Chapter Text
Seungmin stares down at the floor. He can feel his heart beating in his chest like a quick drum, blood pounding in his ears. His teammates murmur around him. Outside the locker room, the stadium roars itself alive, the sound of thousands of soccer fans waiting for them to arrive.
Someone brushes up against him, linking their fingers briefly with his. The hand is sweaty, and Seungmin gets a whiff of sandalwood cologne before the boy pulls away. Something in him calms.
Hyunjin presses his shoulder to Seungmin’s, then catches his hand again and squeezes it.
Seungmin blinks up at him. He studies Hyunjin’s face: unreadable. His eyes flash, so quick Seungmin almost misses it. But he recognizes that emotion, and it makes his heart skip.
“Don’t play,” he murmurs. He glances over his shoulder, to check if anyone is watching them, but everyone else seems to be preoccupied.
“I know,” Hyunjin says under his breath. His expression is steady. He releases Seungmin’s hand, his arm whispering across Seungmin’s back to pull him close. “Good luck today.” And then he disappears, likely off to find the coach and review their plays.
So Seungmin is left alone, staring at where the concrete of the locker room turns into grass and then that wide-open field, surrounded by tens of thousands of people.
“Let’s go, boys!” Coach yells then, his voice hoarse from screaming last night. They jog forward, past that thin line between concrete and grass. The moment they cross the threshold, the crowd erupts.
The field spreads out wide in front of them, the sun shining bright as a coin in the sky. Seungmin can feel the soft heat on his face, his neck. He tilts his head back a little, to look at the crowd. It goes on for ages, out both sides of his vision, surreal in its size.
He can feel eyes on his back, the heat of someone’s gaze, but he doesn’t turn around. He’s waited nineteen years for this moment. He’s poured his blood and sweat and tears into this beautiful, awful sport, and he intends to savor every moment of the coming game. He’s not getting distracted.
Though he knows, of course, that it’s a little too late for that.
THE PAST
Kim Seungmin starts playing soccer when he’s three years old.
He hates it at first. His parents, well-to-do professors from the Seoul metropolitan area, recognize how influential a sport can be in turning a painfully shy child with too much nervous energy into a focused, sociable adolescent. But he’s afraid of everything: the coaches, his opponents, his teammates, the soccer ball. He has a tantrum every time they leave the house for practice. His parents later admit that they were a weekend or two away from giving up when one quiet Saturday morning, his dad puts a rerun of the 2002 World Cup, hosted by South Korea, on the TV.
It’s from then on that Seungmin falls in love with soccer. He’s seen South Korea’s games from that year dozens of times since, and he’s still in awe with the power and grace with which Ahn Junghwan and his teammates weave between their opponents. The professional players dribble the ball with such speed that Seungmin feels it's like magic. He wants nothing more than to be like them, and he spends the whole morning watching the TV with laser-like focus, so unlike his normally constant nervous energy.
Naturally, the tantrums stop from that day on. Seungmin begs his father at every spare moment for him to turn on professional soccer games, and whenever that request is met, the little boy watches them with the wide, wide eyes and thoughtless concentration of a child watching a magic show. He even starts to apply himself to his practices. And because it’s kind of hard to tell if a three-year-old is good at soccer, no one finds out he’s surprisingly, shockingly, somehow good at it until at least another couple years have passed.
When he’s six, his coaches move him up an age division, so he’s competing amongst eight- and nine-year-olds. He outperforms most of his teammates for years. Soccer is magic to him; living, breathing magic, and he tries to learn that magic at every opportunity he gets. Eventually, when he’s ten and competing amongst thirteen-year-olds, his coach suggests the family send him to a proper soccer club, one that raises kids like him to be champions.
His parents, the well-to-do Seoul academics, try their best to politely reject the proposal, but they know a lost cause when they see one. Barely two weeks after his eleventh birthday, they send him to live with his aunt and uncle in the suburbs, so he can train with nationally-ranked Miroh football club’s junior team.
If he loved soccer before, from then on, he lives and breathes it. The years pass easily, with an endless stream of practices and more practices and games and even more practices. He doesn’t have many friends outside of soccer, because he can never hang out. His life is an endless rotation of school, practice, and sleep. He fits in homework around the edges, but halfheartedly, with the sneaking hope that he won’t need to attend college.
