Chapter Text
“So, I have good news and bad news.”
Heeseung lets out what can only be known as a long-suffering sigh as he turns to face his younger friend, giving him a weary look and trying to find it in himself to respond.
See, he may have only known Niki for two years, but as the top dancers at their academy, they’d spent a lot of time together. And, fraught as it may have been in the beginning, when they’d clashed over differences in opinion, maturity, and well, just generally who was a better dancer, they’d become close. So close he thought of him almost more like a brother. And, much like a younger brother, Niki had devoted himself wholeheartedly to making Heeseung’s life chaotic. So, as one might imagine, when he started a conversation in such a way… Heeseung knew to have some trepidation.
“Why does it feel like whenever you say that, it turns out to actually just be bad news and even badder news?”
The younger boy shakes his head like a dog that’s trying to dry itself off, bleached blonde hair swinging to the sides, before humming an mm-mm in denial and shouting, “It’s not! It’s not, hyung, I swear.” He puts one hand up with the other covering his heart, as if to tell him he’s really serious. The thing is, Heeseung believes that. And, with Niki, that’s often the scariest part.
The boy spins around in the desk chair he’d been sitting in since they’d gotten back from practice and grabs his laptop, only to shut it and spin back around just as quickly with it held tightly against his chest.
Heeseung’s not sure if this is all really meant to scare him less, but he can say with absolute certainty that the intense look the teenager hits him with as he faces him again only works to raise his fear levels that much higher. He frowns at him, eyes shifting back and forth between the other’s eyes and the laptop in his arms, and waits with bated breath for him to say something.
“So. …Good news first or bad? Actually,” he puts the laptop down with one hand and waves the other back and forth as if to signify that was wrong somehow. “It’s not really even bad news. More like good news and just ok news. Actually, it might even be kind of fun. So, like, good news and even bett-?”
Heeseung blinks for awhile, waiting for Niki to finish, before cutting in to respond, “Bad news.”
The other looks confused for a moment, seemingly having forgotten his initial question. “Huh?”
“I want the bad news first.”
They stare at each other for a moment, Niki pursing his lips and looking off to the side slightly irritatedly, before scratching the back of his head and meeting the other’s eyes again.
“Ok, well it doesn’t really work in that order actually, so I’ll just start like this: You still wanted to go to that dance camp, right?”
Heeseung’s eyes brighten for the first time since this conversation began and he tells him without much preamble that, “YES?” He absolutely does? Of course? He and Niki have only been discussing it for months, doing all they can to see if their dance academy would find the funds to send them, trying to scrape together the funds themselves when they realized that wasn’t happening, before inevitably remembering that they’re a 15 year old and a broke college student who can barely afford ramyeon without his rich roommate buying it for him.
Needless to say, they’d all but given up on that dream by now, or so he thought.
“Alright, so… I think I found a way we can.”
“You did?!”
Heeseung sits up from his usual spot at the foot of Niki’s bed, eyes sparkling as he presses his palms into his knees and leans forward eagerly.
“How?! There were hardly any vacant hotels in the city, let alone one cheap enough for us to afford for an entire week.”
“Ok, welll… what if I told you I found solutions to both of those?”
Heeseung frowns, waiting for him to elaborate, and the other boy sighs, pushing his hair off his forehead and shifting his head from side to side as if he’s about to get to that “just ok” news about now.
“Alright, so… it’s not… strictly speaking,” he leaves his laptop sitting in his lap to reach up and make air quotes, “‘in the city.’ BUT!! But! It’s also not strictly speaking ‘cheap enough,’ cause it’s not cheap… it’s free.” He raises his eyebrows and snaps, before pointing at Heeseung as if this is supposed to be the selling point, but it honestly only raises extra concern.
“…How is it free?”
Niki breathes in a very deep breath, so deep Heeseung thinks he’s about to go for a dive, and he considers that perhaps that’s a signal for what direction this conversation’s about to go.
“Ok, so… you really want to go to this, right?”
“…Yes…”
“So, then,” he takes a long pause, staring at Heeseung completely deadpan, before asking probably about the last thing Heeseung could’ve come up with even if he’d had all day to guess what possibly could’ve come next.
