iss 2012: for nekkajitge
Title: dancing for my own enjoyment (that ain’t it, kid)
Pairing/Focus: Dongwoo/Sungjong
Rating: PG
Word count: 2160
Summary: Sungjong knows Dongwoo just wants to help.
To: nekkajitge
From: Your Secret Santa
a/n: I’m sorry this is so short! I didn’t have the time to bring as much out of this as I wanted, or as you deserved, but I hope you enjoy it!
“Come dance with me,” Dongwoo says, and it’s a bad line out of a worse story, and Sungjong goes.
Sungyeol waves them off from the floor as Sungjong pulls his shoes on.
“We have a day off,” Sungyeol whines at them, but he grins at Sungjong. Sungjong nods at him, but then he looks away, because he’s not sure he can smile back. He sees Sungyeol’s face twist and fall out of the corner of his eye, but Sungyeol flops back onto the floor to cover it as Dongwoo looks back at them.
“If you don’t become one with the floor, feel free to come join us,” Dongwoo says, and Sungyeol flips him off without looking up. Dongwoo cackles, then grabs Sungjong’s hand and drags him out the door.
Sungjong drops Dongwoo’s hand as soon as he can, right outside the door to their apartment, but he doesn’t look at him, just hurtles down the stairs first, hand skimming along the railing.
-
Dongwoo sets up his iPod in the little speaker in the corner, and scrolls through it, humming softly to himself. Sungjong considers asking him what he’s going to play, but decides the surprise might be good for him, and he relaxes. Closing his eyes, he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, trying to erase the memory of Sungyeol looking frustrated and disappointed and focus on the way his body shifts, the minute movements of his fingers.
He opens his eyes when the first verse of Wings starts, and blinks as Dongwoo slides across the floor to stand a little in front of him, off to the side. He isn’t used to dancing this, and they haven’t started the pre-concert rush to relearn every dance they’ve ever done, but he makes the first quickstep, and his feet fall in step with Dongwoo’s reflection in front of him. They start to glide through it, smooth.
They’ve done it before, but dancing their choreography as just two of them still throws Sungjong off balance a little, uncomfortable with the absences next to him, and in the mirror. It doesn’t seem to faze Dongwoo, but Sungjong isn’t sure he’d know if anything fazed Dongwoo. He can’t be that happy all the time, the same game face on at home and in practice and on stage, but if he isn’t, he has a mask Sungjong wishes he could imitate, entirely without cracks or flaws.
The train of thought distracts him, and he ends up slipping on the last chorus. Dongwoo glances at him in the mirror as he catches up, and Sungjong blushes a little then ducks his head, annoyed. He thinks Dongwoo might still be looking at him, but he rounds out the song without lifting his head to check.
As The Chaser starts, Sungjong takes a deep breath, then refocuses, sweat dripping off his nose as he sharpens his movements, nearly glares into the mirror.
Dongwoo steps up behind him, the closest they’ve stood all afternoon, and Sungjong shudders in the sudden warmth radiating off him. He’s standing still, for half a second, but he freezes when Dongwoo touches him, palm splayed across his chest instead of fluttering an inch in front of him. The blood pumping in his fingers thrums very faintly against Sungjong’s chest, out of time with his heartbeat, before Dongwoo pulls away again, falling back into the choreography.
It takes Sungjong several seconds more to pick it up, and even then he’s doing the whole routine by rote owed to a hundred hours of effort. There isn’t any life to it, and Dongwoo watches him over his shoulder for the next minute, but Sungjong is too busy making sure he doesn’t cry, of all things, to pay attention to either, slumping as soon as they’ve hit the final pose.
Sungjong doesn’t recognize the opening of the next song, so he takes a second during the building instrumental to crouch and bury his face in his knees, trying to build himself back up again. It’s appalling, he thinks, that being touched for a second messes him up this bad, like he’s desperate for it.
He is desperate for it, but this isn’t how that works.
It’s only a few seconds before he’s standing up again, but he’s still on edge, like something is eating away at him. He still doesn’t know the song, although the intro is starting to sound familiar, like something he’d heard snatches of backstage, or in the car. Dongwoo grins at him in the mirror and winks.
When the song picks up, tempo rising, Sungjong finally realizes he knows it. It’s the Sunny Hill song, the one Dongwoo had learned just in case they asked him to stand in for one of their performances. He’d said, “Just in case,” about the dance as well, and he’d taught Sungjong too, the two of them showing up to practice early and dancing it over and over again to keep away the frosty air of the practice room before they were allowed to turn the heating on.
