Chapter Text
The Wednesday match is a blowout. 0:5, almost 15 minutes of PK; one of their defensemen had to leave the match because he got hit with the puck straight in the knee, and the physios aren't sure if he'll be able to be in the line-up for the next match. Yeonjun, the one who everyone was looking to with hope in their eyes when they finally got player advantage at 0:2 and he was getting on the ice, fumbled a great pass from Soobin with the goal wide open in front of him, then got intercepted during a breakaway and took a nice, gliding tumble into the net. He's covered in bruises from getting pummeled all game, since the other team was a bit too aware that they're up against their team's ace player to let Yeonjun do his magic on the ice unbothered. He's exhausted, and they have to be up early the next day to hustle to another away game which means he'll barely get any R&R, and he's got the feeling that he'll force himself to go to the voluntary training session instead of taking advantage of it.
He needs to keep pushing because if he stops for even a day, he thinks he might break.
Beomgyu is a huge dick in the locker room, obviously feeling guilty about the game result and lashing out because of it, even though this particular shit sandwich was a true team effort. Everyone fucked up in their own little ways, skating too slow, taking too long to shoot, fumbling passes, losing one-on-ones. It's not even Yeonjun's fault when he looks at it objectively, even though it feels like it, when he replays the moment where he lost control of the puck in his mind over and over again.
Soobin takes it upon himself to calm Beomgyu the fuck down so he stops stinking up the lockers with his shitty attitude, changing at lightning speed and then hovering over his left wing until he takes the hint and hurries to get out of there, too. They only reunite with the rest of the team when they're climbing into the bus to get back to their hotel, and they take up the seats in the back together, thinking they're sneaky about sharing a pack of gummy worms. Beomgyu is suddenly quiet instead of obnoxious and combative, and he sinks into Soobin's side so comfortably it almost looks cuddly, and on any other day maybe the other players would find it questionable, but with the day everyone's had, they all seem content with letting Soobin rest his head on Beomgyu's if it means that there will be no more yelling until they have to face the coaching team again. A sullen mood seems more appropriate than any uproar.
Some of the others loudly discuss getting drinks in the hotel bar when they get back, and Yeonjun begs off politely, telling everyone that what he really needs is a goddamn nap. Soobin warns everyone to drink responsibly, giving a stern look to one of his alternates who promises to make sure everyone's good enough to make it to the airport the next day. The two seats in front of Yeonjun, occupied by their inseparable defense duo, stay suspiciously quiet, until one of the other defense line guys climbs halfway over his own seat to check if they're coming to drink, too. They take too long to answer, and Yeonjun assumes that there's one of those silent conversations going on that only Taehyun and Kai seem to be capable of off the ice, and then Taehyun says he's probably going to hang back, and it's obvious everyone just takes that to mean that they're both staying in tonight. Because of course they are. They do everything together.
For some reason, it makes Yeonjun's mood even gloomier, although he can't for the life of him figure out why while he stares blankly out the window next to him, tuning out his teammates completely. He likes Taehyun and Kai, is quite fond of them, actually, most of the time. Their intricately intertwined nature is endearing, and he's known both of them for a long time by now. They haven't spent all of that time wearing the same team colors, but they've been running into each other basically since they were kids. Taehyun was a big deal for a while with anyone who paid attention to the junior league, an excellent offensive defenseman, topping defense rankings and piling up wins under his belt. He's been to countless camps with Yeonjun and junior championships and played against him in the big leagues, but around the time Yeonjun got too old to continue playing juniors, Taehyun's press took a bit of a turn. His name started getting lost among the others, losing its luster. He was considered a good player, a solid player. A pillar for his team, for sure, but not a star.
Kai's come-up was rockier; he spent most of his junior career in the lower leagues and if his interviews were to be believed, he thought for quite a while he would never be able to go fully pro. He was close to growing out of the junior leagues too when he finally got spotted by complete chance at a minor league game, invited to train with a top-league team, then taken on and spent a phenomenal season with them which he was able to cap off with winning the whole thing with them. He caught the eyes of the guys drafting players for an international tournament, got paired up with Taehyun in the defense line, since his more defensive style balanced out Taehyun's more aggressive play, and the rest is history.
It was a bit like the fire with which Kai burst onto the scene reignited the cinders of Taehyun's former greatness, and the two propelled each other to new heights, getting wins, scoring points, ending up on the same team in the league just because nobody could deny that they worked best when together. It was a match made in heaven, a little dream team of its own hanging out behind whichever attack line was put in front of them. When they aged out of juniors and Yeonjun started to meet them on the ice again, they quickly became his worst nightmare, until they were finally able to secure them for his team (maybe even thanks to the promise of getting to back up Yeonjun, who was getting prime time news coverage back then thanks to his unique blend of genuine talent as a sportsman and a brand-friendly image that the sponsors just adored) and he grew to love them instead, with all their little oddities and undeniable talent, their loyalty and dedication to the team that somehow never got overshadowed by their obvious allegiance to each other, which so clearly came before anything else.
Yeonjun likes them as people, they're nice and hard-working. Taehyun is just as ambitious as Yeonjun is, and Kai feels as fiercely protective of his teammates as Yeonjun does, and they get along. Today, though, they rub him the wrong way.
They're in the same suite as Yeonjun at the hotel, sharing one of the double rooms, two of their goalies sharing the other while Yeonjun, with all his primadonna privileges he never asks for but almost always gets, has a room all to himself. That means that he has to watch the two of them barely let an inch between them all the way to the common space of their suite, where Taehyun does his Taehyun thing where he waits around for Kai when he could very well just take the couple steps to their suite on his own, but Kai left something between the couch cushions that he needs to get, so Taehyun is stranded standing idly by the couch texting someone on his phone.
The two goalies disappear into their room to drop their stuff off and freshen up before they join the others in the bar, and then Yeonjun realizes he's stupidly lingering too, watching Kai dig through their couch until he emerges with a watch in his hand, holding it above his head in triumph while Taehyun pauses his typing to clap for him politely. They're both smiling, and Yeonjun feels a little bit like shit, fully aware that seeing them so easy-going is making him intensely jealous. He wants to be able to smile too, but all he can think of is the 4 a.m. alarm waiting on his phone to ruin a night of sleep that won't be restful with all the bruises he'll be irritating with every single move, and the brutal pace he'll have to set for himself at practice to make himself feel better while he blows off another day of R&R because somewhere deep down he's convinced that he doesn't deserve to rest.
Will Kai and Taehyun be at the voluntary practice session? Probably. Will that make Yeonjun feel better? No; because they'll sleep better than him, cozy in their shared room, and they'll have each other at practice to holler at and joke around with, and they won't push themselves too hard because they'll know they need to be in shape for the game, and they won't do anyone any good by running their bodies to the ground – because they're there for each other, to keep an eye on each other and keep each other in check.
But now they're checking him out, eerily in sync as ever, watching Yeonjun as he awkwardly stands there, glaring at them for absolutely no rational reason.
“Hey, are you okay?” And of course Kai sounds genuinely worried, because he's a nice dude who does not deserve Yeonjun taking out his complexes on his whole existence when the only thing he's done wrong is be well-regulated and have a friend.
“Yeah, I'm just… just fucking exhausted.” That's what it boils down to. He runs a hand through his hair and closes his eyes for a moment, letting out a long sigh. He needs that nap, so bad.
They both nod in unison, then Taehyun's eyes wander over his body. “Is your shoulder okay? Did you have the physios take a look at it?”
“I'll be fine, it's just bruised up. They said they'll take another look at it Friday morning, and I should just keep icing it until then if it's a bother.”
This time only Taehyun nods, a little bobble of acknowledgement.
“Do you need an ice pack? Taehyun has like three hundred of them,” Kai offers, and Taehyun rolls his eyes – whether he's unimpressed by the offer or the obvious exaggeration is unclear, but he doesn't retract the offer, so maybe it's just Kai's poor math skills that were offensive to him.
“I'm good; I'm stocked, too.” He attempts a smile and knows he failed even before Kai and Taehyun's eyes make it clear he's making some sort of disturbing grimace instead. “Not my first beating on ice.”
And probably not the last.
“Those guys were terrified of you,” Taehyun says conversationally, but there's something off about his tone. “They knew they could never win against a player like you unless they got you injured enough to slow you down.”
Yeonjun wants to snap back that he didn't let it slow him down, but 0:5 speaks for itself, doesn't it? Fumbling a pass, slamming his shoulder into a goal post, and now glaring at the same guys who spent the whole game punishing all the abuse Yeonjun was put through by pulling players off of him, trying to give back twice as bad as Yeonjun got to discourage them from trying anything else; it didn't work, but they did their job, for his sake, too. Kai almost got into a fistfight after Yeonjun got slammed into the boards hard enough to make his teeth hurt. They know he did his best; they did, too. It just wasn't enough today.
“Yeah, well. It worked for them,” is all he ends up saying.
“The refs were insane for letting all that shit slide, honestly, when they were on our ass the entire time,” Kai adds and Yeonjun has to stop himself from bristling again.
Nap. He needs sleep. Before he starts shit with two of the nicest guys he's ever had the pleasure to play with. “Look, uh. I'm really beat. I'll go pop some painkillers and sleep, alright? You two have a good evening.”
Taehyun opens his mouth like he's about to protest, but then he nods instead. “Okay. We'll see you in the morning, then.”
“We'll be in our room if you need anything!”
As if Yeonjun isn't desperately trying to get away from them.
He slinks into his single under their watchful eyes, tosses his bag in the corner, then tosses himself down onto the bed and regrets it immediately when almost blinding pain radiates out from his injured shoulder. Fuck this, fuck everything. Fuck him, most of all.
