Let's Not Talk About It...
I Got Better“Hoya’s weird.” Woohyun muttered, sweat dripping into his eyes and breath short. It was the end of rehearsal.
“He’s just dedicated.” Dongwoo said defensively, dropping to sit on the floor and wiping his own sweat away with a forearm. “This is his dream.”
“This is my dream too.” Woohyun countered, sounding a little defensive himself. “I’m not like Hoya, though. Neither are you, hyung.”
There was a groan as Sunggyu flung himself down beside them. “Don’t call him names, Woohyun.” He said, sounding exhausted. “Hoya tries really hard. He’s committed…he’s a good kid.”
“Tries too hard.” Woohyun muttered mutinously under his breath.
“Look, what harm is it doing you?” Dongwoo asked quietly, feeling uncomfortable having this conversation. He had known it was coming. Known something was coming ever since Hoya had shut that bathroom door. But he still wasn’t ready for it. “He’s not asking you to stay with him.”
Woohyun looked up at Dongwoo with eyebrows raised. “He never asks anyone to do anything with him.” He said pointedly.
Dongwoo couldn’t help looking over to where Hoya was wiping his face with a towel, standing by himself on the other side of the room. “He just wants to be the best he can be.” Dongwoo said, eyes following Hoya as the boy threw the towel aside and began to stretch. “Don’t make fun of him for it.”
“I wasn’t going to.” Woohyun retorted, standing and throwing his bag over his shoulder. “He might not get the joke; might throw me into another table. You guys coming?”
Dongwoo’s eyes were drawn automatically to the gash on the edge of Woohyun’s hairline, angry looking with some dried blood caked around the edges, and he realised how empty his own words were. Who was he to ask what harm it was doing Woohyun?
“Yeah.” Sunggyu replied, standing and reaching down to pull Dongwoo up after him. “Come on, let’s make sure the other kids are ready to go.”
As they gathered the rest of their things together, the notes of the song they had been dancing to filled the room once more. Dongwoo was last to leave and hesitated at the doorway, wanting to let Hoya know that they would be waiting for him back at the dorm. Wanting to let him know that they didn’t think he was weird and that they weren’t angry and that they still cared.
But Hoya was already absorbed in the music and it didn’t feel right to interrupt him. So, like the others, Dongwoo left without a word and he didn’t see the eyes that watched him go.
* * * * *
Sungyeol wanted to talk about it. And Sungjong wanted to talk about it. And Woohyun certainly wanted to talk about it.
But Dongwoo didn’t.
Because what was the point of talking about something that they didn’t understand? What, really, was the point of Sungyeol’s theory that Hoya was allergic to human skin? Or Woohyun’s claims that Hoya was a spy from the North?
Albeit a very bad spy, as Sunggyu had pointed out. A spy who was the most socially awkward person Dongwoo had ever met. A spy who now seemed to have no more chance of growing close to his own band members than of flying to the moon. A spy who would have been shot for failure the moment he stepped back on northern soil.
And how often could you repeat the same thing over again?
Yes, Hoya had thrown Woohyun into a table. And yes, Hoya had then locked himself in the bathroom. And did Dongwoo think Hoya had sounded afraid when he had stammered out that apology? And did Dongwoo think that Hoya had looked ill when he had rushed away? And did Dongwoo think that maybe something was wrong with Hoya?
Yes. Yes he did. He thought all of those things.
But what was the point in talking about it?
No, Dongwoo didn’t want to talk, he wanted to find out what was wrong. And he supposed that that was why he started watching Hoya so carefully.
And that was why Dongwoo found himself asking permission to stay behind with Hoya one afternoon to continue rehearsing.
The manager just shrugged and Sunggyu gave him a small look, but it didn’t seem to be a problem and a few moments later Dongwoo found himself alone in the dance room with Hoya, who was still facing the mirrored wall, face expressionless and drink bottle in hand.
“You don’t smile much.” Dongwoo blurted out.
He didn’t really mean anything by it. It was just an observation and honestly he wasn’t even sure why he had bothered to put it into words, but he almost wished he hadn’t.
He could actually see the way that every single muscle in Hoya’s back stiffened at his words. It was fascinating. It was unnerving.
The younger boy blinked at him through the reflection in the dance room’s mirror and then lifted his water bottle to take another sip.
“I just forget to sometimes.” He said eventually, his dialect almost hidden under the careful way he pronounced the words. He capped the bottle and turned, rolling it back across the floor towards the wall. “I’m working on it.”
Dongwoo frowned.
That wasn’t how smiling worked.
Then again, it seemed that Hoya rarely did follow his opinion of how things should work.
