[infinite] points of contact
points of contact
infinite, dongwoo/hoya, woohyun
pg, 3262w
hoya gets the dance partner he wanted, and an obstacle he didn't.
--written for spire_cx for infinitesanta 2012; originally posted here.
ao3 mirror
Five weeks before the end of the semester, Kim Dongmin’s contact improvisation class starts work on their end-of-year group choreography. Hoya enters the studio with a tension in his shoulder blades that he tries to stretch out, rolling his neck from side to side and swinging his arms back and forth as he makes his way to the front of the room, where Dongmin has gathered his students around him to announce the groups they’ll be working with. His eyes scan the others, sizing up the mix of first-years and second-years. He’s waiting for his own name, of course, but more than that, the name he wants to hear is-
“Jang Dongwoo,” calls Dongmin, and Hoya’s head swivels to where he sees Dongwoo standing with his dyed hair pushed back off his forehead, hands resting against his back.
He’s only danced with Dongwoo once in class before, for five minutes in an improvisation session, but the impression it left on him is strong. He’s spent his whole life around the weight of other bodies, and the whole semester in Dongmin’s class learning to respond to it, but something about the way Dongwoo moved and reacted had felt different, not new but already old and comfortable. He had curved his body around Hoya’s smoothly and naturally, their forearms fitting together like interlocking pieces, and Hoya could feel him responding to every little shift he made, like he already knew where Hoya was going. After their time was up, Dongwoo had grinned and slapped him on the back and returned to his side of the room, but since that day all Hoya’s wanted has been to feel Dongwoo’s body roll against his again-in any context, really, though he tries not to think about that too much.
“With Lee Howon,” Dongmin continues, and everything in Hoya’s body surges. Dongwoo’s eyes find his across the room, and he lifts his eyebrows and gives him an open-mouthed smile. Hoya’s lungs constrict at this and he looks away. “And Nam Woohyun,” finishes Dongmin, and Hoya’s eyebrows raise on their own.
He looks up and finds Woohyun standing close to Dongwoo, leaning in and talking to him, his head nearly on Dongwoo’s shoulder. They both glance over to where Hoya stands, and Woohyun gives a little wave. Hoya tilts his head and squeezes his shoulder blades together. The tension seems justified, now.
Hoya joins them after Dongmin’s called all the groups, and Woohyun grins at him. “Welcome.” Both he and Dongwoo are a year ahead of Hoya and they already know each other, giving encouraging cheers when the other is called on to demonstrate or chatting in the hallway after class lets out. Hoya feels uneasy standing with them. He tells himself it’s because they’re unknown variables, even though he’s seen them both dance plenty of times, either out of the corner of his eye as the class goes through warm-ups or when one or the other is called on to demonstrate a move in front of the class. He knows that Dongwoo has a busy, creative mind and that Woohyun is always willing to push himself. What he doesn’t know is what he has to contribute to that combination.
Well, he thinks, let’s find out.
* * *
Contact improvisation, by its very name, is about interaction. Unlike other types of dance and even contemporary dance, the object of the form is not so much to develop an aesthetic line as it is to constantly generate and develop points of contact, whether they’re with the floor, the wall, or another body.
At this point in the semester they’re acquainted with the ritual of getting into starting position, glancing at each other’s eyes and feet to gauge where to go and where to stop. Woohyun bumps into Dongwoo and giggles, which throws Hoya off, and he has to inhale deeply through his nose, finding centre on the balls of his feet.
It’s hard to incorporate a third, and at first every series of movements inevitably results in a pair working together and the third person at the side occasionally searching for a way in. After a bit of fumbling on the spot from all of them, Woohyun drifts away and Hoya and Dongwoo approach each other.
At the first contact of the back of Dongwoo’s wrist with his, then their forearms and elbows and triceps as they flow against each other, Hoya’s breath catches in his throat. The memory of working with Dongwoo has been at the back of his mind every time he dances, and it feels as right as he’d remembered. Dongwoo’s movements are fluid and loose, counter to Hoya’s own precise pushes, and without speaking the two of them settle into an arrangement: Hoya moves and leads, Dongwoo responds. Hoya introduces a new point of contact or begins sinking to the floor, and Dongwoo rolls against his body or leans in, following his centre of gravity. He’s not heavy, but solid, offering enough resistance for Hoya to react to while still following through with his movement. When they lock eyes, his gaze is deep and narrowed, but he's smiling as if he's enjoying himself. Hoya holds his eyes for a beat too long and the movement of his leg stutters a little, throwing him slightly off-balance.
