Chapter Text
Does Wang Can perform at Moonlight? Yes, he does. Is it anything like his brother’s performances? Not in the slightest.
The vibe we’re going for here is Chicago. (The musical, not the city.) All slinky black, with the discreetest of sparkles. The glint of a knife rather than the shimmer of sequins. Wang Can is in a black-on-black tuxedo, cut for movement like they do for James Bond's actors, his dark hair grown long and unruly but pulled back away from his eyes. It’s the sort of mix and contradiction that makes up Wang Can these days, now that he is out of the Wang family but unwilling to take up his original name. (He takes up his brother, though. That is non-negotiable.) He is all tightness and efficiency and lethality honed into every line of his body, which makes the shock of curls on his head an even more unexpected luxury. His eyes calculate sight lines and points of weakness to exploit, but his soft pout of a mouth is a weakness in and of itself.
Like I said: the vibe is Chicago. All Fosse and murder. Cell block tango. Justifying the unjustifiable. And he is convincing. He hooks a hand over the microphone, cigarette trailing lazily between his fingers, and tells his story into the microphone. He croons the words, half rasp, half purr. He tells a tale of siblings and tricks and murder, familiar words given an unfamiliar ring of truth, all while the house backup singers harmonize gently.One, two, three, splits, backflips, the spread-eagle. Wang Can shows them all. He takes artistry and hones it into a weapon, each trick looking like it could kill a man. (And, who knows, maybe it has.) But he brings it back around, turns those deadly moves back into a dance.
And then, on the heels of a flying, spinning kick, Wang Can plucks one of the backup singers out of the lineup and swirls them into a close tango embrace. They whip around the stage, Wang Can’s long legs entwining and twisting with his partner’s as they flash out from a shimmering confection of a flapper dress cut up to there, looking on the verge of tripping each other, half-fight, half-seduction. Their faces are pressed tightly into each other’s necks, Wang Can’s partner taller than him in towering heels, but their bodies curve together to mirror each other. It is not until the final dramatic beat, where Wang Can drops his partner in a death-defying dip, that the audience can see his partner’s face: a mirror image of his own, only with a smokier eye and redder lip.
The audience hoots and howls in appreciation. Liu Sang is known and loved. The music twists again, back to a remix of the song Wang Can was singing earlier, telling the story of two siblings performing together. Two siblings and a spouse. As the twins perform acrobatic tricks in mirror image of each other, an anonymous backup dancer in a scandalously tight tuxedo the mirror image of Wang Can's - all white with the merest touches of black - slips into the role of spouse.
(Meanwhile, seated at a very good table tucked discreetly to the side is another man in a less scandalous, more refined tuxedo. He watches the twins with greedy, contented eyes. Liu Sang occasionally cuts a smoky gaze in the man’s direction, even while stage-flirting with the anonymous “spouse,” and the man smiles back with just those hungry eyes. Wang Can does not flirt in the same way; he conspicuously ignores the man on the side of the stage. This makes the man smile even with his mouth, which leaves red lip prints on the side of his whisky glass.)
As the story in the song progresses, the twins and the spouse stumble into each other, twining and laughing and sketching the outline of a tango, partnership shifting between the three of them, lead and follow flowing like water, with the third person always only a breath behind. In time with the story being throatily murmured over the slinky jazz backdrop, Wang Can extricates himself from the three of them, spinning out for a brief flourish on his own, drawing the audience's attention as the other two dance into the shadows. A single eight count of athletic drama from Wang Can, and then he slinks his way back to the other two.
A spotlight hits them dimly, the spouse facing the audience as Liu Sang slides into the splits in front of him, arm wrapped around the spouse's neck, bare back exposed to the audience with a single sparkling line of beads tracing between his shoulder blades. As the beat hits, the spotlight flicks harsh and accusing on the pair, and Wang Can lands facing them. Liu Sang now has one leg hooked high over the spouse's hip and is curved in a deep backbend over the arm around his waist, the spouse's face pressed daringly close to Liu Sang's chest. Liu Sang's arms and head are thrown back in a graceful, artistic approximation of ecstasy. A diamond choker gleams at his throat.
Drama! Betrayal! The audience obligingly ooooohs in dismay.
The horns cascade in a dizzying whirl while the three performers repeat their earlier tango, only this time swapping partners in a confusion of arms and legs and aggression, until the music reaches its final crescendo. In the silence before the downbeat, the spouse has collapsed into a white puddle at Wang Can's feet, and Wang Can is holding Liu Sang in a parody of his earlier seductive dip with the spouse.
This time, Liu Sang's legs drape between Wang Can's, and he does not slide into a backbend so much as crumple, arms and head hanging limply in an artist's approximation of death. Wang Can is not pressed to Liu Sang's chest like the spouse had been; he stands upright, one arm still supporting Liu Sang's waist, the other clutching the shimmering choker overhead. He has ripped it away, exposing a blood-red silk scarf around Liu Sang's throat, the end still fluttering with the movement of their bodies. Wang Can's upraised hand is also red, with another scrap of red silk surrounding the choker as he makes sure it flashes fire in the spotlight.
The audience howls gleefully at the delicious scandal of it all.
When the beat finally drops, looping the music back around to the original refrain, with a recording of Wang Can's sultry murmur disclaiming all responsibility. Wang Can drops the necklace and curls Liu Sang into a lift over his head, Liu Sang still outstretched in a mimicry of death, hands still flung outwards in a graceful curl. Wang Can spins, making the fringe on Liu Sang's dress shiver with their movement. During the final refrain, Wang Can flips his brother over and around again and again, moving from death-defying drop to heart-stopping dip, a combination of artistry and brute physical strength. He's not just manhandling Liu Sang, though; it requires his active, discreet participation even as his eyes remain closed, trust in his brother written in every line of his body, if one knows how to look.
(And one man, slouched elegantly at a table just to the right of the stage, his red lips still curved in a smile, can read them like a favorite book.)
The whole thing ends in a flurry of violins and horns, Wang Can back at the microphone singing for himself again. He holds the last note strong with a flourish of vibrato over the final roll of the drums, Liu Sang deposited in a graceful heap at his feet, a final imitation of a tango slide, his face pressed to Wang Can's thigh, eyes still closed, chest heaving with exertion.
The audience roars out their favor.
Or at least that's the way it's supposed to go, has gone countless times before. On this particular night, when they hit the dramatic reveal of Liu Sang's "death," Wang Can's red hand clutches Liu Sang's choker as usual, but this time, there is no silk in his hand. Liu Sang's chest hitches from where he is draped over Wang Can's arm backwards and dangerously low, but Wang Can hurls them both into their final sequence of acrobatic tricks even faster and more forceful and normal.
Close observers who had seen the performance before would notice his small changes in choreography, how this time he keeps Liu Sang pressed close to his own body, always placing himself between the audience and Liu Sang, between the other performers on stage and Liu Sang. Even less observant watchers would notice how he changes the final pose, keeping Liu Sang in his arms instead of dropping him to the ground. He carries him like a princess, face and body curved towards Liu Sang's chest, back to the audience with one red handprint between his shoulder blades, cut through by the trail of diamonds.
The applause is thunderous as always.
The curtain draws much sooner than usual, and there is no curtain call this night, no matter how raucous the ovation and hollering. Perhaps a few regulars comment how they liked them changing things up, keeping things fresh. Very knowledgeable regulars might even dart a glance in the direction of that little table to the right of the stage, but in this, too, they would be disappointed.
The table is empty, only an overturned glass with ice spilling out left to see.