He needs that fucking half day of R&R, but he can't just take it after a loss like that. The assistant coach will no doubt passive aggressively force everyone to go to practice instead of resting and give them extra shit about every little mistake. That guy never got over the fact that he's not good enough to be head coach, and he can suck Yeonjun's entire dick, actually.
It's something he can think to himself, in the privacy of his hotel room. Tomorrow he'll be passing the puck with enough shots in his shoulder for it to go almost completely numb like a good little soldier, but for tonight? Fuck that guy. Fuck practice. He'll stay in bed in his stupid hotel room, lonely in his stupid privileged single and wish that he had a buddy to be miserable with, like Kai and Taehyun do, like Soobin does, even, with a belligerent left wing never too far behind on his heels, somehow magically ending up wherever he is at the end of every day. Yeonjun loves his teammates, he really does, and they're both colleagues and a little family, despite the roster changing every season, but sometimes he still feels lonely, even when surrounded by all of them. Especially on days like these, where the morale is low, and everyone retreats towards the people who bring them comfort. Beomgyu clings to Soobin, Kai and Taehyun to each other, and Yeonjun clings to his bottle of prescription painkillers and tub of numbing cream.
Life could be better; it sure could be a bit fucking better.
Four in the morning comes as stupidly early as four in the morning always does, even after a childhood spent at training camps – for some people, Yeonjun included, it never gets much easier. But he rolls out of bed, because it's muscle memory by now, and doesn't bother cleaning up too much because he'll just take the elevator down to check out and then try to nap some more on the bus to the airport. He keeps his sleep shirt on under his padded jacket, and hides the swelling in his face under a mask before he slips out into the common area.
Everyone is already up; loud groans are spilling through the open door to the goalies room, along with the sounds of two men bitching after drinking too much and then not getting enough sleep. Taehyun is just standing there in the middle of the room, with both his and Kai's bags at his feet, with Kai himself nowhere to be found. He looks shockingly well-rested and professional and serious as always, the only concession to the early hour he seems to have made being the incredibly cozy-looking hoodie he's wearing. It's so loose on him that Yeonjun suspects it might have come out of Kai's bag and not his, although he doesn't remember Kai wearing it himself. It seems to be lined with a soft, plush material on the inside, and Taehyun looks positively snuggly in it, which is not a word Yeonjun tends to associate with the guys in their defense. Then again, Taehyun is not your average defense player – he's got both the fire and the frame of a forward, and maybe it has never fully made sense to Yeonjun why he plays defense at all. He has to try twice as hard to do what the others can do with just their natural build and raw strength, but maybe that's the appeal for Taehyun.
It's the looks on the other team's faces when a skinny-looking defenseman sends the other guy flying in a collision, or when he bodily pulls a guy off of Beomgyu even though his head barely comes up to the other dude's shoulders, or when he scores a point shot that nobody saw coming. There has to be satisfaction in that, even though it's not something Taehyun brags about. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he has to be thinking it. He'll shove everyone's expectations down their throats and then send them face-first into the boards.
Taehyun smiles at him when he sees him, half hidden under his bangs. “Morning.”
Yeonjun responds with a grunt and a weak raise of his hand.
“Did you read the text?” When Yeonjun responds with a confused grunt this time, Taehyun waves his ever-present phone in the air. “Apparently there's an issue with the bus, so we've got a bit more time before we leave.”
This time, Yeonjun groans bodily and Taehyun snickers. “So I could've stayed in bed?”
“Soobin said it'll only be about ten extra minutes. Probably not worth just staying in bed, but at least we don't need to rush downstairs. Do you want coffee? Hyuka and I are getting some before we have to leave.”
He makes a face, contemplating the question. Coffee sounds wonderful, but he was planning on sleeping away most of their travel time, anyway. “Probably not. Gonna nap on the bus.”
Taehyun takes an aborted little breath and nods. “Alright. How's your shoulder?”
Getting into his jacket was such an ordeal he considered staying in it all the way until they got to their next hotel. “It's fine.” He's definitely going to need shots if he's going to practice later, but Taehyun doesn't need to know that; Yeonjun will show up for the team, and that's what matters.
The look Taehyun gives him implies that he's fully aware that his concern is getting brushed off in the most polite way Yeonjun is capable of in his sleepy state, but he doesn't call him out on it, just casually glances at where Yeonjun's bag hangs off of a different shoulder than it usually does.
He crosses his arms, ignoring the sting in his shoulder, and walks out of the room to head to the reception.
After the bus ride and the plane trip, both of which he spends peacefully passed out until his seatmate shakes him awake, he finally feels a little better, even though it almost feels like his shoulder has gotten worse. His range of motion seems fucked, and getting his jacket back on while trying not to show any discomfort in front of his teammates is torturous. He probably needs to talk to their medical staff about this, but now that he's not exhausted and pissed off, he's left feeling a bit numb, and he finds himself struggling to care.
His body is his money-maker – his arms especially. If he aggravates a minor injury and gets himself cut from the lineup due to his own recklessness, he's going to get eaten alive. The coach will yell at him until his ears bleed, Soobin will get him scheduled for another humiliating mental health check, and then the team managers will make him sit for interview after interview after interview where he has to repeat over and over again how he got injured, how upset he is that he can't be on the ice with his team, who he thinks should replace him in the first line and how much he still believes his team will make it through the matches that are coming up.
He'd rather crack his own skull on the ice than do all that, but on the other hand, as they wait around at the airport for yet another bus to take them to the next hotel so they can get an earful of it at the coaching team's suite, he can't find the energy to just go nip it in the bud, get his shoulder taken care of and be a good member of the team.
As if attracted by his gloomy thoughts like the opposite pole of a magnet, Kai sidles up to him, and this time, it's Taehyun who's nowhere to be found. How come they've suddenly developed a sense of personal space?
“Hey.”
“Hi?” Yeonjun looks Kai up and down, then blatantly looks around them for Taehyun.
Kai either pretends that he didn't see it, or is actually brain-dead, because instead of explaining himself, he asks, “Planning to go to practice today?”
They've also suddenly developed a keen interest in Yeonjun's time all of a sudden. “Yeah – apparently I need it.”
He smirks with his own wry joke, but Kai doesn't, rolling his eyes instead. He doesn't comment on it, though, and Yeonjun thinks Kai's lucky he knows when to keep his mouth shut.
“Taehyun and I are taking the day off; we used to play here back in juniors, we know all the nice spots.”
It's an obvious invitation, from the words, from Kai's intonation, from his raised eyebrows. It's as close to if you want to come with as he can give without actually saying the words. But Yeonjun is busy today; whether he's lying on his back in a hotel room feeling sorry for himself or sweating all his worries off in practice, his schedule is packed, and has no place in it for a codependent pair of defensemen anyway.
“Sounds good; have fun.”
Kai presses his lips together, and maybe that's his way of trying not to look disappointed – it doesn't work. “How's your shoulder?”
Yeonjun sighs and crosses his arms again; the pain of it helps him stay stern in the face of Kai's gentle concern. “Are we going to pretend that Taehyun didn't tell you?”
To his satisfaction, Kai looks a bit chastised. “Well, Soobin told us it's polite to at least pretend we don't just tell each other everything.” He grins, sheepish. “Plus, it's been a couple hours. Could have changed.”
“It didn't. I'm fine.”
“Okay, Yeonjun.” Kai reaches out and pats his good shoulder. “Good luck at practice, then.”
There's something almost condescending about it, and Yeonjun would be pissed if he could bring himself to care enough, but he just lets Kai wander away again until he finds Taehyun in the mass of players and staff like his teammate is his true north, and he can always find his way back to him without fail.
He glances to his left, where Beomgyu is zoning out with his headphones on, with Soobin just a few steps away, trying to read a book but glancing up every couple seconds instead to watch Beomgyu's hair sway to the rhythm as he bobs his head. Some of the players are chatting casually, in pairs or in groups. Yeonjun stands on his own and tries to will himself to not touch his aching shoulder.
Either Kai lied to his face, or having to watch the playback of their humiliating loss and all the mistakes they've made convinces him and Taehyun to stick around for practice anyway, because when Yeonjun makes his way into the locker room to change into his training gear, the two of them are just there, in their usual state; Taehyun, fully geared-up, scrolling through his phone while Kai diligently tightens his shin guards next to him. Taehyun glances up when Yeonjun enters but doesn't acknowledge him – maybe that's his way of giving Yeonjun the space he's been trying to signal he needs.
This time, he doesn't want space though, so he drops his bag on the bench, turns to them and asks, “What happened to your day off?”
Taehyun doesn't move except for his eyes, and Kai doesn't look up from his gear at all. “This is more important. We're getting a full day off on Saturday, anyway. Sightseeing can wait.”
Right. It couldn't this morning, but it can now. Yeonjun is making a big deal out of nothing – having to watch themselves fuck up would make anyone put improving as priority number one. There's nothing weird about the two coming to practice – Yeonjun expected them to come to practice; before Kai implied otherwise this morning.
But Soobin isn't here, even though he usually makes a point of coming to voluntary practice to set a good precedent. Half the team is not here, because they're nursing hangovers. Nobody thinks this practice is a huge deal, except for him.
And even he barely made it here – he sat in his hotel room seething like a teenager, moping around until he was almost late, cradling the spiteful thought of skipping this practice like a treasure to his chest. He's not in the mood for any of this.
Could the two of them tell? Did they just want to cheer him up? They could have told him – so he could tell them to fuck off, because he's fine.
He takes his jacket off with too much force and his vision briefly goes white. Right. He was supposed to get the shots before practice, so he could move his arm properly, and get some fucking relief.
When his vision returns, Kai is frozen with his jersey halfway down his chest, and Taehyun's head is raised and pointed his way. So much for being inconspicuous. Taehyun blinks at him slowly, and Kai lets his jersey drop the rest of the way.