“How do you feel about ghost hunting?”
“Excuse me.”
“You said you’re not scared of ghosts, right!! Remember? You said that just last week, when I tried to make you and Jake watch that show, you said you weren’t scared and just didn’t want him to be.”
Heeseung blinks a few times, as if trying to clear his vision and looks to the side, staring blankly at a Michael Jackson poster on the teen’s wall and racking his brain for any sense he can make out of all this.
“I am… so confused at the direction this conversation took.”
“Ok, ok, look.” The boy finally opens his laptop back up and turns it around to show Heeseung a photo of a very large, very old brick house, vines twisting up the sides in a way that Heeseung isn’t quite sure is supposed to be aesthetic. The sides they’re covering are made of bricks so ancient that they’re not even a color you’d consider to be “brick” anymore, and they’re all stained in varying degrees in a way that he’s this time sure isn’t supposed to be aesthetic.
“Oh, right, that show. The one that made Jake cry.”
“Huh?”
“Netflix.”
“Oh. Haunting of Bly Manor.”
“Yea, this is the house from that. This is Bly Manor.”
“What? No. This is where we’re staying.”
Heeseung blinks at the boy a few times, looks briefly back down at the house for a few minutes, then looks at him again, before finally requesting, “Ok. Start from the beginning, what are you talking about?”
Niki sighs, turning his laptop around and closing it in one motion, then leaning forward with his hands resting on it and elbows out, staring Heeseung down in determination.
“So, I thought I’d check one last time for places outside the city to see if we could maybe afford any of those. It turns out, no, we could not. Unless, just checking one last time, you want your rich roommate to pay for us..?”
Heeseung’s previously wide, confused eyes narrow at the mention of this (not for the first time.) Niki knows Jake’s name too. They’ve all hung out multiple, multiple times. Heeseung has gone on to Niki about him even more times. Yet, whenever this topic of conversation comes up, he’s suddenly his “rich roommate.”
“I told you I’m not doing that. I don’t want him to think I’m using him for his money.”
“Ugh,” the teenager flings his hand at him in dismissal, then continues on with his spiel.
“So, WITH THAT IN MIND, we have no other options here, remember. So, I found this one place that didn’t have a price listed, but there was a number and I called the owner to ask how much it was. Well, get this: before I could even get that far, she told me it closed after only a few months cause it had a lot of bad reviews. But they weren’t even about the place or anything. The place is fine. Everybody just thought it was haunted!” He ends with a flourish, as if this is somehow the selling point, but when he’s met with only a blank stare in return, he clears his throat and quickly blurts out the final bit of his explanation in one big breath.
“Anyway, long story short: I told her I was a ghost hunter and was interested in looking into what was bothering the guests. I said I’d need a week. Oh, I also may have told her I could exorcise it. But we’ll see about that. Maybe I can google it, I don’t know,” he finishes with a mumble, opening his laptop again and typing something in.
This is where Heeseung finally breaks from the almost trance-like state he’d been in since the start of this conversation, feeling more as if he were in some sort of fever dream than a real life conversation with a real, 100% serious person. He looks up to the ceiling for a moment, as if calling upon some higher power for help, before putting his head down and rubbing his temples, then sitting up and staring at the boy, wondering where to begin.
“…You’re not a ghost hunter.”
“Yea, but I saw that ghost that one time.”
Heeseung narrows his eyes and drops his hand from his temple.
“Jake and I both already know you only made that up to try and scare us.”
“And I already have the equipment.”
At this, he drops his laptop onto the duvet and ducks underneath his bed, loudly digging around for something, before pulling out what appears to be only a slightly out of date radio.
“…That’s just a radio.”
Niki rolls his eyes, dropping it to his side and telling Heeseung, as if it’s an undisputed fact, “Yea, but it’s so old, no one’s gonna know what it is anyway. Plus, I think any radio will do, I googled it some.”
Heeseung begins massaging his temples once again, mumbling, “I think you’re forgetting not everyone in this world is 12… Wait. Does this woman know how old you are? You really think she’s gonna buy all this when a high school student shows up?”
“I look older than I am!”
“You look 16 at the most. Are there a lot of 16 year old professional ghost hunters?”