Dongwoo is starting to rise from his crouch, elegantly slinking up and rolling his shoulders, and he struts forward as the lyrics start, whispering along, but Sungjong doesn’t move, staring at him. Dongwoo keeps dancing, but he starts to slow as he sees Sungjong, and eventually stops, facing him. “Have you forgotten the dance?” he teases, eyebrow raised, and Sungjong nearly growls.
“Was this a set-up?” he says, and it’s almost a shriek, but Sungjong doesn’t want to tone it down right now, he wants to take this one chance to let out a little of the energy that feels like it’s consuming him from the inside out. He is overworked and he is tired, and the people he trusts want him to stop changing when it’s the only thing that’s holding him up.
“Do you think I’m unhappy when I’m not doing girl dances?” Sungjong asks, loudly. “Do you think that not making a spectacle of myself is bad for me? It isn’t the only thing I’m interested in, it’s just not what I want any more, all right?” He’s yelling by the end, and the silence when he stops is abrupt, like everything around them is trying to process.
“You never get angry anymore,” Dongwoo says, and that is nothing Sungjong expected him to say, and it deflates him. He sinks to the floor and crosses his legs, hands folded in his lap although his fingers twitch, and Dongwoo sits down next to him.
“Okay, I don’t miss you being angry, or fighting with Woohyun, but.” Dongwoo pauses, then says, “But it’s you.” He looks confused, a little, but not hurt, and that still manages to send a minor wave of guilt through Sungjong.
“Maybe I realized it was stupid,” Sungjong says. “Maybe I realized it was hurting me.” Maybe he isn’t talking about being angry, and that tears him up a little inside. He doesn’t think he’s ashamed of what he likes but - no, he is, and he doesn’t know how to convey that to Dongwoo.
Dongwoo is watching him, but not waiting, and not expecting anything, and he’s right there, so Sungjong leans in and kisses him softly. Dongwoo’s lips are more chapped than Sungjong’s, a little rough at places, but he kisses back, without heat, and it might just be an instinctive reaction, but Sungjong still breathes a sigh of relief against Dongwoo’s lips.
When he pulls back, Dongwoo blinks at him, eyes wide and searching.
“Is this why?” he asks, and Sungjong has to take a moment to reorient himself, zero in on words and on talking about - this.
“It’s part of it,” Sungjong says. “But not all. Or most, or - ” And Sungjong doesn’t know how to explain that it’s everything and nothing and the way Myungsoo watches him sometimes, and that he knew this was how it would be but he’s only just realized that didn’t mean he was prepared. He was sixteen when he decided he could live a life like this - on all levels - and he’s not a different person, but he thinks he knows a little more. Dongwoo reaches out to touch him, maybe, then decides against it, but he’s clearly looking for something to say if Sungjong won’t, and Sungjong decides to let him pick up the slack.
“Is it about me, or is it just. You and kissing and?” Dongwoo stumbles over what he’s trying to say and ends up closing with a pouty kiss motion and a vague hand gesture that looks more like a chef talking about a good meal. Sungjong laughs.
“It is you, but not like that,” Sungjong says even as a little flutter in his chest says it could be, because Dongwoo hasn’t run. “I just trust you, hyung.”
“So this is like a trust exercise, huh? You should suggest it to Sunggyu,” Dongwoo says, and Sungjong’s heart jerks painfully, but Dongwoo is busting up with laughter before he’s even finished. Sungjong considers hitting him, but settles on frowning.
“That isn’t funny,” he says, and Dongwoo settles into smiling at him softly.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “And I’m not saying you should, but what if you were less serious about it?” Sungjong continues to frown at him, and Dongwoo sighs.
“I know it’s scary, Sungjong, I know it’s,” he waves his arms around his head, “big, but it isn’t the end of the world.
“Trust me?” he adds, and it feels like Sungjong’s spine melts, as he slumps, not quite defeated, but tired.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, and finds himself smiling as he says it, and it strains his jaw a little from underuse.
Dongwoo beams back, then says, “We can do more trust exercises, if that’ll help.”
Sungjong’s eyes widen involuntarily, and Dongwoo pulls Sungjong towards him and rubs his nose against Sungjong’s, his breath warm.
He waits, though, and finally Sungjong leans in and kisses him again, still soft but less chaste and a lot more insistent. Dongwoo gently leans back and pulls Sungjong with him, until he’s lying on the floor and Sungjong is sprawled across his chest, legs still curled next to Dongwoo’s waist.
