Danny was determined to let things chill out after that. That vow lasted until Sam thrust his hungover ass directly into studying, which made Danny's head ache even more. Once they finished they were going to practice, with or without Lei.
Well, definitely without at that point, since Lei had left early for Olympia. Danny was still churning with annoyance over the whole thing.
Sam passively watched him compose and delete a text to Jiyoon three times before snapping, "Will you please stop avoiding him and ask him to help us?"
A half-hour later, Jiyoon had arrived on their doorstep with a peace offering-slash-hangover cure: two containers of takeout soup from the Korean place around the corner.
It was weird seeing Jiyoon seat himself at their kitchen table with his books and a Styrofoam soup container, chatting with Sam in Korean about their favorite restaurants.
They fell back into easy camaraderie as soon as Jiyoon saw (and laughed at) their messy bedroom with all the futons on the floor. He commented that their couch was definitely not big enough for him plus the band, but if they could concede to sit on the floor or leave, he'd love to watch a movie on Danny's TV. Danny, in turn, told him he had no right to make fun of their mess when Jiyoon basically lived in a glorified closet.
It was good to shuck off the weirdness of the night before. Everything was in the open now: Danny knew that he wasn't inventing sexual tension out of nothing, and Jiyoon knew that he could act on it. If he wanted to.
Lei got back from Olympia late on Sunday night, and went to bed without speaking to anyone. It was a pretty impressive feat, considering most of the time he never shut his mouth at all. Danny gritted his teeth and took the high road—this time. He dreaded what would happen if Lei tried to pull something like this again. Or if he decided once and for all that school was more important than the band.
The promise of the quarter ending loomed on the horizon like a storm about to roll in.
*~*~*
Danny bent himself to learning stupid formulas and staring at numbers till his eyes crossed. He didn't want to fail, but it was so hard to remember why this was important—especially when they went onstage for their sole November show. A screaming crowd greeted them the second they stepped onstage.
"I guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder," Danny murmured in the special tone he reserved for crowd-seduction, and it was off.
Except the rest of the show was as rocky as if it was their first. And it wasn't just Lei's fault either, though he did fuck up his share of cues. Danny was off too, and even Sam fucked up her timing a couple times. As a bassist, no one noticed. Vick was the only one who held it together, for which Danny was profoundly grateful because when Vick fucked up it was impossible not to notice.
After the show they circled up backstage, silent and nervous.
"Whatever," Danny finally said. "Let’s not fuck up next time."
He hoped they wouldn’t. Next time would be in front of a way bigger audience than this one.
Danny would’ve given anything for more time to prepare, and to prove to Erika that he was serious about his music career. Instead, he kept having to fit in practice time on the edges of his packed schedule. They had moved from the music room on campus to a rented studio closer to Erika's office. Stepping into that insulated room was like taking a deep breath.
The only other place he really felt that way was Jiyoon's apartment. That and the concert looming on the horizon kept him going. They had half again as many songs finished as would fit in their time slot, and Erika had personally approved all of them. Danny sang them in the shower, mumbled them on the way to class, and scratched them in the margins of his notes. The concert was the Saturday before finals week, and he felt like once it was finished he'd see a way out. Everything would start to make more sense.
Until then—
"Mr. Kim?" Professor Weaver's voice boomed. "Mr. Kim, do you have somewhere else you'd rather be?"
Danny shot up in his seat, shaking off sleep. Professor Weaver was standing at the front of the room with his hands on his hips, staring right at him.
"Sorry—shit, sorry."
"Do you think you're on vacation already, Mr. Kim?"
"No…" Danny didn't recognize the slide on the projector, and his own notes stopped after two lines. Jiyoon stood at the front of the room, his eyes flicking nervously back and forth between Danny and Professor Weaver. And everyone, everyone else was staring right at him.
"I don't tolerate students who treat my class like an extension of their bedroom. Maybe if you could stay awake in class you would be making better grades, eh?"
"Okay, wow—" Danny began, his temper flaring.
Professor Weaver thrust his neck out. "Do you have something to say, Mr. Kim?" He kept speaking, but the words whooshed by Danny's ears, unheard. He looked to Jiyoon for—what? The right answer? Just in time to see Jiyoon very deliberately reach out and push a textbook over the edge of the table, letting it fall to the floor.
It landed with a crash, breaking the tension and sending everyone in the room flinching back in their seats.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Jiyoon laughed and bent over to pick it up. "Slippery fingers. Oh, but Professor, did you want me to hand back the midterms today, or was that tomorrow?"
"You don't remember?" Weaver grumbled.
Jiyoon snapped his fingers. "It was today, wasn't it? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt the lecture…" He looked pointedly at the slides on the projector, and Weaver turned back to them as well.
