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“So I walk in from the left?”
“No, you walk in from the - “ Felix pauses, clearly trying to think of a way to phrase what he’s thinking, and gives up. Instead, he walks over and hops onto the stage easily, swinging himself up with one arm. He walks over to Seungmin. “You walk in from the right, because this would be the bathroom, and then - “
“Oh,” Seungmin says, comprehension dawning on him. “Because the table would be here, and then - “
“Right!”
“Okay, good,” Seungmin says, pleased with himself, and turns back to his script, flipping the page. His is covered with meticulous annotations, some from last year, some from recently, and he knows what’s written without having to look from days full of constant practice. “And then I’m standing at the window - here’s where the door would be - and it should take me a little bit to sit down.”
“You can pretend to sit down,” Felix suggests, pushing his platinum blond hair back with one hand. His other clutches his script, and he bites his lip in thought as he watches Seungmin mime sitting down on thin air, pulling out an imaginary chair. “Okay, and then we start the part of the scene where the jurors begin to talk?”
“Yeah, everyone should be here for the first scene, and then we can really start.”
“Okay, good,” Felix says, relieved, and smiles. “Do you want to go over lines now, then?”
Seungmin nods in response and drops to the floor, sitting criss-cross applesauce. He holds his script directly across from his face for a second before dropping it into his lap, hands coming up to rub at the back of his neck as he cranes his neck down to read the text. Felix follows half a beat late, pulling his knees to his chest as he sits on the dingy high school theater stage.
"I don’t think this floor is clean,” Felix comments, and gingerly leans over to peer at a suspiciously colored patch of linoleum. “Do you think that’s just...dirt?”
“It’s probably better not to think about it,” Seungmin says wisely, and clears his throat. “Okay, so I’ll start from my first line.”
“I’ll do the lines before yours in scenes,” Felix offers, squinting at the text on his packet. “And then you’ll do the same for me, once we finish the first act?”
“That works for me,” Seungmin decides, and shakes his head a little. “Okay. Juror Eight.”
“Juror Eight,” Felix echoes, amused, and rests his chin on his palm. Seungmin can see his freckles dusting his cheeks, just as prominent as they were when Seungmin first met him last fall. Seugmin blinks. Where had that thought come from?
Well. Not like it matters.
“Oh,” Seungmin starts reading, acting out his character’s lines, careful to keep a quiet, mellow inflection in his tone. “I’m sorry.”
Felix skips forward after that. Seungmin’s next line is half a page down from the first one. “Somebody’s in left field. You think he’s not guilty?”
“I don’t know,” Seungmin says quietly, and then clears his throat. That didn’t come out the way he wanted it to - it was a little too loud. He repeats it, determined to get it right. “I don’t know.”
This time, it’s better. Felix glances up at him, just to confirm that Seungmin doesn't plan on trying to repeat the line one last time, and then continues. “I never saw a guiltier man in my life. You sat right in court and saw the same thing I did. The man’s a dangerous killer. You could see it.”
Seungmin’s voice grows a little stronger. “He’s nineteen years old.”
“That’s old enough,” Felix derides, and rolls his eyes. His accent is peeking through a little. “He knifed his own father, four inches into the chest. An innocent little nineteen-year old kid. They proved it a dozen different ways. Do you want me to list them?”
“No,” Seungmin responds stiffly.
Felix rolls his neck, and then adopts a lower, gruffer tone, mimicking the next character that’s speaking to Seungmin’s. “Well, do you believe his story?”
Seungmin hesitates. “I don’t know whether I believe it or not. Maybe I don’t.”
It'd be nicer, Seungmin thinks, if he had the props around him. It's different with the stage all set up and him wearing what the character would be wearing (in this case, a relatively fine suit). It would feel different. And as an actor, maybe he shouldn't be so reliant on the ambience of the stage around him, but that type of talent's not something that comes so easily.
