come to conceal the confusion we feel
Fandom: The Untamed
Pairing: Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen/Xue Yang
Rating: Explicit
Words: 7,173
As far as Song Lan is concerned, Xue Yang is nothing more or less than the most irritating student taking lessons at the dance studio he co-owns with his boyfriend.
Xiao Xingchen has other ideas.
This fic has been haunting me for nearly a year, and now it is finally released into the wild in a form you can all read it in. This one is really an exemplar of the different standards that apply to different ships: for some ships, “dance teacher seduces his partner and their student into an unnegotiated threesome on the studio floor” is absolutely a bad vibes scenario, but for Songxuexiao? Downright wholesome honestly. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
•••
Back when they first opened the studio, Xingchen had suggested that they keep a couple evening blocks open for the possibility of private lessons. Song Lan had agreed to it readily. They’d needed the money—frankly, they still do—and in his experience the kind of person willing to pay for private ballroom dance classes was usually the no expense spared type. It’d be a bit risky at first while they were still building up their client base, but they’re good dancers. They won the championship last year. Song Lan had been confident that they’d be able to draw in enough big spenders to make private lessons worthwhile.
And besides: he’d also had the sneaking suspicion, with how Xingchen was packing his own schedule—with the way he was throwing himself into it with every overwhelming ounce of passion in his beautiful body—that agreeing to a couple of open nights a week was the only way he’d be able to get his boyfriend to take a break.
He had been right about that. He had also been right about the kind of people who would start negotiating for private lessons, once word got out that they were available. Song Lan had been feeling cautiously optimistic about the studio’s future. Xingchen, of course, was brimming with joy.
And then they had met Xue Yang.
Song Lan does not understand why Xue Yang is taking their classes. He has dance experience—quite a lot of dance experience, actually—but none of it in ballroom. He doesn’t have a partner who has dragged him out to learn how to dance with them. He’s not interested in competition, and he doesn’t care about the kind of social culture where it matters if you know how to waltz. He’d claimed he was just expanding his range—but he’d said it with such a salacious tone, as he dragged his eyes over Xingchen’s hips, that Song Lan didn’t buy it for a moment.
Of course, Xingchen had laughed. Xingchen thinks Xue Yang is funny.
Song Lan does know why Xue Yang is paying them for private lessons, though. That part of the equation had been abundantly clear from the beginning.
“We shouldn’t take him on,” Song Lan had said, when Xingchen told him Xue Yang had approached him after class to ask about extra lessons. “He’s just going to use them to hit on you.”
“If he wants to pay that much money to hit on me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t indulge him,” Xingchen had said peaceably, filling in a column of their account books.
Song Lan had just made an exasperated noise. “Xingchen.”
“Zichen,” Xingchen had returned, raising his eyes seriously to Song Lan’s. “Are we really doing so well that we can afford not to take the opportunity?”
Song Lan had not been able to say that they were.
“Exactly,” Xingchen had said. “I’m putting him down for the Thursday slot. It’ll be fine, you’ll see. He’s really not as bad as you think.” He had paused then, tapping his pen against his mouth contemplatively. “If you’re worried about it, you should join us. It might be good to have a second instructor.”
Which is how Song Lan finds himself, for the third Thursday in a row, sitting in the otherwise empty studio as the summer sunset paints the skyline orange, eating a belated dinner of takeout pad thai and waiting for Xue Yang to arrive for his eight o’clock lesson.








