Chapter Text
Jasmine has always preferred solos to group numbers.
Fine, yes, it sounds egotistical to say out loud. She’s sure it does make her egotistical, on some level, but that’s not the only reason why.
With a solo, there’s no uniformity. After all, it’s just one performer. The countless hours spent cleaning, standardizing, whittling everyone down to the same cookie-cutter image of perfection, those are taken out of the equation. Not to mention formations. No formations, either, just “be stage left” or “face the audience.” There are fewer things that can potentially go wrong during the performance itself, which means fewer things to worry about, which is personally very important to Jasmine and always has been.
And there’s an element of freestyle, too, that sort of has to be put aside for the sake of cleanliness when you’re dancing in a big group. Unless you’re, like, the Rockettes themselves, it’s probably not going to be possible to get everyone to add the same tiny little stylistic choices and finishing touches onto the same dance, so they have to be either foregone or heavily choreographed. Jasmine understands, of course she does, but it makes her heart hurt just a bit every time some dramatic flourish gets dulled down to the same simple wave for everyone.
Now, all this being said, Jasmine loves the group number they’re working on now.
It’s no solo, but it might as well be one. There are so many moving parts, so many sections that are basically dancer’s choice with a vague semblance of blocking to follow, so many chances for different people to have their time in the spotlight. Jasmine’s got her three seconds of center time, so to speak, during one of their transitions between song snippets– and she’s in the front or vaguely center-adjacent for almost half the dance. Very cute. So she’s more than satisfied.
There’s also partner work, which is always fun.
“Jasmine– where are you, Jasmine?” Michelle scans the outskirts of their practice studio, where she’s made them all spread out so she can place them in their spots. Jasmine helpfully lifts her hand in the air. “You’ll be in one of the back center pairs, so opposite where Cam and Jorgeous are right now. DeJa, you’ll be on Jasmine’s left.”
Jasmine hurries to her spot. She sends a little wiggle of her fingers in DeJa’s direction as the other girl joins her, and smiles when she gets a wiggle back.
It sucks a little being in the back, but at least she’s with someone she likes. DeJa’s a third year that Jasmine hadn’t met til her second semester, since she’d been too busy to commit to the team for the fall that year, by DeJa’s explanation. She’d said something about schoolwork, and her improv comedy club taking up a lot of her time. Jasmine can’t quite remember. She knows DeJa’s very nice, and very funny, maybe because of the aforementioned improv comedy club. She knows DeJa usually wears these thick, dark-framed glasses that make her look like a librarian in a kid’s cartoon (in a nice way!) and the first time she’d taken them off for a performance, Jasmine almost hadn’t recognized her.
DeJa is a perfectly decent partner, it turns out. Everyone is learning this fun little trick to kick off the duo section, a classic dip with an arch back and a leg, and DeJa has yet to drop her, so that’s great. There’s more choreography that follows, but they learn it quickly with the intention of refining it later and soon circle back to the dip. That’s the main attraction, Jasmine supposes. Not necessarily the hardest thing they could do, in terms of pure technique and skill or even strength, but maybe the kind of thing that’s just meant to grab the crowd’s eyes. Get a healthy round of cheering and clapping out of them mid-song, make sure they’re still paying rapt attention.
They learn, and they practice what they’ve learned. On a momentary break, a pause between runthroughs, Jasmine wipes the sweat from the dip between her cheek and her nose with her thumb. She tilts her head side to side to stretch out her neck.
Because Jasmine is a creature of habit, and because she is only human, Bosco inevitably comes to mind.
It’s not a good habit. Jasmine so strongly associates Bosco with dance and all things dance, so where there’s dance there must also be Bosco. The urge to walk into any studio or locker room and immediately, probably not very subtly, search her surroundings for that familiar face, that hair, the sports bra and high-waisted grey sweats– it’s something she knows she has to shake, if she ever wants to get over this stupid crush. She just can’t seem to do it. Her body knows to act on the impulse, seek out Bosco and gravitate toward her, before Jasmine’s even aware of it. It’s a little bit devastating, on the worse days, and even on the best of days it makes her feel like she’s just waiting for the impossible to happen. Hoping for a miracle, looking for someone who isn’t looking back.
But… yeah, anyway.
It’s not like a little staring hurts anyone. Anyone besides Jasmine, in a metaphorical sense, she supposes.
In the present, she allows herself to look around the room for Bosco once. Just one singular time, and as luck would have it she’s able to spot her on the first try, a feathery ginger ponytail in the very corner of the room.
Partnered with someone, obviously, because they’re all in pairs now.