"So what you'd vote not guilty for?" Felix interjects, and then groans immediately after the line, shaking his head. Seungmin laughs. A year ago, Felix would have stopped saying his line as soon as he noticed that it was off, but Mr. Jae's successfully trained them to 'recite the line until the end, even if it's shitty'. Felix tries again, grinning ear-to-ear, but it's even worse. You can hear the smile in his voice this time, and Seungmin presses his lips together tightly to keep himself from laughing. "So what you vote for not guilty for?"
"Want to try again?" Seungmin offers, voice slightly shaky from holding his giggling in, and Felix mock-glares at him.
"Not anymore," Felix sniffs, and tilts his chin up haughtily. "If my talents aren't appreciated here, I'll take them elsewhere."
"I'm sorry," Seungmin apologizes, almost sincerely, and manages a mini-bow from where he's sitting. "Please continue."
Felix glances at Seungmin disdainfully, and then finally deigns to pick up his script. "Fine, but only because you're so obviously in need of my superior acting."
"I think you've got the two of us mixed up," Seungmin comments, and changes the topic right as he says that. "Anyway! Next line."
Thoroughly distracted by practicing, they continue on like this for a while. Felix excuses himself once to get water from the dirty school fountain as a last resort, citing a dry throat, and when he gets back, Seungmin temporarily forgets how to speak English halfway through a line, staring at his script blankly. Felix laughs at him for what feels like a solid half hour, even though it had probably just been a minute or two.
Eventually, they fall off track.
It’s later outside, Seungmin notes, looking at the tiny strip of sky visible through the open auditorium doors. Late enough that the sky’s turned golden and orange and pink all over, like an Instagram filter with the saturation pulled all the way up.
It’s only Seungmin and Felix that are practicing today - drama club’s self-proclaimed “practice maniacs” - but it’s nice, having just the two of them together. It reminds Seungmin of sophomore year, when he first met a bright-eyed, freckled Australian transfer student with a voice deeper than Darth Vader’s. He hadn’t liked Felix when they first met, but it was different then.
Things were different, last year. Seungmin thought Felix was trying to get his role, and Felix thought something else, because Seungmin’s not really sure what Felix thought of him back then, but it wasn’t complimentary.
“You know, I used to think you hated me,” Felix says, as if he’s reading Seungmin’s mind, and Seungmin jumps a little. He turns his gaze to Felix incredulously, eyes wide open in surprise. Felix's words are sticky-slow, like syrup dripping down a stack of pancakes. He says it self-consciously, as if he’s a little embarrassed thinking about it now. “I just thought you were - I don’t know. But I was pretty stupid back then, wasn’t I?”
“You’re still pretty stupid now,” Seungmin tells him, but his tone sounds so painfully fond that he grimaces at the sound of it for a second. He swipes his fingers over his script absentmindedly, gaze skimming over the printed letters. “But I didn’t hate you. If I did, you would know."
“You were always really honest about what you thought,” Felix says, openly warm. “You still are.”
“You are, too,” Seungmin points out, matter-of-fact and direct. He smiles, a little, open-mouthed, and glances down at the floor. “You just say things, sometimes.”
“Like what?”
“‘You really mean a lot to me, Kim Seungmin,’” Seungmin imitates, voice going down in his best imitation of a bullfrog’s croak. That’s what Felix’s voice sounds like, right? “Like that.”
“But you do it too!”
“When have I ever?” Seungmin cries out, righteously offended, and reaches out to push Felix's shoulder. Felix rocks back with the movement, the sound of his full-body chuckle erupting in the space between the two of them.
“You were all like, ‘Jeongin looks like a fairy’, all earnestly and everything. And the you told me - “
“Oh, that’s right,” Seungmin recalls suddenly, nodding for a second. “You asked me what my first impression of you was, and then I told you that you looked really handsome.”
“All seriously, too!” Felix laughs louder, and Seungmin laughs, and they laugh together, just like that.
Their laughter dies down after a while, but both of them are still smiling. Seungmin absentmindedly brings a hand to his face, cupping his cheeks, and realizes that the corners of his lips are still upturned.