When Dongwoo slinks out and Woohyun comes in, the difference is tangible. Unlike Dongwoo’s constant flow, Woohyun’s movements are uneven, switching between careful and slow in one moment and hard and purposeful in another as he tries to compensate for whatever he’s last done. Hoya finds himself pressing back against his more forceful pushes, as if they were fighting, not dancing, and Woohyun’s response to these is to pull back slightly, taking away from Hoya’s followthrough. When their exchange of contact is successful, Hoya feels that Woohyun’s body is tough with muscle, and rolling off him feels like rolling off a wall or the floor, without any give.
Dongwoo and Woohyun should be the combination of total opposites, a steady, ongoing flow versus a choppy, uneven stream. But they have the added advantage of knowing each other, and Hoya can see how Dongwoo seamlessly adjusts to Woohyun's changes in tempo and rhythm, and the way he rebounds off Woohyun's solidness rather than trying to push into it. Woohyun's movements become more confident and casual: he'll lift Dongwoo’s wrist with the back of his hand and rotate his arm up, guiding him in a certain direction, or he’ll twist around him and drape over his waist, not shrinking away from contact but reaching for it.
As he watches them, Hoya finds himself fixed to his spot on the floor instead of moving. He knows he’s supposed to be finding a way in, that these are just tests and their ultimate goal is to dance as three. But in the alternately closing and expanding gaps between their bodies, he can’t see a space for himself.
* * *
The next day, Hoya’s sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when Dongwoo and Woohyun sit next to him at the same time. Hoya usually eats alone, working methodically through his lunch until it's done, but he makes room for them without complaint. If nothing else, maximizing the time they spend together will probably improve how they work, he thinks.
As they chat about their plans for the rest of the day, Hoya notices how Woohyun picks at his food, taking the smallest pieces of meat first and stirring through his rice without picking it up. Woohyun catches him looking and smirks. “You hold your chopsticks funny,” he says. He’s been watching him, too.
Hoya looks down at his hand, the stiff, claw-like shape. He shrugs. “When you move a lot, you should eat, you know,” he says, nodding at the lunch in disarray in front of Woohyun.
“I stay balanced,” Woohyun replies.
“My body’s unbalanced,” says Dongwoo, breaking into the conversation. “Everything goes here.” He tilts back in his seat and smacks his butt once, and Hoya’s eyes can’t help but follow the movement. Woohyun laughs, bending forward over his lunch tray. Dongwoo grins, meeting Hoya’s gaze, and Hoya shifts a bit in his chair, remembering how their eyes had locked when they had been dancing. Dongwoo’s eyes are cloudier with distraction now, but somehow no less intense.
“We still have to pick out music,” says Woohyun, breaking the silence. “When do you want to get together and do that?”
“I had one or two things in mind,” Hoya replies.
Woohyun nods. “Me too.” Hoya tightens his lips together but doesn’t say anything. “Why don’t we meet later today? Or even tomorrow? We could go through the CDs in the dance department library...”
“I’m busy,” says Hoya. “I have homework.”
Woohyun snorts. “This is homework.”
“How about Saturday?” asks Dongwoo. “That gives me some time to think of things, too. We can meet by the library, like Woohyun said. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” says Woohyun. “What do you say, leader?” He and Dongwoo both turn to look at Hoya.
Hoya nods, ignoring the jab. “I’ll be there.” He pushes away from the table and picks up his finished lunch tray. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” As he walks away, he can hear Woohyun start laughing, and his ears grow hot.
* * *
Their next practice, they attempt to work properly as three. They still don’t have music, so they concentrate on thinking up positions that involve all of them acting at once, and they block out a few of Dongwoo’s suggestions. Woohyun still moves tentatively around Hoya, shrinking away whenever there’s potential for contact besides the points they’ve already delineated. For his part, Hoya feels like he should move the same way around Dongwoo, because whenever their exposed skin brushes, arm against arm, he jolts a bit.