Which– not even Jasmine’s concern, at the moment. This isn’t about Bosco, right now. This is about her actual partner, and all the tiny details for this section that are landing on top of one another in the cluttered pile of Jasmine’s thoughts. Engage the core. Free hand on your partner’s shoulder, the one that faces the audience. See? She can pay attention to these things too. She’s focused on DeJa, and the choreo and on doing it all correctly and safely.
…Bosco is partnered with a girl in Jasmine’s year whose name is Daya.
In the recurring cast of characters who rotate through Jasmine’s college life, Daya has to be one of the most polarizing. Jasmine either loves her or she hates her, depending on the circumstance. When Daya picks the most stressful day out of Jasmine’s entire week to tell her that she’s not sure these new highlights work for her hair, Jasmine hates her. When Daya walks twenty minutes to Jasmine’s apartment just because the power’s gone out and she doesn’t want to be alone, Jasmine loves her. It switches up based on which way the wind blows, or what day of the month it is. Daya brings her soup when she’s sick, love. Daya gets the solo part Jasmine wanted more than anything, hate. Daya agrees to watch Gone With the Wind together even though they must be on their fifth or sixth rewatch by now, love. So on and so on, til the end of time. That’s just them.
Jasmine remembers, clear as anything, how it had been when she and Daya first met. What a time of her life. She remembers being rubbed the wrong way basically instantaneously, from the moment they both sat down in that auditorium for dance team callbacks and Daya had been so immediately noticeable, so tall and dressed in blacks and neons and spikes and studs. So thoroughly incapable of blending in, and Jasmine had been sort of quietly captivated– at least, until Daya had opened her mouth.
It started with icebreakers, in the small groups they’d been placed into– what kind of person came in with that kind of attitude? So confident, when they didn’t even know whether they’d gotten in yet? And it had only gotten worse from there, almost comically so. Callbacks, then new member introductions, their first team social, their first practice, their first show. Everywhere Jasmine turned, Daya seemed to be there with a roll of her eyes or a catty remark. It made Jasmine’s blood boil.
It would be hard to pinpoint the exact moment things with Daya hit rock bottom, but Jasmine can definitely narrow it down to the top two. The first: when a particular argument had escalated so far that Michelle had physically pulled them apart backstage, three minutes out from curtain call, and given them both a very stern talking to that sends chills down Jasmine’s spine to this very day.
The second: probably when Maddy had been over at Jasmine’s apartment, about twelve hours after said talking-to, and had casually asked whether Jasmine was aware that she and Daya were pretty much the same person in slightly different fonts.
As she said, a hard pick between the two. Both strong contenders for the worst moments of Jasmine’s life.
Fortunately, their relationship had gotten a lot less rocky from there. That was around the end of first year, and now they’re both in their second year and they’re fine now, seriously fine. They spend time together outside of practice, on a regular basis even, and sometimes they manage to go a whole ten minutes without one of them blowing up at the other over something tiny. It drives the rest of their friends nuts. More than once, they’ve been invited to an event under the sole condition that they promise not to fight the entire time and make it miserable for everyone.
But she doesn’t hate-hate Daya. Not now. Maybe not ever, if she went back that far in her memories and took the time to really dissect her emotions, pick them apart with patience and a scalpel. Daya’s loud, and Jasmine’s loud, and Daya’s got a lot to say and so does Jasmine and it’s entirely possible they’re just too similar to have not butted heads, at first encounter.
And there’s also this, come to think of it. What Jasmine’s looking at now, watching absentmindedly while her lower lip finds its home between her teeth. Daya laughing at something Bosco’s just said, leaning forward to swat gently at Bosco’s upper arm. She says something in return, and the room is filled with too many overlapping conversations for Jasmine to hear what’s been said but it makes Bosco’s entire face contort in a silent laugh, eyes screwed shut and canines exposed in a huge grin.
Watching it gives Jasmine the same gnawing feeling in her stomach she gets when she watches the two of them leave practice together, or when Daya makes a beeline for Bosco in stretch block, or when Daya does this sort of thing– laughing and touching and talking like she and Bosco have known each other for ages, even though Jasmine knows for a fact they met last year– and Bosco seems content to let her do all of it. Likely because she is.
Jasmine would suspect that could have had something to do with it, too.
But that’s not something she can exactly do anything about, and jealousy is the ugliest emotion, her grandmother always said, and in the spirit of the whole hating-Daya-less thing Jasmine doesn’t need to be concerning herself with such things. Not if she can help it.