It’s nice, talking like this. Seungmin thinks he’s already said that to himself already, but it’s - it’s seriously nice. He hasn’t had time to think about himself and enjoy himself like this in a while, and this feeling of not having to think too deeply about everything was something he missed without really knowing it, and now that he’s experiencing it again, the ache comes back all at once.
Felix is looking off into the distance, gaze fixed on something Seungmin can’t see. Seungmin wonders if he feels the same about the two of them.
Under half-stage light and half-sunlight, Felix looks different. Seungmin's watched him change throughout high school, had some vague awareness that he didn't look the same, but it's jarring, really looking at him now. His cheeks aren't as chubby. His blond hair is still messy from when he had carded his hands through it earlier. His eyes are warmer than Seungmin thought. He can spot Felix's freckles from a mile away. His skin tone is really gorgeous.
The more he looks, the more he...
Felix really looks different. He feels different, too. Seungmin feels like his heart is expanding like a balloon full of air about to burst, like a video of a bowl of dough that’s been left out to rise in four-times speed. Like his heart is swelling, and the air is being swept out of him, bit by bit.
A slow feeling. A gradual feeling. Something Seungmin noticed just before it bubbled right over him, made him overflow.
Seungmin can’t pull his gaze away, for some reason. He knows he’s being obvious, it’s obvious that he’s staring, but Felix is so and he’s so and everything about him is so -
(Oh, Seungmin’s head goes. Ah. Now I get it.)
Felix seems to pick up on it, too. His gaze tilts over to Seungmin. He blinks in question.
The air changes, maybe. The atmosphere. It feels a little more intimate.
“What are you doing?” Felix asks. The question sounds - not small, exactly, but open. Vulnerable. Seungmin swallows, unable to look away.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. He tilts his head a little, and thinks carefully. “I think - I want to kiss you?”
Felix blinks, slow and shocked, and Seungmin can’t stop watching him. It feels a little like when Seungmin can’t fall asleep because he can’t get comfortable, that hyper-awareness of all the parts of your body. The little hairs brushing against your cheeks, the way the pillowcase felt against your skin. He feels that now, here, in the too-warm auditorium, watching this blond-haired boy from Australia that he thought was out to get him at first.
“I,” Felix says, starts, and then stops. He pauses, as if unsure of what to say, and can’t meet Seungmin’s eyes. “Is that...are you asking me?”
“There’s no one else here,” Seungmin says, quite reasonably, and puts down his script. His voice sounds a lot calmer than he feels. “Can I? Is that okay?”
“This is so awkward,” Felix says. He’s pink now. “I mean - I guess - do you want to? I mean, you do, but…”
He trails off.
Seungmin nods.
“Okay,” Felix says after a beat of both of them sitting in silence. “So. Um. How do you…?”
Seungmin scoots closer, frowning a little in thought, and feels distinctly warm all over from embarrassment. He doesn’t - he kind of wants to laugh, but he doesn’t really...it feels strange, that’s all. It’s like there’s all this giddiness inside of him, this awkwardness that’s making his voice a little higher-pitched out of excitement, that feeling like he’s laughing, but he can’t laugh. He’s serious about this. “I think...we just...kind of?”
He leans in, and then leans back, and then leans in again. Felix leans in the tiniest centimeter forward in response, and then stops, as if he’s unsure of what he’s doing. Seungmin relates.
God. Felix’s lips are so close.
(It’s so awkward.)
Seungmin kisses him, just once. Lightly. On the mouth. Felix’s mouth.
He freezes, a little, once he’s actually done it. Felix’s lips are really soft, or at least he thinks they are. It’s weird. It’s a little different, feeling things on your lips, but it’s nice. It’s really nice, but it’s also really awkward, and what are they supposed to do afterward? He draws away, gingerly at first, and then all at once. He buries his face into his hands, the embarrassment crashing onto him like a wave.
“Have you ever done that before?” he asks, muffled into his hands.
Felix sounds a little like he’s been knocked off-kilter. “Done what?”
“Confessed. Kissed. That kind of thing.”
“Not really.”
“Oh. Me, too.”
They’re quiet for a second. Seungmin peeks through his fingers. “Do you want to...try it again?”