Part 3; 1101w

The first time he sees Luhan is beneath the harsh lighting of fluorescents, in a sound proof room with mirrors for walls and a floor that’s marked from the previous souls that bled and sweat for a taste of the stage and lights.  He more or less stumbles upon the older boy by complete accident, dark eyes blind to the world around him and ears deaf to any sound outside of the headphones shoved over his head.  He trips over the doorway, feet a little heavy from this morning’s classes and body a little tense with excitement over the promise of free time which he intended to spend locked in this particular dance studio throwing himself into the music and simple feeling of a beat coursing through his body. He remembers just wanting to forget the mundane repetition of choreography for a little while.

Luhan is a blur of sweat slicked out of control hair that’s plastered across forehead and cheek and neck, impairing half if not all of his vision that appears to be unneeded as the boy dances from one end of the room to the other with eyes closed.  He’s atrocious technique that almost makes Jongin speak up, but something instinctual that intrigues him just enough that he stands in the corner and devours each move with wide eyes and a silent mouth.  Luhan’s feet rebound from the floor with echoing stomps and squeaking slides, as he moves to a beat that Jongin can feel from the tips of his toes vibrating all the way out through his fingertips. The urge to move along with this mysterious boy is almost more than he can take.

Luhan is far from perfect, but he skirts the edges of something close that Jongin aches to possess.

Luhan is a lively person; a quick witty tongue wrapped around broken Korean that leaves Jongin gasping for air between laughing fits, soft expressive eyes that shift with the older boy’s mood, and something underneath it all that Jongin wants to scoop out and put on display, something that he sees when the older boy is pushing himself through another hour of dance or pressing hand into stomach as he belts notes into the midnight air trying to reach higher and higher.  There is more to Luhan than what meets the eye; there is a whole other world underneath the underneath that Jongin wants to share with the world in the same breath that he wants to keep it all for his own.

Jongin loses himself into Luhan the same way he loses himself into the music.  Drifting alo