Jasmine turns back to DeJa, who’s thankfully been distracted herself, absorbed in some side conversation with Jorgeous. Jasmine’s been caught staring in Bosco’s direction by half her teammates, at this point. She doesn’t need yet another person teasing her.
“Ready to go again?”
DeJa turns back to her in a heartbeat, and her smile is both perfect and blinding. “Let’s go.”
They work well as a pair. Jasmine moves through everything with a speed that borders on impatience, and DeJa is much more steady and deliberate in her approach. It helps to ground them both, and they have the simple pairs work down in pretty much no time at all. It’s not that hard, broken down into pieces. The hardest part is definitely the dip that kicks it all off, which isn’t a matter of difficulty so much as it is trust and technique. Jasmine thinks it’s fun. Prep, twirl and dip. She feels a bit like a princess, or those celebrities from the Dancing With the Stars episodes she’d watched on a box TV at seven years old.
“One more minute,” their coach announces from the front of the studio, “and then we’ll try it with formations, yeah?”
The minute passes, and they run the formations, and now comes the tedious part. “Raise your hand if you had trouble getting to your spot,” Michelle says, and a few hands go up. This is the part that’s the least fun, in Jasmine’s opinion. Fixing the formations, tweaking little things here and there to make transitions run smoother. It’s important, of course, but it means repeating the same section lots and lots of times, and Jasmine gets bored of it quickly.
She’d never forget herself, though. She was raised in dance team culture. Grumbling and dragging your feet to your next spot is just about a death sentence, and Jasmine is glad that her teammates seem to be as aware of this as she is. “Reset,” Michelle instructs, and everyone shuffles back in position. “Let me see that again.” “Go back two formations.” “If you’re not in this, find something to work on, please!”
Their coach may be strict, but it’s clear from the way she runs rehearsals that she’s good at her job. “Okay, I’m happy with that. Let’s see– group A is on, group B is in the wings, waiting three eight-counts. Daya, are you still not making your spot?”
On the other side of their imaginary stage, Daya shakes her head. “There’s just– it’s a lot of traffic around the middle,” she explains, slightly out of breath. “I think it’s because everyone’s getting off stage left and I’m trying to, like, go through them? But I can try another way, or I can try waiting for them to go first.”
Michelle nods. “Let’s try that again from partner work. No music, I’ll count it.”
They run the transition with counts. Reset is called, Jasmine walks back to her place next to DeJa, and when she turns back to the front Michelle already has her clipboard out. Paper formations, with changes added in yellow post-its and smudged ballpoint ink. “I see what you mean,” she says, flipping through her pages. “I don’t actually think waiting for everyone else to go first will work, since then you still won’t have an easy path. I guess we could have everyone else hold an extra four while you move on ‘one’…”
A standstill. The room waits patiently for the issue to be resolved.
Daya, as always, is ready to jump in with a bold opinion.
“I don’t know if this would even work,” Daya says, and her voice carries enough for Jasmine to hear it clear across the room. “But maybe I could switch places with someone roughly in the middle who’s already going left? Like, obviously someone who does my side of the partner stuff. That way I can have a clear shot up to center.”
“Hm.” Their coach taps her pen on the side of her face, her eyes narrow and calculating. “Are you in the group who enters right before this?”
“Yeah.”
Michelle turns to the group at large. “Raise your hand if you’re also in that group, and you’re the partner starting on the right.”
The appropriate people raise their hands, Jasmine among them. She’s sort of zoning out, her muscles are sore and she’d like to go home, but obviously they can’t go home without getting this done first. The sooner it’s all figured out, the sooner she can go home to a shower and the freshly washed sheets on her bed that have been calling her name all day.
There is a small part of her, a small and utterly delusional part of her that thinks it would be just hilarious if somehow their coach did decide to go with this idea, and Jasmine was the one she picked to switch with Daya. Because that would mean Daya would be with DeJa, while Jasmine ends up with a certain tall, tattooed, copper-haired someone who would just about be the death of her in every way imaginable.
But that’s so unlikely it’s more of a daydream than anything, a thought in passing that slips by without fanfare. That’s like getting struck by lightning, or finding a four leaf clover, or something. Jasmine’s not that kind of girl. She never has been.
(And, because she’s a lost cause, because she’s beyond help: Bosco, Jasmine thinks, is that kind of girl. Bosco would be the type to experience something as cosmically incredible as that, if anyone at all.)
Not to imply that Bosco would feel anything remotely close to the level of emotion Jasmine would, that is, if they really were to be paired together. Jasmine has no idea how Bosco might react to that, actually. It’s one of those things where it’s not going to happen, so she might as well just stop that train of thought in its tracks.
