Chapter Text
“Woah. What the…”
Lawspeaker trotted bashfully into Room 19, the fifth practice room in the music cave.
On one shoulder was the cello he so reliably and handsomely carried.
On the other was a… tote bag of some sort?
The reusable kind that you’d get from your favourite local store.
Or perhaps the local branch of a kingdom-wide, multibillion-crown chain.
And indeed, the brand label for what seemed to be some local grocery store splayed itself proudly along the side of Lawspeaker’s bag.
Coloured with only the most psychologically soothing hues, as confirmed by science.
At least, that’s what the blog posts that showed up by default on the Corundum browser’s homepage said, anyway.
The top was open, and the inside was visibly lined with the silvery thermal stuff that keeps your food warm (or cold).
It was filled to the brim with plastic containers of… something.
“Lawspeaker, what is all that?”
Lawspeaker looked shyly away for a moment as he responded.
“Well, I remember you really liked that SandWing dish I made a while back. We… had some left over at my sleeping cave, so I thought I’d just bring it with me here.”
That was a lie, of course.
Lawspeaker had specifically spent a half hour or so last night breaking up the meat, cooking and spicing said meat, kneading the dough, balling and buttering said dough, and then leaving it all to cool overnight before breaking it out of the fridge again to fry and put together properly.
If anything, the spices he’d used, and the fact that this time he’d brought a curry to dip them in, meant that it was actually closer to the traditional SeaWing variation of the same food.
The kind you could find in the big cities’ public food courts, as well as just on carts on the street.
But it was technically still more SandWing in origin, even though obviously the extent of the cultural diffusion over pre-industrial trade routes was debated, and any SeaWings you talked to (even food historians) might claim that there was already an indigenous version of the dish that was just adapted to the culinary traditions of diasporic SandWing merchant communities…
But whatever.
It didn’t matter.
He was sure Changbai probably didn’t care, anyway, so he just left it at calling it a “SandWing” dish.
The NightWing mustered the courage to look back at his pianist friend then, and was not disappointed by what he saw.
First off, to his delight, Changbai was wearing the shiny new shoulder pouch he’d been gifted.
It went quite well with the backpack of the (coincidentally) same colour he was also wearing.
It was something he probably would’ve done even if they were just friends, but it allowed Lawspeaker to puff up his chest a little knowing that he’d done something so thoughtful for his crush.
His deep, whirlwind, increasingly intense crush…
Whose reaction to this latest gift of food was equally as pleasantly surprising.
The IceWing’s snout, smooth and perfect as crystal ice, turned slightly red as he broke into a crooked half-smile.
His eyes flitted back and forth, towards Lawspeaker and away, in shyness of his own as he momentarily processed this endearing act of service.
Exactly the kind of insanely cute expressions Lawspeaker was hoping for.
“R-really? W-wow, I, uh…”
Lawspeaker’s heart surged with a deep, almost radiant warmth as Changbai stumbled through his response.
Maybe he was delusional, but moons, would he have done it again a million times over just to see this flustered expression again.
“I didn’t know that you, like… you know, I dunno. Just… I really appreciate it. Like genuinely.”
Changbai reached out suddenly and grasped Lawspeaker’s claw in his own for a moment.
“You really didn’t have to.”
Lawspeaker jolted a bit at the sudden contact, revelling in the cool sensation of Changbai’s scales on his own as well as the personalised attention that came with them.
“Oh, it was nothinggg,” he grinned toothily as he made an exaggeratedly dismissive gesture with his free claw. “It only took like, an hour or so to make for you, between last night and today.”
Changbai cocked his head a bit at that.
“… wait. But I thought you said it was leftove-”
“Okay but annnnnywayyyyyyy,” Lawspeaker moved to instead be the one gripping Changbai’s claw now, “how about that piece, huh? It feels like it’s been forever since we last rehearsed together.”
“Oh. Uh, yeah, I know, right?” Changbai decided to go along with Lawspeaker’s change of topic. “I mean, we don’t really have as much of a deadline anymore now that Professor Takhi is on leave, but we at least shouldn’t let the progress we’ve already made slip away.”
At some point after delivering his reach-out message, Changbai finally got a response from Lawspeaker.
This rehearsal was the fruit of their hard labour scheduling around their classes, dealing with the anxiety of disappearing typing animations, and the like.
Everything that had happened in the past few months had been… insane, to say the least.