“Are you okay?” Dongwoo asks him at one point when they take a break for water and to write down their better ideas. He rests one hand on Hoya’s shoulder, and the touch sends a brief shudder down Hoya’s back.
He eases out of Dongwoo’s reach. “Fine, I’m fine,” he says, looking down to his feet so he won’t make a stupid expression. “Why don’t we try that one again, where two people are on the floor and one is standing?”
Woohyun obliges and gets on the floor, shifting until he’s on his stomach, but Dongwoo remains standing. Hoya waits, then says, “Well?”
“Oh, I thought you were going to do it,” says Dongwoo. Woohyun looks up at Hoya expectantly, resting his chin on his palms. “No?”
“I don’t bite,” says Woohyun, grinning.
Hoya snorts at this. “I think I’ll try standing,” he says to Dongwoo. “Go ahead.”
“Okay.” Dongwoo drops onto his knees and shuffles closer to Woohyun.
Hoya goes to put his notebook down under the barre against one wall, and he can hear Dongwoo and Woohyun murmuring behind him but can’t make out what they’re saying. When he turns around he imagines he’ll see them piled on top of each other, or maybe Woohyun’s hand snaking around Dongwoo’s thin waist, pulling him close. Instead they’re both on their stomachs, foreheads nearly touching but not quite, talking quietly as Dongwoo scratches at something on the floor. Somehow, that’s worse.
“Let’s go,” calls Hoya. He expects them to jerk apart, but Woohyun only turns his head, and he’s grinning dreamily up at him.
“Waiting on you, fearless leader,” he says.
Hoya grunts and drops to the floor to join them. This makes Dongwoo look up at him curiously. “We have three weeks to do this. So let’s stop fucking around, okay?” he says, not looking at Dongwoo but right at Woohyun. Woohyun’s eyes don’t change, but his mouth slackens. Then he lays his head on the floor.
“Ready when you are,” he says quietly.
When their allotted two hours of studio time are up, Woohyun slips out the door quickly, citing a theory class in a building across campus. Hoya stands and waits for Dongwoo, but he’s taking a while to stuff everything back into his backpack, and so he starts for the door.
“Hey, just a second,” says Dongwoo, and his fingers catch on Hoya’s bicep. Hoya turns into his grip as if they’re still dancing, unable to separate himself from the process.
“What?” he says, after Dongwoo doesn’t say anything else.
“You shouldn’t talk to Woohyun like that.” His head is tilted down a little, and he stares up at Hoya from under his eyebrows, his mouth open a little but not smiling.
“What’s wrong with the way I talk to him?” says Hoya after a beat too long of just looking into Dongwoo’s eyes. “It’s not personal. I’m just being honest.”
Dongwoo tuts in dismay. “Honesty isn’t automatically good on its own. Too much can be poison if you use it the right way.”
Hoya shrugs off Dongwoo’s hand, finally. “He can take it. He’s tough,” he says, as he walks out into the hall.
“Why are you trying to break him?” Dongwoo asks, trailing behind him past the lockers. “We’re a group, we’re collaborators. Even if you don’t like him, it’s only going to hurt all of us if you can’t at least be constructive.”
Hoya turns to respond, and then he stops. Dongwoo is standing so far from him. All Hoya wants is to be as close to him as they are in the studio, but the context is all wrong. “Why do you care so much?” he says.
Dongwoo balks. “Why don’t you care? He’s my friend, and all of us have to work together. Stop treating this like a competition.”
All Hoya hears is that he isn’t Dongwoo’s friend, which is as much of a slap to the face as he needs. “I’ll work on it,” he says thickly. “See you Saturday.” He picks up speed as he walks to the elevator, and when he looks over his shoulder, Dongwoo isn’t there.
* * *
The meeting on Saturday is surprisingly productive, maybe because neither Woohyun nor Dongwoo tries to engage with Hoya about anything outside of the project. Hoya grudgingly accepts this new efficiency, and it only takes an hour of sorting through CDs before they settle on a piece that’s all rhythmic drumming. Dongwoo drums on the table and chants in time, and Woohyun finally cracks and smiles at Hoya. Surprised, Hoya smiles back.
