a sneak preview?? (layhan)

[warmboys]

We Can’t Buy What They Have Tonight
Lay/Luhan
~670 words
PG

layhan as Dada Life for _firstclassmail ♥ written in July as a small token of gratitude for this beautiful monster. consider this a subtle segueway into something that if all goes well will be posted in the next <30 days...

When prompted M&M say that they are on a life mission. “We just want everyone to have fun. That’s all. Intense… fun. We want to give everyone a hot dog-“

“-except the vegetarians,” adds the quieter half of the duo, sensible Zhang Yixing, otherwise known as the Mr. Mild of Mild&Manic.

“Everyone gets a hot dog except for the vegetarians. And people who don’t like hot dogs. You guys get corn cobs… bags of organic spinach… anything, really. We’re not picky. Whatever ensures that you’ll have a good time. Chew up the spinach and get it all stuck in your teeth and then, then say, ‘aaaah.’”

“Beautiful,” Yixing murmurs.

“Beautiful,” Lu Han echoes, and smiles wide enough to showcase the piece of gum he’s been chewing on for the past fifteen minutes.

To say they have fun is the understatement of the century. We’ve all seen the Amsterdam photos. But to ask a better question, how did they get there? What’s up with the peaches? And the Qingdao beer?

“Do you guys ever sleep?”

Yixing runs his hand over the top of his prickly buzz cut, as fine as newly trimmed grass. Fans say it’s never clear whether he’s asleep or awake. Still, he answers questions with a sureness that belies his half-closed eyes. His voice emerges as though from a deep morphine sleep-and comes through in a clear, girly treble.

“We knew this kid,” he explains. Beside him, his twenty-something-year-old partner-in-crime gives a ferocious nod.

“Know,” Lu Han corrects him. “We still know him. It’s not like, like he’s d-“ The first consonant barely makes its way out of his chapstick-dappled lips before the two exchange a glance, one that generally follows a bad joke, except in this case they’re the ones telling it, and to themselves. I, and my trusty camerawoman Nikki, are flies on the wall of their shared consciousness. Nikki’s a Lu Han fan, she likes the crazy eyes, but under the thin peals of laughter I hear a gentle stomach rumble. It’s past two and we haven’t eaten.

“We’re not allowed to say the ‘d’ word,” Yixing explains. The ‘d’ word? “Rhymes with ‘head.’ Means the opposite of ‘being here.’”

“Stop being so fucking obscure. The opposite of ‘alive.’”

“Dead,” I say, more to test out the sound than to be contrary, but it comes out louder than intended, and they both recoil from me, or from the word. “Also the opposite of everything you stand for.”

Lu Han shrugs. “We’re all going to d- eventually. Why speed up the inevitable?”

“On the flip side, some might ask, ‘why delay it?’”

Lu Han flashes me a grin that lets me know I’ve just said something irrevocably stupid. “Oh,” he says, after a moment. Up close he looks every bit the part of Mr. Manic, his lips wide and shiny, his chin dipping dangerously into several folds of skin. “Because there is so much we have left to show you.”

“But yeah, about the kid. He’s like, our unofficial mascot. Nobody knows him-“

“-yet-“

“-yet. Right. Anyway. His name is kind of a Chinese homonym for the word ‘peach.’ The tones aren’t exactly correct, but we call him, like, Little Peach. Hey peachy. Peachy, c’mere. And he’s from Qingdao.”

It’s sinking in. “Hence the beer.”

Lu Han nods. “It’s nothing special. It isn’t dirty. We’re very innocent, as people. It’s more like, we want our music-we want you to feel dirty when you listen to us. We’re all about getting you muddy.”

The air in the room almost quivers with his concluding note of triumph, and he nudges Yixing in the side. Yixing smiles, eyes half-closed, mouthing around the word. “Muddy.”

“Muddy,” Lu Han repeats.

“Yum?”

And so it goes, the title track of their second full-length album, “Y.U.M?” short for “Y U Mad?”