“How's your shoulder?” Taehyun asks conversationally.
Yeonjun doesn't grace that with an answer, just turns around and starts getting his training gear out, ignoring every flare up of pain, and every time the swelling makes it hard to move his arm a certain way. God, he was stupid. He can't play without an injection; he'll be lucky if he gets his gear on.
“One of the nurses is in the office with the coaching team,” Taehyun points out just as lightly, and when Yeonjun glares over his shoulder, he's staring into his phone. Kai is fiddling with his skates, just as casual.
“You aiming for a C next year?” he retorts sarcastically, but he doesn't mean it. He knows Taehyun doesn't want to replace Soobin, he's repeatedly turned down an A on his own jersey. He's just being a good teammate, trying to gently wrangle Yeonjun into taking care of himself. And Yeonjun is being a dick.
It mirrors how their relationship started, in a way, at a training camp where Yeonjun had the time of his life giving the new boys a hard time, and Taehyun was a young, talented kid who was new to the fast track to a pro career, and a little too sincere. Taehyun is doing his best, and Yeonjun gives him shit for it, as usual.
“Aiming for a win tomorrow,” Taehyun shoots back, and he only looks a little like he regrets saying it once it's hanging between them in the locker room. At the end of the day, maybe he thinks that's the only way he can get through to Yeonjun – to appeal to his desire to keep winning.
He'd be right, because Yeonjun gives himself a couple more seconds to huff and pretend like he's all good, but eventually, he tosses all the things he took out back into his bag and throws it defiantly over his swollen, bruised-up shoulder.
It makes his vision blur again, but it feels worth it. Taehyun doesn't comment on it, and Yeonjun appreciates that as he strides right back out of the locker room.
Yeonjun's suite is completely empty; everyone's either enjoying a day off or still at practice – the medical team gave him shit the entire time they were taking care of him and told him about twenty times to skip practice today and ice his damn shoulder, so he lies on his front on his bed with an ice pack on it, trying to keep his weight on the uninjured side while he watches footage of yesterday's match and of the last match the team they're up against tomorrow has been in. They've been good this season – they're under Yeonjun's team in the rankings, but they're no pushovers. Their goalie seems to have a bit of a blind spot on his right though, where he keeps struggling with shots that come right above his pads. Yeonjun could sneak one in – or three; to make himself feel better.
Spending his R&R time actually resting is oddly peaceful, a lot of his aggression and foul mood surprisingly alleviated after the administration of some steroids and a local anesthetic. Turns out he's much more of a nice guy when his shoulder isn't constantly in pain.
He should apologize to Taehyun for getting snappy with him. Or thank him. Maybe take him (and Kai, because he doesn't go anywhere without Kai) to one of those special spots he knows around the city and pay for his meal and kill two birds with one stone. Kai deserves some apologies too, probably. Yeonjun has been cold with him, and Kai's been nothing but lovely as usual.
But for now, he just plays and replays the moment where he lost his balance and tumbled right into the goal, the D-man chasing after him slamming into him right after to crush his shoulder into the post even further. He's lucky it's not fractured, but he doesn't feel lucky.
Someone knocks on the door to the suite, and Yeonjun jumps at the sound enough to jostle the ice pack right off his shoulder, and he diligently picks it back up and presses it in with his other hand while he makes his way to the front door. Who the fuck is looking for him? Soobin is a texter, even if the text is, I'm coming over to your room to chat, and the coach would have just called him to tell him to get his ass over to the coaching team's suite or something. Did one of the people rooming with him forget their card?
He's both shocked and not surprised at all when he opens the door to Bert and Ernie themselves, looking cool as a pair of cucumbers and holding plastic bags that smell like food. Kai's nose is pink from the cold, and Taehyun has the gall to look a little apprehensive as they present their offerings.
“Did you eat? We dropped by one of our favorite places on our way from practice.”
One day Yeonjun will point out to them that they use the word we about as often and as casually as a married couple would, but for now he has a horrible attitude to atone for, so he just looks them up and down with a bit of healthy skepticism (they're still on his ass way more than any teammates of his who aren't Soobin have any business being) and opens the door wider.
“Was going to, later,” he answers as they pass by him, and deposit the food on the table by the couch. Taehyun immediately looks up from it to scrutinize Yeonjun, his eyes zooming in on where he's still pressing the ice pack against his shoulder under his shirt.
“Let's do it together, then,” Kai says cheerfully, just for Taehyun to ruin the positive vibe he was obviously trying to create with a blunt, “What did the nurse say?”
Yeonjun calmly closes the door and sighs. “That I should have been icing it more. I got some shots and I should be good for tomorrow.”
Taehyun looks curious when Yeonjun faces him again. “Good good or good enough?”
Great question. Yeonjun wishes he could guarantee the answer to that. “We'll see.”
It doesn't seem to satisfy Taehyun much, but Kai starts taking his coat off, so Taehyun slowly follows, pulling the zipper of his jacket down. He still seems to be eyeing Yeonjun's shoulder with skepticism – Yeonjun wishes he would stop, even now that he's decided that he doesn't hate them because they care about him and aren't lonely losers like he is.
“Do you like Chinese food?” Kai continues with the same bright tone, like Taehyun and Yeonjun aren't eyeing each other like two wary animals right beside him, tossing his coat over the back of the couch and rubbing at his pink nose.
Yeonjun raises his eyebrows. “Is that what you brought? That can't be in line with our diet.”
Their team nutritionist doesn't get on their case too much about snacking and cheat days, and sometimes Yeonjun wonders if that's a problem, especially whenever he hears suspicious rustling from wherever Soobin is sitting on their bus. Whoever decided that he was the most responsible person on the team must have been on drugs. Or he's really just coasting by on simply being good with people. Or it's just because he's the only center who can keep the first line in check, wrangling both Beomgyu and Yeonjun at the same time – maybe they slapped the C on his jersey out of sheer admiration.
Taehyun shrugs, and it finally seems like he might just relax. “We have a great vegan restaurant here too that would make good diet food, but it would've been so far out of our way.”
“So you didn't burn extra calories taking a long walk and picked up the unhealthiest takeout you could find?”
Kai cackles, even though it's not even that funny. “We sweat our asses off at practice, I swear. Head coach spent most of it in the office, so we got the whole boot camp experience.”
“We're glad we're still good to walk,” Taehyun quips, tossing his jacket, too. He's not wearing that fuzzy hoodie anymore, and Yeonjun kind of misses it. There's nothing wrong with Taehyun in a plain gray sweatshirt, but it doesn't scream comfort; it screams my teammate Taehyun, if anything, but having food with just the three of them in a hotel room isn't exactly something they've ever done as teammates – they usually go out in bigger groups; they have team dinners and group hangouts and bonding activities. He might have not been alone with Taehyun since their time in juniors, and he's probably never been with Kai one-on-one, not with Taehyun superglued to his side at all times.
Even now, they're not alone, it's the three of them, but it still feels like they're too alone for this to just be comfortable.
Kai seems happy to plow right through any discomfort Yeonjun might feel, though, picking containers out of the bags. “Do you like noodles? We got a lot of noodles.”
Yeonjun loves noodles and now he's just suspicious – is this a trick question? “Yeah?”
Taehyun breathes out through his lips, just a little bit of a pout to his mouth as he helps Kai get the napkins, and Yeonjun bristles. Why does everything they do seem so calculated?
Kai laughs. “Great. This shouldn't all go to waste then.”
The two of them set up a spread of food with terrifying efficiency, and not for the first time, Yeonjun realizes that he was too busy admiring their easy synergy to do literally anything with himself. At some point, they just pile around the table, sitting kitty-corner to each other and somehow miraculously not glued to each other's side, they look up at Yeonjun expectantly, and he did not expect this to be the way he'd be spending his off time.
“Coming?”
Kai seems all warm and expectant, accepting, and Taehyun looks like nothing at all, so Yeonjun just goes with it and sits down across from Kai, until they sit in a triangle that's too tight given all the space they have. Taehyun looks satisfied, though, as he hands Yeonjun a paper plate and utensils, so maybe it was the right choice for him to make.
Hanging out with them proves to be easy; they're chatty but not overwhelming, and don't seem bothered when Yeonjun steers the conversation towards work, sharing with them what he's observed about the other team while studying up on their play earlier. It turns out that Taehyun was watching that match on the plane, and noticed the same detail about the goalkeeper that Yeonjun did without him having to point it out. Once again, he wonders if Taehyun's talent isn't wasted on defense, but then he listens to Kai and Taehyun strategize about how to deal with their opponents' first line, and he swallows the remark he had at the tip of his tongue back down – Taehyun is exactly where he wants to be; just because Yeonjun doesn't get it doesn't mean he's wrong. He's got a knack for this, too – he wouldn't be on the front covers of magazines if he didn't, even if he shares those front covers with Kai now that he's older.
They shift to telling him stories about their first season in this city, right on the heels of their international silver medal win – they only just became friends at the tournament, but they knew from the start that they only got hired thanks to each other, and decided to just lean into it. They roomed together, trained together, explored the city together. The others seemed a bit cold to them, probably skeptical of their worth to the team, especially compared to the players they got traded for, and maybe a little off-put by their closeness. But they proved themselves eventually, even though it wasn't the best season either of them have ever played, they worked hard until their new team had no chance but to learn to accept them. But even after they were able to make other friends on the team, they kept that tight bond that helped them keep going when there was no one else to lean on – and it paid off when they came out of juniors and had to join teams of players much older and more mature and experienced than them; when they got onto Soobin's tightly run ship and had to get used to a team with much greater expectations than their previous one.
“I wouldn't have made it onto a big-name team without Taehyun,” Kai quips between bites of sweet and sour pork, and it's so casual and conversational that it doesn't even sound like he's putting himself down as much as stating an obvious fact, but Taehyun rolls his eyes next to him with passion, like that's the stupidest thing he's ever heard in his life.
