Chapter Text
Forty-five minutes ago
Minho had resorted to staring aimlessly at the ceiling. He was bored.
Jisung was late.
They always met in this practice room after their respective classes. He didn’t know what made today any different.
He checked his watch. It had been almost twenty-five minutes since Minho sent his first text.
Minho grunted. He wasn’t sad. People forget things all the time. It’s okay if Jisung forgot today. It’s fine, really.
His eyes were drawn to the skylight above him. It was a partly cloudy day with some particularly puffy clouds. Abstract shapes floated past his eyes for a few moments. The shape of a cat stretching appeared and disappeared for a second before it seemed to morph into the shape of a seahorse. It made him smile.
Jisung would like that. He also liked animals. They watched a documentary about the coral reef together last time they hung out. He snapped a picture with his phone and sent it.
It had nothing to do with Minho’s creeping feeling of disappointment that Jisung was now fully half an hour late to their tutoring session. It absolutely was not a cry for attention.
And Minho’s heart absolutely did not flood with relief when he saw Jisung typing back a few seconds later.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He couldn’t type back immediately. That would make him seem desperate. So, instead, he counted to thirty in his head while formulating a casual response.
LM: thurs is tutoring day!\
Yeah, that didn’t seem weird at all. Minho felt a smile involuntarily perk on his face when Jisung responded lightning fast.
HJ: I’m not hiding Dori anymore tho?
Minho had forgotten that was the original arrangement. His offering to tutor Jisung was a completely impulsive offer that had nothing to do with Dori. Jisung just had this constantly anxious air around him that Minho instinctively wanted to soothe. If he had the ability to help, why wouldn’t he offer?
LM: but you still need help, yeah? I’ll be here
HJ: half an hour
Minho rested his phone on his chest and stared out of the skylight again.
Was it normal to feel like this? His entire body felt unmoored. His stomach was tying itself into knots, trying and failing to bring himself back into harbor. His chest was flying away from him, and he couldn’t keep up.
It was nothing, really.
It was just tutoring.
It was just dancing.
It was just Jisung.
Just Jisung. Because Minho felt very normal about both dancing and Jisung. Never mind that Minho had spent a year thinking of nothing but dance in an attempt to get into the very school he was sitting in now. Never mind that Minho spent almost all his free time hanging out with Jisung.
Never mind the unresolved conversation with Felix he’d had a month prior.
“With boys though, that does get a little more confusing, cause, like, according to bullshit you’re not supposed to like boys as a boy.”
Never mind all that.
Because if he did think about it… if Minho really thought about how he felt…
The doorknob of the dance room rattled. Minho started, expecting to see Jisung walk through the door.
It was not Jisung. It was Hyunjin. He was looking very surprised to see someone else there.
“Minho! You’re not supposed to be here.”
“And you are?”
“Ah, well, no…”
They looked at each other in confused silence for a moment.
“So,” Minho sat up, “What are you doing in here?” He was feeling unfairly defensive. He knew that this unused practice room wasn’t his, but it had come to feel like it was.
“Just looking for a space to practice.” Hyunjin uneasy shifted his weight between his feet.
“There are practice rooms for dance majors.”
“I know, but they’re just so-”
“Crowded, yeah.”
Hyunjin nodded. “And nosy.”
“Feels better to practice alone.” Minho patted the floor next to him.
Hyunjin gratefully sat down. “I always feel like they’re watching me too. Like, who’s that loser, coming here alone?”
Minho laughed, “It’s ballerinas or black mold. Take your pick.” He gestured to the bubbling plaster on the far end of the water-damaged room.
Hyunjin scrunched his face up in disgust. “Sadly, I prefer the black mold.”
“Me too. Anyway, when did you find this place?” Minho said.
“Sometime last week,” Hyunjin shrugged. “I was looking for an empty room to practice in. The doorknob looked pretty busted, and it looked like no one cares about this place, so I jiggled the lock.”
“Criminal,” Minho pointed and laughed.
“Hey! How did you find it?”
“Same way you did,” Minho said.
Hyunjin sighed a long, deep sigh instead of responding immediately.
“Kinda feels counterproductive to come here and dance alone. Dance is a performance after all,” Hyunjin said.