It’s dark outside when they leave the library. “Let’s get something to eat,” groans Woohyun. “After all that hard work, I’m starving.”
You? is on the tip of Hoya’s tongue, but he bites it back. “Sounds good,” he says instead, and he has to clear his throat.
They end up in a restaurant close to campus with dak galbi and soju. It’s been a while since Hoya’s gone out to drink, but he figures he’ll make up for it later. Besides, it’s nice to sit with the other two, oddly comfortable despite their earlier stilted silence.
When Dongwoo excuses himself to go to the washroom, Woohyun barely waits until the door has closed before he asks, “Why don’t you like me?”
Hoya’s hand stops halfway to his mouth, and he drops the piece of sweet potato he was about to eat back into his bowl. He presses his lips together. “I don’t...not like you,” he begins. He thinks of Dongwoo’s words again: Too much honesty can be poison. “I’m just not used to you,” he says at last. “I mean, I’m used to working in a certain way, and making decisions with three people instead of two...”
“But we’ve barely worked at all.”
“Then,” Hoya tries again, “I’m just jealous of the way you hold your chopsticks, and-”
“Ah, don’t play around,” says Woohyun, putting his chopsticks down. He leans in. “It’s Dongwoo, right?” Hoya feels sick all of a sudden, soju swimming around his head. He pushes his bowl away. “That’s it, isn’t it? You like him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Hoya slowly.
Woohyun smirks. “Then it’s because you like me, right?”
Hoya can’t help but laugh. “You stop playing around.”
“You should tell him,” says Woohyun, and Hoya stops laughing. “I know you don’t like taking orders, but trust me on this one.”
“Impossible.” Hoya shakes his head. “We have to work together for the next month. I’m not doing that now.”
“You’re no fun,” says Woohyun, as Dongwoo sits back down. Woohyun turns. “I was just telling Howonnie that he’s no fun,” he explains.
“Howonnie?” repeats Dongwoo with a grin. “Glad to see you two are getting along.” He picks up his soju glass. “Cheers, guys.”
The three of them head back toward the dorms together, Woohyun in the middle with his arms over the other two’s shoulders. “We should put this in our dance,” he mumbles.
Hoya laughs. “Don’t tempt me.”
Once they’re outside the dormitory building, Woohyun scrambles up the steps alone. “You have things to talk about,” he says vaguely to Dongwoo and Hoya, before he’s inside the door and out of their reach. Dongwoo raises his eyebrows at Hoya, and Hoya clears his throat.
“This is why I can’t be nice to him,” he says, and Dongwoo laughs.
They stand across from each other in silence. “I’m tired,” sighs Dongwoo.
“I like you,” Hoya blurts out at the same time. The air between them seems to freeze and solidify. Hoya’s looking right into Dongwoo’s eyes, and he’s both dying to look away and absolutely petrified of moving at all.
Then Dongwoo laughs. “For real?”
Hoya nods. “Yeah. That’s why...”
“Everything,” says Dongwoo.
“Yeah.”
Dongwoo laughs again and comes toward him, and Hoya inhales sharply. He doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get used to this. Dancing together is one thing-they’re in the studio, surrounded by mirrors and the black rubber floor. Intent overrides everything else. But outside of it, there’s no set reason for Dongwoo to touch him or get closer to him, except for Hoya’s burning desire for him to do both.
“We have to work together for the next month and what are you doing?” says Hoya as Dongwoo steps toward him and takes one wrist in each hand.
“Points of contact,” says Dongwoo. He lifts Hoya’s wrists over his shoulders so his hands rest against his back, then lifts onto the balls of his feet so they’re seeing eye to eye. He rests his forehead against Hoya’s, then his nose, and then his lips. Hoya shuts his eyes and presses back, breathing hard through his nose.
When Dongwoo leans back, Hoya opens his eyes and says, “I don’t know if that should go in the dance.”
