xi was forced to deal with friendly fire from the usual source:

[MrJiong]: dying~ dying~

[XiErXi]: wtf is it now ah

[MrJiong]: there’s only 17 hours left……

[MrJiong]: [blushes] [blushes] [blushes]

[XiErXi]: [sigh]

[MrJiong]: it feels unreal…

[MrJiong]: feels like jiongjiong’s been invited to see forbidden sights ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆

[XiErXi]: do you want to be uninvited? [smile]?

[MrJiong]: jiongjiong doesn’t think Xi-er is serious~

[MrJiong]: jiongjiong doesn’t think Xi-er can bear to do it~

[XiErXi]: …

[MrJiong]: *whispers* jiongjiong knows he’s being bad. jiongjiong is sorry, but…

[MrJiong]: jiongjiong wants to be punished in person, okay? so, for that, jiongjiong will work hard ah~ ah~

XiErXi has temporarily blocked jiongjiong!

“It’s all of them,” Xi found himself saying, glaring at that last, defiant message in his HUD. “Everyone I know is fucking mental.”

Somehow, that didn’t stop him answering Jiong’s call three minutes later, or wanking to the low, rough sound of Jiong’s voice. This close to what an irrational part of his brain was telling him had to be their acrimonious karaoke-instigated end, Xi could not help himself; he didn’t even wait for Jiong to start talking before he unzipped himself.

He had no idea how on earth he would manage to concentrate on the day. It had been nearly six whole weeks, or five weeks and five days since the last time he’d seen Jiong in person, and perhaps it was Xi’s faint siren ancestry, or it was how gloriously attentive the captain was whenever they met up, but all in all, Xi felt feverish at the thought of being able to see his lover again. To not just see him, but feel him, touch him, hear him…

“So easy tonight,” Captain Jiong said, smugly, once Xi had stopped whimpering into link. “You lovely little slut, are you crying?”

“No,” Xi lied, blinking angrily. “What… did you also just…?”

“I will soon,” was the warm, still-smug answer. “You positive you’re not crying?”

“Fuck off!”

Jiong laughed. “So you are, then,” was the last thing he said before he trailed off into low grunts and inarticulate moans. Xi licked his lips, listening intently, fancying that he’d be able to tell just when the other man actually started to come.

Not yet, not yet, not—there. His moans took on an extra urgency, his voice just a little higher than before, a little louder. “Don’t do this again until you’re in front of me,” Xi couldn’t help but say when Jiong was finally done, his voice low and tight and hungry. “You can fuck my mouth, just use me like that all night, I won’t mind.”

He would mind—didn’t he want, no, need to get his ass properly fucked, after these few weeks of separation? But Xi could at least admit, if only to himself, that he wouldn’t mind catering to any and all of Jiong’s whims this time, if that was the fastest way he could get the man back into his bed.

“I’ll use you,” was Jiong’s only answer, his voice dark with promise. “I’ll make you beg me to stop.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Xi couldn’t help but mutter, in return, flushing as he did so. “Are you trying to get me all spun up again?” But even as he said that, he was squeezing his soft, twitching cock, restless again despite the fact that he knew he needed to get to sleep if he didn’t want to start tomorrow off on a shaky note. “Surely you’re done by now?”

“Mostly,” Jiong said. “Are you sure I can’t see you before the big event? Just to take the edge off?”

“Good night,” Xi said, tartly, ignoring that oft-repeated question. In the mood they were both in, it wouldn’t stop at ‘taking the edge off’; it’d end in Xi missing rehearsal and showing up to perform while dishevelled and stinking of come, and that would just be massively disrespectful to everyone he’d be singing with. “Remember, it kicks off at seven sharp—”

“—and we have to be seated by quarter to seven, because that’s when you close off the room for the first half. I remember.”

“Good night,” Xi said, nettled by that all too obviously indulgent, teasing tone, and immediately ended the call, only to realize that he was back to being half hard again, frustrated in a way he knew wouldn’t go away unless he dealt with matters at hand.

Scowling, he rummaged through his archive of dirty clips, hating himself for beelining for one in particular, a so-so, fuzzy, self-recorded five-minute clip of jiongjiong sucking his cock. He refused to think about why this particular clip was his favourite, when so many others in his collection were much more crisp; he just maximized the video to fill his entire HUD and stroked himself off, his body trembling, his head full of the floaty, almost feverish sensation he’d felt while recording said clip.

Jiong had tied his wrists to the headboard with one of their shirts, and leaned on his thighs so heavily that he barely had the freedom to wriggle, and even less freedom to thrust. All Xi had been able to do was endure…

Makjang: Korean, slang word for excessive soap-opera-esque plots and plot elements. Think heroine and her lover suddenly discovering they’re actually fraternal twins separated at birth by her evil stepfather who recovered from amnesia after trying to commit suicide because he was kicked off the board of directors by the heroine.↩