Chapter Text
Zam was a naturally curious person. He loved knowing things, especially things about other people. He loved knowing other people! Which is why when he saw the new guy had put his stuff in the cubby right above his, he was interested.
Listen, Zam’s only doing this because of the weird circumstances the school has put him in. First, they tell him that the only ballet class he could possibly take overlaps with rehearsal for his other company. (Even though he told them about the scheduling conflict?) Meaning he had to leave the damn studio fifteen minutes before class officially ended. Then, they had to put a mysterious new guy in Zam’s class- only his ballet class! And then, they had to make it a rule to not talk during class! So he couldn’t learn anything about this guy!
How was Zam supposed to know things about him? He didn’t take modern with Zam and the rest of the class before ballet. So the only time Zam saw this guy was during class when, again, they weren’t allowed to talk.
Obviously, something had to be done.
Zam had about five minutes before it would be absolutely necessary to start driving across town for rehearsal with his other company. Surely there was something he could learn before then.
Zam put himself at eye level with the new guy’s cubby and started to observe. You can tell a lot about a person by their bag and shoes, Zam thought. As a dancer, the only place to really express yourself was truly your dance bag. Zam’s own bag was a yellow duffle with keychains clipped to practically every zipper. He had every kind of dance shoe imaginable and at least two different sets of dress out clothes, plus an extra pair of tights. You never know, okay. He messed up one time and had to wear the school's clothes. Never again.
The new guy's bag was unimaginably tiny compared to the rest of the bags in the dress out room. It was one of those cross body sling bags and it looked like it could fit a water bottle, a pair of shoes and maybe an extra uniform. Most of what the guy had wasn’t even in the bag, just sitting in the cubby. There was a big orange hoodie shoved sort of on top of a pair of chunky combat boots.
Damn, okay. Zam was not expecting shoes like that from this guy. He was so shy during class. Zam certainly wasn’t offended though, those shoes fuck.
Today was the first day the new guy had been in Zam’s class, even though this was the second class of the week. He had heard through school gossip that he tried out for B level, but ended up being placed in Zam’s D level. Personally Zam would have placed him in the professional division, but you have to audition to get into that. Plus Zam could see minor flaws in the guys dancing, very minor. He was clearly trained from a young age. But maybe not in ballet? There was definitely something off with his movement quality.
None of this was evident by this guy's bag though. Actually, there were so little things in his bag that the whole snooping thing really gave Zam nothing.
That was fine. Whatever. There were other methods of getting information. Zam reached back into the cubby. His fingers immediately came into contact with the hoodie, and wow was it soft- Zam almost checked the tag to see where it was from. He heard the jingle of car keys in the front pocket of it but decided to leave those alone. He didn’t want to be caught looking like he was gonna steal this guy's car. Finally his eyes caught on what he was looking for, a phone.
Picking the phone up automatically made it turn on, revealing a basic sunset picture lockscreen. Zam cringed until he remembered that he had a sunset lockscreen for about six months too. Well. Ignoring that.
There wasn’t much Zam could see with the phone still locked. But there was one thing he could do! It wasn’t part of the original plan but Zam was going to go through with it anyway. He was a naturally curious person. He needed to know more stuff about the new guy.
Zam had only done this once, and it was with a friend he already knew. But that wasn’t going to stop him. He was a man with a plan.
He swiped left to open the photo app and flipped it to the front facing camera. Zam’s hair was a little messy and he was still horribly sweaty from class but he stayed strong and propped the phone up on the guys boots. Zam gave in and ruffled his hair once to hopefully make it look less like it was sprayed to stand straight up. Then he took a deep breath and pressed record.
Pangi didn’t find the video until late at night. He was awful with managing his time and he always put off doing his homework until after his afternoon classes. So the next time he opened his photos app was when he was laying in bed, about to go to sleep.
Pangi regularly cleans out his photos app at night and deletes any pictures that he doesn’t need. (Red calls him a freak because of that.) He was in the middle of moving several point-five pictures of Woogie to the trash when he came across a video that wasn’t taken by him, and that he definitely didn’t remember saving to his phone.
