The music room smelled like stale air and someone’s abandoned coffee. Phuwin had been staring at the same lyric sheet for fifteen minutes, the hangul blurring into nothing, his headphones pushed down around his neck. The producer—some guy named Ohm he’d worked with twice before—was scrolling through his phone, waiting for Phuwin to find his voice.
He couldn’t find shit.
The glass wall of the recording booth gave him a clean sightline down the corridor. Through it, past the vending machines and the framed gold records, the dance studio's own wall of windows ran parallel—and there, mid-center, Pond moved like water finding its level.
The choreography was sharp. Jasp.er's latest comeback track, something bass-heavy and relentless. Phuwin knew the song. He knew every song Pond had ever danced to, had catalogued them across a year of watching from doorways and balcony rails and the shadowed corners of venues where he wasn't supposed to be. Pond's body hit each beat a half-second before the sound reached the glass, muscle memory so deep it looked like instinct.
Aou was beside him, Joong behind, Santa at the diagonal—all of them sweating through their practice clothes, all of them good. But Pond was different. Pond's body didn't just execute. It spoke. Every roll of his hips carried something unspoken, something Phuwin felt in the base of his spine.
Ohm cleared his throat. "You want to run it again from the bridge?"
Phuwin didn't answer. His reflection in the booth glass stared back at him—wide doe eyes, a strand of black hair already escaping from where he'd pushed it back. His fingers had stopped tapping against the lyric sheet. The paper was damp where his palm had been resting.
"Phu?"
"Give me a second," Phuwin said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. He was already standing, the headphones sliding off his neck and clattering against the music stand. "I need to—someone I know. Just a minute."
Ohm shrugged, already back on his phone. Phuwin was out the door before the shrug finished.
The corridor stretched longer than it had any right to. Phuwin's footsteps were too loud on the polished floor, his sneakers squeaking in a way that made him wince. Through the dance studio's windows, the group was still moving—Santa had called a correction, something about the transition into the second chorus. Phuwin watched Pond nod, watched him wipe sweat from his temple with the back of his wrist, watched the way his t-shirt clung to the small of his back where the fabric had darkened with damp.
Phuwin's hand hovered over the door handle. He could feel his pulse in his throat, a steady thump that seemed too loud, too obvious. Inside, the music cut off mid-bar. Santa's voice filtered through the glass, muffled but clear: "Take five. Hydrate. We're running the bridge again."
Pond straightened from his ending position. His chest rose and fell with the exertion, the muscles in his shoulders shifting under golden skin. He reached for his water bottle, and that was when his eyes flicked toward the door. Toward Phuwin.
Their gazes met through the glass. Pond's expression didn't change—still that soft, easy smile—but something moved behind his eyes. A flicker of knowing. The same knowing that had crackled through the dark studio last night, when he'd stood wet and naked and smiled at his own reflection while Phuwin hid somewhere in the shadows.
Phuwin pushed the door open. The hinge sighed. "P'Pond."
"Nong Phu." Pond's voice was light, almost teasing. He capped his water bottle with a slow, deliberate twist. "Didn't expect to see you here."
The lie sat between them, comfortable as an old sweater. Phuwin felt heat creep up his neck. "I'm—I'm recording. In the production room. For the music video." He gestured vaguely behind him, toward the corridor he'd just come through. "I saw you dancing and I just wanted to say hi."
"Hi." Pond's smile deepened. He leaned one hip against the practice barre, the pose casual and open, his t-shirt still clinging in all the places that made Phuwin's throat dry. "Everything okay? You look a little flushed."
"Fine. I'm fine." Phuwin swallowed. His fingers found the hem of his own shirt, twisting the fabric. "I just—it's been a while. Since we talked. How have you been?"
Pond tilted his head. A bead of sweat traced a path from his temple to his jaw, and Phuwin watched it travel. "Busy. Practice, shoots. The usual." He paused, and the pause was deliberate, weighted. "Missed you, though."
Phuwin's stomach dropped. Pond had said it so easily, so casually, like it was nothing. Like he wasn't standing there with that soft, knowing smile and those sharp almond eyes that saw everything and gave nothing away. "I missed you too." The words came out before Phuwin could stop them. Quieter than he meant. Realer than he wanted.