“Nah, you want people to see the finished product, not the fuck ups along the way. Too embarrassing.” That was the reason Minho came here, anyway. He used this room to tutor Jisung but also to choreograph and practice alone. His head felt clearer.
“Is that why you’d show up to dance team practice like you already knew the routines?”
Minho picked at the seams of his pants. “I always got the coach to give me the choreo notes so I could try to learn it early,” he finally answered.
Hyunjin lightly slapped him with the back of his hand, “No way! You little shit.”
Minho feigned reeling back for a punch, and Hyunjin relented.
“Okay, okay, chill, chill. I’m sorry. It’s just, you really did that?”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause.
“Think you still remember the old routines?” Hyunjin said.
“Mmm, maybe not all of them. The school song, definitely.”
“I bet I remember more than you.”
Minho normally hated challenges and bets, but this was Hyunjin calling for war.
About twenty minutes later, they had gone through several of their routines and were, then, fighting over the choreography for the school song.
“I am remembering this correctly! I’ve done it more recently than you,” Hyunjin said adamantly.
He danced the ending eight count furiously in Minho’s direction. It was very cheesy choreography, very cheerleaderesque. Hyunjin, with his long limbs and over-exaggerated movements, looked very silly doing it.
Minho laughed at him. “Well, that looks bad! I don’t remember the ending looking bad!”
Minho was in the middle of mimicking Hyunjin’s movements when the doorknob jiggled for the second time.
The two boys immediately dropped their ridiculous poses. You don’t exactly boast about reminiscing over your high school fight song choreography in college unless you’re really lame.
Jisung walked into the room, and his wide smile dropped. He kept looking from Minho to Hyunjin and back to Minho again with his brow furrowed.
“Hey, guys…”
Jisung set his bag down in the corner of the room and started rummaging through it. Minho thought that it probably shouldn’t take him so much time to find a pair of shoes. That was weird.
Hyunjin had taken a sudden interest in a dent in the hardwood floor and seemed hellbent on making it bigger. Minho hissed at Hyunjin to stop. Hyunjin looked at him with a strange, pained expression.
“So, what were you guys doing?” Jisung had found his shoes and was slowly putting them on. He still wasn’t looking at them.
“Dancing,” Minho said, plainly. What else would they do in an abandoned ballet studio? Make snow angels in the dust?
“I was actually looking for a place to rehearse,” Hyunjin said abruptly.
“Oh, there’s been a mistake.” Jisung slowly stood up and walked towards the pair of them. He looked at Hyunjin. “Minho’s my tutor. Yeah? So, if you don’t mind…”
And, in a few seconds, Hyunjin scooped up his bag and took long fast strides out of the room.
“Okay! Pirouettes. I’m bad at them. Help me?” Jisung grabbed his hand and pulled them to the center of the room.
Minho let himself be dragged. He had no idea what had just happened. He kind of felt bad that Hyunjin had left so suddenly, but Jisung was holding his hand now. So, everything else felt entirely inconsequential. When Jisung dropped his hand, he didn’t even mind then because Jisung was pouting at him.
“You told me I was getting better at spotting!”
“You were.” Minho meant it. Jisung was improving very steadily at ballet. He was even picking up moves without Minho’s guidance.
“Then, why can’t I do a full pirouette without falling out of it?”
“You just need practice.”
Minho directed Jisung to stand in front of him, facing the mirror. He was glad that Jisung jumped right into the tutoring session with no apologies or hesitations.
“Okay, show me what I’m dealing with,” Minho said.
Jisung rolled his eyes but did a pirouette anyway. The turn was clumsy and awkward, and he only got halfway around before losing his balance. His arm positions and posture were terrible. No wonder he was falling out of the turn.
They had gone over arm positions and posture their first lesson. It wasn’t like him to forget a lesson once Minho taught it. This was setting off delayed warning alarms in his brain.
Something was up with Jisung. It was actually unlike Jisung to be an hour late and not apologize. It was unlike Jisung to be rude to Hyunjin too. Minho thought they were friends.
Minho looked at Jisung through the mirror. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his sweatpants, but Minho could see that he was fidgeting through the movement of the fabric. It was a slight movement, but Minho could tell that Jisung was chewing on the inside of his cheek.
Yep, all signs point to Something Being Wrong.