“Kai, you're a great defense player – you just got unlucky and you couldn't afford a transfer. You got here on your own – I'm not having this argument again.”
Yeonjun stuffs his mouth full of noodles so he doesn't look as amused by just how much the two of them act like an old married couple as he in fact very much is.
Kai raises his eyebrows at his own food instead of glaring back at Taehyun, who's staring him down disapprovingly. “I'm not arguing with you, either.”
“Then stop saying that.”
Sounds to Yeonjun like they very much are having this argument again – he didn't even know this is an argument they had before; it feels a bit exciting to be privy to that now.
“It's true, though,” Kai says with a shrug, dragging his chopsticks through the sticky sauce, then looking up at Taehyun, easy and genuine. “Maybe I was a good player before, but you made me great – you pushed me forward. I wouldn't be where I am without you.”
Yeonjun thinks that if those eyes, if those words were aimed at him instead, he would have melted into a puddle, but Taehyun just purses his lips and stabs pointedly at his rice. “If this dinner gets awkward, it's your fault.” Maybe he's just heard all this before, too. Maybe this really is an old rerun, maybe sped through for Yeonjun's benefit. The whole Huekang Experience, abbreviated.
“It's not awkward,” he assures, maybe admits to himself out loud just to assure himself of it, too. “You two are cute.”
Taehyun looks at Kai with his big wide eyes, the two of them sharing a silent conversation through whatever mind meld thing they've got going on, before Taehyun looks back down at his food and Kai grins at him with a happy, “Thanks.”
Yeonjun is a bit taken aback by the easy acceptance, but he's more taken aback by Kai following it up with:
“You're cute, too.”
He almost chokes on his own spit at that, and Kai cackles a little too loud – Yeonjun almost chokes again when he looks over at Taehyun, and he's chewing his food with this sly little look on his face, like he knew Kai was going to say that and is trying not to laugh as well.
“You should've seen your face,” Kai jokes, a bit too self-satisfied, and Taehyun finally snickers too, his eyes squeezing shut as his laugh trails into a giggle.
“Shut up,” Yeonjun grumbles, and they both look at him happily before exchanging another, slightly different, look.
Why does everything they do seem so fucking calculated, indeed.
He assumes that will be the end of it – he got his shoulder treated, they laughed together over dinner, even though some of it was at Yeonjun's expense, and at the end of the night, they pat each other on the back, wish each other some good sleep before the next day's game, Yeonjun thanks them for the food, and it feels like they've made up sufficiently enough to hop on the ice together tomorrow without any hiccups.
And there are none – no hiccups at all.
If anything, everything is so velvety smooth it feels a bit surreal after the shit day he's had yesterday. Most of them take the team bus to the arena, and for once, Beomgyu deigns to sit next to him on the way, chatting with him about their days off, then launching into a juicy piece of gossip he's heard about a player on the other team from his friend who used to play here. Beomgyu has friends everywhere, old teammates and training camp buddies, opposing team players that he chatted up after games, ever the jovial spirit. It comes in handy sometimes, mostly in small ways, like giving Yeonjun just the right ammo to yell into the face of the guy who just cross-checked him to get him riled up. Beomgyu's personality can be a lot on the ice, but for the most part, off the ice he's just a fun guy to hang out with. He puts Yeonjun at ease as they wait for the rest of the team to trickle in and take their seats, and he appreciates it.
Kai and Taehyun are some of the last people to get on, and they both shoot Yeonjun friendly smiles, catching his eye before they slide into their usual seats. Yeonjun watches the back of their heads as they settle in, and Taehyun leans over to Kai to tell him something Yeonjun can't hear from a couple rows behind them. He wonders if it's always been like this – the two of them smiling at him like this, not just nodding their heads, lifting a hand in greeting like teammates on decently friendly terms would.
Beomgyu doesn't seem surprised by it, at least, or maybe he's too distracted heckling Soobin for being the last one to get on to notice. Yeonjun watches Taehyun hand Kai an earbud through the gap in the seats, and their heads come together over the screen of Taehyun's phone.
Soobin pulls at the little ponytail gathered at the back of Beomgyu's head on his way to sit in the back again, telling Yeonjun hello with a cheeky little salute, and Yeonjun feels a little lonely again.
He feels eyes on his back while he's changing before the warm-up, but this time he doesn't feel the need to get snappy with anyone about it – the swelling has gone down overnight, and he can move his arm properly again without his whole brain exploding in pain. It still has to look a bit gnarly, like an injury like that would, but now that it doesn't feel like a huge, glaring sore spot anymore, Yeonjun doesn't feel the need to defend himself; he gets his clothes on without a single wince and catches Soobin's eyes in his peripheral.
Soobin smiles at Yeonjun before pulling his own shirt on. Maybe everyone's just in a good mood today.
Or maybe there's still something weird going on, because while they're running laps around the rink, Yeonjun finds himself enclosed between a pair of defensemen who are obviously trying to be not obvious about perfectly keeping pace with him, and later, doing squats face-to-face with Kai's friendly face and catching Taehyun looking at him from his spot on the bench while he's lacing up his skates after warming up. Are they not done with him yet? He's obviously fine now.
They both high-five him when he does well during drills, Taehyun hands him a water bottle he didn't even ask for at one point, and Kai skates over to fix his training jersey at the back and winks at him before skating away again. Yeonjun can't for the life of him remember if this is new, or if he's just hypersensitive to every friendly gesture now that he's learned to be suspicious of what the two of them are doing. The guys high-five all the time, they hand each other drinks and… maybe they don't all fix each other's uniforms, but Soobin does that stuff all the time, especially to him and Beomgyu, really not helping the whole ‘perpetually harassed mother of two' vibe he has going on. Maybe the rest of it was normal, and Kai was just being cheeky, new to comfortably teasing Yeonjun now that he's tested the waters over dinner? It could be that. Maybe yesterday brought them closer, in some weird way, and this is just his new normal.
He thinks he wouldn't mind that, as he watches Kai making Taehyun laugh with a quip and a silly expression, the two of them clearly lost in their own world for the moment. If he can half-belong between Beomgyu and Soobin in first line, he can half-belong between Kai and Taehyun, too, and maybe it'll meet in the middle and help that feeling of loneliness that's been gnawing at him again.
For now, Soobin and Beomgyu sneak up on him from behind and wrap their arms around his shoulders to pull him forward and make him stop zoning out when he's supposed to be warming up, and this is something that he can enjoy, too.
The Friday match is a resounding success. 1:4, 4 minutes of PK. Yeonjun has a nasty scare in the second period where he gets boarded bad shoulder first and stays on all fours on the ice, but once Kai gets him back to the bench and he has a second to sit there and recuperate while one of their physios fusses over him, he comes to the conclusion that the shock of it was worse than the pain, and he should be able to get back on the ice. Part of him was terrified of this happening and it fucking up their entire game when he needs to sit the rest of the match out, but after it happens and he's waiting for his time to hop back in with an ice pack shoved under his shoulder pad clumsily, Soobin's wide hand patting at his lower back, he goes from apprehension to a sense of fearlessness. If his bad shoulder can't stop him, then he has nothing to worry about, and he just has to win.
One of their defensemen gets himself sent to the penalty box for going after the guy who downed Yeonjun a bit too hard, but then the other team fumbles a pass and they punish it with a quick break away and a smooth hit, right in the goalkeeper's weak spot. Beomgyu sticks his tongue out at Yeonjun while he does his celebratory pass by the bench, and Yeonjun can't help but grin at him right back.
Beomgyu's goal gets them to 2:1, and it gives them the confidence to make it through the rest of the penalty without the other team scoring, and once Yeonjun gets back on ice, he's on a mission, and his teammates seem to be right there with him, determined to make this one count. They'll show these guys why they're a top-tier team. Teach them a lesson, for the one they had to learn themselves on Wednesday. Pay it forward.
When he gets intercepted on his way to the locker room by an adorable petite lady who wants to do an interview, she rambles off an incredibly flattering little speech about the famous 3Choi line showing why it's the best-known line-up in the league, and about how each of them is coming off the ice with at least 3 points to add to their statistics, and he can barely stop preening enough to have a normal conversation with her once she turns back towards him. He gives his usual ‘we won, good game' speech, but makes sure to shout out the rest of his teammates today. They're all a team, and he felt it today, maybe he felt it yesterday too, but today it felt more real than it has in a while. He ends by saying that his team is his home, and pats the logo on his chest with a smile.
The locker room is a mess with the celebrations, everyone well aware that once the head coach shows up, he's going to tell them not to let it get to their heads since they just came off a major loss, but for the moment everyone's cheering, both the players and the other staff – Beomgyu is on Soobin's back for some reason, their physios are going around the room bumping fists and giving out high-fives and hair ruffles and pats on the shoulder, and every player who scored gets a small round of applause, with the biggest reserved for their goal keeper right at the end. Beomgyu beats into Soobin's chest instead of clapping, but their captain doesn't complain, just thanks everyone for showing up for the game with his left wing still clinging to him like a koala, his skates thankfully off, although he has to still weigh a metric ton with all his gear still on. Maybe Soobin is riding high off winner's adrenaline and doesn't realize what he's doing – he'll regret that tomorrow.
Yeonjun barely even catches a glimpse of Kai and Taehyun in all the mess, and he's halfway convinced they're not in the locker room at all, but once their head coach shows up and starts cooling things down, they find their ways to their own lockers just like everyone else, and he's convinced he must have just missed them in the fray. The coach is a bit chiding about the ruckus, but he seems satisfied with their performance today, so he goes easy when he's trying to refocus them on the next match, the next win. Their place in the play-offs seems basically guaranteed at this point, but they can't afford to slack off. The next game is a home game, and they can't let their fans down.
