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Park Seonghwa’s blood tastes like copper and viscera and all the usual things, but there’s something else thrumming in the undercurrent.
Hongjoong licks a smear off his knuckles with a feral grin.
It tastes like winning.
Red and blue jerseys swarm Hongjoong’s vision as the stripes haul him away, and it’s too late to stop the full on bench brawl that’s breaking out on the ice. Even the goalies have left their creases, throwing themselves headfirst into the melee.
Seonghwa is still blazing, spitting threats and obscenities, but Hongjoong can’t hear anything over the roar in his ears and the thundering crowd in the stands. All he can think is that he’s the most beautiful man he’s ever seen.
Adrenaline is buzzing in the pocket of his left cheek, where Seonghwa’s solid right hook left a gash that’s dripping blood onto the ice. He pokes his tongue against it and hisses at the sting.
Hongjoong should be attending to his responsibilities as captain. The board is tied 1-1, and there’s still ten minutes left in the period. Before he goes, he waits for Seonghwa to catch his eye from where he’s sullenly plugging his nose with a rag, and blows him a kiss.
They lose 2-1, and victory has never been sweeter.
It’s not Seonghwa’s job to fight, as captain of the Rangers, as a star forward. He supposed to leave it to the brutes, to the Mingis and Yunhos whose jobs it is to scrub the deep end and fill ‘em in.
Hongjoong doesn’t make a habit of playing dirty, but there are times he can’t help himself. When he needs to push and prod until something gives way beneath that perfectly poised veneer.
Because it hurts less to be cussed out and snarled at, than to be otherwise met with cool, detached indifference.
Hongjoong doesn’t think too hard about it.
—
The Capitals get knocked out in the first round of playoffs, and the subsequent off-season stretches into a seemingly infinite void.
Hongjoong isn’t built for the heat, feels most in his element in grey slush winters and rink AC. In the mind-numbing July swelter there’s little to do except run drills in his backyard and reply to Wooyoung and San’s vacation photos on Whatsapp, so when his agent calls to say Biosteel has a spot for him this year, he packs his bags.
“You,” Seonghwa hisses when he rocks up to training camp with his douchiest pair of flip flops and a duffel bag. An accusatory finger pokes into his chest. “What are you doing here?”
Hongjoong bites back the first five responses that crop up on his tongue. I miss you. How’s your mom? Come home with me. Instead, he flips up his sunglasses and makes a show of checking him out. He looks good, but what else is new. “Happy to see me, babe?”
Seonghwa pinches the bridge of his nose, and Hongjoong notices with a rush that it’s just imperceptibly skewed. He did that. “They told me you wouldn’t be here,” he mutters.
“Been asking after me, have you?”
“Just— stay away from me,” he sneers, and jogs back to where Jongho and Yeosang are warming up, and Hongjoong tamps down the curl of self-loathing in his stomach.
Of course, they get paired up for drills.
Hongjoong has long since shut off the part of his brain that feels shame, so he stares as much as he wants. He gets denied every other day of the year, relegated to what he can glean through media days and post-game interviews.
He drinks his fill of the things they don’t cover on TSN, like the way Seonghwa’s hair curls at the nape of his neck, the infuriatingly narrow nip of his waist, the deftness of his long fingers. How his pink lips pout in concentration when he’s considering a new play. Hongjoong hangs on to every detail like a dying man.
Seonghwa barely looks at him. Every time he catches him staring, he turns away like he’s been burned. Hongjoong pretends not to notice.
On the ice, Seonghwa is as slippery as ever, weaving between defensemen like a fucking eel. He’s a thorn in the side to play against, but having him back on his line feels so much like home that Hongjoong could cry. He almost does, when Seonghwa scores the first goal of the tourney with an assist from Hongjoong, a gorgeous no-look, between-the-legs pass that lands on his tape with such certainty he knows it’s a goal before it even hits the net.
In moments like this, Hongjoong can pretend to pick up right where they left off, and it’s like they never stopped playing together. In the celly huddle, Seonghwa whoops with such pure joy that Hongjoong does actually shed a single tear, but no one notices in the fray of things. It’s glorious.
It doesn’t last.