Changbai honestly wasn’t sure whether they were going to talk about all of it, or even address most of it at all.
All he knew was that time and time again, Lawspeaker had demonstrated he was someone Changbai could trust.
That, for some inexplicable reason, that NightWing truly cared about him.
Understood him.
Loved him, even, in that way that friends often do.
More than Ostrich or Anemone or his piano professor.
More than Boto or Thrush.
More than even his own parents, if that most recent conversation was anything to go by.
It sounded pretty extreme, but seriously.
Lawspeaker was basically the only dragon who hadn’t ever made his life harder ever since he entered it this academic year.
As much as it hurt when it took him more than 10 minutes to respond to a text, whenever he was actually around, Changbai’s problems just felt distant.
Like suddenly, nothing could actually hurt him.
As if that NightWing’s support could carry him through crisis and back.
Hell, maybe he was just imagining it, but even his asthma felt like it acted up less whenever he got to hear that psychologically soothing voice, and see the handsome face that came with it.
Changbai had always been drawn to the softer features that characterised snouts like his, after all.
He’d considered Boto and Thrush to be his closest friends since he got to this school, and he’d had close friends before that.
But he would also be remiss to ignore just how important Lawspeaker had become to him.
The rehearsal was, of course, actually needed to keep the piece in shape for whenever the indefinitely-postponed recital would eventually happen.
But more than anything, it was just an excuse to hang out and do something he loved with his now-best friend.
Claw in claw, Lawspeaker escorted Changbai like an old-fashioned valet to the piano approximately 5 feet from the door.
It wasn’t like the practice room was big, or anything.
The gesture was still clearly affectionate, though.
It honestly made Changbai’s heart race a little.
Lawspeaker was acting pretty casually about it, though, as if it was something he did with all his friends.
So Changbai didn’t comment on it.
“Have you like… been practising, Changbai?” the NightWing asked as he started taking his cello out. “Obviously I know so much shit has happened that I absolutely would not blame you if you haven’t.”
“No, yeah, like… I haven’t really,” the IceWing chuckled back. “Have you?”
Lawspeaker shrugged with those strong, broad shoulders of his.
“Kind of. I mean, my professor is still at the school, so I’ve still been taking my regular lessons with her. I don’t practise the piece every day on my own, but she usually likes to switch up the repertoire we work on between lessons, so I often bring this piece out with her.”
Changbai nodded.
“Nice to see you haven’t forgotten about it completely.”
“Oh, I could never. It’s actually really fun to do with the ToothTube backing track,” Lawspeaker smiled. “Though I of course prefer having my accompanist do it with me live.”
“Alright, buddy, calm down.”
Lawspeaker made a bit of a smug face.
“What? You know I’m right.”
“Dude, this shit is basically a duet, with how much I carry the motif within the counterpoint. Even if it’s, like, always either transposed, or a bunch of inversions from the tonic in that one part.”
“Yeah, yeah. Save it for the theory classes, bro.”
Changbai gave his cellist friend a half-seriously suspicious look.
Even though all the drama stuff should, in theory, have basically all become history by now, it seemed like something had inexplicably changed yet again between them.
Like Lawspeaker was somehow treating their relationship differently than he ever had before.
Of course, he couldn’t articulate his thoughts to the man so directly.
“You know, Lawspeaker, you’re, like… different today.” he affected a sceptical rise-and-fall in his tone. “I mean, you’ve always been blunt, but now, you’re like… haughty about it.”
The NightWing only offered another shrug.
“I mean, a little banter never hurt anybody, did it? I’m just glad you’re back, and that we’re finally hanging out like normal again.”
Now this, of course, wasn’t a lie, per se.
Obviously, Lawspeaker really was glad that Changbai was back in commission and able to hang.
It wasn’t like he was being some inauthentic self by showing this side of him.
It came naturally with his opening up to dragons he trusted.
But in truth, it also wasn’t the only reason he was only now sort of acting this way.
The NightWing thought back to what he had seen that day, in the infirmary.
Changbai was seated on the bed, holding his phone and what seemed to be an ice pack in each claw.
Beside him was none other than his old partner from their chemistry class.
The SandWing of the Copper Winglet.
The dragon Lawspeaker suspected may, in fact, be Changbai’s first date <3.
Pronghorn was confident, charming, goofy, outspoken.
Features rugged and chiselled in a way Lawspeaker’s own were not.
He’d honestly tried before — many times, in fact — to stop thinking about whoever Changbai’s damn situationship was.
