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Jin walked into the room with his duffel bag full of supplies, looking around in interest at the other people milling around. The teacher hadn’t arrived yet. Good. He had time to take out his supplies and get comfortable before the class started. He’d been waiting for this class all week since he had got Namjoon to sign him up for it; as if on cue, his stomach rumbled in anticipation. Rubbing his hands with glee, with a smile so happy that he closed his eyes, Jin set his bag on the floor and began rummaging through it, making sure he had brought everything. Water, napkins, wipes, containers to take samples home in, chips; it was all there. Jin had worn his loosest t-shirt and comfiest sweatpants in preparation for the amount he intended to eat. Today was not the day for tight pants that restricted his eating capacity. He had noticed with approval when he entered the room that everyone else had worn similar, workout style clothes, with duffel bags of their own. At least he knew he was dealing with others who were as serious about their love for eating, and for chips and dip.
Jin was so busy thinking and looking through his bag, he failed to notice basic things that should have been a big red flag; the fact that the room was lined with wall-to-wall mirrors, for one. He also failed to notice the man who had walked into the room a few minutes before, and had set up his belongings, and was now facing the class.
“Welcome to Salsa class! Who’s ready to dance?”
In that moment, it was as if time had slowed down.
Jin slowly turned to face the front, bag of chips in hand, staring blankly at the teacher. The dance teacher. The really hot, young, really smiley salsa dance teacher. Fuck.
“There may have been a misunderstanding.”
The teacher turned to look at Jin, cocking his head to one side in confusion, as Jin realized he had spoken those words aloud. Fuuuuck.
The teacher stared for a moment at Jin, then shifted his gaze to the chips in Jin’s hand, eyes widening and lips pressed together. His shoulders began to shake in suppressed mirth. After a second, the teacher burst out into laughter, his full body shaking.
Jin was not so amused. He felt like a deer caught in headlights, and had started sweating. Jin had suddenly put two and two together, and realized that he had (clearly) signed up for a dance class. Unfortunately, him and dancing had ostensibly never seen eye to eye. And now he had already embarrassed himself in front of his new hot dance teacher, who was going to make even more fun of him once he saw him dancing. All at once, things started to make sense: why there were mirrors on the walls, and all the students in their (Jin shuddered) athleisure. Jin glanced towards the door in desperation, wondering if it wasn’t too late to make a run for it, money be damned.
The teacher’s laughter slowed down as he wiped tears from his eyes, and he gave a genuine grin to Jin. Wow, his smile is really pretty, Jin thought.
“This is the funniest thing that’s happened in a class of mine, and I’ve been teaching dance classes for several years now, so thank you. Everyone, my name is Jung Hoseok,” he bowed slightly, “and I’ll be your Salsa dance teacher for the next two hours.” At the word ‘dance’ Hoseok raised his eyebrows towards Jin, putting emphasis on the word and eliciting soft giggles from the other students in the class. Jin blushed furiously, looking down at his lap.
“Ok everyone, please find a space on the floor with at least one foot of space around out and start stretching, then we’ll begin a warm up before I take you all through the basics of Salsa. By the end of the class, I expect you all to have fully mastered a simple routine that I’ll be showing you.”
While Hoseok had been giving his introduction and instructions, Jin had surreptitiously packed away all of his food, and was sitting quietly in the same spot, wondering what to do next. What he didn’t expect was for Hoseok to walk towards him and squat down in front of him, smiling softly.
“Hi,” Hoseok said softly.
“Hey,” Jin breathed.
His eyes meandered across Hoseok’s body of their own accord, as if they had a mind of their own. He couldn’t help but notice the lean, muscled arms openly visible from his muscle tee that did little to cover up his torso, sweatpants hanging from his slim waist that tightened slightly at the thighs. The thought came unbidden in his mind that he really wanted to touch him, just run his hands all over the tan, taut, honey colored body. Jin swallowed, his mouth dry, as he quickly brought his eyes back up. He ended up facing a head of shocking red hair (that looked surprisingly soft, how does he do that) and twinkling eyes. Oh boy, this was going to be harder than Jin had thought.
“Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just thought that was really cute, that you thought this was a class for making salsa.” As soon as Hoseok started speaking Jin shook his head, literally shaking out of his reverie. Hoseok kept smiling softly. “Didn’t you read on the website about this class?”
Still trying to recover from the incredible sight in front of him, now noticeably closer, Jin blurted, “My friend just told me on the phone that there was a salsa class, and I told him to sign me up. I just assumed…”
“Ahh, I see. Well, now that you’re already here and have paid up, might as well take the class, right? You’re already dressed for it, why not give it a shot? You might have fun!” Hoseok eagerly said.
“I don’t know, I’m a really shit dancer, I have worse than two left feet. Trust me, it’s better that I go,” Jin mumbled, unwilling to make eye contact with the other man.
“I’m a good teacher. Plus, I’d really like it if you stayed. Please?” Jin’s head whipped up, and he gazed into the other’s face, searching. Hoseok steadily returned his gaze, looking completely genuine and serious.
After a few seconds, Jin numbly nodded. Hoseok beamed in response, and got up to walk back towards the front of the room. But before he could take two steps away, Jin nearly shouted, “JIN.”
The room was filled with chattering so no one else noticed the loud shout, but Hoseok immediately turned around, and looked at Jin curiously. “Hmm?” he hummed.
“My name. It’s, uh, Jin.” Jin stuttered.
“Jin,” Hoseok repeated, still smiling that same soft smile. “Call me Hoseok.”
Jin kept staring at Hoseok long after he’d walked away. It was several seconds later that Jin was finally able to exhale completely, deflating a little. That was probably in the top ten most awkward conversations ever, and he was friends with Namjoon, the self-proclaimed king of awkward.
Wait, had he called him cute?
One hour in, and Jin was sweating. He made a mental reminder to kill Namjoon when he gets home. If he made it out of this class alive, that was.
It’s not like he wasn’t fit, he did work out often enough, how else was he going to maintain his beautiful broad shoulders? But this, this was on a whole other level. He had no idea that dancing could be this exhausting, and more than that he had no idea that any one person could have this much energy. The person in question, of course, being Hoseok.
Hoseok had taken the entire class through various stretches, which in itself made the muscles burn. They bent forwards, backwards, from side-to-side and every which way possible, before they even began to dance. Jin knew he was flexible, and smugly looked ahead as he stretched his legs out, until he lost his concentration at the sight of Hoseok stretching. He was sitting on the ground in a comfortable front-split, leaning fully forwards until his chest lay against his knee, palms against the sole of his shoe. And not a sign of discomfort on his face! Hoseok looked around with ease, keeping an eye on the students around. As he looked around, his gaze met Jin’s, and Jin jerked his head away, pretending he hadn’t been looking at Hoseok. He didn’t notice Hoseok fondly shaking his head.
Then came the dancing. Until that point, Jin had thought Hoseok was a really relaxed person, but once he started moving, he was anything but. Hoseok was a skinny guy, lean and toned but not overly muscular. But once he started dancing, he was all smooth, hips rolling fluidly and feet barely touching the ground.
Hoseok began by playing some latin song from his iPod through the speakers installed in the room. He explained that he was going to show them the basic routine that he expected everyone to have mastered by the end of the class, and then he was going to teach them the basics of salsa, before getting to the routine.
“Oh, and there’s also going to be some partner work, so before we start dancing for real, everyone find a partner!” Hoseok said.
Jin looked around awkwardly as everyone around him noisily went and paired up. After royally embarrassing himself earlier in the day, he wasn’t too keen on pairing up with someone who was going to make fun of him or laugh at him, so he waited on the side until everyone else had a partner, hoping to just match up with whoever was left. A couple of minutes passed, and he realized as he surveyed the room that everyone had paired up. Everyone. Turns out, there were an odd number of students in the class, and since Jin didn’t go looking for a partner, he was all alone. Jin didn’t know whether to feel happy to not be stuck with anyone, or sad that he was the odd one out in the class.