When the tournament’s over, Seonghwa lingers hesitant for just a second, and Hongjoong hates the glimmer of hope that sparks in his chest, hates himself for the words he refuses to say but definitely should, and Seonghwa looks at him with something a touch too angry to be disappointment, before leaving again.
—
The media is highly invested in their relationship, to Hongjoong’s endless chagrin and torture.
It’s a classic story, really— two meteoric prospects, raised in the same hometown, linemates for all of juniors. Drafted first and second overall, the youngest captains of their franchises, and then somewhere along the way, they turned into bitter rivals. The media raises a hullabaloo about it three times a year when their teams meet, digging up photos from their past and comparing the trajectories of their careers. It’s inevitable. Hongjoong couldn’t care less, just tries to tune it out.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way.
Etched in the back of his brain is a vault he couldn’t scrub blank even if he wanted to. Therein lies knowledge of how Seonghwa takes his coffee, the shade of pink he turns after too many bottles of soju, and the feeling of his damp hair sliding through Hongjoong’s fingers after a shower. Deeper in, memories of conversations, fantasies, of what they would do if they made it to the show together, how they would be the first ones to do it as a pair, the two of them united until the end.
Hongjoong spends that afternoon before their game sprawled on the floor, flipping through a box of photo albums and old memorabilia his mother insisted on bringing to this house. He puts a couple of photos up on his fridge.
For Seonghwa’s birthday, Hongjoong mails him a puck from their last game as juniors, the date carefully sharpied on the tape wrapped around the side.
He doesn’t text or call, and Hongjoong doesn’t expect him to, but a week later he checks Instagram and— Seonghwa has unblocked him. So, there’s that.
—
A year later, Hongjoong is having the best season of his career.
He’s on a hot streak, leading the team in points and leading the league in plus minus. His jersey sales have gone through the roof, and people keep mentioning his name in conversations for the Hart.
And then they play Boston, and he gets into a collision with a D-man twice his size, and his leg gets crushed into the boards, hard, and then his ACL is shot, and well.
There’s not much he can do from there.
—
There’s a knock at his door.
Hongjoong starts, a melted spoonful of gelato raised halfway to his lips, and checks the time. It’s a quarter to midnight, and he’s watching highlights from tonight’s game on his laptop. His leg is propped up with ice, so he has to fuss with his crutches before getting off the couch and hobbling to the door.
When he opens it, Seonghwa is standing on his front porch holding a pot of soup, which— What. Why. How.
The Rangers beat them 4-3 tonight. He should be out celebrating with his teammates, but instead, he’s here. On Hongjoong’s doorstep. With soup.
Seonghwa doesn’t wait for a greeting or invitation before shouldering in past Hongjoong, who wonders if this is a naproxen-fueled hallucination. He’s left standing in his foyer, mouth agape like a fish, before he picks up his jaw and shuts the door behind him in a daze, trailing after Seonghwa.
It’s disarming, seeing him in the low-lit ambiance of his own home. He hasn’t seen Seonghwa like this since they were seventeen, sat shoulder to shoulder in his mother’s kitchen wolfing down bowls of jajangmyeon after practice. He navigates his kitchen with startling ease, even though he’s never been here before, pulling down bowls from cabinets and putting the stove on to heat the soup. It makes a new part of Hongjoong’s heart ache, seeing a glimpse of what could be if Seonghwa was still a part of his life.
He ladles out a bowl when it’s ready and wordlessly pushes it towards Hongjoong. It’s seaweed soup, and he’s overcome with a wave of such homesickness and regret it suffocates him. The soup is delicious, and Seonghwa’s cooking is leagues better than when they were teenagers, but it sticks in his throat nonetheless. While he eats, Seonghwa packs the leftovers into tupperware and starts the dishwasher. He pauses when he sees the photos of them on his fridge, arm in arm and grinning like fools, and Hongjoong feels like he’s been caught out.
“You know, Wooyoung has been feeding me so much my fridge is running out of space,” he says, voice half-hoarse, aiming for levity.
Seonghwa doesn’t smile, just levels him with an unreadable expression. He used to be able to read all of Seonghwa’s expressions.
”Goodnight, Hongjoong,” he murmurs, and it’s the first and last thing he says before leaving him in the quiet hum of his kitchen.