What happens next probably could stop a real train in its tracks, at least in Jasmine’s mind.
“Alright,” Michelle announces. “I think we can try that and see if it works. Daya, go ahead and switch spots with… Jasmine.”
Jasmine feels her jaw go slack.
She’s hit, for one brief and delirious second, with the urge to laugh hysterically. And then maybe bury her face into her hands, or perhaps let herself crumble to the ground and let it swallow her up whole.
Her feet are moving before she’s even had to tell them to, her body well-conditioned to following instructions in the confines of this room without a second thought. She’s never been more grateful, because otherwise there’s no telling how long she might have stood in place, rooted to the spot by pure fucking disbelief.
There’s no way.
There’s just no god damned way.
Dutifully, her feet carry her over to the corner where Bosco is standing. Daya slips past her from behind, taking her spot next to DeJa, and just like that they’ve switched partners. No time wasted, no questions asked. No big deal! Not at all.
(Maybe if she tells herself about one billion more times, she can trick herself into actually believing it.)
“Everyone take a moment to work on something while our new pairs figure it out, please! Let’s do five minutes.”
Five minutes. They have five minutes to adjust to each other, and Jasmine has yet to even look in Bosco’s general direction, because she’s kind of terrified she’ll burst into flames if she even tries.
But they’ve only got five minutes, rapidly approaching four, so Jasmine bites her lip and forces her head to turn– just do it. Just look at her.
When she finally looks, Bosco is already looking at her. Ready to get right to work, apparently. Jasmine’s world is tilting on its axis, threatening to spin out of control and whirl off into the cold void of space, and Bosco’s completely casual and unconcerned about this whole thing. Why wouldn’t she be?
She extends a hand to Jasmine. “We can try it without the actual dip first,” she says. There’s a few strands of hair that have escaped her ponytail, that are now curling aimlessly around the smooth line of her jaw. Jasmine feels like she might be running a fever.
“Okay,” Jasmine croaks out, and immediately clears her throat. “Okay. Yeah.”
Amazing work, Jasmine. Really spectacular stuff. Keep it up.
They mark it through. Jasmine puts her feet in all the right places, accurate if a little clumsy, and instead of fully arching back she just kind of leans, tipping her head back to imitate what it might be like. As if that could ever prepare her, as if she’s not totally doomed no matter what. A girl can try, can’t she?
Bosco touches her exactly as much as she needs to, her hold on Jasmine’s hand just firm enough, her arm at Jasmine’s back just solid enough to where Jasmine knows she isn’t going to fall, when they do this for real. She lets go as soon as Jasmine stands up straight.
“Cool. You wanna try full out, or mark one more time?”
It’s some mix of all these factors, Bosco’s unwavering professionalism and the offhandedness of her tone and Jasmine’s heart performing an entire percussive symphony inside her chest, that makes Jasmine answer without a second thought. She just wants to get it over with, for better or for worse.
“I think I’m good.” Jasmine backtracks to her original spot. “We can do full out.”
Bosco puts out her hand again. Jasmine takes it before she can lose her courage, praying her palm isn’t clammy to the touch. “Ready?” Bosco asks, quiet and unhurried, and Jasmine doesn’t even trust her voice. Just nods, and resigns herself to the fate of whatever is about to happen.
“Five, six, seven, eight–”
By some miracle, Jasmine remembers. Remembers to prep on eight, remembers to initiate with her left foot and engage her core, all that stuff Michelle has been telling them that still can’t save her when it comes down to this moment, it turns out. She throws her arm out blindly for the prep, entire body tensed, and already by the time she steps into Bosco’s space she knows she’s fucked. Bosco’s arm is slightly cool against the strip of bare skin at Jasmine’s back, the space between her top and her waistband, and she’s either turned too far or not enough and Bosco’s so close. So close it’s dizzying. She’s dipping Jasmine back and the world really could be pitching off course, the entire practice room flashes by Jasmine’s field of vision in one exhilarating blur, she’s floating or falling or somewhere in between–
“Whoa, I got you.” Bosco’s stronger than she looks, apparently, because she brings Jasmine back up to standing with what seems like barely any effort at all. Not too fast, just efficient. Which is exactly what Bosco is all the time, Jasmine’s learning.
“You good?”