Danny let out a shaky breath, his hands clenching so tight the muscles ached.
Sam's hand brushed Danny's arm, and he shook it off. His eyes were stinging, and his heart was still racing. Everyone else had moved on, but Danny still felt angry enough to spit, to throw his notebook on the ground and walk out.
And he would already have been kicked out too if it hadn't been for Jiyoon. The only reason he was passing at all was because of Jiyoon's help, and now he had stepped in again to save his ass when he had no reason to. When Danny was about to lose his temper and take it out on the professor like he deserved.
His anger didn't dissipate, just simmered low under his skin. He didn't hear the rest of the lecture—at least, not until Weaver asked Jiyoon to pass back the midterms.
"We'll spend the next class going over your answers to the test questions," Weaver droned. "Until then, you can spend some time re-examining the problems on your own time."
A knot grew in Danny's stomach as Jiyoon moved up the aisle handing out stacks of tests to be passed down the rows. He was pretty sure he didn't want to spend any more quality time with that test. Unless that time was spent lighting it on fire and sending its ashes out to sea.
Jiyoon paused next to him and Danny kept his eyes firmly on his desk. If he looked at Jiyoon right now, he wouldn't be able to keep his shit together.
The stack of papers landed in front of him, with Danny's name and a big number forty-three, circled in red, right on top.
A failing grade.
Danny took it and passed the stack down to Sam. Jiyoon was already gone, handing out the rest of the tests like nothing had happened. Danny was left behind, burning red with embarrassment and holding the actual physical proof of how incompetent he was.
He clenched his hands so hard he thought his fingers might bore holes in the paper. Failing. He was failing.
He stuffed the test into his backpack and zipped it shut with some intensity. At the front of the room, Weaver glanced his way and narrowed his eyes. When Weaver looked away again, Sam nudged Danny in the side.
Danny grimaced and made a zero with his fingers.
"Shit," Sam mouthed back. She flipped her paper towards Danny so that he could see the sixty-eight written at the top. Not a great grade, but not failing. He must have looked pretty fucking crushed, because Sam scooted her chair closer and let her arm fall around Danny's waist.
They sat like that until the class ended. Every minute that ticked by felt like an eternity, like Danny would have to spend the rest of his life in that hard plastic chair, getting his soul sucked out of him. When Weaver finally released them, Danny shoved everything into his backpack and rushed out the door. He didn't look around for Jiyoon, and only realized Sam had kept up with him when she fell in line next to Danny at the cafe.
"You don't exactly need coffee," Sam commented. It just riled him up more.
"Maybe if Professor fucking Weaver wants me to stay awake during his boring-ass lectures, he could buy me a cup his damn self." They took a table, and Danny let his bags hit the ground with a bang. "Fuck this bullshit class. Fuck that bullshit professor." He shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands. He still wanted to cry, but the room was full of people, and the last thing he wanted was more witnesses to his very public near-breakdown.
He dropped his hands to the table and contemplated driving his head through it instead.
"There you are." Jiyoon wove through the crowd, one arm full of books and papers as usual. He looked frazzled now, but Danny remembered him dropping that textbook as cool as could be. Saving his ass again. "Are you okay?" Jiyoon reached out to squeeze Danny's shoulder, and Danny flinched away.
"I'm fine. Everyone fails tests sometimes, Jesus." His teeth were on edge, and he snapped out, "Except for you, maybe."
"Ah." Jiyoon drew his books closer to his chest. There was a tense silence, which Danny wasn't going to be the first to break. He knew he should thank Jiyoon for the trick with the book that distracted Weaver, but when he thought about saying the words, it turned into a laundry list of shit he owed him. Shit he had never asked for and couldn't repay.
And after all that, he couldn't even pass one stupid test.
"I'll see you later, then." Jiyoon turned on his heel and left.
Danny glared at the tabletop.
"That was really rude," Sam said, and took a sip of her coffee. "You hurt his feelings."
"Whatever," Danny snapped, and then, "Fuck."
He shoved his chair back and ran after Jiyoon, catching him in the hall.
"Jiyoon, wait! I'm sorry."
Jiyoon whipped around, his lips tight.
"I'm an idiot. You had my back in there and I was an asshole to you, so… fuck."
All of Danny's anger had turned inward, but Jiyoon just stood there, straight-faced and tense. Then he let out a long breath and his shoulders sagged. "Forget about it. I can tell you're tired."
"Why aren't you yelling at me?" Danny asked desperately. He could see the effort it was taking Jiyoon to be patient, to understand. But he didn't deserve it.
"Should I?"
"You're always so fucking patient, even when I'm being a fuckwit. I don't—it's so frustrating sometimes. So please just scream at me or something. Tell me to stop being an asshole."