Of course, luck was not on his side.
Hoseok called out to the room at large, “Everyone got a partner?” and Jin tentatively raised his hand, shaking his head in response. Hoseok looked over at him, eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Well, I guess you’re stuck with me,” and Hoseok winked at him.
Jin looked down yet again at his feet, feeling the blush make itself home on his cheeks. He held his cheeks in embarrassment, feeling the heat of the flush. What is happening to me, Jin thought furiously. I’m a grown ass man, not a teenager. Stop it. STOP IT.
Shaking his head, Jin tried to go back to focusing on the class. Hoseok had started talking through the first basic step of the salsa, the ‘On1’. Hoseok turned so that his back was facing the class, and began by moving his feet. Left forward, right step, left together. Right back, left step, right together. Repeat.
Jin tried his best to copy the way Hoseok had gracefully moved, but when he looked in the mirror in front of him, all he could see were lanky limbs moving back and forth stiffly.
“Relax,” a soft voice spoke in his ear, “you’re dancing, not marching.”
Shocked, Jin flinched at the sudden voice, but he was determined to not let it show on his face, so he fixedly kept staring at the mirror ahead, focused on his footwork. Unfortunately for him, this didn’t help, seeing as he now had a clear view of Hoseok in the mirror, standing closely behind him. Jin wondered whether Hoseok was feeling as affected as he was, because if so, he was doing a good job of hiding it.
“Like this,” and Hoseok placed his hands on Jin’s hips. Though he wasn’t holding tightly at all, Jin could feel the heat of his touch seeping through his clothes and into his skin, and he gave an involuntary shiver. Jin continued to move his legs as if on autopilot, and Hoseok gently used his hands to guide his hips in rhythm, making his hips roll in small circles.
Jin didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Hoseok whispered “Breathe,” in his ear, before flitting away to observe the rest of the class. Jin let out a puff of air, feeling equally drained and filled with adrenaline. What was Hoseok playing at? he wondered.
Thankfully, the next several minutes of class passed uneventfully, with everyone struggling to pick up the rather sensual and suggestive movements of salsa. They followed the On1 with a variation of it; instead of moving the legs front and back, they moved them side-to-side. This was followed by a series of increasingly difficult steps that the class struggled to master. After a short five minute break, Hoseok announced happily that it was time for the partner work to begin.
Hoseok motioned to Jin to sit down on the side while he helped the rest of the class learn the steps, and he gratefully obliged. Jin took this time to catch his breath and arrange his thoughts, while Hoseok flitted around the room. He tried to watch the choreography, but really it was an excuse to finally get a good, proper look at Hoseok. The more he observed him, the more he was drawn towards the redhead. He seemed to have an endless amount of energy, and a smile that could light up a room. If only Jin could turn back time, and have met Hoseok in a less dorky, more impressive way. He thumped the back of his head despairingly against the wall.
“Shall we?” The same voice that had been following him around all class broke his mental tirade, and Jin jerked his head up towards the sound. Sure enough, Hoseok was standing in front of him, offering his hand to Jin. To Jin’s infatuated mind, it felt like a gentleman offering to take a lady to dance at a ball, as if out of another era. Mutely he took the offered hand and pulled himself up. Still hand in hand, Jin blindly followed Hoseok who silently kept walking towards the front of the room, all the while staring at his back. In one fluid motion Hoseok swung Jin by the hand till they were face to face and gripped his waist. One hand still held securely in Hoseok’s, Jin’s other hand instinctively went up to Hoseok’s shoulder.
“No, not like this,” Hoseok spoke softly. He grabbed Jin and pulled him forward till they were barely inches apart. “Like this.” Jin let out an involuntary gasp at the closeness. Hoseok slowly started swaying in place, leading Jin in the dance. “The Salsa is an intimate dance, we have to be close.”
