High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 41 - Keep your Enemies Close

The weeks after the emergency meeting went by in a daze.

When Mean had told his agency about the spontaneous trip to Geneva, they not only wanted him to make up for his absence by spending more time in the recording booth beforehand – they also came up with the idea to use the trip to film a few sequences for his first music video.

They had already had a concept for the video, but it was quickly rewritten to incorporate shots of Mean and his White Hand friends playing in the snow in the Swiss mountains. They were trying to contract a local crew to do the shoot for them, since it would be impossible to get a Thai team there on such short notice.

There had been no use for Mean to try and talk them out of it – they were sure that these exotic images would help make his debut as a musician a success.

Mean had grumbled about it, but had had to call defeat eventually. He had hoped to impress the public with his songs, written and composed by himself, and in some cases, he was even participating in the arrangement and final mixing process.

He didn't think he needed gimmicks like a video shoot in a remote location to appeal to his audience.

Spending so much time at the studio meant that he was basically absent from UdG the entire time.

He only went to the few courses with mandatory attendance, for everything else, he relied on the same fellow students who usually helped him out when he was busy.

And, he had entrusted the interim leadership of White Hand to Viola for the duration of his time at the studio.

Of course, if he could choose his stand-in after his own heart, he would have given it to Plan instead. But every choice other than Viola would have made tongues wag and rumours fly.

She was the only other member directly tied to the sponsoring families, and she had been Mean's best friend since kindergarten.

Spending seemingly endless hours in the recording booth also meant that Mean rarely had the opportunity to see Plan.

Not just that, Plan was busy on his end, too, finalising his analysis of the latest data set their group had received and rehearsing his presentation. If he managed to finish the analysis before their departure, he could present exclusive preliminary findings at the conference that would surely draw attention to his research, rather than the farmer-turned-genius-researcher story that had brought him there.

When Mean returned home late these days, Plan was often already sleeping.

And, when he was early, Plan would usually be late.

They had started the habit of sneaking into each other's rooms whenever they felt lonely.

In Mean's case, this often meant lifting a sleeping Plan up from his mat on the floor into the bed, so they could huddle up together.

If Mean was home first, he sometimes noticed in hazy half-sleep that someone had climbed into his bed next to him. More often than not, he couldn't tell if it was a dream or reality until the next morning, when his boyfriend was either next to him, or not.

Nobody in the house had commented on the fact that they were spending their nights together increasingly more frequently.

Mean was pretty sure they knew about it, but had adopted an unspoken 'keep it low and we won't see anything' policy.

About two weeks before the departure of their flight to Geneva, half a month after their emergency meeting, Viola came storming into the recording booth in the middle of a session, agitatedly waving a sheet of paper in front of Mean's eyes.