When he’s eighteen, he tries out for the national under-20 team and somehow, though he is far from the most talented player in the room, he makes it.
Seungmin’s a member of the team for a little over a year when without meaning to, he makes friends with Hwang Hyunjin, if you can call it that.
It’s a Monday, just after practice. Mingi, one of the senior members of the team, is in the midst of trying to coax Seungmin into running drills with Hwang Hyunjin after hours.
Mingi is a Golden Retriever of a boy, with boundless optimism and a smile for everyone. If anyone else had tried to convince Seungmin, they would have failed already. He doesn’t have the heart to outright turn the older boy down.
“Why should I care?” Seungmin slams his locker shut with a clang.
“Shit, man, you trying to make a point?” Mingi says, flinching at the sound. “Cap wants you to help him out. It’s better to just listen to him.”
Seungmin frowns, then looks up to meet Mingi’s eyes. “Then tell Minho that there’s no reason that our best striker would need help from the LVD.”
“The LVD?” Mingi blinks.
“Least Valuable Defender.” Seungmin starts untying his cleats. Their MVD, so to speak, is Na Jaemin, another puppy dog-like teammate that Seungmin can never say no to.
Mingi frowns, turning his lip up cutely. “Stop being so mean to yourself. Look, Seungmin, between us, Cap is worried about Hyunjin. He needs to cut down on the drinking or he’ll be kicked off the team. If you run drills with him, maybe you can talk to him? Tell him to stop?” Cap was the team captain, a twenty-year-old midfielder and oldest team member named Lee Minho. He was notoriously difficult to work with, cynical with very high - almost too high - expectations of them.
Seungmin sighs. “Cap thinks I can make him stop? Why?”
Mingi glances around for a few seconds, like he’s looking for someone, then says, “Oh, well, you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”
“He talks to Jisung,” Seungmin argues. He throws his cleats in his bag, then slips on his street shoes.
“Screaming matches don’t count, and you know it.” Mingi claps Seungmin on the shoulder, then salutes him with that puppy-dog smile. “We’re counting on you, bro.”
“But-” Seungmin starts, but Mingi has already disappeared, likely to start packing up. He checks his watch with a sigh: 7:49 PM. He might as well just bite the bullet and do what Cap wants. He may not like their captain, but Minho clearly knows what he’s doing; they had yet to lose a match this season.
Seungmin starts pulling his cleats back on. “Hey, uh, Hyunjin,” he calls. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
From across the locker room, he sees a dark head lift up in surprise. The chattering of his teammates immediately quiets.
Hyunjin turns around and gives him a grimace of a smile, then weaves around the mess of teammates to reach him. “So you heard from Coach,” he says flatly. “That I’m getting kicked off the team unless I shape up.”
Seungmin's going to talk to Mingi later about twisting people’s words, because that is not what the older boy said was happening. Seungmin tries to not let his surprise show on his face. “Then you’re ready?”
Hyunjin shrugs, raking back his silky black hair with one hand. “I mean, sure, whatever.” Seungmin has always wondered how Hyunjin keeps it looking that soft, even after hours of sweating through practice. His own hair always ends up looking like he’s walked through a greasy rainshower.
Someone shoulder checks Seungmin hard, and he turns around with a frown that quickly melts into a friendly smile. “Dude, that hurt!”
“Oops,” Felix says sincerely. “I’m heading out, I’ll see you guys later.”
Seungmin waves. Felix, an Australian-Korean that belongs to an Aussie professional football club outside of his activities with the Korean national team, is the closest he has to a friend. Felix is the only other defender Seungmin’s age, and they do a lot of activities together as a result.
“Let’s go,” Hyunjin says. “We don’t have all night.” He brushes past Seungmin, but with no force.
Seungmin throws a look over his shoulder at his other teammates without thinking. He makes eye contact with Jaemin, who laughs audibly at his expression, and then Jisung, right next to Jaemin, who gives him a strange look.