He tsks and looks off mid-eye roll, then back down at his duvet to start fiddling with a string on it, leaving Heeseung to stare at him questioningly while the silence stretches on.
Finally, he mumbles, “And anyway, I may have told her I had like… a team of ghost hunters. So.” He looks up, meeting Heeseung’s eyes, looking back down at the string, then meeting them again, before the older of the two finally understands what he’s getting at, eyes widening as he raises his eyebrows and shakes his head.
“NO.”
“Why not?! You wanna do this just as much as I do, and you’re right, who’s gonna take one 15 year old ghost hunter seriously? She’ll turn me away at the door and we’ll have to turn all the way around and come back, we’ll have wasted all our money to get there! And didn’t you say you wanted to work with this choreographer since you started dancing? You’re gonna give up on your dreams just like that when I practically have it laid all out for you right there with hardly any effort even needed on your part?”
Heeseung groans rather loudly, mussing his own hair and planting his face into the palms of his hands to think for a moment.
“Can pretending to be a ghost hunter to scam some poor woman for an entire week really count as ‘hardly any effort on my part?’”
“She won’t even be there, you’ll seriously hardly have to do anything. Just show up, go along with what I say, and get an entire week left alone to train under your idol and stay for free in a mansion.
Heeseung escalates his groaning til it reaches a crescendo and he looks up from the palms of his hands to stare silently at the wall.
A grin stretches across the teenager’s face that tells Heeseung more than he even knows himself that he’s about to give in to this. This is really happening, they’re going to scam some woman to stay in a haunted house probably an entire hour or more outside New York City so they can go to a dance camp. He isn’t proud of it. But then, when is he ever when he and Niki are left to their own devices?
“Fine. But when we tell this story to the police, we’re making it clear it was your idea. You can’t be tried as an adult yet.”
Niki jumps up, whacking his bed and yelling a “WOOO!” in victory, trying to high five Heeseung and getting the least enthusiastic response in return. He shakes the others’ shoulders, his body limply swaying back and forth as his dark brown hair falls into his face, obstructing his vision.
“Come on, relax, it’s gonna be fine. Better than fine, it’s gonna be amazing. I mean, this is what we’ve been hoping for for months, right? And we finally found a way to do it. You’re gonna meet your favorite choreographer. I’m gonna become the best dancer in the world. We should be excited.”
Heeseung’s mouth, which had started biting on his nails somewhere along the line, stretches into a smile as he finally meets the other’s eyes, his own sparkling with excitement for the first time as the reality of getting to do the only thing they had talked about for the last few months sets in. Yes, it may not have been… ideal, but he had to hand it to the kid, he really was resourceful. If it were left up to Heeseung himself, he’s sure they never would’ve gotten to go at all.
“There we go,” Niki says, snapping and pointing at his smile. “By the way, we’re gonna need Jake.”
“Ok, no. Hell no, I’m not getting him involved in this.”
“But I told her I had a team!”
“Yea, and I thought that was you and me!”
Niki looks at Heeseung as if he’s an absolute fool and tells him, “Hyung. That’s not a team, that’s a pair.”
Heeseung takes a deep intake of breath before looking off in exasperation and just staring at the wall for another moment. Finally, he throws his hands up and says, “Well, forget it then, it’s off.”
“What?!” Niki stands up suddenly. “Why, weren’t you excited just a second ago?”
Heeseung grabs his shoes and starts putting them on, officially wanting no more of this nonsense.
“Yea, that was before you told me I needed to subject my innocent roommate who is scared to death of ghosts to this bullshit.”
Niki stares at him with a judgmental look of all things. That should be how Heeseung is looking at him right now.
“So you really think we’re gonna see ghosts here.”
“Well-” Heeseung stutters, pausing in the middle of tying his shoestring. “No, I mean, of course not. Ghosts aren’t even real.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Ugh.” He sits up on the bed, leaving his half-tied shoestrings to fall to the sides of his shoe. “No, but,” he puts his beanie on and scratches the back of his head. “You know Jake does.”
“Yea, well, that’s why you just don’t tell him.”
“Oh, my god. This is why you’re single.”
“Hey.” Niki glares down at him. “You’re also single. I’m trying to help you out with that.”