Hoseok took complete control of the dance and of Jin, leading him around like a marionette on strings. Jin had no idea what he was doing. All he knew was that Hoseok was gazing intensely at him and it was like he had no choice but to keep looking back at him. Several minutes later, Jin and Hoseok were back in the position they started out in, standing chest-to-chest, chests heaving and breathing heavy. Seconds ticked by and they drank each other in, unmoving. Seemingly out of the blue, the song playing in the background faded out to silence, and Hoseok came out of his stupor, finally letting go of Jin and turning to face the rest of the class.
“Well done everyone!” He started clapping, and everyone copied him. “Take five, and we’ll start learning the final routine after the break.”
For the third time, Jin let out a big breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. At this rate, making it through this class was going to be near impossible.
Jin lay on the cool wooden floor starfished, eyes closed and mouth agape as he panted, attempting to catch his breath. Something hard came and smacked his abdomen hard, and grimacing, Jin peered down to find that the hard thing was a water bottle. Huh, he wondered. He had brought water with him, but he was too tired and aching to go to his bag and get it. The class had finished several minutes ago, and everyone had slowly filtered out of the room except for Jin, who was way too exhausted to move.
“Thank you, god,” Jin moaned as he took the bottle, and leaning up on an elbow, chugged most of the bottle in one go, pouring the remaining water over his head in an attempt to cool down. His shirt was already soaked in sweat by this point; he figured a little more water wouldn’t kill it. He slowly opened his eyes and found Hoseok gaping at Jin, mouth forming a perfect circle. The moment their eyes met, though, Hoseok quickly blinked and shook his head, closing his mouth. Weakly, Jin nodded his head in thanks at Hoseok’s direction, realizing that he was the one who had thrown the bottle to him, before falling back to the floor with a thump.
It didn’t escape his notice that for the first time that day, Hoseok was the one looking flustered and not Jin. Oh how the turn tables.
“I’m not god, but you’re welcome anyways,” Jin heard a voice, laughing.
“Wow, that sucked. I’m going on Yelp and writing the meanest review ever. ‘Hoseok not only kills his students via dance, but also tells terrible jokes’.” Jin replied without a beat, completely deadpan. He was completely burned out, and his brain-to-mouth filter had (clearly) gone on vacation; he didn’t have the energy to be shy around Hoseok anymore after the grueling class he had put them through. “I am the veritable king of dad jokes, don’t try me.” Hoseok kept laughing in the background. “Tell me, what kind of dance do cars do?”
“I don’t know, what kind?”
“Brake Dance.”
A few seconds of silence, followed by a “oh my god Jin, that was so bad!!” This lead to a passionate bickering match about dad jokes that lasted several minutes, all while Jin was still lying flat on the floor. Eventually the conversation lulled into a comfortable silence for a few minutes.
Jin slowly tried to move a little. “Oh my god, I’m dead. I’m actually dead. Why did you have to go so hard, we’re all beginners here. I don’t think I’ll be able to move for a week. Everything hurts,” Jin ended with a whiny tone that clearly said he was pouting.
“Oh come on, you big baby, it’s not that bad. Or are you that out of shape, old man?”
“YAH!”
After a few more seconds of silence, “Well, I know one way I could make it better.”
Jin hummed from the floor, “Hmm? And what’s that?”
“Go on a date with me.”
Jin’s eyes shot open, and he sat up straight as if he had been shocked. “W-what…you jus-…did you just…but I…” He spluttered.
“Or have you not been ogling me all class long, hmm?” Hoseok smirked.
Jin could feel a flush come over his face, and he knew this wasn’t from the exertion of dancing. He looked at the floor, determinedly not making eye contact with Hoseok.
“Cute.”
Jin groaned. “Y-you can’t just say stuff like that! If anything, you’re the cute one here. God, I’m so embarrassed,” he mumbled by the end.
“Hey, hey, it’s fine, I think you’re pretty hot too,” Hoseok said, winking at Jin. Jin groaned again, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly he felt a pair of soft hands come and hold his wrists, removing them gently from his face. Looking up, Jin was met with a pair of twinkling eyes and heart-shaped lips turned up in a nervous smile, and Jin exhaled. “So, what do you say? Wanna go out with me?”