He spends the rest of the night haunting his halls like a ghost, wondering if it’s possible to love someone you irreparably hurt.
—
The next time he sees Seonghwa is at San and Wooyoung’s wedding.
They rent a venue in upstate Maine and invite half of the NHL, because they’re sweethearts that no one can keep from falling in love with.
Wooyoung asks Hongjoong to be his best man, so he spends the morning ferrying handwritten notes and dry cleaning and ring boxes between hotel rooms, and he finally understands what people mean when they say that a wedding is the most important day of your life, and it’s not even his wedding.
The ceremony is held by a lake under a wisteria tree, and as his best friends and teammates stand at the altar, exchanging vows and drinking from the copper cup, looking so incandescently happy to be in love, Hongjoong looks out into the assembly and realises that maybe, just maybe, he wants that for himself.
Because his teammates are hopeless romantics who believe in second chances, he gets sat next to Seonghwa during the reception.
He’s wearing pale pink hanbok, and Hongjoong can’t stop staring as Seonghwa drinks and smiles and chats with other guests. He’s probably being terrible company, half-heartedly chiming in and tuning out other people’s stories, but he can’t help it. Seonghwa is as radiant as the sun.
Hongjoong gets so distracted, in fact, that he forgets to be nervous about giving his best man speech.
He can give post-game interviews and press conferences in his sleep, and he’s witnessed half of the attendees chug beer out of sweaty athletic footwear. In spite of that, he’s been losing sleep over the next ten minutes for the better part of a week.
Over at the grooms’ table, San, who’s already swaying despite being on a five drink limit for the night, is giggling and pushing his face into Wooyoung’s collar. Their cheeks are flushed with happiness, and they’re looking at each other like they’re the only two people on the planet.
Hongjoong looks at the man next to him, and draws from a well of courage previously dry.
He stands, clinking a spoon against his glass.
When couples start peeling off to the dance floor, their table thins out until they’re the only two left sitting there, and, well. He’s not one to fumble an opportunity like that.
“Dance with me,” he says with his best bravado.
Seonghwa sighs and looks down at his proffered hand, and Hongjoong wavers, certain that he’s going to say no.
“Just one song,” he says after a harrowing moment of suspense, which Hongjoong supposes he deserves. He gets up without checking to see if he follows, and Hongjoong’s brain plays catch up before he scrambles after him.
Seonghwa takes to the dance floor like a fish to water. He has always been more graceful between the two of them, lithe and elegant where Hongjoong is sharp and jagged. And yet, they slot into each other as easily as breathing, as if Seonghwa never filled in the space that he used to occupy. He pulls him in close, and they dance until they’re red in the face and breathing like they’ve just skated a double.
High off the music and the party, they seek respite on a terrace overlooking the lake. The cool air feels like a baptism.
Seonghwa leans his head against the railing, allowing the night breeze to ruffle his sweat-damp hair. There’s a couple of drunk people out on the grounds, barefoot and stumbling into each other. One of them starts singing.
Hongjoong inches closer. “Do you think you’ll ever get married?”
“…Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
”If it was the right person.”
Hongjoong thinks about it. “I always thought I’d never get married. End up as a crazy old bachelor like Jaromir Jágr.”
“…But?”
”But I think I might have been wrong about myself.”
Seonghwa turns, and before he can stop himself, he leans forward and closes the gap between them.
He hesitates, breath catching in his throat, but then Hongjoong brings his hand up to cradle his face, so carefully, so delicately, and it’s like his last defences melt away. The kiss is desperate, yet gentle, and Hongjoong thinks it might be where he belongs.
When they pull away, Seonghwa’s eyes are glittering with tears that threaten to spill over his lashes.
”Why did you do it?” he whispers, barely audible. “Why did you leave me?”
Under the wash of moonlight he looks so plaintive, so young, and for the first time Hongjoong allows himself to really, truly look at him. How could he do anything except cherish this man?
He has nothing to say. There’s nothing that he can say.
He can’t explain why one day, he closed himself off to the world and never looked back. Why he shut out the only person he’s ever loved, why when given the choice, he would choose to self destruct over all else time and time again.
“It scared me,” he whispers.
“What did?”
His voice is raw. “That I would have done anything for you.”