Jiyoon's shoulders were hiking up again. "Do you need to be yelled at to remember to be nice to me?"
"No. God, no."
"I don't exactly want to be like Professor Weaver right now. I'm your friend, and yes, I'm trying to be patient with you. I know you're stressed. I'm sorry I'm not helping."
"You are helping."
"I don't feel like I can help if I don't know what the problem is." Again, Jiyoon was all deliberate calm, with an undercurrent of communicate with me, you fuck. Well, maybe Danny had imagined the last bit.
"It's everything." He took a deep breath, tried to ground himself. Jiyoon hefted his books up against his chest and stepped closer, framing Danny's face with his free hand. His palm was cold and dry, and his touch made Danny shiver.
Jiyoon pulled away. "Sorry—"
"No, your hand's just cold."
"Oh." Jiyoon looked at his hand as if it had transformed into a deadly weapon. "Sorry again." He dropped his hand to his side, and Danny stared, wondering if there was a cool way to say, "No, go ahead and touch my face."
"I know that test didn't go as you hoped," Jiyoon said instead.
"No, but—I don't wanna talk about it."
Jiyoon nodded. "We don't have to. But… your TA is going to need to talk to you about it. And you're not going to enjoy that."
"Yeah. I know."
"Neither is he, by the way." Jiyoon gave him a look that was half sympathy and half shared misery. "He sort of wanted to tear it up and throw it away."
Danny let out a deep, agonizing huff of breath and sagged against the wall. "This sucks."
"It does. It sucks quite a lot." Before Danny's eyes, Jiyoon composed himself. He made it look so easy: one breath and all the worries were smoothed off his face. "How can I help?" Jiyoon asked, talking over Danny's noise of protest. "Even if everything feels awful right now, if we can pinpoint one thing to make it less stressful, that would be something, right?"
Danny tamped down his guilt and tried to find the right words to describe this emotional mess. "Okay. I don't understand the material. Every time I look at it on my own it's like—it's just nonsense. I'm not sleeping a lot. I'm trying to pass all my classes, and so I end up working all night. And when I'm not studying, I'm working with the band, or I'm hanging out with you. Once in a while, I even try to take a nap."
"Well, there's your problem."
"I know, right?" Danny managed a laugh, because Jiyoon wasn't looking at him like he was crazy. "But it's taking everything I've got to stay on top of this class, you know? Or on the fucking bottom of it, I guess."
"Danny, you're not failing."
"But I just did."
"I won't say this isn't a risk. You're going to need to work very hard to stay in the clear. But you're not failing yet. I would tell you if you were. You certainly not in the top ten…" Jiyoon's mouth quirked in a wry smile. "And Professor Weaver has never been fond of students who aren't. But you're not going to fail."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously." Jiyoon nibbled on his lower lip for a moment, frowning. "All right, here's my suggestion. Please don't worry about scheduling anything with me. If you need study help, I'm happy to lend a hand, but we'll just keep it to that until things calm down."
"What? No, that's not what I said—that's not what I want at all." Danny's heart rate started climbing again. "I'm miserable now. I don't want to be fucking miserable if I can't see you."
"I'm trying to help you prioritize."
"But that's not fair—"
Suddenly, Jiyoon's entire demeanor changed, and his smile turned full and genuine. "Danny. I'm not suggesting this to punish you. And it's not meant to be a permanent suggestion either." He took Danny by the arm and shook him gently. "The quarter is almost over. We've passed the halfway point now. I'm still going to be around when it ends."
"Yeah… but…"
"Prioritize. School is more important."
"No, it's not," Danny grumbled.
Jiyoon ignored him. "Take some time. Ask me for help if you need it. And in just a few weeks, we'll both be on vacation. And we can do anything you want."
"I can't—" Danny's cleared his throat, trying to keep some composure. "You know, I can't ask you to cheat for me again. I don't want that. I don't want to be the asshole that makes you risk your damn job."
Jiyoon was frowning again, concern lining his features. "Is that still bothering you?"
"Of course it bothers me! You keep—" he forced his voice lower. "You keep helping me when you're not supposed to."
"Danny…" Jiyoon sighed and hung his head. "That's something that stresses you out?"
"I guess."
"I promise you, I won't do anything as drastic as letting you turn an assignment in late again. I just—I just hate seeing you struggle with this when I know it's in my power to help you."
"I don't want to take advantage of you."
"You aren't." Jiyoon reached for Danny's arm. "It won't happen again. I promise." He squeezed his arm and took a step back. "But consider my study help as an extension of my office hours. All right?"
"Okay. I can do that."
Jiyoon tilted his head and smiled at him. "Four more weeks."
"Four more weeks." It didn't feel that long when Jiyoon said it. In fact, it felt like Danny could see the light at the end of the tunnel.