For today though, they've done well, and they can rest. They get the whole of Saturday off too, before they travel back home Sunday. Yeonjun can't wait to see his own apartment again, honestly. Even though nobody is waiting for him there, and his family lives in a whole different city, it will be nice to spend a night somewhere that isn't a hotel room. He's tired of the smell of hotel sheets, and waking up to his teammates' grunting and complaining in the morning.
He can just grunt and complain on his own, in his own kitchen while he prepares the coffee that he prefers, in his birthday suit because he's in his own home, goddamn it, and he'll walk around butt-ass naked if he damn well pleases.
It sounds like a great vacation, if a brief one. He just wants to be home.
The bus is significantly emptier on the way back to the hotel – a lot of his teammates scattered, to have dinner or go straight to drinking or work off some of the adrenaline by walking back instead of taking the bus. Yeonjun half planned on sticking by Soobin and Beomgyu and then asking them to hang out in the hotel lobby, but they disappeared too, somewhere between him taking his pads off and putting his jacket on, and they're not on the bus. Taehyun and Kai are there, engaged in lively conversation with the other defense players they came on the bus with, not sparing Yeonjun a glance. In their defense, he's collapsed at the back with another ice pack pressed into his shoulder just in case the boarding incident made the injury flare up again after all. He feels more like taking a nap than hanging out with his teammates. Maybe he's just getting old. His priorities are getting worryingly bed-related.
Thankfully, the conversation in the front doesn't get too rowdy, even after more people join in, so Yeonjun just curls up on himself in his seat and lets himself drift off.
He's woken up by gentle hands nudging him awake and muted giggling. There's a distinct note of beer hitting his nose that wasn't there when he fell asleep. When he blinks his eyes open, it's to a pair of huge, glinting dark ones too close to his own, and a prominent blush on a handsome, sharp face.
“Yeonjuuuuuuun. Wake up.” Taehyun dissolves into giggles again, pulling at his arm. “We're at the hotel.”
Yeonjun takes a second to blink awake, and when he's aware of himself enough to look around, there's just an empty, dark bus, Taehyun laughing and Kai kneeling on the seat in front of him, draped over its back with his head bowed to keep it from bumping into the overhead compartment.
Kai grins at him when Yeonjun's eyes land on him. ”Hey. Sorry about him – he's usually not a giggly drunk, I dunno what's wrong with him.”
Taehyun laughs some more, then apparently decides that his job is done and throws himself bodily into the seat next to Yeonjun. “Great game today. You were so—”
He doesn't finish his sentence, looking a bit like he finished it only in his head but didn't realize. How wasted is he? The only thing Yeonjun smelled on his breath was beer.
“It was a thirty minute drive; how much have you guys drank?”
Kai shrugs. “We had a whole case of beer, and Taehyun lost at every single drinking game we tried – I think he had to chug about four of them, and we haven't eaten since lunch, so…” he turns his head until his cheek rests on his hands flat on top of the backrest, and looks at Taehyun, who stares back at Kai with a smile. “I don't think he's that drunk, though. Tipsy, maybe.”
Yeonjun squints at Taehyun skeptically. “He looks pretty plastered to me.”
Taehyun reaches out to touch Yeonjun's arm, like physical contact can make him seem more sincere. “I'm fine.” Then he bursts into laughter again, his hand slipping off of Yeonjun's sleev.
“Right.”
“I'm great,” Taehyun assures him between gasps, in a tone that doesn't even try to be serious.
Kai just looks at him fondly; Yeonjun sighs.
“I'm not helping you drag his ass to your room,” he warns, and Taehyun springs up to his feet.
“I can walk!” He announces, then looks around himself, wide-eyed like he's forgotten something important. “I need to go!”
He starts jogging down the aisle to the open bus door at the front, disappearing down the steps in what seems like two very questionably safe hops. Kai looks after him, but doesn't rush to follow.
“Don't you think you should go check if he's okay?”
Kai shrugs. “He's going to our room – he needs to take a shower.”
Yeonjun scrunches his nose. “He didn't shower at the stadium?”
“It's his post-win celebration shower; he locks himself in there for like an hour.”
Noise carries to them from the outside, where Taehyun apparently ran into their teammates or some staff, and they're having a loud conversation that Yeonjun can't quite make out. He pulls another face. “What does he do there for an hour?”
“I don't know exactly,” Kai says and grins a little. “But it always smells really nice in there after he's done, so it's probably good for his skin or something.”
Right. He's definitely doing skincare after the thrill of a successful match. That's definitely how Yeonjun celebrated his wins when he was younger. He wonders if Kai is really that clueless, or if he's just content to leave it at this. Maybe he's content to leave it at that in front of Yeonjun, if nothing else. It's none of Yeonjun's business, after all.
It's not the worst thing he's ever thought about though, especially when this cheerful, giggly, blushing version of Taehyun is concerned. Almost too easy to imagine, with him having seen as much of Taehyun's body over the years as he has in the showers, in the lockers, in shared hotel rooms when they were younger. Slim waist and a strong back, busy hands and a giggle that echoes on the tiles before it morphs into something a bit different. Breathier.
Is he blushing, now? If he is, hopefully it's not too visible in the dark corner he's curled up on himself in. Kai's face is illuminated by the parking lot lights, in full view. Yeonjun can't quite read his eyes. Maybe he seems a bit curious. Maybe he doesn't feel any particular way at all.
“You should go get him.”
“Why? He's sober enough to take an elevator up to our room.”
“He didn't look sober at all.”
“Worried about him?”
Yeonjun squints at Kai, suspicious again. “Yeah – he's my teammate. We have another game next week.”
Why is Kai here at all, anyways? They're inseparable, but now they're not? Now they keep lingering around him.
Kai snorts, then lifts the thumb of one of his hands that are still resting under his face, and rubs it across his own bottom lip. “How's your shoulder?”
Are they ever going to let that go? “Fuck off.”
It seems both sufficiently heartfelt and light-hearted to make Kai both cackle and back off, finally climbing out of the seat he folded himself into and standing up in the aisle. He needs to bend his head here slightly too – all defense players are freak giants. Except for Taehyun. Taehyun is fine.
“Got any plans for tonight?”
He starts extracting himself from his cocoon in the corner as well, a bit slower than Kai did. Isn't he supposed to be buzzed, too? Why is Yeonjun the sluggish one? He really is getting old. “A nap.”
Kai snorts. “No partying?”
His teammates don't need to know that, though. No need to signal any vulnerability to them when half of their team dynamics are based on him being on top of his game. “Tomorrow's a day, too.”
He stands up and puts his bag over his shoulder, and Kai backs up until he can stand without having to bend his head to avoid the roof of the bus, but doesn't completely get out of his way. “You're all booked for Saturday, then?”
Yeonjun chews on his lip. This is getting ridiculous, isn't it? “Why?”
“Well, we ditched our day off on Thursday, so we'll be making up for it. We could take you to a good club; or just take you to that vegan restaurant we mentioned the other day.”
There's no implicit if you want to tag along this time. It's just an offer. Kai looks a little nervous about it, even. And Yeonjun's ready, right? To admit he's lonely; that he needs friends, and Kai and Taehyun seem determined to find a space for him between them, or next to them, or wherever.
“If you guys will be up for breakfast tomorrow, we could regroup over some food, talk about it?”
Kai smiles, his shoulders dropping, and Yeonjun smiles back. It can be that easy, if he lets it. “Sounds good. I'll be there if Taehyun doesn't make it; depends on whether someone gets to the vodka in the minibar before him, I guess.”
Yeonjun snorts. “Is he a big drinker? I remember he always used to threaten he'd narc on us when someone snuck a bottle in at camp. Always a straight-laced little shit.”
It makes Kai roll his eyes, but he doesn't stop smiling. “Well, he's more fun now. And he's not a big fan of sobering up once he gets going, so if we want him on his feet tomorrow before noon, I might want to go get that vodka before he finds it.”
“He deserves to celebrate, though – you guys played a good game today.”
“So did you,” Kai replies, firm. “Especially with an injury.”
He huffs. “I told you the shoulder is fine.”
“Doesn't mean it got magically healed by the shots yesterday. You did a good job.”
Yeonjun rolls that over in his mouth. Just because he didn't need to hear it doesn't mean it can't feel a little good to hear it, right? He props his elbows on the seats next to him and gives Kai a grin. “Gee, thanks, coach.”
Kai gives him another little eye roll, this one even less serious than the one before, and finally gets out of his way, backing out of the aisle and into one of the rows to let him pass first. “Good night, Yeonjun.”
And maybe Yeonjun is a bit encouraged by how easily this conversation went, or he's really that lonely, because as he passes by Kai, instead of saying good night back, he throws out, “If Taehyun gets too rowdy with the vodka, you can come hang out with me. There's enough room for two in my single.”
Yeonjun is in bed again, watching a movie on the laptop in his lap. It's late – he napped for a few hours, but his suitemates made a ruckus getting back to their rooms, and there has been a steady trickle of them coming back now every fifteen or twenty minutes, so he gave up on sleep in favor of trying to entertain himself. It hasn't worked too well, his attention constantly straying all kinds of places away from the movie that's playing in front of him – like Kai's hair, catching the harsh light of the hotel parking lot, his hands gentle on Yeonjun as he helped him get back to the bench after he got boarded. His smile this morning. Or Taehyun, his laugh and his flushed cheeks, his sincere wide eyes and firm attitude. Slender hands, and what they get up to when post-win adrenaline makes them restless, under the pelting hot rain of his shower. How his skin might smell, after he's done. How it might feel, under his…
With the latest round of door slamming comes a knock on Yeonjun's door that he almost doesn't register, so deeply sunken into his distractions and determined to ignore the noise from the common area, but he does end up hearing it consciously, right as it peters out into silence.