Seonghwa looks at him for a long time, sadness swimming in his eyes. “Goodnight, Hongjoong,” he says finally, and leaves him out on the terrace alone.
—
Hongjoong thinks it's over.
But then, he starts getting the texts. Slowly at first, just a message here and there.
I think they’re taking Mingi off injury reserve this season
And,
My mom told me to give you her jjamppong recipe [pdf attached]
Then come the photos. Small excerpts of Seonghwa’s life. He sends snapshots of his miniature diorama builds, of team dinner, of Mingi’s pitiful attempts at growing facial hair. Hongjoong has spent so long scrounging for scraps of Seonghwa’s life on the internet, and now he gets entire photo diaries of his day delivered right to his fingertips.
He makes the effort this time. He sends things right back, photos from roadies, candids of Wooyoung asleep at team breakfast, face stuck in an omelette. They start live texting games, they video call. One day he’s on the phone with his mom, and she asks how Seonghwa is doing like she always does, and he realises he can actually give her a real answer. It’s nice.
Gradually, without even realising it, they knit the fabric of their lives together once again.
—
When he gets drafted for the All-Star weekend in Toronto, absurdly enough, Hongjoong finds he’s nervous. It’s his fifth or sixth time at one of these things, and he’s long since resigned himself to working while watching his teammates get the week off to vacation in various tropical resorts. Last year, Wooyoung brought him back a keychain with a flamingo on it, which felt like a taunt more than anything. But despite that, he feels weirdly antsy in the lead up to this one.
On an unrelated note, he’s been seeing Seonghwa.
Well. Seeing is a strong word. More accurately, he’s been getting dinner with him whenever their schedules place them within driving distance of each other. Last month, the Capitals played the Devils while the Rangers were at home, so naturally they went out for pho afterwards. It’s nice. It’s not a big deal. Just old friends catching up.
Speaking of old friends, All-Star weekend is also a good chance to see people that he rarely gets to see— Yeosang, Mingi and Yunho are all going to be there. They’ll catch up, grab a drink together.
A new development for the week though, is that it has now also become a test of Hongjoong’s mettle and fortitude as a man.
It is accepted that Seonghwa is pretty much universally beloved amongst other players. It’s hard not to fall in love with him, Hongjoong of all people gets that.
That doesn’t make it any easier for him to stand by and watch as a convoy of professional male athletes shamelessly flirt with him.
They’re standing around between events during the skills competition, and after the fifth player comes up to the bench to chat him up, Hongjoong’s eye starts twitching.
Everyone on the ice has something to say to the captain of the Rangers, it appears. Seonghwa is blushing and giggling as the Panthers’ rookie goalie talks his ear off, and when he reaches out to teasingly flick a strand of his hair, Hongjoong almost breaks his stick in half.
If he faces off against the kid for the breakaway challenge and pulls out the truly filthy deke that he normally reserves for when there’s a Stanley Cup on the line, that’s none of anyone's business.
The other problem is that Toronto is also the epicentre of hockey, so he barely gets any downtime with Seonghwa. The streets of downtown are crawling with hockey fans, especially this week. They can’t step foot outside their hotel rooms without being approached by a starry-eyed twelve year old asking them to sign their breakaway jersey, which is sweet the first dozen times, and then quickly becomes a problem.
Seonghwa is smiling as they finally sit down at a restaurant after getting hounded, at a secluded table in the back. It’s one of those smiles that presses his cheeks into his eyes, and it’s adorable, and it’s hard for Hongjoong to act like a grumpy sack of shit when he looks like that, but it doesn’t keep him from trying.
“What?”
Amusement dances in his eyes. “Are you jealous, Hongjoong?”
He keeps his gaze steadily fixed on the menu in front of him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Seonghwa reaches out for his hand across the table, clasping it between his. “You have no reason to be, you know. I came here this weekend to see you,” he says.
Hongjoong pokes his tongue into his cheek, stubbornness giving way to sheepishness. “I could’ve sworn you were contractually obligated to be here.”
“Well obviously, that’s just a rumour,” he says, and then he can’t contain his laughter anymore. “I forgot how cute you are when you get jealous.”
He scrunches his nose. “I am not.”
“You’re allowed to be jealous,” he says, looking smug.