It takes a while for Jasmine to find her balance again, and in that time she realizes she’s being spoken to. “Huh? Oh, yeah,” she blurts, a breathless giggle tumbling out just to really seal her misfortune into place. “Sorry. I– that was totally my fault, I didn’t, like, turn enough–”
“No, it was fine.” Bosco lets her go, steps back a bit, and Jasmine immediately feels this tiny, embarrassing ache at the center of her ribs. Come back, her heart seems to beg. “I think maybe you were too far to my left. Try again?”
And try again they will. Try again they must, because this is going to be performed in front of people, real life people who have eyes and brains and are definitely going to notice if Jasmine fucks this up when she’s in the very front. God, get a grip.
Jasmine exhales forcefully, puffing out her lips. “Yeah,” she says. “I won’t go as far left, that’s my bad.”
So they try again. And again, and again, until their five minutes are up, and then they have to run it as a group. Then, when it comes time for cleaning, they run it in smaller groups of two or three. They must practice this singular eight-count more than twenty times altogether, if Jasmine had to guess, and it gets to a point where Michelle seems to take pity on them and calls for a water break. “Take two minutes,” she says, her tone a clear warning of exactly how serious she is about these two minutes. “Take a second to rest your backs, my dippers. Dip-ees. People who are being dipped, you know what I mean. Make sure to stretch!”
Jasmine will take two minutes, gladly. She takes her sips of water and spends the rest of the short break sitting with her back to the wall, taking deep breaths and pressing the backs of her hands across her face and neck, wondering if it’s possible to die of overheating in an air-conditioned dance room.
Doing this with DeJa is nothing like doing it with Bosco.
It makes no sense, because they have to support her weight in all the same ways, do the exact same little routine, but somehow it’s so different. Where DeJa is grounding, stabilizing, makes Jasmine feel a bit more like she can breathe through her movements, Bosco does the opposite. Being this close to Bosco is like perpetually being a touch off balance, a constant state of finding her footing and barely succeeding. It’s making Jasmine feel crazy, and it’s also completely embarrassing. The last thing she needs is for Bosco to think that on top of being incapable of stringing together more than three to five words at a time, she also can’t dance.
Two things that are wholly, blissfully untrue in the grand scheme of things. If only Bosco knew.
“Okay, it’s been three minutes, because I am generous,” Michelle calls from the front of the room. “Let’s run this two more times and go home. How does that sound?”
That sounds good to Jasmine. She pushes herself to her feet and resigns herself to two more times being swept off her feet, literally.
When they’ve stepped apart for the last time, Bosco doesn’t even look winded. Jasmine can’t tell if she’s just hiding it well, or if she’s just really that unaffected. Her hair’s falling out of the elastic a tiny bit more, baby hairs curling with perspiration, but she’s standing up tall listening to Michelle give their parting words for the night, hands on her hips and shoulders back.
“...and that’s it for me,” Michelle says. “Any questions about rehearsals this week? The schedule that was posted most recently is the one you should refer to, that’s the only one that’s up to date.”
No questions.
“Okay! Good work today. See you on Wednesday!”
It’s like a magic spell is lifted. The stillness breaks all at once, everyone splitting off their different ways, heads ducking and conversations starting up in multiple places.
Jasmine stays where she is for a second, making a conscious effort to breathe deeply, and she doesn’t even notice Bosco hasn’t left yet until she turns to leave herself and nearly barrels right into her.
“Oh!” Jasmine says, just as Bosco brings up a hand up– to stop Jasmine from bumping into her, Jasmine assumes blankly, until she feels it graze the outside of her own arm. Oh.
To steady her, maybe?
“Sorry,” she blurts.
Bosco waves her off. “All good,” she says, and her tone is low and leisurely and Jasmine’s just spent half an hour being dipped in her arms and somehow this is more disorienting all by itself. Holy… wow.
She smiles, uncertain. “Um.” Normal things. Say things normal people say. “I’ll see you Wednesday?”
Bosco lets her eyes drift to somewhere above Jasmine’s head, thinking. “I actually don’t think I can make Wednesday,” she says, cool as ever. She’s half-turned to leave now, and the faint relief Jasmine feels is met in equal proportion with a reluctant, sugar-sweet disappointment. “I have to text Cam about that, thanks for reminding me. But I’ll see you… what, Friday?”
Jasmine manages a nod. “Yep. Friday. Um, you’re welcome,” she tacks on with a laugh.
She gets an ‘OK’ sign and a purse of Bosco’s lips in return, which turns out to also serve as her goodbye.
Bosco won’t be here on Wednesday. The mental note is made before she can curb the impulse.
This is not of any practical importance, but it’s very likely Jasmine will remember it anyway, and be a little disappointed every time she does.