backup!dancer!reader x sophia laforteza ── enemies to lovers ⋆⁺₊⋆
syn: you've been a katseye backup dancer for four months and you have no idea why sophia can't stand you
masterlist | taglist | build-a-fic event
avalon's perfumery fragrance 01, cold shoulder
request: okk first of all, the perfumery is so cool, like i’m obsessed!! aaaand i was wondering if you could do an eau de perfume (or de toilette), spicy, rose, orange (maybe reader is a backup dancer for katseye ;)) and vetiver :> let me know if u need more details or anything! hope you have a nice day <33
avalon: hi this is perfect and I'm in love with you hehe. thank you so much for your submission. i hope this fits what you were asking for eeek
if you're reading this this is unedited lol. im tired. will come back and edit it soon
You’d been running the same count for three hours now.
The burn began in your calves, then spread to your hips, and by the time the edges of the mirror fogged from everyone’s breath, you weren’t sure how much longer you could stand this. The last of the day's light streamed through the high windows, its long stripes along the wood floor growing dim.
Your body braced itself at the sound of Yuna’s voice—she called the eight-count from the top with crossed arms from the front of the room.
"Five, six, seven– Sophia."
Her voice cut through the music and someone near the speakers killed it. The room flooded with a suffocating dread as you all tried to stifle your panting.
"Watch y/n," Yuna said. "You shouldn't be getting outdanced by your own back up."
Her correction ripped through the room like a shot. Girls spared quick glances at you and Sophia, unable to help their morbid curiosity. Against your better judgement, you looked over at Sophia, too. She adjusted her shoulders and lifted her chin. No flinch, no frown. The studio light caught the line of her jaw when she turned back to face front, and you made yourself look away.
You’ve been dancing before you knew how to spell—you knew how to swallow critique without reaction. Apparently, Sophia had adapted just the same.
Yuna moved on quickly, either averting her attention from the tension in your corner of the room or oblivious to it entirely. The music burst to life before everyone could find their marks and you threw yourself back into the eight-count with the kind of focus that was really just a very disciplined form of not thinking.
When you were through, the sting made itself known again. You didn’t look at Sophia.
By the time break was called, a blueish dusk had fully set in. The room had thinned out a bit, a few girls peeling off toward the hall where someone had left a box of convenience store onigiri on the folding table. You heard Lara laugh at something, bright and out of place, and Megan's lower voice answering underneath it.
You found a spot against the far mirror and slid down until you were sitting with your knees up, pressing your sweating water bottle against your neck.
One hour to go, maybe two if the choreographers decide the formation needs to be picked apart again.
The studio transformed into something different during rest. The ceiling higher, the walls further apart, the mirrors now just mirrors. You could hear the ventilation system, the distant bass from whatever was playing in the practice room down the hall, Lara and Megan's conversation winding through the space like it belonged there.
"She's been doing that thing with her left arm again," Megan said.
You shut your eyes to prevent yourself from watching on top of your eavesdropping.
"I know," Lara said. "She knows too. She was watching herself in the mirror the whole last run."
A pause followed, then the crinkling of a wrapper.
"Do you think Yuna was too hard on her?"
"Yuna's Yuna," Megan said, which wasn't really an answer.
You took a slow drink of water and fixated on the cold sitting in your throat.
You noticed it on the fourth run after break, the way Sophia looked at you.
Not the innocent sideways glance people traded in rehearsal—did you mess up or did I. Not the blank, mirror-fixed stare of someone trying to hold their spacing. She looked at you directly, right at the top of the formation change just before the step where she held your shoulders from behind.
It was one, jarring second until something within her snapped into place. A fleeting moment before she was back to clean, precise, and completely unreadable.
You had been dancing in Sophia LaForteza's orbit for four months. In that time she had spoken to you exactly as much as was required—blocking notes, formation calls, the occasional clipped sorry when someone cut a corner too tight.
She smiled at the other backup dancers, laughed at their jokes. She was practically sisters with the other members. She brought coffee for the vocal coaches and thanked the sound guys by name.
It’s not that you hadn’t tried in the beginning. You were bubbly, personable, never difficult or stepping on any toes (literally and figuratively).
But sooner or later, you realized her cold shoulder wasn’t a fluke. The way she looked at you, or lack there of, made it clear she viewed you something akin to “the help.” Eventually, you stopped offering the warmth that wasn’t reciprocated.
