And I Blink in Sight of Your Blinding Light
chapter 2 - Lara fucking Raj
tw: mild violence, graphic descriptions of violence (broken nose)
By the eighth unanswered call from Mary, Sam was tempted to eat all the food out of spite.
He could turn around and go home, because he did tell Mary to wait for him downstairs. But if Mary was stuck in rehearsal with her ex Dumb Ryan in charge, she was already having a bad enough day. Plus, if they’ve been at it since this morning, the girls must also be pretty burnt out.
He could leave the food with the security guard downstairs. But his friend isn’t on shift; the other guard is. Carl, the one who always asks for ID twice or frowns more than usual if Sam hasn’t shaved his beard. Sam is too tired for that today.
And maybe he is too, since he hasn’t tapped on his window to ask why Sam’s been sitting in the car longer than their unwritten twenty-five-minute accord.
He calls a ninth time. He waits long enough that the container on top isn’t warm anymore, the plastic lid fogged with tiny droplets. He rolls his eyes. “Die With a Smile” starts playing on the radio for the fifth time, and he briefly thinks about staying in the car with the engine running.
Sam knows he should go up. He knows how exhausting it is to have assholes for coaches and schedules that are probably not fully legal. Mary has talked about the girls so much that he feels adjacently responsible enough. They’re hungry, tired, and, well, under the all-familiar pressure he knows too well. Fuck.
It would be nice to see Sophia again.
“Screw it,” he mutters to himself. He turns off the car and slams his door hard enough to make it clear to Carl that he is not in the mood for his bullshit. But Carl must really not care (not with Sam’s very intimidating Cars Crocs, dobok loose at the waist, and plastic bags cutting into his arms) because he gets up from his deck to wait for Sam at the door.
“Choi,” he looks annoyed. Great. “Do you have a badge?”
“Do you?”
Carl just rolls his eyes and seems to decide to let it go. Sam eyes him warily as Carl calls for the elevator and waits awkwardly next to him.
“Second floor, take the hallway to your left and the first door to the right.” Carl doesn’t leave room for Sam to give a sarcastic comeback, just slides his badge over the pad and presses the button “2.”
The elevator is glass. Everything in the building seems to be all glass, really. Call it Korean modernism or an eerie warning that you’re always being watched. It’s enough to distract Sam until the elevator dings again and he thinks about it. He’s already inside. Maybe he could share the food with Carl?
“Don’t be stupid,” and he’s talking to himself again. Great.
He follows Carl’s instructions, and suddenly he’s frozen in front of the door that says ‘KATSEYE’S Rehearsal Room 1’ because of course there are others. When was the last time he was in a studio? He can hear a piano running scales-- E Major, he thinks to himself-- and voices trying for a perfect harmony. He peeks his head in the window and tries to find Mary but only notices Sophia, who is standing near the piano, back straight and eyes tired.
She stops abruptly the second their eyes meet. He watches her lips go “Oh my God, oh my God,” and Dumb Ryan’s hands stop on the piano, his dumb head turning to see him on the door. They probably roll their eyes at the same time.
Sophia opens the door for him, shrieks his name, and almost topples them both over—food and everything. She wraps her arms around him, and he kind of forgets about his annoyance. He missed her.
As soon as she lets go of him, she punches his arm. Hard. “That’s for not taking so long.” She punches his other arm before he can move. “And that’s for not visiting me once.”
“Damn, Sophie. I missed you too.”
Sam places the bags on the nearest table, mostly to avoid Sophia's turns, and claps once, loud enough to shift the room. “Guys, this is Sam. My bestie since we were, like, twelve.”
The girls turn toward him in near-unison, and for half a second it seems automatic, the way they smile and wave like it’s a fan meeting. The muscle memory of meeting strangers when you’re running on empty.
Sam recognizes that face. The fan-meeting face. He hates that he recognizes it.
Sam bows, and Sophia introduces them one by one, and it’s more remembering for Sam because Mary sometimes sleeps with their merch. Rants about every live the girls do and “Can you believe they said…” followed by something that would have had Sam grounded for a month. There’s posters too big to match the aesthetic of the penthouse so they just rest against random walls.
So, sure, he knows who Lara fucking Raj is.
But when Sophia says, “This is Lara” and uselessly points her out, it’s like Sam’s seeing her for the first time. Because oh.