"Yeah?" Pond's eyebrow lifted a fraction. He pushed off the barre, taking one step closer, close enough that Phuwin could smell him—clean sweat and something underneath, something that was just Pond. "How much?"
Phuwin's breath caught. Behind them, Joong's laugh rang out across the studio, Santa was saying something about the bridge transition, and none of it mattered. The world had shrunk to this: Pond's eyes, the inch of space between them, the question hanging in the air like a dare.
"A lot," Phuwin managed. His voice cracked on the second syllable. He bit his lip—hard, the sting grounding him—and forced himself to hold Pond's gaze. "I was wondering if maybe you'd want to—I mean, there's this club. Tonight. If you're free."
Pond didn't answer right away. He let the silence stretch, let Phuwin squirm under the weight of it. His smile never wavered, but his eyes flicked down to Phuwin's mouth, to where his teeth were still pressing into his lower lip, and something in his expression shifted. Something warmer. Hungrier.
"I'll think about it," Pond said.
Phuwin's heart slammed against his ribs. "Okay. Yeah. Think about it." He was nodding too much, too fast, his fingers still tangled in his shirt hem. "I just—I really miss you, P'Pond. I know we haven't talked much since—" He couldn't finish. The word "breakup" sat on his tongue, heavy and sharp.
"Since we broke up," Pond finished for him. His voice was gentler now, the teasing edge softened into something that sounded almost like the old Pond. The one who used to trace circles on Phuwin's palm while they watched movies. The one who kissed like the world was ending. "I know, Phu. I know."
Phuwin's eyes stung. He blinked hard, looked down at the floor, at the scuffed practice-room tiles. "You look good," he said, and it came out sad, small, the way he felt. "You look really good."
"So do you." Pond's hand lifted—just a twitch, just a half-aborted movement toward Phuwin's face—and then dropped back to his side. "But I should get back. Santa will kill me if I'm late for the run-through."
"Yeah." Phuwin stepped back, toward the door. "Yeah, go. Go practice. I'll see you later? Maybe?"
Pond nodded. "Maybe."
Phuwin waved—an awkward, jerky motion that made him cringe even as he did it—and backed out through the door. Through the glass, he watched Pond turn and jog back to the group, watched Santa lean in and ask something, watched Pond shake his head and say something that looked like "Nothing. Let's run it again."
Phuwin didn't go far. Just around the corner, down the corridor, to the little alcove where the vending machines hummed and nobody ever stopped. He pressed his back against the cold wall and put his face in his hands.
His fingers were shaking. His whole body was shaking. "God," he whispered into his palms. "God, he's so—" The words came out strangled, half-laugh, half-sob. "The man I just talked to is so good at fucking me. So good. And making me—making me like this."
!!!
The vending machine hummed against his back, cold through his thin shirt. Phuwin pressed his palms harder into his eye sockets until starbursts bloomed behind his eyelids. His cock was half-hard in his jeans, had been since Pond leaned in close enough to smell, and now his body wouldn't stop trembling—adrenaline and want and the sheer mortification of having stood there like a stuttering idiot while Pond looked at him with those knowing eyes.
"Like this," he repeated, quieter. His voice broke on the last word. He dragged his hands down his face, fingers catching on his lips, still swollen where he'd bitten them. Pond had looked at his mouth. Pond had looked at his mouth and something had shifted, something hungry, and Phuwin had seen it.
He let out a sound—half groan, half laugh—and pushed off the wall. His legs felt unsteady, like he'd run a mile instead of just standing in a dance studio for five minutes. The alcove was still empty, still humming with vending machine fluorescence, and he waved his hand in the air, a shaky, embarrassed gesture that was for no one but himself.
"Get it together," he muttered. "You have to go back. You have to sing."
He ran his fingers through his hair, felt the loose strand that had escaped his styling, and tucked it behind his ear with hands that still weren't quite steady. His reflection in the vending machine glass was a mess—flushed cheeks, glassy eyes, the kind of dazed expression that belonged in a drama, not on a professional model about to record vocals for a music video.
The corridor stretched ahead of him, empty and too bright. Phuwin made himself walk. One foot in front of the other, sneakers squeaking on polished tile, past the dance studio where he did not look through the glass because if he looked he would see Pond moving through the choreography and his body would forget how to function.