It was easier than the alternative—easier than noticing the way her hair fell across her forehead when she was tired and stopped fixing it, easier than listening to her boisterous laugh when another backup dancer made a joke, easier than admitting that the blankness she aimed at you specifically felt like heavier than indifference.
It happened on a Tuesday, which felt wrong somehow. Things like this should have a build-up, should arrive on a Friday when everyone was already fraying, not two days after your off day with a gourmet coffee growing cold by the speaker and grey light coming through the windows.
Yuna had left twenty minutes early, that was the first domino, and Sophia decided to take over the count.
When left to their own devices, everyone defaulted to her. You had watched it happen enough times to know the pattern, the way the room reorganized itself around her as if they knew it’s exactly what she wanted and they were eager to please.
The second domino fell shortly thereafter. You hit your six count, then came out of your turn early. You could have sworn it was barely noticeable unless someone was watching intently. Watching you and you alone.
"Hold on." Sophia's voice, clear and even and sweet in a way she couldn’t turn off, no matter who she was talking to.
The music stopped. "Y/n, you're coming out of the turn early. You're rushing the prep."
A little pang of frustration echoed in your chest because, of course, you were aware.
She paused for a half-second, looking rather unimpressed. "From the top of the eight."
She took her place in front of you once more. You ran it again and this time you held the turn an extra count, something loosening at the relief of the timing clicking into place.
"Still early,” she said, looking at you through the mirror.
Your head snapped up, eyes trained on her through your heavy breathing.
The room grew incredibly still. Still enough that you could practically hear the sound of eyes landing on you.
“Are you sure?” Your voice came out weak, intentionally, because you were giving her the chance to amend her statement.
Sophia's expression didn't change. "It was by about half a count. Watch the mirror on the prep—"
"I've been doing this routine for six weeks. I know where the prep is,” you said, fighting against the bite in your tone.
She turned to face you properly.
You blinked at her, finding the physical manifestation of everything building between you startling.
"I did hit it. You called it early the first time too, and I fixed it, and then you called it again. So either you're not watching or you're—" You stopped yourself.
Sophia's chin lifted the way it had in the mirror on that first day.
"I'm–” she tilted her head, taunting you with pursed lips, “I’m what?"
The room collectively held its breath. The sound of your ragged breathing practically echoed off the walls and suddenly you wish you’d held yours too.
“Nothing,” you shook your head and smoothed back your hair. “Can we run it again.”
You looked at her. The afternoon light was flat and grey today, no warmth in it, and it made the studio feel claustrophobic. Sophia was watching you with something in her expression that you couldn't name, something that didn’t resemble that familiar blankness.
"I was going to say," you said carefully, "that you're correcting me because it's easier than taking the correction yourself."
An unbearably long silence stretched between you. Someone shifted their weight on the other side of the room and you could see Daniela and Megan exchange glances in your periphery.
Sophia's jaw tightened. "That's not what's happening."
"I'm not—I'm calling what I see."
"Okay," you said again, and something about the flatness of it, the way you didn't push, seemed to bother her more than if you had.
"You don't get to just say okay like —"
"What do you want me to say, Sophia?" And there it was, finally, the ugly thing underneath it all. "You want me to argue with you? I'm not going to argue with you. I fixed the turn. If you still think it's wrong then show me what you're seeing because I genuinely can't tell if you're giving me a real correction or if you just–" you exhaled. "Forget it. From the top."
You were already turning back to your mark.
"From the top," you said. "Please."
No one called the count. The music didn't come back on. After a moment you heard Lara say something quietly to Megan, and then the sound of someone picking up their water bottle, and then slowly, carefully, the room began to breathe again.
You stared at yourself in the mirror. Your expression was composed. Not surprising. You kept it, as you always did.
Sophia had walked to the far side of the studio. You could see her in the mirror with her back to the room, and you watched her press one hand flat against the glass and drop her head forward. It was dramatic and rather off brand considering her professionalism.
Daniela appeared at your elbow ten minutes later, while you were retying your shoe and trying to decide if you wanted to leave before or after Sophia did.
"That was a long time coming," she said, very quietly.
"I'm not saying anything."
She crouched down beside you, lowered her voice further. "She's not… it's not what you think. The cold thing. It's not because she doesn't–"
"I don't want to know," you said, and you meant it, mostly. "Not right now."