He takes his headphones off, letting them hang around his neck, and sighs.
It's starting to get pathetic, how obvious he's getting, in front of himself if not in front of others. He's been playing hockey since he was a kid, constantly surrounded by other players – cute, athletic boys at first and then firm, buff, masculine men when he got older. There's always been enough eye candy around to crack a weaker man, but Yeonjun's been good, so good at ignoring it. By the time he realized that seeing other men naked was something he was interested in, he's already fallen in love with the game, and it was easy enough, if not without its hiccups, to learn how to focus on that instead of any attraction he might feel towards anyone on the ice. Or off it, for that matter. Yeonjun's lonely for a reason – he'd always rather show up for voluntary practice than go fishing in the uncertain waters of the dating pool. It's never felt like such a bright idea, anyway: looking for people to date, to have sex with, to come home to. He trusts his teammates with a lot of things, but he'd never trust them to be normal about this. No matter how many years he's spent being one of them, being just like them, not starting any trouble, keeping his eyes and hands to himself, there's no telling how they'd react if they knew. Not suspected, which some of them might, but knew.
The point is, Yeonjun's been on his best behavior since he stepped out onto ice for the first time as a four-year-old, and now he's slipping, thinking about his teammates and their hands, their mouths, their smiles, because they've been nice to him for a couple of days? He's losing his damn mind. If there ever was a hint that Yeonjun needed to do something about himself, about that gnawing need for company within him, it was this – his mouth going dry thinking about Taehyun fucking Kang touching himself in the shower even as he climbs out of bed sluggishly and makes his way to the door.
At least he's too sleepy to get properly turned on by the visual, and doesn't really have anything to hide from whoever is waiting on the other side.
He takes his situation in, detail by detail – the common area is dark, but the light behind both of the other bedroom doors are on, and someone seems to be in the bathroom as well. He did hear four distinct slams of the door, so all of the others have made their way back already, and are most likely headed straight to sleep. There's someone standing right there, in front of his door, hands politely behind their back, waiting for him to acknowledge them.
In slippers, not shoes; wearing a zip-up hoodie with their team's logo on it, only haphazardly zipped up over a plain white T-shirt. An awkward smile, slightly apologetic eyes. Kai.
“Did I wake you up?”
Yeonjun tilts his head back, shaking his hair out of his face and dragging a hand down it. Both the poison and the remedy, in one neat swallow. “No. Was already woken up.”
Kai pulls a sympathetic face. “I could hear your front door from down the hall – I think they put you in one suite with the four loudest door slammers in the world.”
Finally, that makes Yeonjun laugh, lets his shoulders drop. “Yeah, these guys have never heard of a subtle approach in their lives.” Kai smiles, because it's not really worth a laugh, and then Yeonjun sighs and leans on his door. “They let you in?”
“Yeah; told them we were planning to hang out, apparently we should ‘keep it down'.” He rolls his eyes as he makes the air quotes with one hand, and Yeonjun huffs out another laugh. “Hypocrites.”
“Taehyun took his sweet time with that vodka.”
“Someone stole that one, actually – he just fell asleep on me twenty minutes ago, and I don't feel like going to sleep yet, and you offered? So…”
Kai's lips purse, unsure, and he reminds Yeonjun of Taehyun for a brief moment. Yeonjun's mouth feels dry and sticky when he opens it to reply, already sure he's going to let Kai in, but Kai obviously can't see it in Yeonjun's tired face, because he rushes to add, “I've got a pretty sweet offer?”
Yeonjun blinks, thrown off by that, and Kai's other hand finally leaves its hiding place behind his back to reveal… a bottle? It's hard to make out the details in the low light, with only Yeonjun's bedside lamp being on in the room behind him. It's clear and has some kind of… liquid in it? But it's not alcohol, because the bottle looks plastic, and the liquid looks vaguely tinted, and…
Kai thrusts it at Yeonjun's chest, and Yeonjun takes it reluctantly, the weight and shape of it in his hand feeling a bit uncomfortably familiar, but before he can come to a terrible conclusion, Kai follows it up with, “Fun fact about me – I'm a fully certified masseur.”
It's a bottle of massage oil. Yeonjun brings it up to his eyes and squints at the label – it's scented, and he's sure he's made out the word relaxing even despite the bad lighting. Huh.
He blinks up at Kai, with new, fresh eyes, somehow suddenly feeling a bit more awake. “Whoa. How did that happen?”
Finally, Kai relaxes too, putting on a teasing tone to say, “Invite me in and find out?”
And Yeonjun wants to, whether it will mean getting more of Kai's backstory or not, so he steps out of his way finally and lets Kai wander into his room, looking around, like he's never seen a single room before. He might not have; Yeonjun can't imagine him ever giving up the bed next to Taehyun for anyone.
When he stands by the bed, Yeonjun whistles at him, and throws the bottle at Kai when he looks over. Kai catches it without issue, and Yeonjun closes the door and follows him in, taking a seat on his bed by his still open laptop. “What's the big story, then?”
Kai flips the bottle in his hands and sits down, too, all the way on the other side, barely balanced on the edge. “A good excuse to come see you?” He laughs at himself, completely ignoring Yeonjun's slightly stricken expression and he plays with the bottle some more. “We've told you yesterday that I was pretty sure I was never going pro, right?”
Yeonjun shakes his head to clear it. “Yeah.”
“Well.” He shakes the bottle in front of himself, then looks over at Yeonjun with a smile he can't possibly mean. “This was my backup plan. Best case scenario, I would've wanted to work with a team just like ours, help take care of the players, if I couldn't be one myself. I couldn't really imagine just walking away completely after taking hockey so seriously for so damn long, and I was never gonna be smart enough to be a physio. So, this.”
He frowns a little, shifting where he sits. “I thought you were already signed on with a team, at seventeen.”
Kai flips the cap on the bottle open and clicks it shut again, constantly nervously fumbling with his hands. He's so placid on ice, Yeonjun wonders if he misses the weight of a stick in his hand; misses the gear holding him down, grounding him. “Yeah, but I didn't think it would stick. Even when I met Taehyun, and we started…” He shakes his head. “I was just waiting for the bubble to pop, so I kept a backup plan. Most people have those, right? I just took mine a bit more seriously than others.”
Yeonjun shrugs. Maybe other people do, other players, who weren't brought up being promised great things in their future all the damn time. Yeonjun doesn't have a backup plan. He has a vague retirement plan consisting of joining the coaching staff or maybe training juniors, going back to giving little greenies a hard time like he used to in the good old times. But even that is vague and murky. He can barely imagine a world where he's not getting out on the ice every other day. He doesn't like thinking about it.
“It's useful, too,” Kai points out when Yeonjun doesn't give him much of an answer, smiling wider again. “Taehyun loves it.”
That makes Yeonjun snort, and it's easy to brush off any need to imagine that when Kai is right there in front of him. Later, it might plague his mind, but now, it's easy to be lighthearted and ask, “Does he just not schedule massage appointments?”
“I don't have all the equipment, but when it's just a knot in his quads or his back or something, why should he take up the team's resources when he can just pop over to my bed and I'll take care of it?”
It makes sense, in a terrible way that makes Yeonjun focus on Kai's fingers where they keep fondling the bottle a little too hard. If they're friends now, or if they become friends, could he just ‘pop over' and have Kai ‘take care of it', too?
“I guess.”
Kai laughs a little, like he notices Yeonjun getting distracted, and he leans back on one hand, finally taking up some extra space. “You have anything you could use a hand with?”
This is probably the worst case scenario, isn't it? Yeonjun wakes up with his head full of nonsense about men, about Kai and Taehyun and sex and company, and then one of them waltzes right into his room and stretches out on his bed in the low light, hoodie halfway off his body while he offers to put his hands on Yeonjun's body. And it's so stupid, because it's nowhere near what he was thinking, but it's still too close and Kai is keeping his voice low, because he promised the others they'll be quiet. Kai looks just as handsome and open with his face covered in shadows as he did fully illuminated. And he's straight.
However hopelessly unstraight his whole thing with Taehyun seems sometimes, Yeonjun thinks he'd be doing them a disservice by assuming that it's a romantic thing, much less a sexual thing. He's never seen Kai's eyes wander when they change next to each other, or Taehyun's for that matter, he's never seen them touch in a way that would look even remotely suspicious, the only thing that he'd even consider as a strike against them would be the fact that they live with each other, but even that can just be a convenience thing. A difference in salaries thing. Yeonjun almost certainly gets paid more than them; he can afford to have a nice apartment all to himself. Maybe they can't, so they just accepted this necessity just like they accepted the whole rest of it.
They're not Beomgyu and Soobin: they're not painfully unsubtle, so in everyone's face that no one dares to ask, in case it destroyed the balance of the team. They don't climb each other to celebrate wins and cuddle in the back of the bus and have one-on-one conversations away from the team's eyes so frequently it stopped being funny four seasons ago. Yeonjun has never seen Kai walk around his apartment in an imitation of Taehyun's jersey that he self-admittedly bought with his own money off their team's merch website.
Yeonjun remembers staring at Beomgyu, wondering if that's his unspoken way of telling Yeonjun that he's fucking their captain and being met with Beomgyu's pretty, unflappable, defiant face. He'd have liked to wish them the best, really, even though it felt like another group he thought he might be part of just shut their door for him, but Beomgyu didn't really give him the chance. They're bold in some ways, but not even they want to tell. Yeonjun would have liked to tell Beomgyu that they're on the same boat, even though tall, lanky centers don't exactly do it for him, but Beomgyu didn't let him, but maybe the very fact that he bothered to signal so hard meant that he had an idea that Yeonjun would be less than scandalized.