Dongwoo didn’t really know what to say next, so they fell into silence. It shouldn’t have been awkward, but it was. Hoya just stood in the middle of the dance room, stiff and silent and looking for all the world as though he wanted nothing more than to just turn the cd player on and get back to dancing.
Dongwoo wanted to ask Hoya if he was ok. He wanted to ask him if he wanted to talk about what had happened. Because for some reason talking about it with Hoya was different.
But Hoya was looking at some point above Dongwoo’s head, fingers twitching impatiently.
Dongwoo sighed and decided to put him out of his misery.
“Shall we get going again, then?”
“Sure.” Hoya replied and he was already standing in position with his head down and the opening bars of the music track lilting through the room, before Dongwoo had even finished capping his own drink bottle.
Dongwoo sighed again and stood to join him.
* * * * *
It quickly became routine for Dongwoo to stay behind some afternoons and dance with Hoya. They didn’t really talk, but sometimes Dongwoo thought that maybe Hoya was starting to relax in his presence a little. Once he had thrown Dongwoo a water bottle when they had finished a routine and after the first week he had started to wait for Dongwoo to pick himself up off the floor before turning on the next track.
Dongwoo even thought that at times Hoya might actually enjoy having someone else there. Someone to compare with. He noticed the way Hoya would watch him sometimes, noticed when Hoya adjusted his technique as if deciding that he had liked Dongwoo’s way better. And on three different occasions, when it was Dongwoo who didn’t feel that what he was doing was quite perfect, Hoya had slowed down, repeated the move, carefully, exactly, until Dongwoo had got it.
Through dance they had developed some kind of silent understanding. That was what Dongwoo liked to think.
Dongwoo still wasn’t sure exactly what that understanding was, but he stopped trying so hard to start conversations and he thought that Hoya might have stopped trying so hard to avoid them. Not that Hoya actively joined, but he did seem content to listen.
And before long Dongwoo had nearly forgotten, really, why he had started all this in the first place. Hoya was good at doing that. Making people forget.
As much as his silence and distance were a constant reminder of the space that existed between him and the others, there was a strange ease in the way that he did it. As if he had mastered the craft of not really mattering a long time ago. After a little while it almost became normal.
And although Dongwoo had sworn not to become complacent about Hoya ever again, even he found himself slowly falling into his new routine and forgetting to keep his eyes open and his brain working.
He had been successful for a while and long after Woohyun had moved on and bought Hoya a little purple keyring on his day off, as if nothing had ever happened between them, Dongwoo was still working on the mystery, looking for the clues.
At first he had kept a list of the things that he noticed. It was short.
Hoya wakes up before everyone else. (which meant that by the time the rest of the members stepped out of their rooms, Hoya had done his morning exercise, was showered and dressed and was eating his breakfast on his own in the lounge room).
Hoya goes to bed after everyone else. (which meant that unless Dongwoo stayed up and waited for the younger man to return to the dorm, he was never able to wish him goodnight).
Hoya never speaks unless spoken to. (the only exception to this rule was when he asked the manager if he could visit the studio to practice).
As Dongwoo had noticed each of these three things, he had wondered how he had ever missed them before. Why had he never wondered what Hoya looked like when he was sleeping before now? Why had he never before sat near him in silence and hoped and hoped that today would be the day Hoya would speak to him of his own volition?
Why had Dongwoo never before wanted to spend as much time with the other boy as possible?
And maybe that was the problem, because that was where the list ended. At some point Dongwoo stopped watching Hoya’s interactions and started watching the way his body moved when he danced, the way his brows furrowed when he concentrated, the way Dongwoo thought that Hoya's lips might have turned up a little at the corners when Dongwoo was rattling on about flying carpets one night on the ride home from the studio.
He wasn’t really sure when his thoughts concerning the time he spent with Hoya changed. But they did. He wasn’t sure when he started enjoying his time with Hoya so much. But he did. And he wasn’t sure when solving the mystery of Hoya took a backseat in his mind. But it did. And by the time Dongwoo realised how complacent he had become, almost a month had passed.
* * * * *
It had been a long night and Dongwoo had started to daydream without even realising it. The wall he was leaning against was hard, but all he could see in his mind were pillows. Lots of them. There was a particularly large, purple one shaped like a dolphin. And lots of little poufy ones which were falling down from the sky all around him…and his head was growing so heavy with the sheer number of pillows filling it that Dongwoo’s chin was beginning to loll forward of its own accord.
And then he heard it. A crash and the smallest noise. A groan. A sound of pain.
His head jerked up and he blinked around blankly.
He was in the corridor outside the studio showers. It was night time. He was waiting for Hoya.
Hoya.
Dongwoo pushed himself off the wall and towards the bathroom door with a speed that even he was surprised he possessed so soon after leaving pillow-land. At the door he hesitated.
