#;ricky

who: ricky moon & open, perhaps someone with a question and/or concern about ghost brother or something entirely unrelated

ricky was in the middle of a very heated argument with jason when he felt what were definitely human eyes on the back of his neck. jason did what jason does best and just... vanished, leaving ricky to slowly turn to whoever was behind him. “oh, sorry. were you- did you have a question? got a bit wrapped up there.”

this week was daunting to say the least. while it was only right for them to do a song by their legendary sunbaes, myname,, it was also a lot of pressure. they needed to do justice to the performance, after all, and myname were no joke when it came to dancing and performing live. living up to that would be more than difficult, so that meant killing himself with practice, yet again. 

this month was a never-ending cycle of that slaving style of training and rehearsing, it seemed. he had to really work to try to maintain his spot in the safe team, which meant honing in on his weaknesses so they weren’t so weak anymore. he had done his best up until the project to improve his dancing, and slowly but surely it had come to be acceptable, but acceptable wasn’t good enough anymore. 

he just hoped ricky could see how hard he was trying here, how much work he was pouring into these performances to keep up when needed, and shine when needed. ricky was one of the other trainees that he knew was stressed out over this project and definitely slaving to meet a certain expectation. if hugo thought his own situation was bad, he couldn’t imagine the pressure ricky was under right now. hugo runs through the chorus one more time, no music, doing his best to finish his moves, then looks to ricky through the mirror for confirmation, wordlessly. they had done this too many times already, he didn’t even need to speak anymore. 

“stop it. i’m not going to talk to him!” gavin blushed as his gaggle of (female) friends urged him to talk to ricky. he resisted their pushes and even pushed back, especially when one of them called out “ricky!” while he was distracted by another. 

“ooh, he’s looking over here, gavin.” he stared at his friend, wide eyed, before looking over his shoulder. 

well, if he didn't regret becoming a trainee before...

this eval was going to be the death of him, he knew it. it’d be a miracle if he came out the other end alive. he had been a trainee for not even two months and he was being thrown into this huge performance where he was going to make a fool of himself in one way or another. at least by the end of it there’d be a portion that played to his strengths - that christmas party with the kids afterwards. that would be fun, he just hoped he’d have the energy for it.

until such time, he’d have to kill himself trying to get this choreography down for the concert performance... thing. and he’d have to somehow manage singing while he danced, something he wasn’t exactly able to do yet. so he had to practice doing something he wasn’t able to do until he could sort of do it not as shittily as he was doing it now so he wasn’t complete asstastic up on that stage. 

thank the lord for ricky.

hugo knew from the moment the eval was announced that he’d have to move in to nova’s building for the month and literally sleep there so he could utilize as much time as possible for rehearsing and learning the choreography and his lines and not flop completely come performance day. surprisingly ricky was doing the same, even though hugo was sure that ricky didn’t need to bunk here to do a perfect job of the performance. that’s just how dedicated the other trainee was, apparently, and it drove hugo to try and work just as hard, if not harder. his stuff was in a corner and the bell was striking midnight. he had at least three more hours of practice ahead of him. santa, bring me energy drinks and an iv bag for christmas, love hugo.

“again? we should go again. let’s go again.”

hugo liked to think that ricky had warmed up to him by now, what with having trained in nova for 8 months now and surviving that horrid christmas evaluation by practicing by ricky’s side the whole time. he felt he had proved he was here to stay and work hard, which seemed to be pretty important to ricky. even so, with this progress, hugo still wasn’t satisfied with their relationship. he had gotten incredibly close to bambam, whom he loved to bits, and he wanted to have that close relationship with the other boys in nova as well. 

so, with the end of training for the day, hugo tracked down the other 97 liner before he could leave the building, big smile on his lips. “ricky! hey, are you busy right now? we should hang out together.” he genuinely did want to get to know ricky better, especially since there was a high chance they’d debut together. ricky was the golden boy of nova, he could do anything he set his mind to, and hugo was a really good rapper, so the likelihood of them debuting together was indeed high, and that meant spending lots of time together, and being on a team together. teammates typically helped each other out and supported each other, and if hugo was to do that properly for ricky, he should know him better. 

“i was thinking ice cream, since it’s so hot out. my treat!” before the other could say no, he already had their arms linked in a friendly gesture, hoping the other would go along and start walking with him. “there’s a shop nearby, i think. if we walk there we’ll definitely have earned it. what do you say?”