He didn't look. He walked faster.
The production room door was exactly as he'd left it, slightly ajar, Ohm's silhouette visible through the narrow gap. Phuwin pushed it open and stepped inside, and the change in air pressure made his ears pop—the booth was climate-controlled, cool and dry, smelling of electronics and the faint ghost of someone's lunch.
"Sorry," he said. His voice came out steadier than he felt. "Sorry, that took longer than I thought."
Ohm glanced up from his phone, one eyebrow lifting a fraction. "You good? You look like you just ran a marathon."
"I'm fine." Phuwin slid back into his spot behind the microphone, the headphones cool against his ears where the skin still burned. His fingers found the lyric sheet, crumpled now where he'd gripped it too hard earlier. "Really. Let's go. From the bridge."
Ohm didn't push. He just shrugged and tapped at the console, and the backing track filtered through Phuwin's headphones—synth and bass, a slow-burn beat that matched the pulse still hammering in his throat. The screen in front of him lit up with the lyric overlay, the little cursor blinking at the start of the bridge like an accusation.
Phuwin opened his mouth. The first note came out shaky, a half-breath of air before the word caught. He stopped. Closed his eyes. Tried again.
This time the note held—thin at first, then fuller, his voice finding the melody like a hand finding a wall in the dark. He sang about longing, about someone who left and took all the light with them, and the irony wasn't lost on him. Every word was a confession he'd already made to Pond's face ten minutes ago, minus the part where he'd pressed his palms against a vending machine alcove and said out loud what Pond did to him in bed.
His face went hot again. He kept singing.
Through the booth glass, Ohm was nodding along, one finger tapping the desk in time. The recording light stayed red. Phuwin's voice climbed into the pre-chorus, and something in his chest unclenched just enough to let the next breath through. This was the easy part—the part where he didn't have to be Phuwin, just a voice in a machine, just another pretty boy singing someone else's heartbreak.
Except it wasn't someone else's. It never had been.
"That's good," Ohm said through the talkback when the track faded. "Bridge is solid. Want to run the chorus?"
Phuwin nodded, not trusting his voice for anything but the melody. The track kicked in again, and he let himself sink into it—the swell of the instrumentation, the way the lyrics demanded more from his chest than his lungs wanted to give. He sang about wanting, about the ache of an empty space beside him in bed, and his mind supplied Pond's face in the dark studio last night, water still beading on his shoulders, that smile curling at the edge of his mouth like he knew exactly what Phuwin was doing in the shadows.
The chorus peaked. Phuwin's voice cracked on the final high note.
"Shit." He pulled the headphones off, already wincing. "Sorry. Let me try that again."
"No, it's fine, the emotion was there." Ohm's voice was patient, the kind of patient that came from working with too many singers who fell apart in the booth. "We can punch in. Give me a clean take on just the last line."
Phuwin nodded, pressing the headphones back against his ears. The track cued up, just the last four bars, and he took a breath that felt like it came from somewhere deeper than his lungs. The note came out clean this time—high and aching, the kind of sound that made people close their eyes when they listened.
"Perfect." Ohm was already saving the file, his attention shifting to the monitor. "I think we've got what we need for today. You want to listen back?"
"No." Phuwin said it too fast, then softened it with a weak smile. "I trust you. If you say it's good, it's good."
Ohm gave him a look—the kind of look that said he knew there was more going on but wasn't paid enough to ask. "Alright. You're done for the day, then. Go home. Get some rest. You look like you need it."
Phuwin pulled off the headphones and stood, his legs steadier now than they'd been when he walked in. The booth door swung open with a soft hiss, and the warmer air of the production room hit his face like a reminder that the world outside still existed. He gathered his things—phone, wallet, the half-empty water bottle he'd been nursing since morning—and headed for the door.
The corridor was empty now. No music bleeding through the dance studio walls, no muffled laughter or counted beats. Phuwin paused at the corner where the vending machines hummed, where twenty minutes ago he'd pressed his face into his hands and said things he'd never said out loud before. The wall was still cool. The vending machine lights still flickered, one of them buzzing with a loose connection.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.