“Yeah,” Jin breathed. His eyes flitted towards Hoseok’s lips for a second, unknowingly licking his own lips. Hoseok unconsciously mirrored the action, parting his lips. Within a split-second, the mood shifted from something light-hearted to heavy and intense.
Jin took one hand out of Hoseok’s grip, and slowly raised it to cup Hoseok’s cheek, rubbing the thumb over the cheekbone, as Hoseok leaned into the touch. “I really want to kiss you,” Jin said in a low voice.
“Please.”
Jin surged forward and met Hoseok in a sweet kiss. Their lips began moving seamlessly against each other in a kiss that remained chaste, but still full of passion and heat. Some time in between kisses Jin’s other hand rose to cup the other cheek, while Hoseok’s hands gently encircled Jin’s waist. At one point, Jin took Hoseok’s bottom lip and sucked at it, swallowing up the noises that he let out. There were no fireworks, but it felt warm, and wet, and so, so right.
After what felt like hours they parted for air, still pressing their foreheads together as they caught their breath.
“On one condition, though,” Jin panted.
“What’s that?”
“We go and eat some salsa, I’m still craving it.”
Giggling as he leaned forward again, Hoseok murmured, “Deal.”
Bonus (1 month later)
Curled up, Namjoon cowered on the couch as Jin beat him with a cushion while yelling continuously, his pleas going unheard. Unbothered, Hoseok watched the scene in front of him unfold, eating popcorn from a bowl.
“You”-hit-“knew”-hit-“it”-hit-“was”-hit-“a dance class”-hit-hit-“and still signed me up?!” Jin screeched. “Friendship cancelled!!”
“But hyung, (hyung stop hitting me for a second) I thought you knew that too!”
“If you knew me at all, you’d have known I wouldn’t go for any dance thing willingly, I’m almost as bad a dancer as you are Namjoon-ah!”
“Hey babe,” Hoseok chimed in, mouth stuffed with popcorn. “If it wasn’t for Namjoon though, we wouldn’t have met, and we wouldn’t be dating today.”
Chest heaving, Jin hit Namjoon one more time (for good measure, he said), before dropping the cushion and walking over to sit on Hoseok’s lap. Hoseok instinctively put an arm around his waist. “I suppose that’s true,” Jin sighed. He leaned over and dropped a kiss on Hoseok’s lips, before leaning back against his chest, settling into his lap. “Still, he made me go through all that, so now I should repay the favour, don’t you think?”
Hoseok smirked while Namjoon gulped, eyes darting from Jin to Hoseok rapidly.
“Maybe he should take a dance class too, just for the experience,” Jin sniggered. A soft ‘Hyung, no!’ came in the background, but Jin ignored it, contemplating Namjoon’s punishment.
“Babe, I know what we should do,” Hoseok said, as he leaned forward and whispered into Jin’s ear. They both erupted into loud guffaws, Jin’s windshield wiper laugh mingling nicely with Hoseok’s loud cackling. Namjoon could only stare bemusedly at the two of them, dreading his predicament.
One week later, Namjoon found himself at the same dance studio Jin had gone to, waiting nervously for a ballet class to start. Ballet, he thought upsettingly, that was even worse than salsa! The only consolation for Namjoon was that the teacher of the class was Hoseok’s friend, so hopefully he would be nice.
The door of the studio opened, and a man entered the room, wearing tights that clung to his muscular body and a tank top that showed way too much skin. Dropping his dance bag at the front of the room, the man turned to face the class and clapped his hands. In contrast with his well-defined body, the man had soft, pink cheeks and the brightest smile he had ever seen, a smile that made his eyes curve into small crescents. Namjoon could only stare in awe at this magnificent specimen of man.
“Hi everyone, my name is Park Jimin, and I’m going to be your ballet teacher for today!” Jimin chirped. As he spoke, he looked over the students, finally settling his gaze on Namjoon, who was standing in one corner of the room. His eyes crinkled up as he smiled even wider, the full effect of his smile focused on Namjoon.
Shit. Namjoon was fucked.