Minho sighed. He wanted to ask, but he was bad at the whole emotions and comfort and reading people thing. He knew he seemed cold and uncaring to some people because of it. But he did care. He just never knew what to say.
So, instead of a carefully crafted and emotionally intelligent sentence, Minho just opened his mouth and let words fall out of it. It would be better to say anything than to have Jisung think that he didn’t care.
“Do you just want to get food instead?”
Jisung spun around to face him. “I was that bad!?” He seemed confused and a little hurt.
Minho kicked, punched, backhanded, and body-slammed himself mentally. It was a real war zone up there today.
He scrambled to correct himself, “No! No, no. This has nothing to do with your dancing. You just seem kinda,” he gestured in Jisung’s direction vaguely, “worried? I guess? And we could do this later when you feel better.”
Minho felt very stupid. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he should just stick to dancing. He knew how to do that. This talking thing was way out of his lane.
But Jisung didn’t seem offended. Instead, he took a breath and ran a hand through his hair. His hair looked soft. Minho mentally slapped himself again for not focusing on the problem at hand.
“Food sounds good. Raincheck though. Right? I want to get better at this.”
“Of course!” Minho said. He was relieved. He was hungry anyway, and there was a ramen shop close to campus he wanted to try.
When they got to the restaurant, Jisung tried to pay. Minho flat-out refused.
“You paid last time. It’s my turn.” Minho deftly slid in front of Jisung and stuck his card in the reader before the other had any time to react.
“But you’ve been doing all this tutoring for free, and I was late this time! At least let me pay for a meal in return,” Jisung said.
“Don’t be stupid. I’m not doing this because I want favors from you.” Minho cringed a bit at himself. He wasn’t tutoring Jisung for entirely selfless reasons either.
“You actually enjoy watching my dumbass trip over my own feet in that dusty room?” Jisung laughed at himself as if he couldn’t imagine anyone simply enjoying his company.
Minho led them over to a table. As they sat down, he said, “I like watching you dance, yeah.”
Jisung spilled some broth over his hand and cried out.
Minho immediately gathered napkins and tried to clean up the spill, but Jisung swatted him away.
“It’s not that bad,” Jisung said as he rubbed the hand. Minho noticed that his cheeks had a little color to them.
He had never been more grateful to ramen for being a messy and difficult noodle to eat before today. They didn’t say a word to each other for the entire meal.
They were leaving the restaurant before Minho had the courage to speak again.
“Did you like it?” He looked at Jisung out of the corner of his eye. Jisung had his hands deep in his sweatshirt pockets and was looking at his feet while he walked.
“Yeah, it was good.”
They were quiet for a bit longer as they walked the now-dark streets back onto campus.
Jisung broke the silence, “I wasn’t late today for no reason, you know?”
“I figured,” Minho said. Jisung had been taking their sessions very seriously. Minho knew enough about him to know that Jisung didn’t half-ass anything. He had to have had a good reason to be late.
“I was with Changbin and Chan.”
“I didn’t know they were ballet dancers.”
Jisung snorted. “I would love to see them try. But, yeah, no, we got shitty news from a stuck-up, moldy producer that our music was too groundbreaking and sick for him to handle.”
He was getting more and more worked up with every word. To conclude his point, Jisung selected a hunk of concrete on the sidewalk and brought his foot down on it to send it skittering into the road.
“I’m sorry…?” Minho wasn’t exactly sure what he was apologizing for.
“Don’t apologize. That’s my job. It’s not like you were the none choosing whether or not to give us a record deal. You haven’t even heard our music.” Jisung sent another rock flying into the road. This one narrowly missed a car speeding past them.
“I could,” Minho said this very tentatively. He didn’t want to barge into that part of Jisung’s life uninvited. He seemed protective and a little bit embarrassed about his music. But, also, he sent it to a producer, which must mean that he wanted someone to listen to it.
Jisung laughed. “Please Lee Minho Studios, we are starving college students with a big dream. Give us lots and lots of money.”
“No, I mean, I could listen to your music. You’re right. I haven’t heard it. I don’t have lots of money, but I want to hear what you wrote.”
Jisung seemed to forget the third rock he’d selected as a road sacrifice underneath his hovering foot as he looked up at Minho bewildered. “It’s not just me. Chan and Changbin write too.”