The video automatically started playing when Pangi scrolled onto it so he pressed pause. In frame was a guy with bleached blonde hair and one hand paused halfway into a wave. He’s cute, Pangi thought. And then mentally berated himself for looking at a single frame of someone and deciding they were cute. His standards were in the fucking gutter.
Anyway, back to the task at hand. Who the hell was this guy? It wasn’t until Pangi looked at the background that he realized that the video was recorded in the dress out room of his new ballet school. Then it clicked, this guy is from his class! He was the one that left early. He straight up flashed the teacher a peace sign and walked out. Pangi honestly had respect for him for that.
But did he get Pangi’s phone out of his bag and record a video on it? Interesting method of communication. But points for creativity.
Pangi didn’t want to get up and get his earbuds, so he just put his phone on a really low volume. Hopefully it didn’t wake his sisters up in the next room over. Pangi cupped a hand under the speaker on his phone to hopefully amplify the noise to him and not anyone else. Then he slid the video back to the beginning and pressed play.
“Hi!” The guy in the video waved enthusiastically. “Sorry to literally take your phone out of your bag and, um- record something on it. That's a little bit weird of me. I wanted to talk to you, because you’re like- a really good dancer! So I just took your phone. I know. I’m sorry.” It was physically upsetting to Pangi that this guy was not only looks-wise cute, but speech-patterns cute too.
“My name’s Zam. I forgot your name.” He- Zam spoke so bluntly that Pangi laughed at full volume at 11:30 at night, less than ten feet away from his sleeping younger siblings. He slapped a hand over his mouth in surprise but let the video keep playing.
“Anyway,” Zam completely ignored what he just said and continued talking. “You don’t take modern before class and you dance differently than everyone else here. You’re more grounded,” he observed. “Do you dance somewhere else? What’s your main style?” With those questions he got closer to the camera. Pangi instinctively leaned backwards as if Zam was invading his personal space right here, right now.
“I’m curious about you man,” Zam propped his chin up on his hands. “The way you dance is really cool. Your um….. movement quality!” Zam popped back up to sitting normally with an excited expression. Pangi was not going to make it out of this video alive!
“Yeah so if you wanna record me a message back, we could get a little thing going here.” Zam wiggled his eyebrows and then reached to the side. He grunted as he lifted a yellow duffle bag into frame. “This is my bag. My phone will probably be in here unless it's not and then it's in my shoes. If you see a message on it, no you don’t. Especially if it’s from Spoke.”
Zam put his bag down and pulled his phone out to look at the screen. “I normally have it on DND while I’m in class- oh shit, I have to go!” He quickly scrambled to shove a few things into his bag. Then he reached for Pangi’s phone and waved in the same motion.
“Byeee ! I’ll see you next wee-” Zam cut himself off mid sentence by ending the recording. He then presumably tossed Pangi’s phone back into his bag and ran out the door.
Pangi sat still for a second while he processed. Then he started scrolling to random seconds in the video, trying to intentionally catch Zam mid blink or with a weird expression. He ended up with the frame right before Zam leaned to grab his duffle. He was looking to the side with his eyes half closed and his right hand in motion. His hair was swinging in front of his face.
Pangi narrowed his eyes at the picture and thought, “is he still cute?” Unfortunately his brain answered “yes”.
Well some people are just objectively cute, Pangi told himself. He plugged his phone in and tossed it off the bed. He will deal with this tomorrow. Or make his friends deal with it tomorrow.
“Pangi, if I’m being completely honest…..” Red swiped back and forth on Pangi’s phone. He was watching the video that Zam had left Pangi yesterday. He was also annoyingly holding the phone so that Pangi couldn't see which part he was looking at.
“Actually I’m not sure. This could be very good or very bad for you,” Red handed Pangi’s phone back to him. It was paused on the first frame where Zam was waving at the camera. “You gotta get me more intel before I can make a decision.” Red tossed an arm over Pangi’s shoulders and pulled him closer. “I’m glad that I’m your relationship guru though.”