There’s no fireworks or butterflies or love at first sight. It’s this sudden, violent absence of noise. Like someone finally reached into his skull and turned off the months-long static he wasn’t even aware of.
Lara Raj looks tired. Like she’s been doing runs and choreo since 9 a.m., retouched her makeup every other hour, and put on a smile because there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. Standing there like someone who knows they belong here.
The girls thank him for the food; he knows that. But he only smiles, bows suddenly remembering his manners when Lara says, “Oh my God, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Mary talks about you all the time.”
Mary? Right, Mary. His sister. What, sister? He nods once, because words are temporarily unavailable, and watches Lara start unpacking the food.
Manon is giving him a look, like she’s trying to access his thoughts, which would be scary if he had any right now. Daniela smiles briefly before stuffing her mouth with a breadstick, Megan waves from where her face is way too close to the microwave --why is there a kitchen in the rehearsal room?-- and Yoonchae looks at him with bright eyes. She opens her mouth to speak when Dumb Ryan’s voice snaps him back to the room.
“Alright, that’s enough.” Ryan claps once, like it’s supposed to mean much. “You can eat after rehearsal. Let’s get back to work.”
“Ryan, it’s 5 p.m. They’ve been here since this morning.”
Ryan does that thing that has always annoyed Sam since the moment Mary introduced him as her boyfriend four months ago. That little breathy laugh at nothing, not even a full laugh—just huh through the nose. Like your presence is amusing enough. “Choi, you can’t walk into my rehearsal and tell me how to run it.”
“I’m not telling you what to do,” Sam says evenly. “I’m just saying, being humane can’t hurt you that much?”
Ryan turns to sit again, like that’s that. “Let’s run again.”
Sam watches the girls swallow before they managed to grab, eyes flickering to Sam and then Sophia. They get back to running harmonies like nothing happened, but Sam sees the way their eye flicker to the clock and the bags on the table.
He should leave, logically, he knows that. He should probably find where the hell Mary is. But Dumb Ryan gets on his nerves again. “No, no--” his voice is sharp. “That pitch is flat. You’re pushing from your throat, Megan, come on.”
Sam does the mature thing and leans close to Ryan, reading the sheet music with his head almost on Ryan’s shoulder. He hears one of the girls snort. “Can I help you?”
“That’s not a pitch issue,” Sam says. “It’s breath support. Maybe don’t ask them to sustain without reset. They’re tired.”
Really, Sam isn’t usually like this. He’s polite, mostly. Too Korean to be a brat. But Dumb Ryan always brought the worst of him, and he’s particularly not fond of people who justify a poor attitude with whatever made-up title they think gives them power.
“Sam, please,” Ryan says, smile thin. “I didn’t ask for a Broadway dropout to assist my sessions.”
“Then maybe don’t run your sessions like you want them to drop out too.”
Sophia calls his name, raises an eyebrow he’s familiar with: behave.
Ryan’s nose flares, and he looks around to check who’s witnessing his humiliation. Sam tightens the black belt around his waist, a thoughtless tug, muscle memory recall of technique. Maybe that’s what sets Ryan off.
Some unconscious, animal thing. Posturing without meaning to.
Sam doesn’t see the punch coming.
It’s fast and sloppy-- all shoulder and ego. Sam briefly thinks about poor technique. Then there’s the dull crack-- wet, like knuckles hitting cartilage instead of bone. Pressure caves his face inward, familiar and sharp, and everything is a mess of heat and tears and red.
He’s taken enough kicks to the face to know better than to panic. Tastes like iron. Feels it warm against his upper lip, already dripping. He laughs once—disbelieving, mostly-- even as his eyes burn with tears.
If he were Ryan, and his hand probably wasn’t broken, he’d swing again just for that.
Ryan swears loudly, clutching his hand.
Sophia is between them instantly, one hand on Sam’s chest, the other trying to look at his nose. “Jesus—Sam—”
He lets her see because he’s ruined her day enough as it is. She tilts his head back and the blood falls on his mouth. He feels it when he grins at Ryan. “Hey, you good?”
Dumb Ryan glares.
“Because,” Sam adds lightly. “I think you broke your hand.”
note: fun one to write, hope you like it!!
prev - masterlist - next
taglist! (open)
@solarzbeam, @daysareslow, @fck-this-name