She patted your shoulder and offered a tender look before exiting the studio.
You went back for your water bottle only when you were certain she was gone, or at least you thought she was. You’d heard someone grab their things from the cubbies, you were sure you accounted for everyone.
But when you rounded the partition by the sound booth, you heard a sound so small and out of place you were convinced you had imagined it.
Sophia was sitting on the floor with her back against the mirror, in the same place as where you left, knees pulled to her chest, elbows stacked on top and head buried in them. You could tell she was trying her best to keep her shoulders still, but with little avail. You couldn’t see her face, but you did see the way she shifted her face slightly to wipe her cheek against her arm.
You should have left. You knew that. You could have backed out quietly and she never would have known and everything could have continued the way it had been for months—workable. A clean cut coldness. But you stayed.
You weren’t sure what gave it away, but she noticed quickly. She picked her head up just enough to see who it was. When the two of you locked eyes, her whole body went rigid and she tucked her head back down. The particular humiliation of being caught like that—by you specifically—was so obvious that it almost hurt to watch.
"I know," you said, because you weren't going to argue with her about that too.
After feeling frozen in place for a moment, you crossed the room and sat down against the mirror a few feet away from her. Instead of looking at her, you pulled your water bottle into your lap and stared at the middle distance and let the silence be what it was.
A minute passed, maybe two, and the entire time you were wondering if you overstepped—with this moment, with the earlier exchange, with something you weren’t even aware of.
"I've been having a hard time with the formation change," Sophia said finally, to the empty room. "The one in the bridge. Yuna's been flagging it for two weeks."
"So when you hit it cleanly every time and I…" She stopped. Exhaled through her nose. "It wasn't about the turn."
"I know," you said again, softer this time.
Silence took its familiar place between you, but it’d morphed into something more comfortable.
"I'm sorry," she said. "For today. And for…”
A pause that stretched long enough to hold all four months in it. "I don't know why I made it so difficult. With you."
You turned that over in your mind, looking for the barb in it, the qualifier, the place where it became something other than what it sounded like. You didn't find one.
"It's fine," you said, which wasn't exactly true, but it was the closest thing to a door you knew how to open.
The next few days were different, unceremoniously so.
She saved you a place at the folding table without making it a thing — just slid her bag over when you came in and looked back at her phone. You didn't comment on it, but it sat in your chest and refused to be resolved.
She started calling the corrections differently. Softer at the edges and much less like a verdict. You found yourself listening without bracing for it, which was new.
Once, running the bridge formation, you caught each other's eye in the mirror at exactly the wrong moment—the moment right after you'd both hit the change cleanly for the first time together—and she looked away first, which was also new.
You didn’t allow your mind to linger on it. It felt too new and too fragile and a little like something you might ruin if you looked at it directly. You just kept showing up, kept hitting your marks, and let whatever it was take up space without naming it.
Three weeks out from the show was when everything clicked, two when it started to mean something different, and by the night of it you had stopped pretending you didn't know what that something was.
The show came the way shows always did—too slow and then all at once.
You didn't think about her when the lights went up. You thought about your feet, the precarious cut of your skirt, the count. You thought about the crowd, which was enormous, reducing everything else to white noise. That was what you'd always loved about performing, the way it narrowed the world down to just your body and the music and your breathing.
It worked, mostly. Right up until the bridge.
You hit your mark and felt Sophia's hands land on your shoulders from behind, steady yet gentle, the way you'd stopped being surprised by. The count, the spacing, it was all correct. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.
And then she leaned in, just slightly and entirely unnecessary. Her chin came to rest near your temple for the half second before the step carried you apart, and you felt her exhale against your cheek.
You didn’t drop the count because four months of learning to weather her storm while keeping time prepared you for it. But your heart was doing something complicated in your chest and you were very aware of exactly where Sophia was for every remaining count of that performance in a way that had nothing to do with spacing.
You nearly collided with her coming offstage.
She caught your arm to steady you in the middle of all of it, her hand on your arm, both of you still breathing hard.
She let go and you didn’t dwell on the emptiness left behind.
The wings were chaos, smelling of hairspray and the unmistakable adrenaline-sweat of a hundred people who'd been running on nerves for three weeks. And despite it all, you and Sophia stood, flushed and breathing hard, in a bubble that felt far, far away from it all.