Dongwoo smiles. “No,” he says, “but I think we should rehearse it again anyway.”
infinite, dongwoo/hoya, woohyun
pg, 3262w
hoya gets the dance partner he wanted, and an obstacle he didn't.
--written for spire_cx for infinitesanta 2012; originally posted here.
ao3 mirror
Five weeks before the end of the semester, Kim Dongmin’s contact improvisation class starts work on their end-of-year group choreography. Hoya enters the studio with a tension in his shoulder blades that he tries to stretch out, rolling his neck from side to side and swinging his arms back and forth as he makes his way to the front of the room, where Dongmin has gathered his students around him to announce the groups they’ll be working with. His eyes scan the others, sizing up the mix of first-years and second-years. He’s waiting for his own name, of course, but more than that, the name he wants to hear is-
“Jang Dongwoo,” calls Dongmin, and Hoya’s head swivels to where he sees Dongwoo standing with his dyed hair pushed back off his forehead, hands resting against his back.
He’s only danced with Dongwoo once in class before, for five minutes in an improvisation session, but the impression it left on him is strong. He’s spent his whole life around the weight of other bodies, and the whole semester in Dongmin’s class learning to respond to it, but something about the way Dongwoo moved and reacted had felt different, not new but already old and comfortable. He had curved his body around Hoya’s smoothly and naturally, their forearms fitting together like interlocking pieces, and Hoya could feel him responding to every little shift he made, like he already knew where Hoya was going. After their time was up, Dongwoo had grinned and slapped him on the back and returned to his side of the room, but since that day all Hoya’s wanted has been to feel Dongwoo’s body roll against his again-in any context, really, though he tries not to think about that too much.
“With Lee Howon,” Dongmin continues, and everything in Hoya’s body surges. Dongwoo’s eyes find his across the room, and he lifts his eyebrows and gives him an open-mouthed smile. Hoya’s lungs constrict at this and he looks away. “And Nam Woohyun,” finishes Dongmin, and Hoya’s eyebrows raise on their own.
He looks up and finds Woohyun standing close to Dongwoo, leaning in and talking to him, his head nearly on Dongwoo’s shoulder. They both glance over to where Hoya stands, and Woohyun gives a little wave. Hoya tilts his head and squeezes his shoulder blades together. The tension seems justified, now.
Hoya joins them after Dongmin’s called all the groups, and Woohyun grins at him. “Welcome.” Both he and Dongwoo are a year ahead of Hoya and they already know each other, giving encouraging cheers when the other is called on to demonstrate or chatting in the hallway after class lets out. Hoya feels uneasy standing with them. He tells himself it’s because they’re unknown variables, even though he’s seen them both dance plenty of times, either out of the corner of his eye as the class goes through warm-ups or when one or the other is called on to demonstrate a move in front of the class. He knows that Dongwoo has a busy, creative mind and that Woohyun is always willing to push himself. What he doesn’t know is what he has to contribute to that combination.
Well, he thinks, let’s find out.
* * *
Contact improvisation, by its very name, is about interaction. Unlike other types of dance and even contemporary dance, the object of the form is not so much to develop an aesthetic line as it is to constantly generate and develop points of contact, whether they’re with the floor, the wall, or another body.
At this point in the semester they’re acquainted with the ritual of getting into starting position, glancing at each other’s eyes and feet to gauge where to go and where to stop. Woohyun bumps into Dongwoo and giggles, which throws Hoya off, and he has to inhale deeply through his nose, finding centre on the balls of his feet.
It’s hard to incorporate a third, and at first every series of movements inevitably results in a pair working together and the third person at the side occasionally searching for a way in. After a bit of fumbling on the spot from all of them, Woohyun drifts away and Hoya and Dongwoo approach each other.
At the first contact of the back of Dongwoo’s wrist with his, then their forearms and elbows and triceps as they flow against each other, Hoya’s breath catches in his throat. The memory of working with Dongwoo has been at the back of his mind every time he dances, and it feels as right as he’d remembered. Dongwoo’s movements are fluid and loose, counter to Hoya’s own precise pushes, and without speaking the two of them settle into an arrangement: Hoya moves and leads, Dongwoo responds. Hoya introduces a new point of contact or begins sinking to the floor, and Dongwoo rolls against his body or leans in, following his centre of gravity. He’s not heavy, but solid, offering enough resistance for Hoya to react to while still following through with his movement. When they lock eyes, his gaze is deep and narrowed, but he's smiling as if he's enjoying himself. Hoya holds his eyes for a beat too long and the movement of his leg stutters a little, throwing him slightly off-balance.