“By getting me to lie to him?!”
“No, by getting you a free vacation with the guy you like. Didn’t you say he was going back home for break if you’re not gonna be around? So, do you want him to go spend spring break with a bunch of hot Australian people, or do you want him to spend spring break with you in the city of love?”
“That’s Paris,” Heeseung corrects him, but he’s biting his nails again while he takes everything the younger told him into account.
He’s not… technically wrong. Well, he’s wrong about a lot. But he isn’t wrong about Jake, not really. Heeseung had been agonizing over how to make a move on him practically since the day they’d become roommates and he didn’t feel like he’d gotten all that much closer since, to be honest. He’s been sort of just hoping he would do it instead but there’s a part of him that still isn’t sure he feels the same way.
See, Jake is unfortunately the sweetest guy in the entire world, and as much as Heeseung loves that that means he practically showers him in devotion and affection, it also means Heeseung is left hyper-analyzing every little bit of it, wondering just how much of it means anything and what doesn’t. Niki is tired of hearing him go over it, he knows.
And he’s right, there is a part of him that worries, if there is something there and Heeseung didn’t make his intentions known by now, what if he does go off for a week and find someone else? Jake was popular back home, he knows that much. And he practically gets better looking every day, he knows that even more.
When Heeseung had told him he wouldn’t be going home for break, Jake actually offered to take him to Australia with him. Which, Niki insisted was the most obvious sign that he was into him he could possibly get. But Heeseung still wasn’t sure. He had to ask himself, could he see any situation in which Jake had a roommate, any roommate, whose family was in a different country and was always left on campus during breaks, who he didn’t ask to come visit his own family with him if they wanted to? He decided the answer was no.
Niki told him he was crazy. That he’d be even crazier if he didn’t go.
And he would’ve, romantic intentions on Jake’s part or no. If it didn’t go against Heeseung’s one rule he’d had since the day he learned Jake was wealthy. Never make him feel like he’s interested in him for his money. And an expensive vacation to another continent definitely feels like it could infringe upon that. So… he said no.
“Listen, you’re the idiot that didn’t wanna go to Australia with him.”
Heeseung starts to cut in, then Niki beats him to it, “I know, I know, your dumb money rule. But if he spends money on his own ticket to go somewhere with you… that’s fine, right?”
Heeseung bites harder on his nail, nose scrunching up as he stares a hole into the wall. Niki sits back down and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“How long have you liked this guy now? Right, a long time, and I’m tired of hearing about it.”
Heeseung drops his hand from his mouth and glares at the younger boy.
“LISTEN, I’m just saying… are you ever gonna do anything about it at this point? This could be the perfect opportunity; You get out of your same old boring environment and it won’t seem so scary to change things between you guys. Plus, ghosts or no, he’s scared of everything so he’ll probably be all over you.”
Heeseung glares harder.
“I’m just saying!”
“I’m not trying to seduce him with fear, Niki.”
“I know that, but am I not right? Remember when I told you guys about that ghost I saw? He was clinging all over you the entire night.”
Heeseung’s leg starts thumping on the teen’s bedroom floor as he frowns at the wall again, eyes shifting back to Niki’s every once in a while while he thinks.
“I’m not gonna scare him on purpose though.”
“I didn’t say you should! You don’t believe in ghosts, right? So then what’s to even be scared of there? It’s just a big, old house. And you guys can do some romantic shit around New York after class.”
The thrumming of Heeseung’s leg against the wooden floor gets louder and Niki knows he’s won.
“You know I’m right.”
Heeseung’s eyes shift to Niki’s one final time.
“Romantic week in New York City with Jake…” he holds one hand to the side, then lifts the other to match, as if he’s weighing something. “Lonely week away from Jake, wondering what he’s doing in Australia without y-”
Heeseung suddenly stands up, stomping his feet loudly on the floor and glowering down at the teenage boy.
“Don’t oversell it,” he says through gritted teeth, then holds his hand out. “We don’t tell him about the ghost shit. Seriously, you do that and leave us out of it completely.”
Niki hops up and grabs his outstretched hand, shaking it enthusiastically. He grins.
“Absolutely.”