The Next Step Oneshots

2. Snap, Crackle, Pop - Nochelle

They'd just finished filming. And she can feel it in her hips. She wills herself keep upright, but her traiterous joints don't allow her. She crumples to the ground, slamming her head hard on the floor.

She bobs in and out of consciousness, unaware of the chaos that she'd caused. In particular, the panic of a boy. A childhood friend who's stood by her side ever since they'd met.

He scoops her into his arms in concern, riding in the ambulance alongside her. Concerned and worried faces of their family of dancers ride behind them. But he doesn't notice. All he pays attention to is her limp body on the gurney, beautiful green eyes closed shut.

--

He finds out that she had snapping hip syndrome. A normally harmless condition that she had aggravated by pushing herself too hard. It had lead to tendon damage, which had to be corrected in surgery.

He stares at the medical charts in disbelief. How had he not noticed dancing alongside her for so long? It was his responsibility to take care of her, especially with her past of not having people who cared for her. Yet he had been so focused on his new position as dance captain, he had managed to ignore his best friend's injury, which could've put her out of dance permanently.

Feeling terrible, he calls Lola. She tells him that she had snapped Richelle's pointe shoes, trying to prevent her from dancing. But she had somehow managed to tape her shoes back together again.

Defeated, they both talk for a bit. Eventually, he's called into her ward, so he ends the call and follows the nurse. Entering the room, he sees her small body on the bed. Her usually strong and defiant self, fragile and vulnerable with tubes attached to her body.

--

She drifts into consciousness, and she knows she's messed up. Hearing the familiar beeps and murmurs, she knows she's in the hospital. She doesn't expect anyone to be here with her. It was supposed to be lonely and sterile in the room.

Yet when she opens her eyes, he's there, sitting by her bedside, staring at her in concern. She stares back, and they stay, looking at each for a couple moments. And then he speaks up.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?" She asks in confusion. It was her fault and her fault only that she was here. Not the studio heads, not the dancers, and definitely not her best friend.

"I'm sorry that I didn't notice. That I let you push yourself so hard. That I took away your position as dance captain. That by taking that position, I let myself ignore you and miss your injury."

He rambles on and on, and she's shocked. Nobody had ever apologised to for something that wasn't their fault, let alone visit and stay with her in hospital. She was used to lonely mansions and ignorant babysitters, parents only around late at night and gone in the early morning.

She leans forward with great difficulty, and cups his cheek.

"It's not your fault. It was mine. I let myself get this far, and now I can't even dance. You earned your position as dance captain, and everyone voted for you. It was a fair game, and you won."

He looks at her limp blonde hair, curls mostly fallen out and bags under her eyes. But she's still just as beautiful to him. God, she was the most amazing person in the world to him, ever since he was fourteen.

Little did he know, he had been her favourite person ever since she was thirteen.

--

She attends physiotherapy every day after recovery, dying to get back into dance. He visits her and helps every time, each day updating her about the new developments of the studio.

Every day, he brings her flowers, or chocolate, one of her guilty pleasures. She knows that he's still feeling guilty, so she lets him.

He tells her about the new, awful studio head. He tells her about one of their other teammates being too anxious to even attend, and she knows that everything had gone downhill since she left.

She thinks it's completely her fault- their old studio heads had been fired for letting her dance on her injured hips. She has to fix things, before the studio is ruined forever. Every day, she gets stronger, and soon she's doing one, two, three, five, ten pirouettes. Defying the doctors' expectations, she's heading back to the studio the next day to surprise the dancers.

--

He's helping his teammate clean the mirrors, after she defied the new studio head. Once a team, forever a team. Together, they want to overthrow her; to bring back the familial sense of the next step.

She sneaks into the room as they're talking.

"You know what we need? We need a dancezilla." A dancer mentions.

"Miss me?"

He turns around, and there's his beloved dancezilla. And what was she doing here? He thought she wouldn't be back to dance for another month or so?

He rushes to her, and picks her up in a hug, twirling her around and around. She squeals and giggles, much to the other dancers' surprise. She had never been so carefree and happy around them before.

"Why are you here? I thought you'd have another month of physiotherapy before you could come back?"

"I worked hard, and today I showed them I could do my illusion again. So they let me come back as long as I take it slow."

"That's brilliant, Ritchie."

He pulls her into a hug, and gets an inexplicable urge to kiss her. So he does. For the first time, he gives into his undeniable will to want her. As soon as he realises he actually kissed her, he pulls away, apologising.

"I'm sorry Ritchie I-"

She cuts him off with a returned kiss. He deepens it, both unaware of the cheering dancers behind them. They break away, and she regains the sassy, defiant look on her face that he loves so much.

"So. What's the plan?"

--

Together, they overthrow Ms Angela. They're all covered in whipped cream, chips in their hair. But it's the best moment of the season; of the year. They all cheer, and the food fight continues. He smears cream on her nose, and she rubs jam in his hair.

"There's whipped cream on your lips, Ritchie." He tells her.

"Want to take care of it?" She replies sassily.

He laughs, and kisses her on the lips. It's sweet, and tastes of cake. And right then and there, they both realised. They had each fallen in love with their childhood best friend. And they couldn't be happier about it.