Whether it was Pronghorn or not, it was never helpful to focus on his feelings of jealousy over his and his accompanist’s actual friendship.
Genuinely, though, his infatuation was just too strong at this point to ignore the possessiveness that came with it.
And as infuriating as he increasingly found himself finding that SandWing’s immature personality, it was undeniable that Pronghorn and Changbai were at least genuine friends.
If not something more.
Changbai, to be fair, was pretty good at getting along with almost anybody (some NightWing exceptions notwithstanding).
His chillness (pun intended) and approachability were severely attractive, for one.
But they also meant that it was possible that Lawspeaker didn’t need to affect this aura of uncharacteristic jocularity to stay in the IceWing’s good graces.
But, then again.
Maybe he was into confident guys.
Maybe Lawspeaker was close to him now, but would soon be discarded.
Left behind.
Forgotten about.
Allowed to just drift away, if he didn’t keep making an impression in Changbai’s life however he could.
Without being… too obsessive, of course.
Maybe.
Was it ethical to openly flirt with someone who he believed may have a boyfriend?
Even if that belief had come about by spiralling over a single piece of dubious-at-best evidence?
Probably not.
But he had enough plausible deniability that it hopefully wouldn’t matter.
Now was not the time to be second-guessing his strategy, anyway.
Changbai was just about ready to start playing, so it was time for him to prepare himself and his instrument, too.
Focus, focus, focus.
“So… how do you wanna do this, exactly?”
Lawspeaker thought for a moment about the best answer to that question.
“I… dunno, honestly. What do you wanna do?”
“Well, what do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know. What do you wanna-”
The NightWing caught himself in the middle of his sentence.
Changbai looked, for a split second, kind of bloated.
Like he was about to blast Lawspeaker in the face with frostbreath.
Instead of doing that, however, he actually just made a super loud snorting sound as he attempted to stop himself from laughing.
An attempt that clearly failed, given the way he doubled over and started to cackle.
“Wait, wha…”
Lawspeaker trailed off in confusion as Changbai’s guffaws echoed throughout the practice room.
The IceWing’s deep blue eyes were positively sparkling as they crinkled in that glorious way eyes do to accompany a genuine smile.
Cheeks puffing cutely as all his facial muscles suddenly became entangled in fulfilling the singular quest of socially communicating his joy.
This was the first time Changbai had ever laughed this hard in front of him.
And as stomach-turningly, heart-racingly, unbelievably endearing as this sight was to Lawspeaker, he couldn’t help but wonder what, exactly, had been so funny in the first place.
“Dude. It’s… it’s not that funny. I don’t…”
It seemed, though, that Changbai’s laughter was as infectious as it was cute.
Lawspeaker felt the familiar sensation begin to bubble up from his belly and throat, almost reminiscent of the firebreath he never had to use.
“What are you even… what are you even laugh…”
Despite his best attempts at forming a coherent sentence, however, Lawspeaker was soon enough also ensnared in the throes of laughter.
As manly as he liked to think his voice was, his laughs, especially the hard, almost harsh ones he was letting out now, were inexplicably high-pitched.
Now he was doubling over in his chair, almost losing grip on his cello as he began to descend into just this fit of laughter.
And seeing Lawspeaker laugh, in turn, only made Changbai want to laugh harder.
“Dude!”
“Dude?”
“Dude, no, it’s not even fucking funny. I just… pfff hahahaha-”
Insisting that it wasn’t funny also, paradoxically (or perhaps non-paradoxically) enough, only made it funnier.
IceWing and NightWing went on like this for about a solid 2 minutes in total, almost forgetting completely about the task at hand.
Both of them knew this was an insanely stupid, basically non-joke to even be cracking up about in the first place.
But they did it anyway.
Something about the way it came from their friendship — the knowledge that they, the soloist-accompanist duo of the music cave’s Room 19, were the only ones who even knew what they were talking about — made it the funniest thing in the world.
Changbai had to wipe a tear or two from his eyes as he looked back at the NightWing sitting a few feet from him.
“Okay. Well, uh, anyway.”
Lawspeaker nodded.
“Anyway…?”
“I guess, uh… yeah. We can just go through the whole piece together and see if we can make it through. If we either finish or get too lost to continue, we can step back, point out places we missed or could improve, and go from there.”
The NightWing’s affirmative smile was almost comforting in its unwitting suaveness.