Hongjoong puts the menu down, and tugs Seonghwa’s hand to his mouth. “Yeah, well. You make it easy.”
—
The eight-year contract he signed as a rookie is coming to an end, and then Hongjoong will be an unrestricted free agent. Free to go wherever he wants. He thinks about renewing his contract and staying in Washington, with Wooyoung and San. It feels easy and familiar.
But then the Devils come knocking, and there’s an interesting thought. He’s made some friends with the coaching staff over the years, and Choi Jongho has been making waves since they got him first overall a few years ago. It’s a franchise with a bright future, they say. They could use a veteran presence, they say. And Manhattan is only a 30 minute drive away.
Seonghwa is the first person he calls after signing the deal. His eyes go round when he tells him he’s landing in Newark two weeks from now. He makes a proper fuss, insisting on picking Hongjoong up from the airport and hosting him at his apartment while he looks for a place.
New York is certainly a pace change from DC. The streets smell like piss and the rats are plentiful, but everything buzzes with possibility. And of course, Seonghwa is here.
The new team also takes getting used to, but that will come with time. The organisation welcomes him with enthusiasm, and the fans do too.
The only problem is apartment hunting. Every place his realtor shows him is too big or too small, or there’s just something not right about it. So he stays with Seonghwa, for the time being. There’s more than enough room, and he pitches in with rent, helps out with laundry. It’s nice. It’s not a big deal.
“You have me,” Seonghwa says one day, totally unprompted. “You know that right?”
Hongjoong is putting together an IKEA cabinet that he refuses to succumb to. He takes the Allen key out of his mouth. “What?”
Seonghwa appears in his peripheral with a steaming mug, and hands it to him. Black coffee, just how he likes it. He sits down next to him, cross-legged on the floor. “I’m yours,” he says, as simple as fact.
Hongjoong’s brain goes offline for a second.
Somewhere along the way, whether he knew it or not, he accepted that he would only ever have the parts of Seonghwa that he was given willingly. He made peace with the fact that he would take what he could get, and leave the rest up to fate. It was hard not to be greedy, but Hongjoong was used to wanting. So he was happy to wait.
Has he been an idiot all along?
“And you don’t have to feel the same way,” Seonghwa continues, as if he didn’t just flip his world on an axis, “but I thought I’d say it out loud. Just in case.”
Hongjoong thinks his brain might actually be broken.
So he does the only thing he’s capable of, which is to gingerly set the mug down on the floor, and kiss the living fucking daylights out of him.
The hardwood is awful on their ageing backs, and their teeth bump against each other, but Seonghwa is holding him like he’s perfect, and Seonghwa actually is perfect, and it makes him want to cry.
“I love you,” Hongjoong whispers against his lips, reverently, so reverently. “You’ve always had me. I thought I had lost you, and I was so scared. But I love you. I just didn’t know if you were mine.”
Seonghwa laughs, and it's muffled a bit against his lips, and he thinks he might be crying a bit also, but he doesn’t care. “You idiot,” he says, and that’s when Hongjoong starts crying, too. “I never stopped being yours.”
—
A year later, the two of them buy a brownstone in the Lower East End. It’s got green mosaic kitchen backsplash and peeling art deco wallpaper, and enough room for both their workout equipment combined.
It’s closer to Seonghwa’s rink than his, but he’s willing to make the compromise.
He does that now. Make compromises, break off small pieces of himself to attach to something bigger. He likes that he can point to something that he and Seonghwa built together, and say, look. This is the greatest achievement of his life.
It helps that there’s a small band of platinum around Seonghwa’s finger to prove it, but. Hongjoong isn’t the bragging type.
“Does this mean you have to let me win faceoffs, now?” Seonghwa asks as they lay in bed, admiring the ring.
“The opposite, I think,” he says, rolling over in a steep of post-engagement glow. “I’m pretty sure you have to surrender the puck to me, now.”
“Mingi is gonna flip,” Seonghwa says, already snapping a photo of his hand to text to the group chat. “I know he had money on how long it would take for you to ask.”
Before his brain can process that information, Seonghwa is tossing his phone into the covers and pouncing on him for round two, and well.
Hongjoong doesn’t mind letting him win some of the time.