“I’m not sure that I should even trust your judgment, man.” Pangi ducked under Red’s arm. “Your type is Ash .”
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with Ash and I’s relationship,” Red argued. He sat up so he could cross one leg over the other and put hand over his heart. He was clearly being sarcastic which made Pangi worry just a little. But also it was Ash and Red so how not- worried should he be about them.
Pangi hummed and laid backwards onto the marley floor of the dance room. “I want to record a video back for him but I don’t know what to say.”
“Bro, he literally asked you questions,” Red frowned down at him. “Just answer them. It doesn’t have to be a speech or anything.”
Before Pangi could open his mouth to argue back, Woogie rolled to the floor next to them. “What’s the gossip? Also, she's changing the beginning of the third section.” He pointed behind him to their dance teacher who was standing at the front of the room directing the dancers around her.
Pangi perked up immediately. “What’s she changing it to? I don’t want to look dumb.” He started to get up but was stopped by Red’s hands on both of his shoulders. “You’re not even in the beginning of the third section.” Red shoved Pangi back to a sitting position. “Calm down. Tell Woogie about your crush.”
“I don’t have a crush!” Pangi yelped at the same time that Woogie exclaimed “Pangi has a crush?”
Pangi whacked Red over the head and slapped a hand over Woogie’s mouth before he could say anything else. He opened his own mouth to once again defend himself but was interrupted.
“Pangi, please get bitches. You deserve it.” One of their classmates yelled from across the room. Pangi sighed exasperatedly and covered his face while Red shot their classmate a thumbs up and yelled “we’re workin’ on it” back.
“I haven’t even talked to him yet! You’re literally making shit up!” Pangi leaned back on his hands and kicked Red in the leg, making him yelp and pull his legs underneath him. Luckily before they could devolve into a full kicking match Woogie asked, “wait, is that what you guys were talking about at lunch?”
“Yeah, yeah. Pangi, show him the video.” Red gestured with one hand and leaned over to stretch his hamstring. Pangi and Woogie moved to stretch too. If they sat still for too long their teacher would yell at them for being lazy. Plus stretching just helped them stay warm while their teacher worked with other dancers.
Pangi opened his phone to the video of Zam again and slid it across the floor to Woogie who immediately leaned down to watch. Halfway through the video Woogie looked up at Pangi and told him, “he’s definitely your type.”
Pangi dropped his forehead to the floor in exasperation. “I’m not trying to date him! I haven’t even met him. He doesn’t even know if I saw this or not!”
Red laughed. “Yeah but you did ‘cause you clean your camera roll every night like a freak .” Pangi rolled his eyes but graciously ignored that comment.
“I’m going to record something back,” he decided. “On Monday.”
“You don’t have that class again until Monday?” Red asked. “It’s Thursday.”
“Well Red, I’m not a freak like you who has an afternoon class every single day! I’m only taking ballet for technique because I couldn't get a ballet class in my school schedule this year. And my old studio sucked.”
“Go to Soc,” Red shrugged. Pangi and Woogie sighed in unison. Red literally did this every single time anyone talked about afternoon classes. This guy was a walking advertisement for his dance studio even though he skipped most of his classes and hated how they tried to put him on their competition team. The math really wasn’t mathing.
“ No , because they'll make me take seven classes a week like you!” Pangi turned to Woogie and guested for him to support him.
“I don’t know why you’re asking me for an opinion,” Woogie leaned back smugly. “I only dance at school.”
“ Fuck you, man,” Pangi sighed.
“He knows his limits, what a guy.” Red knocked shoulder with Woogie.
“No, it’s just that everywhere else sucks,” Woogie repeated Pangi’s words from earlier. Red gasped and began furiously defending his studio.
Evidently they got too loud because their teacher yelled at them for not working. And then she called everyone out to go over the counts of the group phrase from the second section of their piece.
“Hey, you’re gonna send a video back, right?” Red knocked Pangi in the arm as they walked to the center of the room.
Pangi nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’m a nice person.”