It’s not heated, or heavy, but it’s sweet, and when Dongwoo nibbles at his bottom lip, Sungjong huffs out a laugh and wiggles his toes. He leans far enough away to run his tongue over the tiny, already fading indentations, and is surprised by how swollen his lips feel. He licks again, and decides he likes the way it feels, the way it resonates a little across his body, down to the fading tingles in the soles of his feet.
He sticks out his tongue again only for Dongwoo to say, “You could let me do that.” He sounds almost irritated, and Sungjong giggles as Dongwoo threads a hand through his hair to pull him back down, and licks against his lips, then slowly into his mouth, swiping across his teeth, then pressing further in. Sungjong registers it as weird even as he enjoys it, tentatively reaching out to meet Dongwoo’s tongue with his own.
Sungjong springs away from him when the door handle turns, bouncing halfway across the practice room, and he’s still trying to straighten his hair as Sungyeol slouches in. But Dongwoo just stays where he is, lies on the floor and laughs softly at the ceiling. Even when Sungyeol steps up beside his head and looms over him, Dongwoo just giggles and tips his head further back, elongating his neck. Sungjong thinks about biting it, and treats himself to the pleasant knowledge that Dongwoo might let him.
“I thought you were supposed to be dancing,” Sungyeol says. Dongwoo shrugs.
“Just taking a break,” Dongwoo says, then lifts his feet and arches his back and propels himself upward and towards Sungjong. He lands within arm’s length, and reaches out a hand to pull Sungjong up. Sungjong pushes himself up mostly on his own, but he doesn’t let go of Dongwoo’s hand until well after the three of them have stood around in almost companionable silence.
Sungyeol claps, eventually. “So! Dancing,” he says, and Sungjong slowly lets his fingers untangle from Dongwoo’s, but Dongwoo links their pinkies for a second as he goes. Sungjong ducks his head to smile, then thinks better of it, and lifts his head to look Sungyeol directly in the eye and smile at him, big if still a little shaky.
Sungyeol raises an eyebrow, but he smiles back, and Dongwoo skips over to restart the playlist. He points Sungyeol to where he should stand, but Sungyeol runs his fingers across the tips of Sungjong’s shoulder as he goes, and as the music starts, Sungjong breathes deeply and thinks about trust.
Pairing/Focus: Dongwoo/Sungjong
Rating: PG
Word count: 2160
Summary: Sungjong knows Dongwoo just wants to help.
To: nekkajitge
From: Your Secret Santa
a/n: I’m sorry this is so short! I didn’t have the time to bring as much out of this as I wanted, or as you deserved, but I hope you enjoy it!
“Come dance with me,” Dongwoo says, and it’s a bad line out of a worse story, and Sungjong goes.
Sungyeol waves them off from the floor as Sungjong pulls his shoes on.
“We have a day off,” Sungyeol whines at them, but he grins at Sungjong. Sungjong nods at him, but then he looks away, because he’s not sure he can smile back. He sees Sungyeol’s face twist and fall out of the corner of his eye, but Sungyeol flops back onto the floor to cover it as Dongwoo looks back at them.
“If you don’t become one with the floor, feel free to come join us,” Dongwoo says, and Sungyeol flips him off without looking up. Dongwoo cackles, then grabs Sungjong’s hand and drags him out the door.
Sungjong drops Dongwoo’s hand as soon as he can, right outside the door to their apartment, but he doesn’t look at him, just hurtles down the stairs first, hand skimming along the railing.
-
Dongwoo sets up his iPod in the little speaker in the corner, and scrolls through it, humming softly to himself. Sungjong considers asking him what he’s going to play, but decides the surprise might be good for him, and he relaxes. Closing his eyes, he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, trying to erase the memory of Sungyeol looking frustrated and disappointed and focus on the way his body shifts, the minute movements of his fingers.
He opens his eyes when the first verse of Wings starts, and blinks as Dongwoo slides across the floor to stand a little in front of him, off to the side. He isn’t used to dancing this, and they haven’t started the pre-concert rush to relearn every dance they’ve ever done, but he makes the first quickstep, and his feet fall in step with Dongwoo’s reflection in front of him. They start to glide through it, smooth.
They’ve done it before, but dancing their choreography as just two of them still throws Sungjong off balance a little, uncomfortable with the absences next to him, and in the mirror. It doesn’t seem to faze Dongwoo, but Sungjong isn’t sure he’d know if anything fazed Dongwoo. He can’t be that happy all the time, the same game face on at home and in practice and on stage, but if he isn’t, he has a mask Sungjong wishes he could imitate, entirely without cracks or flaws.