“Hoya?” There was no reply and without another thought, Dongwoo pushed the door open and stepped inside.
A line of sinks and mirrors spanned the wall opposite him, the showers stretching out to his right, and there, right in the middle of the tiled room, kneeling with his head in his hands and a towel wrapped tightly around his waist, was Hoya.
Dongwoo was already striding to him before Hoya had lifted his head and processed Dongwoo’s presence in the room, but when he did Hoya backed away so quickly and so violently that it was almost stunning to watch.
Dongwoo paused instantly.
Their eyes were locked and Dongwoo couldn’t help wondering what Hoya saw in his own, because all Dongwoo could see was a wounded, unpredictable animal staring straight at him with muscles taught and breath heavy.
Fight or flight.
The words echoed subconsciously through Dongwoo’s mind. As though he was watching a cornered animal crouched on the floor, about to make its decision based entirely on what Dongwoo did next…
But then Dongwoo pushed the thoughts from his mind. This was Hoya. And they had an understanding. They danced together and Hoya listened to Dongwoo when he spoke. They were friends.
“Hoya, are you ok?” He asked, moving forward once again, looking desperately for any sign of an injury. And there it was; a dark red mark forming above Hoya’s right eyebrow.
Before he could take more than a step, Hoya had scrambled back even further, not pausing until the wall was at his back, bare chest rising and falling rapidly.
“I’m fine.” He bit out, voice strained and echoing the tension apparent in his entire bearing. One hand was clenching the towel tightly, holding the material together, whilst the other moved across his chest in some kind of vain attempt to cover his bare skin…
Dongwoo frowned.
He’d seen the members shirtless plenty of times before. Changed in the same rooms together. Pissed beside each other at urinals. Showered together even.
But never Hoya…a voice in his head reminded him suddenly. And it was true; he’d never seen Hoya so much as change his socks, let alone shared a bathroom with him. It seemed silly now that he hadn’t thought about it before.
And why had he never wondered at the fact that they didn’t shower at the same time when they finished their rehearsal? Why had he never wondered that Hoya only seemed to finish stretching down and packing up after Dongwoo had already left the bathroom?
He’d fallen into the routine to easily. Just another thing that Hoya had managed to make look normal enough for him not to question. How much more was there?
It was silly though. They were both men; Hoya didn’t need to hide from him.
He took another step forward. “Hoya, I-”
“Please don’t.” The strange, desperate edge to Hoya’s voice was so confusing.
Dongwoo inched closer again. “I just want to check your wound. I just want to make sure you’re ok…”
Hoya was pressing himself further into the unyielding wall, as if it might suddenly open and swallow him up. “Please don’t.” He said again and that edge was taking on a new quality. Something Dongwoo couldn’t identify.
“I’m only going to look at your head.” Dongwoo explained carefully. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed important that he do this. He could just turn around, respect the younger boy’s privacy, and walk away. But Dongwoo needed to know. He needed to know what this was. “Only that.”
Hoya’s eyes were over-bright now, only a meter from Dongwoo’s own. There were tears resting unshed inside them and it caught Dongwoo off guard. “Please…” Hoya tried one last time.
But it was too late, Dongwoo had closed the gap between them. He was crouched in front of Hoya’s face, his hands reaching out to grasp the younger boy’s shoulders gently, one lifting to trace the purpling bruise on Hoya’s forehead.
And then Dongwoo was falling back onto his arse, Hoya’s hands pulling away instantly to cross over his chest, his body jerking to the side as he threw up onto the pale tiles below.
Dongwoo could only sit where he’d fallen, stunned into silence, as Hoya retched again and again, bringing up food and then bile, body shaking.
He couldn’t see Hoya’s face, the boy had turned it away as he heaved wretchedly, and after a few moments Dongwoo finally backed away.
He waited until the fit subsided…and then he waited a little more.
Hoya still hadn’t turned back to face him. Dongwoo wondered if he ever would.
“Hoya?”
But the way the younger man’s entire body flinched at the sound of his voice was all Dongwoo really needed to hear. He stood carefully and backed out of the room.
When Hoya emerged twenty minutes later he still didn’t look at Dongwoo, but he waited for him so that they could walk to the company car together and on the drive home he curled into his seat and didn’t even try to hide the tears running down his face.
Dongwoo didn’t dare reach out to comfort him.
That night Dongwoo added two new entries onto his Hoya List.
Hoya doesn’t like to be seen.
Hoya doesn’t like to be touched…
Dongwoo felt a little sick inside as he closed his notebook and replaced it beneath his mattress.
He wondered whether Hoya's family had ever rung him for his birthday...
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