When Dongwoo slinks out and Woohyun comes in, the difference is tangible. Unlike Dongwoo’s constant flow, Woohyun’s movements are uneven, switching between careful and slow in one moment and hard and purposeful in another as he tries to compensate for whatever he’s last done. Hoya finds himself pressing back against his more forceful pushes, as if they were fighting, not dancing, and Woohyun’s response to these is to pull back slightly, taking away from Hoya’s followthrough. When their exchange of contact is successful, Hoya feels that Woohyun’s body is tough with muscle, and rolling off him feels like rolling off a wall or the floor, without any give.
Dongwoo and Woohyun should be the combination of total opposites, a steady, ongoing flow versus a choppy, uneven stream. But they have the added advantage of knowing each other, and Hoya can see how Dongwoo seamlessly adjusts to Woohyun's changes in tempo and rhythm, and the way he rebounds off Woohyun's solidness rather than trying to push into it. Woohyun's movements become more confident and casual: he'll lift Dongwoo’s wrist with the back of his hand and rotate his arm up, guiding him in a certain direction, or he’ll twist around him and drape over his waist, not shrinking away from contact but reaching for it.
As he watches them, Hoya finds himself fixed to his spot on the floor instead of moving. He knows he’s supposed to be finding a way in, that these are just tests and their ultimate goal is to dance as three. But in the alternately closing and expanding gaps between their bodies, he can’t see a space for himself.
* * *
The next day, Hoya’s sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when Dongwoo and Woohyun sit next to him at the same time. Hoya usually eats alone, working methodically through his lunch until it's done, but he makes room for them without complaint. If nothing else, maximizing the time they spend together will probably improve how they work, he thinks.
As they chat about their plans for the rest of the day, Hoya notices how Woohyun picks at his food, taking the smallest pieces of meat first and stirring through his rice without picking it up. Woohyun catches him looking and smirks. “You hold your chopsticks funny,” he says. He’s been watching him, too.
Hoya looks down at his hand, the stiff, claw-like shape. He shrugs. “When you move a lot, you should eat, you know,” he says, nodding at the lunch in disarray in front of Woohyun.
“I stay balanced,” Woohyun replies.
“My body’s unbalanced,” says Dongwoo, breaking into the conversation. “Everything goes here.” He tilts back in his seat and smacks his butt once, and Hoya’s eyes can’t help but follow the movement. Woohyun laughs, bending forward over his lunch tray. Dongwoo grins, meeting Hoya’s gaze, and Hoya shifts a bit in his chair, remembering how their eyes had locked when they had been dancing. Dongwoo’s eyes are cloudier with distraction now, but somehow no less intense.
“We still have to pick out music,” says Woohyun, breaking the silence. “When do you want to get together and do that?”
“I had one or two things in mind,” Hoya replies.
Woohyun nods. “Me too.” Hoya tightens his lips together but doesn’t say anything. “Why don’t we meet later today? Or even tomorrow? We could go through the CDs in the dance department library...”
“I’m busy,” says Hoya. “I have homework.”
Woohyun snorts. “This is homework.”
“How about Saturday?” asks Dongwoo. “That gives me some time to think of things, too. We can meet by the library, like Woohyun said. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” says Woohyun. “What do you say, leader?” He and Dongwoo both turn to look at Hoya.
Hoya nods, ignoring the jab. “I’ll be there.” He pushes away from the table and picks up his finished lunch tray. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” As he walks away, he can hear Woohyun start laughing, and his ears grow hot.
* * *
Their next practice, they attempt to work properly as three. They still don’t have music, so they concentrate on thinking up positions that involve all of them acting at once, and they block out a few of Dongwoo’s suggestions. Woohyun still moves tentatively around Hoya, shrinking away whenever there’s potential for contact besides the points they’ve already delineated. For his part, Hoya feels like he should move the same way around Dongwoo, because whenever their exposed skin brushes, arm against arm, he jolts a bit.
