SING - Johnny x reader - Why won't he? / It's in plain sight

(Pt. 1) I got my eyes on you

"Buster! -- I swear, it's not--", came another hiss on your part, when the recognizable last notes of the song tore through the thick fog of bashfulness that had accumulated in your mind from your distraught defensiveness and his voice rang through the entirety of the arena one last time.

"- love me the same?"

For a brief succession of seconds that felt most bizarre in their deadly silence after music had filled this empty hall for the past hour everything had frozen in place.

Eyes on Buster you watched his smartass smirk tug the corner of his mouth just a teeny bit higher before he decided to migrate his attention from your agitated face to the stage.

The two singers were already waiting expectantly.

"Very, very nice!", Buster praised enthusiastically and gave two claps of applause, "This should be just the act we need to put a cherry on top of the cake!"

His voice spiraled a little out of bounds in his elation at the end.

"Alriiight", slurred the American bison, Richard, on the left, giving a lazy fist pump.

His partner for the number and main singer Johnny nodded cheerfully (cutely so, you noted) on his piano stool - a little tic he was prone to whenever a performance went nicely instead of giving a direct reply to the endorsement, you had caught.

As the theater owner continued on giving small pointers and more compliments, Johnny seemed fixated on his boss much like his collaborator, while in truth his eyes lay on you. Seated right next to Moon the shift of his orbs and focus was utterly inconspicuous to the eye as the gorilla ogled you excitedly and lent only half an ear to Moon's rambled speech, wondering about you instead.

You were sitting with your hands on the rest of the settle in front of you, bent over and shoulders drawn up high as if to sink into your own frame, forehead buried in the crimson cushion, attempting yourself at fighting off the lingering embarrassment burning in your cheeks.

A much harder task than you had imagined.

Even with your eyes closed, and thus Buster out of sight, and your mental mantra-like chastisement to calm down you could barely shake the flush and memories of that teasing smirk and the lidded eyes flooding in and out of your consciousness did not aid you in your objective one bit.

You knew exactly, after all, what the koala had aimed at with those gestures.

Darn him and his watchfulness, you tried so hard to hide it as best you could.

By that time your hunched figure and ever so soft defeated bumping of your forehead against the cushioned back rest of the row ahead of you puzzled the mountain gorilla greatly, having no way of knowing what had gone down prior to the end of his song, to the point where there was the tiniest falter in his sweet smile.

When you finally lifted your head after another minute however, his heart allowed the swelling, suffocating tension in his chest to ease up and his smile broadened with your eyes falling onto his own, all unbeknownst to the young man.

"- then that should be all for today's rehearsal! Great work you two, great work!", Buster's voice tuned back into Johnny's mind and he quickly gave another nod down at the koala, only now realizing he had spaced out for half (or more) of what the director had put out there as constructive criticism. Richard plodding off the other edge of the set went completely unnoticed even.