“I know. I’m interested in my friends’ music.”
Jisung hesitated for a few seconds before making up his mind. He put his foot down and straightened his back.
“Well, someone might as well hear it if that crusty, dusty old guy isn’t going to listen anymore. Do you have good headphones or earbuds? I’m not playing this on a shitty phone speaker. I’m worth more than that.”
Minho felt nervous butterflies erupt in his stomach. If he wasn’t careful, they would fly right out of his mouth and betray how he felt. He thought it must be unnatural that he’s feeling so excited about listening to some guy’s SoundCloud.
“They’re back in my dorm,” was all Minho said. Better to keep it brief than to accidentally give too much away.
Twenty minutes later
Minho’s headphones were connected to Jisung’s phone, and Jisung felt like he was going to throw up.
This was a terrible idea.
What the fuck was he doing?
Was he going to sit here like an idiot and watch Minho listen to his music in silence?
Minho pulled one ear away to speak. He was sitting on one bed of his dorm bed, and Jisung was on the other, facing him. “Are you not going to listen too?”
“Ah, well, yeah, I can.”
Thank god or whoever was listening. Jisung didn’t know if it would have been weird to listen to his own music. He scrambled in his backpack to retrieve his headphones and quickly connected them.
“Ready?” Minho gave him a dumb little thumbs up.
“Absolutely not. Your music sounds like a flaming hot dumpster full of emo trash and cringy self-aggrandizing lyrics that would put Ozymandias to shame.”
Jisung told his inner critic to stop using niche Romantic poetry references and shut the fuck up. He shot a dumb little thumbs up at Minho and pressed play before he could think too much more about it.
Jisung stared resolutely at the little scrolling bar on screen for most of the first song. It was a recent one that he was really proud of. He’d tag-teamed with Changbin on the rap, and Chan put together some really good instrumentation. But Jisung was so nervous he could barely hear it.
What if Minho laughed at him? Jisung didn’t think he could stand it. This music was him. It was everything he couldn’t or didn’t say to other people. Chan and Changbin took that silence and made it into something greater, something that sounded like he felt. They never even talked about what they wrote about, really, they just understood innately what those feelings sounded like.
So, if Minho laughed at the music, if he didn’t like it or, even worse, thought it was boring, it was like Minho was rejecting him. It was one thing to have a faceless producer somewhere halfway across the world dislike your work, but completely another to have your friend say that your blood, sweat, and tears are a piece of shit, actually.
Jisung dimly recognized the song coming to a close. He snuck a peek up at Minho. He wasn’t laughing. He was bobbing his head to the beat with a contemplative expression.
Okay, Jisung could handle that reaction.
When the song finally ended, Minho pulled off one ear of the headphones again. Jisung followed.
“Good. I like it,” Minho said.
“You don’t have to say that! Be honest!” Jisung did want Minho to be genuine, but also feared honesty so very deeply, terribly much.
“I’m not lying. I like it. I want to listen again.”
“Why?” Jisung was surprised. He thought that he would just go through a few of their newest songs and release Minho from the obligation. He didn’t think Minho would want to do a play-by-play.
Minho shrugged. “It was good.”
Jisung played the song again. This time he watched Minho more intently. He was moving with the beat and fidgeting with his hands. Jisung realized that he was drumming on his thighs. A small smile spread on his face when Jisung started rapping. He started counting under his breath near the end.
“Again,” Minho said. Jisung immediately scrubbed back to the beginning.
To Jisung’s surprise, Minho scrambled off the bed. He quickly moved his desk chair out of the way. He faced the wall with his back facing Jisung, and, after counting himself in, Minho began to dance.
Like all the other times Jisung had seen him dance, he was impressed at Minho’s musicality. It was like Minho let the music control his body. He didn’t decide how to move. He just did. It was hard to believe that Minho was freestyling because the dance matched up with the music so well.
Jisung stared at Minho’s back in disbelief for a moment. He was dancing. He was dancing to Jisung’s song that only the two of them could hear through their headphones. Dancing in this cramped little dorm room. Just to make Jisung feel better after a bad day.
Jisung felt like he had been fucking punched in the fucking gut. He was falling in fucking love all because of Lee Minho.
“Fuck,” Jisung said under his breath.