Maybe everyone can fucking tell he's gay, even though he doesn't think he's ever given anyone a reason to think so, except for never mentioning any girlfriends when the topic comes up. A bunch of guys avoid that kind of talk – Taehyun included. Kai contributes sometimes, mostly amusing stories of his sisters' friends crushing on him and the ensuing awkwardness. Yeonjun thinks he heard a story of him sneaking out during a summer camp his team held to meet a girl somewhere in secret that had gone terribly wrong. He's mentioned girls before; Taehyun is just a private kind of guy. They're both straight, and Yeonjun is being… desperate.
You'd think as a star athlete, he'd be drowning in ass, but the truth is… lonely, and a bit pathetic. Workaholic and anxious. He's got too much going on.
“Yeonjun?”
Kai looks worried. He zoned out on him, and he's not sure if his face is doing something that can be brushed off by saying he's tired.
He could just ask, if he's honest with himself. Hey, Kai? Are you straight? I'm just wondering, as a fellow straight guy.
Is Taehyun straight? Do you think he's sexy, too? Please make me feel normal about thinking this way. About him. About you. You're pretty in this light. You can put your hands on me dry – we'll work up a sweat, and they'll glide better.
“I think I pulled something in my side when I got pinned?” He pokes at a spot near the bottom of his ribs. It's been sore all day, but it's also been the least of his problems, so he didn't really pay much attention to it. It might be nice to have it gone. Is it worth letting Kai touch him, though? Knowing what it feels like to have his hands on his body?
Kai bites into his own lip while he inspects the spot Yeonjun is pointing to, his brows furrowing. He seems to be thinking at least half as hard as Yeonjun is, and that's a problem. This should be easy; he should be making a friend.
Then Kai looks down at the bottle, takes a breath, and looks up at Yeonjun with a smile, like he was thinking the exact same thing. “Do you mind peppermint? Taehyun's got such a grudge against it, but I swear it works like magic.”
Yeonjun breathes out a bit too hard, but that's okay, right? If they both felt that painful awkwardness setting in. If they both felt like things were getting off the rails. They're just readjusting; correcting course. “I don't mind peppermint, not at all.”
“Awesome.” Kai's voice got all soft, and Yeonjun gets the sudden, bristling feeling that he's being treated gently right now. “I'll bring some next time, then. We'll have to make do with lavender for today – after the shitshow that was me putting the peppermint one on Taehyun, I didn't have the courage to bring that one with me as the only option.” He chuckles, sitting back up to scratch at the back of his head with the hand he was leaning on. Retreating back into his space. All safe again. “And I didn't want to just bring over a bag.”
“You thought about this a lot.”
Kai shrugs. “Taehyun talks a lot of shit about me, but I do sometimes think things through.”
Yeonjun huffs in amusement – Taehyun does, indeed, talk a lot of shit about him. It's another reason why they fit together so well – Kai is more spontaneous, Taehyun more calculated. They improve each other's play by forcing each other to come out of their comfort zone – or maybe they improve each other in general. Taehyun is rigid where Kai is malleable, Kai is steady where Taehyun is dynamic. The perfect duo. Yin and yang of the ice, or something.
He's so tired, sometimes, but he can't help but be fond of them even when he's forced to look on from afar.
“Do you mind taking your shirt off? And we might need a towel, if you do want me to use this.”
Kai waves the bottle in the air again. Yeonjun just gives in, lets himself glide with the curve. Lets the inertia carry him forward, through putting his laptop away, taking his shirt off, getting a clean towel from his travel bag, laying it down and lying down on top of it. Kai offers they could listen to music while he works, but Yeonjun isn't sure if they wouldn't bother the others, and he's not in the mood to get in an argument with a teammate, especially not shirtless, partially covered in oil, with Kai and a suspicious towel on his bed late at night. He's not taking any goddamn risks, so he tells Kai little anecdotes about Taehyun instead between noises he could have swallowed back if he didn't volunteer to keep his mouth open while Kai works at his muscles until his whole lower back feels warm and loose.
He tells him about that whole Taehyun threatening to tell on them debacle, where he followed a group of older boys who thought they were being so incredibly sneaky out of one of the cabins they stayed at and to their hideout where they gathered to secretly get drunk on a single smuggled-in bottle of vodka. Tiny Taehyun felt severely betrayed by the boys who he looked up to, and who spent a good two weeks trying to force it into his brain that he was a little twerp who didn't know anything about hockey and should not even try to be friendly with them or try to consider himself their equal, their teammate, or whatever else he got into his little head, and he yelled at the older boys for breaking the rules fearlessly, threatening to tell on them if they pulled through with it.
In retrospect, Yeonjun has nothing but respect for the sheer balls of thirteen-year-old Taehyun, even though at fifteen, it felt more like being yapped at by a small but fighty chihuahua. To him, the hazing was never that serious, because he didn't really understand how that made the younger boys feel, since he's never had to go through it himself. He was ostracized because he was favored, but these kids got bullied as a group, and that was way more okay, right? They weren't alone, so they'd be fine and understand that the older boys were just having fun, flexing their senior status. Right?
Taehyun never seemed to feel that way. He never seemed to quite warm up to Yeonjun, either. Even when they were on the same team at junior championships, Taehyun made sure to keep other company, even though they technically knew each other well. It took the jump to seniors for them to settle that old score, although, given by how Kai seems to have no idea about most of the stories Yeonjun tells from their times at camp, maybe it still isn't fully settled in Taehyun's mind. Maybe camp is something Taehyun just doesn't want to think about anymore, along with Yeonjun's part in what he'd gone through there.
And Taehyun would still follow him like a dog with his best friend, and make sure he got his shoulder checked out? Taehyun would giggle at him while drunk, laugh with him over dinner? After that? With that in their past?
He doesn't get these two at all. He doesn't understand a thing of what has to be going on in their heads.
But he understands this – when Kai is done with his lower back, which is already more than he'd asked him to help with, and his fingers trail up, fingertips skating up his spine until they come to the edge of the bruise covering his shoulder and spread the soft, gentle scent of lavender all around it, he thinks he understands that part. Maybe it was just a scare for them; maybe they're worried about being traded, if Yeonjun is out and they need a new star right wing for first line. Maybe they just like their team that much and don't want to leave.
It doesn't feel like that, but it could be.
Taehyun is devastatingly cute in the morning. Yeonjun is already in the hotel restaurant, digging into some scrambled eggs and coffee when he and Kai make their way there, Kai opening the door but Taehyun slipping through first, drowning in that big, soft hoodie again. He doesn't even lift his head before heading to the drinks table to get himself coffee, but Kai does, eyes scanning around the room as he walks in until they land on Yeonjun, and he gives him a wave when he notices Yeonjun looking at him already. Yeonjun returns the wave, then looks at Taehyun again, who is just huddled over his coffee cup now, like he's trying to do aromatherapy with the coffee vapors. Kai approaches him, saying something that Yeonjun can tell from his facial expression makes fun of him for his hangover, and Taehyun lifts his head enough to glare, which doesn't make Kai's smile falter in the slightest.
Kai fills his own cup with juice, then wraps one arm around Taehyun's shoulders and drags him towards the food, since Taehyun genuinely seems like he'd rather not move at all if left the choice.
Yeonjun looks back down at his own food. Taehyun's not the only hungover player in the room – a bunch of their teammates clearly hit the bottle a little too hard while celebrating last night, including Yeonjun's suitemates, some of whom are still snoring away, skipping breakfast in favor of extra sleep. He himself was up too early, if he's being honest – the nap he'd taken earlier in the evening, and the general restlessness that lingered in him after Kai went back to his own room once his excuse to stay was thoroughly depleted, meant that he was up sometime around four again, as if he had another plane to get on today.
He took advantage of his own insomnia this time and went down to the gym to get a good hard workout in before breakfast, already anticipating that hanging out with Taehyun and Kai might mean making an absolute mess of his diet again. If they even still want to hang out – Taehyun still seems like he'd rather be catatonic than deal with things like light and motion today when he and Kai make their way to sit in front of him. He sinks into his chair with the enthusiasm of a man who'd like nothing more than to succumb to gravity for once and let it take him wherever it needs.
It's a bit adorable, and he can't stop himself from laughing.
Taehyun grumbles incoherently, letting himself collapse around his cup and plate of food. Yeonjun feels infinitely better about being a grunting, sleepy mess the other day before their flight. Not even the indomitable Taehyun Kang is perfect – although Yeonjun still feels like his messiness is palpably more endearing than Yeonjun's. Yeonjun is bitchy and non-verbal, Taehyun seems soft, a bit touchy and a bit sulky.
But then again, Yeonjun's recently been hit with the revelation that he does, in fact, consider Taehyun to be attractive, and maybe it has something to do with that. It's easy to see everything your crush does as cute.
Not that Yeonjun has a crush, necessarily, but it's close enough. Taehyun is handsome and hot, so his hangovers get to be funny and cute. That's it.
Kai seems to agree too, so maybe Yeonjun is just being objective after all, laughing at Taehyun's obvious misery too before he turns his much clearer, smiling eyes to Yeonjun. “Good morning. Sorry if you've been waiting for a while – this one was impossible to get out of bed this morning, but he wouldn't let me go on my own.”
Taehyun turns his head to the side. “The fuck do you mean, this one,” he almost growls with how rough his voice sounds.
Yeonjun can see Kai suppress an eye roll before he leans towards Taehyun, wrapping his arm around him and nuzzling his shoulder. “My lovely Taehyunnie! My other half!”
Kai laughs while Taehyun jerks away from his hug, finally sitting up to glower at Yeonjun, too, who doesn't even try to look like he wasn't laughing. “Shut up.”
“Will you be doing the talking?” Yeonjun asks, teasing. “You don't seem in the mood.”
“What's there to talk about, are you coming out with us?”