The train of thought distracts him, and he ends up slipping on the last chorus. Dongwoo glances at him in the mirror as he catches up, and Sungjong blushes a little then ducks his head, annoyed. He thinks Dongwoo might still be looking at him, but he rounds out the song without lifting his head to check.
As The Chaser starts, Sungjong takes a deep breath, then refocuses, sweat dripping off his nose as he sharpens his movements, nearly glares into the mirror.
Dongwoo steps up behind him, the closest they’ve stood all afternoon, and Sungjong shudders in the sudden warmth radiating off him. He’s standing still, for half a second, but he freezes when Dongwoo touches him, palm splayed across his chest instead of fluttering an inch in front of him. The blood pumping in his fingers thrums very faintly against Sungjong’s chest, out of time with his heartbeat, before Dongwoo pulls away again, falling back into the choreography.
It takes Sungjong several seconds more to pick it up, and even then he’s doing the whole routine by rote owed to a hundred hours of effort. There isn’t any life to it, and Dongwoo watches him over his shoulder for the next minute, but Sungjong is too busy making sure he doesn’t cry, of all things, to pay attention to either, slumping as soon as they’ve hit the final pose.
Sungjong doesn’t recognize the opening of the next song, so he takes a second during the building instrumental to crouch and bury his face in his knees, trying to build himself back up again. It’s appalling, he thinks, that being touched for a second messes him up this bad, like he’s desperate for it.
He is desperate for it, but this isn’t how that works.
It’s only a few seconds before he’s standing up again, but he’s still on edge, like something is eating away at him. He still doesn’t know the song, although the intro is starting to sound familiar, like something he’d heard snatches of backstage, or in the car. Dongwoo grins at him in the mirror and winks.
When the song picks up, tempo rising, Sungjong finally realizes he knows it. It’s the Sunny Hill song, the one Dongwoo had learned just in case they asked him to stand in for one of their performances. He’d said, “Just in case,” about the dance as well, and he’d taught Sungjong too, the two of them showing up to practice early and dancing it over and over again to keep away the frosty air of the practice room before they were allowed to turn the heating on.
Dongwoo is starting to rise from his crouch, elegantly slinking up and rolling his shoulders, and he struts forward as the lyrics start, whispering along, but Sungjong doesn’t move, staring at him. Dongwoo keeps dancing, but he starts to slow as he sees Sungjong, and eventually stops, facing him. “Have you forgotten the dance?” he teases, eyebrow raised, and Sungjong nearly growls.
“Was this a set-up?” he says, and it’s almost a shriek, but Sungjong doesn’t want to tone it down right now, he wants to take this one chance to let out a little of the energy that feels like it’s consuming him from the inside out. He is overworked and he is tired, and the people he trusts want him to stop changing when it’s the only thing that’s holding him up.
“Do you think I’m unhappy when I’m not doing girl dances?” Sungjong asks, loudly. “Do you think that not making a spectacle of myself is bad for me? It isn’t the only thing I’m interested in, it’s just not what I want any more, all right?” He’s yelling by the end, and the silence when he stops is abrupt, like everything around them is trying to process.
“You never get angry anymore,” Dongwoo says, and that is nothing Sungjong expected him to say, and it deflates him. He sinks to the floor and crosses his legs, hands folded in his lap although his fingers twitch, and Dongwoo sits down next to him.
“Okay, I don’t miss you being angry, or fighting with Woohyun, but.” Dongwoo pauses, then says, “But it’s you.” He looks confused, a little, but not hurt, and that still manages to send a minor wave of guilt through Sungjong.
“Maybe I realized it was stupid,” Sungjong says. “Maybe I realized it was hurting me.” Maybe he isn’t talking about being angry, and that tears him up a little inside. He doesn’t think he’s ashamed of what he likes but - no, he is, and he doesn’t know how to convey that to Dongwoo.
Dongwoo is watching him, but not waiting, and not expecting anything, and he’s right there, so Sungjong leans in and kisses him softly. Dongwoo’s lips are more chapped than Sungjong’s, a little rough at places, but he kisses back, without heat, and it might just be an instinctive reaction, but Sungjong still breathes a sigh of relief against Dongwoo’s lips.
When he pulls back, Dongwoo blinks at him, eyes wide and searching.
“Is this why?” he asks, and Sungjong has to take a moment to reorient himself, zero in on words and on talking about - this.
