Work Text:
“This is Youngjo,” your friend introduces you. You’re overdressed for the weather, your sweater just a touch too warm for late spring, your bleached blonde bangs perpetually in your eyes.
Youngjo is built. It’s the first thing you notice. Big arms, big chest, muscles you could only dream about back then, buying your first set of dumbbells and still not used to the chalky aftertaste of protein powders. Youngjo is handsome. That’s the second thing. Even with a pimple on his chin, his face seems like something out of a magazine.
He looks chic and cool, and you can feel your tongue grow heavy and unwieldy in your mouth, ready to stutter through the next couple of words of a social dance where you’re perpetually falling short.
You bow first, too-aware of the vulnerable nape of your neck. Youngjo bows back and when he straightens up, he’s smiling. It’s a warm smile. Almost sweet. Some of the perpetual tension you’ve been carrying in the sharp overworked sinews of your body crackles and unwinds.
You step into his orbit. Your steps sync up.
*
Osaka is-
fear and hope and constant all-encompassing exhaustion. Your dreams are so close you can taste them at the back of your tongue, like iron from where you bit your cheek during day-long dance practice.
You take the subway. It’s familiar enough but you squint at the characters in advertisements that never resolve themselves into something that makes sense. Youngjo falls asleep on your shoulder, face slack and features gentle, hair spilling like dark feathers from under his bucket hat.
You watch yourself watch him in the subway window.
*
Your dream bursts like a soap bubble. It’s there one day, and gone the next, leaving you with the oily residue of a dissolving mirage. You don’t understand everything they say to you over the buzzing in your ears. It’s probably better that way.
Youngjo’s hand bumps yours under the table. You’re afraid to reach out and hold it even though you want to. Your pinkies wrap around each other. A tether. A safety net that keeps you from spilling across the ink printed papers on the conference table.
You say a cordial goodbye to the other two, find your despair mirrored in the dark of their eyes. Youngjo squeezes your shoulder, once. And disappears into the night.
*
You’re alone.
*
You get up in the morning because you know you have to but it doesn’t smooth out the worry in your mother’s brow. You do other things. Boxing and hapkido, because there’s an edge of anger in you that you’ve always held back, always carefully guarded, and now it’s closer to the surface than it’s ever been.
Your dream is gone. Maybe one day soon it’ll make a good story to tell.
*
Your phone rings.
You’re in your childhood bedroom, lying down on sheets that smell like your mother’s laundry detergent. Your idols’ faces watch you unblinkingly from the walls.
You almost don’t answer. The hole in your heart that you’ve been patching up with single-minded desperation rips open like paper.
“Hi,” you say, curl up in a ball on your side like it’ll shield you from another blow.
“I was worried you wouldn’t answer,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice. It warms you from the inside out. You stay quiet. Luckily, he’s always been good at reading your silences.
“I’m at RBW now,” and the exact words he says are blurred out by time and your own poor memory but a slowly dying ember somewhere in your chest splutters haltingly, painfully, into a flame.
“You’ll come?” he asks, and there’s a weird kind of intensity in his voice. Outside, the late afternoon has sunk fully into evening as the streetlights blink on, one by one.
“I’ll come,” you say, where half an hour ago you would have said no.
You say yes because Youngjo has always been fair to you. You say yes because you’ve watched him in subway windows, in dirty practice room mirrors, from the corner of your eye. You say yes because his hand searched for yours first.
*
You’re late for your audition. Anxiety is a living thing, dogging your steps, squeezing your heart. But when you’re on your little stage, eyes on you, your steps fall into a rhythm. Words fall from your lips in a familiar cadence. You sing and your voice is strong.
There’s silence, for a moment, as the last of the noise from the tinny speakers fades out. The director leans forward in his chair, catches your eyes.
Says, “When can you start?”.
Youngjo is waiting for you in the hallway. You hadn’t told him when you were auditioning but you suppose it makes sense that he knows.
“So?” he asks, and his expression is serious but there’s something in his eyes that you try not to dwell on. You open your mouth but nothing comes out. His expression twists into concern.
You’re shaking.
His hand circles your wrist and he tugs you into a hidden alcove under a stairway. He tucks your face into his neck and he doesn’t tell another soul about what he sees for the rest of your life.
*
It’s your choice to leave your name behind. Leedo is someone stronger, someone braver, someone sharper than what you feel. He stands on stage and his knees don’t shake. Leedo is bigger than you are. He’s everything you want to be.
You can never escape yourself entirely. It’s Leedo who stands up on stage, it’s Leedo who doesn’t stutter in the glare of the camera lens. But it’s Geonhak who cradles Dongju’s skinny body in the early hours of the morning when he’s too exhausted and homesick to stay on his feet. It’s Geonhak who puts his arm around Hwanwoong’s waist to stop him from walking into a wall because he’s sleepwalking. It’s Geonhak’s shoulder under Keonhee’s arm, holding him up. It’s Geonhak chasing Seoho around the practice room because they haven’t seen daylight in 48 hours and they’re desperate for a laugh.
It’s Geonhak, rubbing Youngjo’s back when it knots up, unwillingly memorizing the twisted pain on his features.
*
You wonder sometimes if Youngjo became Ravn for the same reason. He tells you about it once, the comic book character who gave him his name. Stories of murder and espionage and love both found and lost. You don’t understand half of it but you’ve always liked listening to him talk.
*
They lose Youngjo for a month and it’s terrifying.
You don’t remember a time where he hasn’t been living your dream at your side. You realize that you don’t want to.
When he finally returns, you coach him through the motions of your debut choreography. You watch as he pushes his body into movements it’s forgotten until it finally syncs up with yours.
*
They don’t tell you the letters are going to be read out loud, but you can guess. Three years in the industry feel both like the blink of an eye and a decade at once. You’ve picked up a few things even if you pretend otherwise for the camera.
It doesn’t make any difference. You would have written the same thing either way.
*
Thank you for bringing me here.
*
Thank you for calling me. Thank you for asking me to come. Thank you for making yourself a person worthy of my trust. Thank you for picking up the bill for the food last night. Thank you for coaching me through my English pronunciation.
For a thousand things, and a thousand more in the future, thank you.
*
The parking garage is empty and echoing by the time you finally finish your schedules. Dongju and Hwanwoong are giggling up ahead, chasing a hapless Keonhee as Seoho eggs them on, their manager trying desperately to quiet them down.
Youngjo walks by your side. You look at him in the reflection of a parked car window. He’s looking at the others, and there’s so much fondness on his face that it makes something in your chest feel cracked open.
You reach out your hand, blindly, find his already waiting. Your pinkies twist together, just for a moment. Your steps sync up.
You fall into his orbit. Again.