“Sounds like a plan.”
It would be a lie to say the following practice session was exactly fruitful.
It made sense, considering just how long it’d been since Changbai had last laid his talons on the ethically-sourced ivories.
It wasn’t totally not fruitful, however, and the duo were able to get some good work in.
Smoothing out fast passages, agreeing on how to coordinate tempo changes, delineating where exactly Lawspeaker’s cadenza would begin and end.
All pretty basic things, really.
But man, if Lawspeaker didn’t feel more contented here than he had in a looooong time.
Music had always been one of his greatest joys, no doubt.
The sheer emotion and simple pleasure it held for him could hardly be put into words.
And to do it with Changbai?
Beautiful, radiant, elegant, smart, funny, talented, spellbinding, captivating, smoking (freezing?) -hot Changbai?
Maybe his perspective on his accompanist was tinted by the rose-hue of infatuation, but moons be damned, he couldn’t help but want to be near this dragon forever.
Everything they’d already gone through together had only given Lawspeaker ample opportunity to see at least a concrete sample of Changbai’s true colours, and how he acted when subjected to situations far beyond the fair-weather.
And it only told him that what he wanted with Changbai was real.
Substantiated by a real appreciation for his personality, his humour, his style, his dreams, his values.
His everything, really.
It hadn’t been part of Lawspeaker’s initial vision coming to this school to find love.
Hell, he’d never even really considered it as a possibility.
He’d never had a crush on anyone back home, after all.
Guy or girl.
But now, having come to terms with his romantic, yes, romantic interest in Changbai?
It felt as liberating as it did absolutely fucking terrifying.
Moons, did he hope he wouldn’t screw this up.
Whatever “this” could even be, considering the whole thing with Pronghorn.
Or whoever the fuck it even was.
Lawspeaker didn’t know.
As their latest runthrough of the piece came to a close, however, Changbai watched him finish the piece with the same little flourish he always did.
Basically the one part of the piece he could keep consistent every single time.
His pianist friend gave him a heart-meltingly gentle smile.
“This is actually going way better than I expected. I think we have good natural synergy.”
Lawspeaker couldn’t help the upside-down grin that graced his snout as he heard that.
“I… guess so. Feels like it’s meant to be, huh?”
Changbai couldn’t tell how serious Lawspeaker was being with that comment, but he wasn’t about to disagree outright.
“Maybe, haha.”
…
…
An awkward pause followed those short words.
Lawspeaker gave him a look, and when Changbai looked back, he could feel it.
The way it made him want to say something, anything that would bring about a change from this suddenly weird vibe that made everything stagnant and dry and slow-feeling.
The way he kind of knew Lawspeaker wanted it, too — he knew the NightWing could feel what he was feeling — but could bear no better than he himself the weight of being the dragon to speak up.
A feeling so succinct yet indescribable, it maybe could’ve been captured in a single term by some obscure indigenous language before the Dragon-ification of Pantala.
However easily articulable it was, though, it was stronger than Changbai’s current proportion of willpower.
Things had just been happening so suddenly between them that it felt too hard to break their just-reached equilibrium with yet another disruption.
So he resigned himself to just leaving it be.
For now.
“Well,” the IceWing broke the silence as he stood up from the piano bench, “I need to use the bathroom. So, like, if we’re done practising, maybe we can eat some of the stuff you brought and call it a day?”
Lawspeaker did his best to hide the dejection in his voice as he responded.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Totally, dude.”
Just as he was about to speed-walk his way out of the tension-thick air of Room 19, however, Changbai suddenly remembered something.
“Oh! I almost forgot.”
He moved to pull his laptop out of the bag he’d brought, the one that normally only carried his sheet music binder but could realistically be used for any class material.
“Before we leave, we have to print off a form with both of our signatures saying we volunteer to perform whenever Takhi comes back and arranges for us to. Technically it’s not due until then, but the deadline would basically be right then since it was originally supposed to be earlier, and I’ve heard the school can be really annoying if you happen to miss it. So I thought we might as well just do it now.”
Changbai waited for Lawspeaker to put his cello back fully in his case before handing the laptop to him.
The latter only stared in confusion for a moment.
“Wait, you want me to print it off? Why don’t you just do it now and I can pick it up?”
“Well, it takes a while for my computer to, like, pair with the school printers, and I don’t know which one is closest to us,” the IceWing explained. “Also, I have to go, like, right now, so…”
Hearing the slight urgency in Changbai’s voice was enough to make Lawspeaker relent.