Coach, Seungmin mouths simply. Jisung makes a sound of comprehension, then rolls his eyes. His eyes follow Hyunjin’s figure as the taller boy disappears down the hall, in a way that almost makes Seungmin blush. He does this sometimes, and so does Hyunjin; they look each other in a way that makes Seungmin wonder, even though they’re supposedly enemies.
Hmm. Seungmin isn’t a snitch, so he doesn’t ask just then. He just follows Hyunjin out.
“Uh, were you drunk at practice on Monday?” Seungmin asks Hyunjin hesitantly almost an hour later, when they’ve exhausted themselves running drills. The sun has sunk decidedly below the horizon, rendering the normally mundane pitch potentially treacherous in the darkness. They sit on the cold metal bleachers a few feet apart. Seungmin can feel the chill of the evening sinking in through his bones, up from the grass and through the seats.
Hyunjin kicks at the grass. “Maybe. What’s it to you?” His hair is falling into his eyes, like always, and he pushes it back again. Sweat sticks his red jersey to back, outlining his sharp shoulder blades.
Seungmin can see a potential argument there, so instead, he changes the subject. “Are you sleeping with Jisung?”
Hyunjin chokes on air. “What?” He says, staring back at Seungmin with his eyes wide. “Why would you think that?” His jeg jitters on the ground, like he’s a rocket about to take off.
Seungmin raises his eyebrows. He drums his hands on his knees, straightening his legs and stretching out his hamstrings with a wince before he replies. “Well, are you?” He asks.
Hyunjin’s eyes dart away, and Seungmin watches, amused, as a blush slowly covers his cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s not a good liar; Seungmin can hear the tremor of a falsehood in his voice.
Seungmin shrugs, trying to hide a smile. I love being right. “Whatever. It’s not like I care. But if you are, tell Jisung to stop being so obvious, looking at you like that.”
“Like what?” Hyunjin’s voice buzzes in his throat, and Seungmin can hear the thinly veiled curiosity. He looks at Seungmin sideways, like he’s trying not to. He brushes his hair back with one hand.
“Like he wants you.” Like he’s hungry, Seungmin adds in his brain. Like he’s dying of thirst and you’re water, like he’s starving and you’re food. And you look at him like that, too. For some reason, the thought makes something in him ache.
Hyunjin doesn’t seem to know what to say. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s smiling faintly, like he’s pleased. “That’s… interesting,” he says finally. “Do you think anyone else has noticed? Not that it’s true,” He adds in a rush. “Because it’s not.”
Seungmin thinks about it for a moment, staring out at the dark, dark pitch and the blinking stars in the distance. “Maybe Felix, but he’s too nice to say anything. No one else.”
“And you’re not?” Hyunjin says carefully. He pulls at his shirt, separating it from his back. “Nice?”
“I’m not nice like that.” And it’s the truth. It’s more truth than he meant to share with someone like Hyunjin, someone he barely knows. In the back of his brain, Seungmin thinks of the empty apartment that's waiting for him at home, about the parents he barely talks to, about the aunt and uncle he barely knows despite living with them for his the majority of his formative years. Seungmin is nice, yes, but the kind of nice that seems to draw people away, rather than bring them close.
To Seungmin's surprise, the other boy breaks into a broad smile. He has perfect teeth, white and straight like an actor. He messes with his hair again with one hand as he says, “Then we’re going to get along just fine.”
And they do, somehow, and as a result, Hyunjin isn't kicked off the team. The after-hours drills continue for months, even though Hyunjin never comes to practice drunk again, even though Seungmin stops being able to smell alcohol on him barely a week after they start. They’re not friends, though, at least not in the way Seungmin and Felix are friends. Something in their relationship is unsteady in the way most friendships aren’t, like a poorly balanced object about to fall off a table.
They don’t talk about Jisung again, but Hyunjin starts to catch Seungmin intercepting their moony glances with an expression Seungmin can only describe as knowing. It goes on for months, and every time it happens, something in Seungmin’s gut unravels a little farther, an ache that whispers in his stomach whenever Hyunjin looks at Jisung like a man starving.
Seungmin wonders, sometimes, how they manage to keep it a secret. He wonders about Hyunjin, too, in ways that he’s too embarrassed to voice out loud.