“Are you okay?” Dongwoo asks him at one point when they take a break for water and to write down their better ideas. He rests one hand on Hoya’s shoulder, and the touch sends a brief shudder down Hoya’s back.
He eases out of Dongwoo’s reach. “Fine, I’m fine,” he says, looking down to his feet so he won’t make a stupid expression. “Why don’t we try that one again, where two people are on the floor and one is standing?”
Woohyun obliges and gets on the floor, shifting until he’s on his stomach, but Dongwoo remains standing. Hoya waits, then says, “Well?”
“Oh, I thought you were going to do it,” says Dongwoo. Woohyun looks up at Hoya expectantly, resting his chin on his palms. “No?”
“I don’t bite,” says Woohyun, grinning.
Hoya snorts at this. “I think I’ll try standing,” he says to Dongwoo. “Go ahead.”
“Okay.” Dongwoo drops onto his knees and shuffles closer to Woohyun.
Hoya goes to put his notebook down under the barre against one wall, and he can hear Dongwoo and Woohyun murmuring behind him but can’t make out what they’re saying. When he turns around he imagines he’ll see them piled on top of each other, or maybe Woohyun’s hand snaking around Dongwoo’s thin waist, pulling him close. Instead they’re both on their stomachs, foreheads nearly touching but not quite, talking quietly as Dongwoo scratches at something on the floor. Somehow, that’s worse.
“Let’s go,” calls Hoya. He expects them to jerk apart, but Woohyun only turns his head, and he’s grinning dreamily up at him.
“Waiting on you, fearless leader,” he says.
Hoya grunts and drops to the floor to join them. This makes Dongwoo look up at him curiously. “We have three weeks to do this. So let’s stop fucking around, okay?” he says, not looking at Dongwoo but right at Woohyun. Woohyun’s eyes don’t change, but his mouth slackens. Then he lays his head on the floor.
“Ready when you are,” he says quietly.
When their allotted two hours of studio time are up, Woohyun slips out the door quickly, citing a theory class in a building across campus. Hoya stands and waits for Dongwoo, but he’s taking a while to stuff everything back into his backpack, and so he starts for the door.
“Hey, just a second,” says Dongwoo, and his fingers catch on Hoya’s bicep. Hoya turns into his grip as if they’re still dancing, unable to separate himself from the process.
“What?” he says, after Dongwoo doesn’t say anything else.
“You shouldn’t talk to Woohyun like that.” His head is tilted down a little, and he stares up at Hoya from under his eyebrows, his mouth open a little but not smiling.
“What’s wrong with the way I talk to him?” says Hoya after a beat too long of just looking into Dongwoo’s eyes. “It’s not personal. I’m just being honest.”
Dongwoo tuts in dismay. “Honesty isn’t automatically good on its own. Too much can be poison if you use it the right way.”
Hoya shrugs off Dongwoo’s hand, finally. “He can take it. He’s tough,” he says, as he walks out into the hall.
“Why are you trying to break him?” Dongwoo asks, trailing behind him past the lockers. “We’re a group, we’re collaborators. Even if you don’t like him, it’s only going to hurt all of us if you can’t at least be constructive.”
Hoya turns to respond, and then he stops. Dongwoo is standing so far from him. All Hoya wants is to be as close to him as they are in the studio, but the context is all wrong. “Why do you care so much?” he says.
Dongwoo balks. “Why don’t you care? He’s my friend, and all of us have to work together. Stop treating this like a competition.”
All Hoya hears is that he isn’t Dongwoo’s friend, which is as much of a slap to the face as he needs. “I’ll work on it,” he says thickly. “See you Saturday.” He picks up speed as he walks to the elevator, and when he looks over his shoulder, Dongwoo isn’t there.
* * *
The meeting on Saturday is surprisingly productive, maybe because neither Woohyun nor Dongwoo tries to engage with Hoya about anything outside of the project. Hoya grudgingly accepts this new efficiency, and it only takes an hour of sorting through CDs before they settle on a piece that’s all rhythmic drumming. Dongwoo drums on the table and chants in time, and Woohyun finally cracks and smiles at Hoya. Surprised, Hoya smiles back.