“Uh, alright, then.”
“I made a copy with our other information filled in in my Plexle Drive, so just look for it there. The tab is already open.”
Lawspeaker opened his mouth to ask another question of clarification, but Changbai was already basically rushing out the door.
As the door shut behind the IceWing, Lawspeaker shrugged and opened the laptop.
Luckily, it was already unlocked, so that two minutes or so of waiting for him to come back was saved.
Changbai’s Plexle Drive was, indeed, also already open.
As Lawspeaker scrolled down the page a bit to the recently modified files, he was able to pretty quickly find what was likely the form Changbai was talking about as he scanned the various names.
Copy of Sanctioned Event Permission Slip (for Participants).docx
Maybe just a few files down, however, was another very… interestingly named document.
Lawspeaker swore he really didn’t even mean to look at the title on this one.
But, of course, dragons were trained to pick out their names in both speech and text, after all.
And, well…
lawspeaker draft text (NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT SEND!!!1!!11!)
It seemed like it had last been modified a while ago.
Ignoring how surprisingly little it seemed that Changbai made new Plexle documents, judging by that, it also seemed like a rather long text from the little preview on the grid layout view.
Not to mention that it had to be long, if he’d needed a whole document to pre-write it out in the first place.
And as Lawspeaker couldn’t recall having received a text matching what seemed to be contained in that document in neither size nor seriousness, it really wasn’t his fault that his curiosity was instantly piqued.
This had kind of been in the midst of when all that drama was building up, after all.
Was this actually something important that had just been swept aside while all that other shit was going on?
Clearly it wasn’t just nothing, right?
Lawspeaker thought about the moment of random awkwardness that had just arisen between them right before Changbai left.
That dragon had clearly wanted to say something — was this it all along?
Lawspeaker thought once again, as he tended to do way too often nowadays, about the whole first date <3 thing.
No way the IceWing would hold off on telling him something as important as their relationship status for this long…
… right?
Lawspeaker simply couldn’t help himself.
He moved the cursor away from Copy of Sanctioned Event Permission Slip (for Participants).docx and instead double-clicked on the preview icon for lawspeaker draft text (NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT SEND!!!1!!11!).
And he could never have guessed what he was about to read.
hey Lawspeaker, it’s Changbai. I just saw a clip recently from the Sky Kingdom National Broadcast Association (you might have seen it too) that apparently, there’s some sort of, like, political double meaning to the lunar salute thing that we both mentioned before? just, like, something kinda problematic that’s apparently starting to gain popularity with some NightWings.
Ohhhhhhh shit.
Was that what this was about???
He’d almost completely forgotten.
He doubled down and positively locked in as he read the rest of what was there.
of course, I do know that you might not have known about it, or maybe didn’t think it would matter enough to mention it to me when we were talking about it — but I just want you to know for next time that I’d really prefer it if you took the time to explain, whenever things like that do come up. just, yk, like at least a quick “hey actually that doesn’t mean what you think it does” aside? or something along those lines.
again, I know it’s totally not your fault that you didn’t this time, and I’m sure you had your own reasons (even if you did know the double meaning), but just for the future I’d really genuinely appreciate it if we could both keep that in mind.
am I making sense right now, or is there anything else about this that you’d want me to explain?
(I mean, it’s not like I should need to, but still.)
((You sly NightWing dog. lol.))
Woah, woah, woah.
What the fuck?
“Sly NightWing dog”???
What did that even mean??
Just as Lawspeaker was only beginning to process that last signoff Changbai had apparently written to him, he heard the door to the music cave’s Room 19 open with a click.
“Man, I am hungry for those doughy things you brought. If you got the form, I’m literally so ready to just-”
The IceWing trailed off as he saw his NightWing’s absolutely baffled expression.
Handsome brow thoroughly knitted, and bluish-purple eyes staring wide at whatever was on the screen.
“Lawspeaker? Wait, what’s wrong?”
Lawspeaker took a moment to even react to his words, only turning the computer screen around to him so he could see it.
hey Lawspeaker, it’s Changbai. I just saw a clip recently from the Sky Kingdom National Broadcast Association (you might have seen it too) that apparently, there’s some sort of, like, political double meaning to the lunar salute thing that we both mentioned before?
Changbai’s heart absolutely dropped as his eyes scanned over the words on his screen.
“So, what exactly does all this…?”