“It’s part of it,” Sungjong says. “But not all. Or most, or - ” And Sungjong doesn’t know how to explain that it’s everything and nothing and the way Myungsoo watches him sometimes, and that he knew this was how it would be but he’s only just realized that didn’t mean he was prepared. He was sixteen when he decided he could live a life like this - on all levels - and he’s not a different person, but he thinks he knows a little more. Dongwoo reaches out to touch him, maybe, then decides against it, but he’s clearly looking for something to say if Sungjong won’t, and Sungjong decides to let him pick up the slack.
“Is it about me, or is it just. You and kissing and?” Dongwoo stumbles over what he’s trying to say and ends up closing with a pouty kiss motion and a vague hand gesture that looks more like a chef talking about a good meal. Sungjong laughs.
“It is you, but not like that,” Sungjong says even as a little flutter in his chest says it could be, because Dongwoo hasn’t run. “I just trust you, hyung.”
“So this is like a trust exercise, huh? You should suggest it to Sunggyu,” Dongwoo says, and Sungjong’s heart jerks painfully, but Dongwoo is busting up with laughter before he’s even finished. Sungjong considers hitting him, but settles on frowning.
“That isn’t funny,” he says, and Dongwoo settles into smiling at him softly.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “And I’m not saying you should, but what if you were less serious about it?” Sungjong continues to frown at him, and Dongwoo sighs.
“I know it’s scary, Sungjong, I know it’s,” he waves his arms around his head, “big, but it isn’t the end of the world.
“Trust me?” he adds, and it feels like Sungjong’s spine melts, as he slumps, not quite defeated, but tired.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, and finds himself smiling as he says it, and it strains his jaw a little from underuse.
Dongwoo beams back, then says, “We can do more trust exercises, if that’ll help.”
Sungjong’s eyes widen involuntarily, and Dongwoo pulls Sungjong towards him and rubs his nose against Sungjong’s, his breath warm.
He waits, though, and finally Sungjong leans in and kisses him again, still soft but less chaste and a lot more insistent. Dongwoo gently leans back and pulls Sungjong with him, until he’s lying on the floor and Sungjong is sprawled across his chest, legs still curled next to Dongwoo’s waist.
It’s not heated, or heavy, but it’s sweet, and when Dongwoo nibbles at his bottom lip, Sungjong huffs out a laugh and wiggles his toes. He leans far enough away to run his tongue over the tiny, already fading indentations, and is surprised by how swollen his lips feel. He licks again, and decides he likes the way it feels, the way it resonates a little across his body, down to the fading tingles in the soles of his feet.
He sticks out his tongue again only for Dongwoo to say, “You could let me do that.” He sounds almost irritated, and Sungjong giggles as Dongwoo threads a hand through his hair to pull him back down, and licks against his lips, then slowly into his mouth, swiping across his teeth, then pressing further in. Sungjong registers it as weird even as he enjoys it, tentatively reaching out to meet Dongwoo’s tongue with his own.
Sungjong springs away from him when the door handle turns, bouncing halfway across the practice room, and he’s still trying to straighten his hair as Sungyeol slouches in. But Dongwoo just stays where he is, lies on the floor and laughs softly at the ceiling. Even when Sungyeol steps up beside his head and looms over him, Dongwoo just giggles and tips his head further back, elongating his neck. Sungjong thinks about biting it, and treats himself to the pleasant knowledge that Dongwoo might let him.
“I thought you were supposed to be dancing,” Sungyeol says. Dongwoo shrugs.
“Just taking a break,” Dongwoo says, then lifts his feet and arches his back and propels himself upward and towards Sungjong. He lands within arm’s length, and reaches out a hand to pull Sungjong up. Sungjong pushes himself up mostly on his own, but he doesn’t let go of Dongwoo’s hand until well after the three of them have stood around in almost companionable silence.
Sungyeol claps, eventually. “So! Dancing,” he says, and Sungjong slowly lets his fingers untangle from Dongwoo’s, but Dongwoo links their pinkies for a second as he goes. Sungjong ducks his head to smile, then thinks better of it, and lifts his head to look Sungyeol directly in the eye and smile at him, big if still a little shaky.
Sungyeol raises an eyebrow, but he smiles back, and Dongwoo skips over to restart the playlist. He points Sungyeol to where he should stand, but Sungyeol runs his fingers across the tips of Sungjong’s shoulder as he goes, and as the music starts, Sungjong breathes deeply and thinks about trust.