"The bridge," she said simply.
"I know,” you nodded, biting back a smile egged on by a mix of pride and nerves.
"I know,” you nodded. "Took us long enough."
She laughed, the real, melodic one you’ve been listening to from a distance. Something about having it aimed at you directly, finally, in this loud dark corridor with the stage still warm behind you, made your brain go briefly and completely blank.
The show had softened something in her face, or maybe that had been happening for weeks and you were only now letting yourself see it. Her hair was damp at the temples, chest still rising and falling fast, stage makeup faded. It was alarming, the way it hit you so suddenly.
You didn't know what your face was doing but you prayed it was something normal.
"Hey," she said, softer now, like she'd noticed something shift. "We did good."
"Yeah," you said, still dazed. "We did."
She opened her arms, which is something you’d never imagined she’d do, and you fell into her without question. Her arms wrapped around you, her body flush against yours, and it landed much differently than the quick congratulatory thing you'd been bracing for.
You felt her exhale against your shoulder like it was exactly where she’d been trying to get to. Her hand was splayed flat on your low back, pressing you closer to her despite no space left between you. Her chin rested near your temple, the way it had on stage, and this time you let yourself enjoy it.
You were acutely aware of how you were falling apart under her touch—how affected you were by what was left over of her perfume and how soft she felt against your skin.
You weren’t sure if this was a new development for either of you or it had just been obscured by everything else. Either way, what mattered is that you were holding onto it now and its presence was undeniable.
She pulled back just enough to look at you, lingering inches from your face, and her hands slid to your shoulders. Something about your expression, maybe the slight part of your lips or your wide eyes, made her pause.
The noise of the wings blurred into something distant and indistinguishable.
"Hi," she said quietly, grinning from ear to ear.
And you realized, standing there with her hands on your shoulders and her eyes locked with yours and your heart in your throat, that it had been the latter. This wasn’t new. She’d been waiting for you to catch up for a very long time.
The wings smelled of hot cables, hairspray, the particular adrenaline-sweat of a hundred people who'd been running on nerves for three weeks. You came offstage with your pulse racing and your face still warm from the lights and nearly walked into her.
Sophia was standing just past the flat, observing the chaos of everyone coming off in a daze. She looked at you the way she'd been looking at you for the last two weeks, the way that had no blankness in it at all.
"Hey," she said, something in her coming back to life.
You looked at her properly, the way you'd been careful not to for months. Her chest was still rising and falling fast, her hair damp at the temples, stage makeup faded. She was so pretty it was almost annoying.
Around you, people moved and laughed and someone was already crying, probably Megan, but the summation of it all meant no one was watching. It was the two of you pressed against the wall, alone and yet not alone at all.
"The bridge was good," she said simply.
"Yeah," you said. "It was."
She looked at you for a moment longer, and you could see her deciding something.
"I think—" she started, then stopped. After a breath, she tried again. "I think I've been trying not to like you for a really long time."
Something stirred in you, something not easily namable, and you felt your face twist in confusion. "Because of the choreo thing?"
She tried to bite back a smile, you could see her fighting it, but it didn’t work.
"That's not–" she stopped and searched your face for something. "You really don't…"
She exhaled, quiet, almost to herself. Then she looked at you very directly and said nothing, just held your gaze long enough that it started to feel like something.
You looked at her properly, the way you'd been careful not to for months. Her chest was still rising and falling fast, her hair damp at the temples, stage makeup faded. She was so pretty it was almost annoying.
"I know," you said, lips pulling up at the corners.
Something in her face shifted—the last of it, whatever she'd been holding onto—and she let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"Is that annoying to hear?" you asked, still the slightest bit apprehensive.
"Incredibly,” she sighed.
She broke into a genuine smile, the one she’d given so freely to anyone who wasn’t you. And now that it was directed at you, for the first time, you let yourself lean in and truly appreciate the beauty of it.
"I really wanted it to not be that obvious,” she tried to look away but her eyes gravitated back towards you.
"It wasn't," you said. "Not for a while."
She looked at you, still smiling, and the backstage chaos kept moving around you like water around two rocks, and you thought that maybe you didn't need to say anything else right now, that this was already enough, that there would be time for the rest of it.
"Good show," you said finally.
"Good show," she said back.
And that was enough. For now, that was exactly enough.
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