High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 24 - Hiding in Plain Sight

Even though he was exhausted, Mean couldn't fall asleep.

He kept staring at the dark ceiling of his room, trying to get the giddy feeling inside of himself to quiet down.

It didn't work.

Thinking back at the many times Plan had kissed him this evening felt surreal – and each kiss had been better than the one before. His lips were still slightly tingly and swollen from so much unfamiliar activity, reminding him of the reality of it all.

That he had really done it.

Or, well... Plan had.

If he had waited for Mean to make the first move, they would probably have danced around each other for... maybe forever, or until Win would have inevitably made a move again, and Mean would either have lost, or felt compelled to act.

Now that Plan had confessed to him, it wasn't difficult to see that his crush hadn't been as one-sided as he had thought it was.

He was happy that he had made it a habit to record all his improvisation exercises, because he now had a recording of the music he had created with Plan, not just as a memory, but as proof that it had really happened.

Before he had gone back to his room, he had taken time to edit out, delete and overwrite the parts where they had talked, and the embarrassing kissing noises. Mean wasn't callous or stupid enough to keep a recording of that around – something like this would eventually find its way into the wrong hands. If Viola didn't find it first, of course.

Though... Viola's hands would probably also have counted as wrong hands.

So... good thing he had deleted that.

And lucky, that he had preserved the music.

Objectively, as the music student that he was after all, upon listening to it repeatedly, he could tell that it wasn't the greatest recording of Cantaloupe Island ever... not even the greatest he had ever played himself. But maybe it was just his hopelessly infatuated heart – he believed that the emotions in it could still be heard, and it made it special.

He would have to give a copy to Plan, too.

Though... it had happened again, hadn't it?

He had done something behind Plan's back accidentally. Mean hadn't forgotten to warn Plan he was recording the session on purpose. Starting the recording was something he did so routinely that he hadn't thought about what he was doing when he set it up. And to be fair... he had gone into the studio thinking he would play and Plan would only listen.

Maybe... was it too much to hope that Plan would like to have the recording, too? Even more so if he showed him that he had really deleted everything else?

They had said goodbye at the studio, because Plan could barely keep his eyes open anymore and Mean had needed to finish up things. The goodbye kiss had felt divine. But then Plan had left and everything had felt empty without him.

He could see him the next morning. And hopefully in the evening.

And the next day.

*~*~*

Plan looked down onto the plate that had just been placed in front of him by a maid.

This was weird. This was really weird.

He knew the maid from breakfast, she was one of the regulars. But now that he sat at the fancy table, she treated him like some young master and he felt lost.

He had no idea what the food on the plate even was, not to mention how to eat it – and he gazed sideways at Mean, trying to get a hint on what to do.