A/n Wow, I updated pretty quickly…two days...frankly, this is unusually fast for me, considering how long I take to update my other stories… I guess I have a lot of impetus for this one…let's hope my inspiration last long. Thanks for the review! Review replies are at the bottom. Oh yeah, and if you haven't read my story Beautiful Stranger, you might want to. I try to explain a little of the background from BS in this chapter, I'm not sure I did it well though. I hope it's not confusing. More background stuff will come in later chapters.
"Eek! You get to see Van de Fanel LIVE! You lucky bitch!"
Hitomi rolled her eyes, holding her cell phone a few inches away from her ear as her best friend Yukari screeched her happiness and jealousy.
Three weeks. It had only been three weeks since she'd met Van. And it had been three weeks since she had been hiding their relationship from the world.
Van and Hitomi had agreed from the beginning that they had to keep it quiet from the media. He had explained to her the experience of being under the public eye, always expected to be the happy-go-lucky charismatic musician, always perfect, and flawless. It wasn't the kind of life that Van enjoyed. Add a girlfriend on top of that, and the media would be on them like bees on honey. Van's last relationship with his childhood friend Merle had been squashed into that kind of world. A breakup had been inevitable. Afterward Van had sunk into a kind of hopeless, masochistic depression. Ironically, this depression had put a huge boost to his publicity, and suddenly his fans seemed to be entirely composed of hyperactive fan girls who were eager for his attentions but were also of course entirely sympathetic to his broken heart and very ready to heal it. These kinds of attention put a damper on his emotions rather than uplift them. It got to a point where Van had to literally start running for his sanity whenever sounds of loud fan girls were heard in the distance.
There was one good thing that came out of the fan girls. If the fan girls hadn't been chasing him, Van would never have literally bumped Hitomi onto the intersection, knocked her over, helped her up, and would never have helped her through with her break up with Allen.
"Hitomi, are you listening to me?"
"Yes of course," Hitomi replied dreamily. "Look I have to go now so I'll see you later at school."
"I'll watch for you when SNL comes on! Have fun!"
It was hard keeping Van a secret. Sure, her parents knew about him, but they weren't entirely aware of Van's fame and popularity, being old timers. It also helped that her parents used to play jazz music in their youth and Van was currently studying jazz music. So it seemed that Van reminded her parents of their youth.
However, school was completely different. When the paparazzi caught scent of the fact that Van had kissed some girl who was not his ex-girlfriend (that girl was Hitomi), Fanelia High went into frenzy. Who was this girl? And how dare she date Van? Now he wasn't single anymore!
Hitomi was generally not a very popular person. She gotten a sort of unique edge while dating Allen in a way that made her noticed by the In crowd but not entirely part of them. Hitomi had gotten the "How dare you date our shining prince in armor!" treatment while being Allen's girlfriend, to which she would reply with a snarl and be left alone. What would they say when her relationship with Van was revealed? Hitomi couldn't snarl to the whole country as she did at school.
She had even kept it a secret from her friends. Yukari, as much of a best friend she was, did not have the desirable talent of keeping her mouth shut. It wasn't as though she would blab Hitomi's relationship over the intercom if she were told. Rather, Yukari was the type of person who would just harmlessly tell one other person and make that other person swear on her life not tell anyone else. That other person would of course agree and then turn around and 'accidentally' tell her best friend, who would turn around and blab it to someone else and so on and so forth.
It was painful. But what else could she do?
Hitomi snapped her cell phone closed and looked out the window. There, a sleek black Mercedes awaited her on the sidewalk. Folken really wasn't kidding when he said the car would come pronto. Shrugging on a jacket, Hitomi yelled to her mom that she was leaving and walked out.
The Mercedes window rolled down and Hitomi was greeted with the sight of orange flames. She stopped right in her tracks.
"Oh God!" she muttered. She watched the orange flames go out and waited as the smoke blew out the window, revealing a slightly scarred sliver headed man.
The silver head looked up at her and blinked. "Whah? Who… Oh it's you Hitomi! How are you babe? Hop on in, we've still got at least an hour until filming starts."
"Were you experimenting with your lighter again, Dilandau?" Hitomi demanded.
"Oh yeah! Do you want to see? I just made this cool new trick--"
"No."
Dilandau. Genius drummer and dangerous pyromaniac. Scouted by Van and now a permanent member of his band. When Hitomi first met the drummer, he had accidentally exploded her iced water in the glass, without even breaking the glass cup. Clearly, Dilandau was some kind of bizarre genius. He just needed, Van had told her, a new hobby, other than fire that is. Otherwise he was a perfectly nice guy, if a bit twisted.
Hitomi inched a little closer to the car as Dilandau waved away some smoke. No wonder the car had come so quickly. Dilandau was just as reckless with cars as he was with lighters.
"If I ask nicely, could you drive slowly?" she asked cautiously.
"What are talking about? I always drive slowly."
"Well, could drive even slower?"
By this time, it had dawned on Dilandau that Hitomi was still not in the car. He scratched his head and wondered why anyone would feel unsafe with him as the driver.
"All right, if it makes you feel better," he replied slowly.
"Promise?"
"Sure, sure."
Hitomi sighed in relief and climbed in and immediately strapped on the seat belt. Barely a second later, Dilandau slammed on the pedals and the Mercedes roared into action.
"Dilandau this is a neighborhood street! Why are you at 40 miles an hour? I told you to go slower!"
"I am! I was at 50 miles when I drove here! Hey, can you tell me the way to the high way again? I think I got lost."
"Argh!"
"What was that?"
It took approximately 5 minutes to find the highway, take the long highway stretch, and pull into the SNL studio parking lot, and the only reason it didn't take 3 minutes was because Hitomi's screeching distracted Dilandau from going over 100 miles per hour.