It’s dark outside when they leave the library. “Let’s get something to eat,” groans Woohyun. “After all that hard work, I’m starving.”
You? is on the tip of Hoya’s tongue, but he bites it back. “Sounds good,” he says instead, and he has to clear his throat.
They end up in a restaurant close to campus with dak galbi and soju. It’s been a while since Hoya’s gone out to drink, but he figures he’ll make up for it later. Besides, it’s nice to sit with the other two, oddly comfortable despite their earlier stilted silence.
When Dongwoo excuses himself to go to the washroom, Woohyun barely waits until the door has closed before he asks, “Why don’t you like me?”
Hoya’s hand stops halfway to his mouth, and he drops the piece of sweet potato he was about to eat back into his bowl. He presses his lips together. “I don’t...not like you,” he begins. He thinks of Dongwoo’s words again: Too much honesty can be poison. “I’m just not used to you,” he says at last. “I mean, I’m used to working in a certain way, and making decisions with three people instead of two...”
“But we’ve barely worked at all.”
“Then,” Hoya tries again, “I’m just jealous of the way you hold your chopsticks, and-”
“Ah, don’t play around,” says Woohyun, putting his chopsticks down. He leans in. “It’s Dongwoo, right?” Hoya feels sick all of a sudden, soju swimming around his head. He pushes his bowl away. “That’s it, isn’t it? You like him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Hoya slowly.
Woohyun smirks. “Then it’s because you like me, right?”
Hoya can’t help but laugh. “You stop playing around.”
“You should tell him,” says Woohyun, and Hoya stops laughing. “I know you don’t like taking orders, but trust me on this one.”
“Impossible.” Hoya shakes his head. “We have to work together for the next month. I’m not doing that now.”
“You’re no fun,” says Woohyun, as Dongwoo sits back down. Woohyun turns. “I was just telling Howonnie that he’s no fun,” he explains.
“Howonnie?” repeats Dongwoo with a grin. “Glad to see you two are getting along.” He picks up his soju glass. “Cheers, guys.”
The three of them head back toward the dorms together, Woohyun in the middle with his arms over the other two’s shoulders. “We should put this in our dance,” he mumbles.
Hoya laughs. “Don’t tempt me.”
Once they’re outside the dormitory building, Woohyun scrambles up the steps alone. “You have things to talk about,” he says vaguely to Dongwoo and Hoya, before he’s inside the door and out of their reach. Dongwoo raises his eyebrows at Hoya, and Hoya clears his throat.
“This is why I can’t be nice to him,” he says, and Dongwoo laughs.
They stand across from each other in silence. “I’m tired,” sighs Dongwoo.
“I like you,” Hoya blurts out at the same time. The air between them seems to freeze and solidify. Hoya’s looking right into Dongwoo’s eyes, and he’s both dying to look away and absolutely petrified of moving at all.
Then Dongwoo laughs. “For real?”
Hoya nods. “Yeah. That’s why...”
“Everything,” says Dongwoo.
“Yeah.”
Dongwoo laughs again and comes toward him, and Hoya inhales sharply. He doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get used to this. Dancing together is one thing-they’re in the studio, surrounded by mirrors and the black rubber floor. Intent overrides everything else. But outside of it, there’s no set reason for Dongwoo to touch him or get closer to him, except for Hoya’s burning desire for him to do both.
“We have to work together for the next month and what are you doing?” says Hoya as Dongwoo steps toward him and takes one wrist in each hand.
“Points of contact,” says Dongwoo. He lifts Hoya’s wrists over his shoulders so his hands rest against his back, then lifts onto the balls of his feet so they’re seeing eye to eye. He rests his forehead against Hoya’s, then his nose, and then his lips. Hoya shuts his eyes and presses back, breathing hard through his nose.
When Dongwoo leans back, Hoya opens his eyes and says, “I don’t know if that should go in the dance.”
Dongwoo smiles. “No,” he says, “but I think we should rehearse it again anyway.”