Hitomi took a deep breath to calm her nerves and then another one to slow her fast beating heart. She opened the door, stuck a leg out, and heaved herself out of the car. She swayed slightly as she tried to stand.
"Ugh… I told you to drive slowly Dilandau," she complained as she steadied herself on the door. She was starting to feel dizzy.
Dilandau looked hurt as slammed his door shut.
"I was driving slowly! If I went any slower even that old lady in the Alexis would have beaten me," he said.
"That old lady was going at 90 miles an hour!"
"Exactly."
Hitomi realized at this point that it was useless to argue with Dilandau and gave up. She followed Dilandau as he started off and realized that they weren't at the SNL studio.
"Dilandau, where are we?" she asked nervously.
"The hotel of course. Van's waiting in his room."
Hitomi smiled at the mention of Van. Folken had exaggerated in their phone conversation. Where had he had said weeks, it had actually only been a few days since she and Van last seen each other.
Dilandau knocked on Van's door and waited patiently. When there was no response, he rapped it again but louder. When there was still no response, Hitomi quickly grabbed Dilandau's arm as he raised it to pound on the door.
She knocked gently. "Van? Are you there?" Getting no response, she tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. Entering quietly, Hitomi grinned at the sight of Van snoozing on the bed.
Kneeling down next to his face. She kissed him lightly and poked him on the especially ticklish area of his neck. He twitched. Hitomi then proceeded to tickling him.
Van groaned and attempted to swat away the tickler. "Damnnit Folken, would you leave me alone? I didn't do it," he mumbled.
"Do what, Vannie?"
Van frowned, or at least tried to amidst the tickling. That wasn't Folken's voice.
He opened one eye, blinked, and opened the other. At this point, the tickling began its evil effect and he started laughing.
Dilandau switched his lighter on and off as he watched Hitomi tickle the daylights out of Van. He snorted at their antics and wondered how long he would stand here unnoticed.
Van was able to stop the tickling by grabbing Hitomi around the waist and tickled her on the sensitive part on the side.
"No stop, stop!" Hitomi shrieked.
Dilandau shivered at the implications of the sounds they were making. He cleared his throat and chastely turned his head.
The cleared throat seemed to do the trick. The sounds of laughing and the actions of tickling stopped.
Van grinned happily at his girlfriend and pinched her nose affectionately. "Hey stranger," he said and then kissed her in greeting.
Dilandau cleared his throat again in case the implications started again. "You didn't lock the door," he told his friend. "What if a bunch of fan girls caught you sleeping?"
"Good thing Hitomi isn't a fan girl then," said Van. He sat up and stretched.
Hitomi slung an arm around his neck, grinning. "So, I hear you have to do some skits," she said.
Dilandau guffawed. "Yep, Our Van here's gonna be an actor!" he proclaimed. Both he and Hitomi started snickering at this thought.
Van smirked. "Well, as a matter a fact, I got out of the acting part," he shot back.
Dilandau's expression fell slightly at the possibility of a comedy act being taken away.
"In fact, instead of acting, I'm just going to perform instead," Van explained.
"WHAT? YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS!" Dilandau shouted in agony.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Van said, grinning widely.
"I haven't practiced for so long!" Dilandau complained. "You know we haven't had a gig for at least a week! I'm out of practice! I can't play on national TV!"
"Ah… well, we can just play the new stuff then," Van offered. "We've been working on them for past few days so they should still be fresh in your mind."
"The new stuff? But I thought we were going to keep that quiet until the recording starts?"
Hitomi looked from Van to Dilandau in confusion. "New stuff? Could somebody explain to me what you're talking about?" she demanded.
Van explained. "We've been trying out some new styles lately and we've got some songs developing. They haven't been recorded or released to the public yet."
"Are they songs even I haven't heard yet?"
"Yep."
"I see… so what styles were you using?" Hitomi asked.
Van winked. "Jazz," he answered. "Your parents will like this. Let's go down to the studio now. I'll have to talk to the producer. He was really looking forward to seeing me act."
"Well no wonder," Dilandau drawled. "Just seeing you read off a script would make anyone—ow! You didn't have to hit me Van!"
Review replies:
Feathers of Snow: Honeypot—Hey! Thanks for reading! I'm glad you like it. I hope it's not too confusing if you didn't read Beautiful Stranger… well, good thing for you, I have ski week and inspiration so I think I'll be updating a lot with this story…at least this week anyway ^_^;
Pogo the kosher penguin—Folken gay? Hm…now there's a thought. It's interesting that you perceive him as gay. I actually wrote with those pushy Hollywood managers in mind…kind of like the lawyer in Chicago… ^_^ He certainly was pretty energetic…
Snow blossoms—Sorry for the confusion and I'm glad you liked the beginning! Yeah, I was going for a mood swing kind of beginning. I wanted to sort of build it up so that it seems like Van is talking to Hitomi, but then, nope, it's a mirror. ^^ Okay, I'll try to sort our some of you questions. The "I used to love show" part…*sheepish look*. Actually, that was my mistake. What I meant was "I used to love that show" meaning Van used to love SNL. And "I'd kowtow to you right now on the floor" kowtowing is the action of going down on your knees and bowing, a way to show respect. In China, people have to kowtow to the emperor all the time. So Folken was basically saying that he'd kowtow to Hitomi in apology, but since they were talking on the phone and Hitomi wouldn't be able to see him, he offered to make kissing noises instead. Lol…well, I hope you liked this chapter!
MaboroshiTsuki—HEY ANNE! HOW ARE YOU!? Well, your dreams have come true indeed! Your addiction is fed! ^^; I think I'll be updating this story a little more often…this reply review isn't very long since I can email you instead. One last thing, Jude Law = -swoon-