If it gets him more of this? Getting to watch this old married couple shtick from the front row? It's literally free entertainment. “I'd like to. What's the plan?”
“We'll take you for lunch, and then talk you into coming clubbing with us,” Taehyun says, matter-of-factly even though his voice still sounds like shit.
Kai squeezes his eyes shut, his whole face cringing in embarrassment next to him. “That's not how we were gonna word that.”
Taehyun shrugs and picks up his coffee to sip it, taking an indulgent sniff of it while he's at it.
Yeonjun huffs out a laugh, kind of helpless in the face of that bluntness. “You're planning on drinking again?” He sizes Taehyun up skeptically, his slightly swollen face, squinting eyes and uncomfortable posture. If Yeonjun got this messed up on a couple beers he'd maybe rather never drink again.
“I'm not drinking today,” Taehyun retorts, resolute.
Kai rolls his eyes. “He'll drink if we drink, he just likes to pretend he's responsible.”
Yeonjun expects Taehyun to argue back, but he just presses the rim of his cup against his mouth and mumbles something like, “It's weird to not do shots when everyone's doing shots.”
It doesn't seem to impress Kai much, but Yeonjun can relate, so he shrugs and pokes at his eggs some more. “We don't have to drink too much; I'll have a beer and we can dance or something.”
“You like dancing?” Kai seems much more intrigued by that than Taehyun's excuses.
“Yeah, I think so?” Yeonjun rubs at his own ear. “I don't get to do it a lot, but it's fun to do something else with my body than working out and playing, you know?”
Taehyun blinks at him so long and so intently that Yeonjun starts to worry if he's said something terribly wrong, but before he can go over everything he's just said again, Kai distracts him by laughing and saying, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Is he a professional ice breaker? Kai really seems determined to slap things back into shape whenever they start getting weird – it's appreciated; it makes Yeonjun feel like he might succeed in befriending the two, despite his own awkwardness and hang-ups.
“So you'll let us take you clubbing,” Taehyun adds, halfway between a question and a statement.
Let us. They're being so weird. “Yeah, why not? I haven't been in…” He can't remember the last time he's been to a club, if he's being honest. “Forever.”
“Nice,” Taehyun quips before diving back into his coffee cup, tilting his head back to finish it fully. “I'm getting more coffee.”
They watch him pull himself back out of his chair and all but toddle over to the drink table; Kai only looks at Yeonjun again once Taehyun is pouring himself another cup.
“We're headed to the gym after this, are you in?”
Yeonjun sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. “I've already been – had an early morning today.”
Kain looks him up and down. “Huh, okay.” He smiles. “Nevermind.”
Does he think Yeonjun is lying? He's already agreed to spend most of his day in their company.
He takes a bite of his eggs and sits back, giving Kai a pointed look. “My shoulder feels fine, by the way.”
And Kai laughs, but maybe Yeonjun sees him relax, too. “Right.”
They have fun at lunch; Yeonjun gets picked up in his room around noon, and they walk all the way to the restaurant, even though Kai complains about being sore from his workout. Yeonjun would maybe worry about him pulling something, but Taehyun seems so nonplussed by Kai's whining that Yeonjun assumes Kai is making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe he's aware that he's kind of cute doing it, or it's an excuse to dramatically throw himself at the two of them every now and then. It's just free entertainment, just like what Yeonjun came for.
They talk about yesterday's game on their way there and about next week's game while they wait for their food to arrive, taking advantage of a booth to each have a side of the table to themselves, Taehyun willingly trapping himself in the back between the two of them. The food is good, health-conscious enough to not have Yeonjun feel painfully guilty about his diet even though they eat well and plentifully. It seems to be the trigger they need to get their heads off work for a bit, as the two give Yeonjun the run-down of the items on the menu he didn't get to taste and let him taste things off their own plates, making it clear that they were basically regulars when they used to live here.
“We lived with this one player who was on the senior team,” Taehyun explains when Yeonjun points it out, his expression a bit awkward. “He had an extra room in his house, in case someone needed a place to stay. He was a really nice guy, but he had a whole family already? A wife and a four-year-old, and their second kid was born in the middle of the season.”
“It felt awkward to hang around the house too much, with all of them there,” Kai adds, his own face just as pained. “So we've done a lot of wandering around the city in our off-time.”
“I think I spent most of my stipend back then on restaurant food,” Taehyun grumbles, and Yeonjun laughs, which makes Taehyun smile, too. “My parents learned pretty quickly that having a pro-athlete son didn't immediately mean they were gonna retire early and live off my pay.”
He clearly means it as a joke, but Yeonjun feels a pinch in his chest. It's what he's always wanted for his family. His mother has always seemed pretty resistant to it, so for now he's just covering as much of her expenses as she lets him, but once she gets a bit older, and work gets harder for her, he hopes that she'll let him just take care of her. He doesn't just take huge paychecks from his team because he's arrogant enough to believe he deserves them, or because he loves money, he's doing this for his family, too; for his mom who moved with him for hockey opportunities, drove him to practice, bought him expensive gear, cared for him, supported him, was there for him through the thick and thin of it. Still is, calling and texting and facetiming with him literally all the time, to share the highs and lows of his career with him. He wonders if the other two feel a similar way about their families, but he doesn't feel like they're close enough for him to ask.
So he clears his throat instead and takes it somewhere else. “Sounds like a nice place to stay, though. The first time I had to live on my own off-season, I was sharing an apartment with three other guys, and it was all our first time living on our own? We didn't even know how to do our own laundry – that place was disgusting.”
Taehyun pulls an appropriately disgusted face, but Kai just seems kind of amused. “I really think I lucked out with you, Taehyun – everyone's stories seem way worse than ours.”
It's a compliment, but Taehyun still looks a bit offended. “That's because I'm messy, not gross. I don't leave trash lying around, and I do my own laundry.”
“Back home, I'd get shit for letting any of my laundry touch the floor.”
Taehyun purses his mouth, looking more adorably huffy than actually incensed. “That's because your sister is a neat freak; everyone leaves their laundry around sometimes.”
“I leave laundry all over my place,” Yeonjun admits, tentatively supportive. Taehyun jumps on it, jerking his head in Yeonjun's direction.
“See? That's normal.”
“So what you're saying is you contributed to the place being disgusting,” Kai replies, eyes teasing and voice infinitely amused. Is that what Yeonjun gets for sticking up for Taehyun while they're having one of their married couple fights?
“I was eighteen! And I was barely home – that coach tried to run my ass into the ground with extra practice days.”
“You just said you still do the same thing,” Taehyun points out, the ungrateful traitor that he is.
“My apartment looks fine compared to that pigsty,” Yeonjun asserts, huffing. “I just don't like doing laundry.” But he does like taking his clothes off, in any room, at any time, just because no one can tell him that he can't if he feels like it.
“Gross,” Kai sing-songs, but he doesn't look disgusted at all. Taehyun snorts.
“Shut up,” Yeonjun retorts, mildly. He's a bit embarrassed, sure, but it's clear that they don't really mean it.
They're giving him a hard time, in a fun way that doesn't hurt anyone. Yeonjun could take a lesson from them.
He ends up staring at Taehyun while he eats without realizing, until Taehyun points it out to him by widening his eyes at him, going, “What?” in an amused voice. They're all just having fun; no tension from Taehyun at all.
Since when?
Yeonjun hesitates, then takes a leap. “Remember when we roomed together? Back in juniors, at your first championship.”
Taehyun blinks his eyes slowly a few times, then looks down at his plate. “Right, yeah.”
That was the first time they played together for real, at a serious event, not just practice games at camp. The head coach that year assigned them rooms by random draw, and Yeonjun was pretty happy to room with a boy he knew, just to be met with a stone wall of serious eyes and the bare minimum of words exchanged between them. Taehyun seemed to spend all his free time finding reasons to not be in their room, always training or working out or sight-seeing or hanging out with other defensive players in their rooms instead. Yeonjun was just as unimpressed with Taehyun then as he was during camp. He seemed like such a buzzkill, a boring, weird little kid.
Maybe he just thought Yeonjun was a dick; he wouldn't have been wrong.
“You were crazy neat back then.”
He's not surprised when Taehyun's face scrunches up in a grimace. “I didn't want to leave my shit around in the ace player's room,” he says, and it sounds so reluctant Yeonjun is kind of sorry for bringing it up. “I had no idea what you'd be like, and I thought I'd rather not find out.”
Kai makes a confused noise on the other side of the table. “I thought you guys knew each other, though? Yeonjun said yesterday you two trained together a bunch as kids.”
Taehyun blinks his wide, wide eyes at Kai, then at Yeonjun, looking genuinely shocked. “You guys talked about the youth camp?”
“Yeah?” Kai frowns even deeper than he was already frowning, looking at Yeonjun who's doing his best not to look too guilty. “Should we not have?”
The question seems to give Taehyun genuine pause, and he doesn't look at either of them for a moment before he sighs and shakes his head, throwing Yeonjun a sideways glance. “I didn't know Yeonjun remembered it that well.”
“You were pretty hard to forget,” Yeonjun replies honestly.
Kai still seems confused, but he seems to have gathered that he maybe shouldn't bring up Yeonjun's stories from last night, because he follows up with, “Why did you say you didn't know what he'd be like, though? If you trained together.”
His voice still sounds softer, though, like it did when he spoke to Yeonjun last night. His gentle voice. His I don't mean to upset you voice.
Taehyun shrugs jerkily, keeping his eyes on his food. “A lot of the guys were a lot different away from camp. Some of the older guys were assholes to me for three months straight, but when we were on one team, we were suddenly one big family and I was their cute little brother or whatever and we were all good.”
Kai looks surprised – they have really never talked about this before, clearly. “Was Yeonjun like that?”
It's aimed only at Taehyun, and Yeonjun looks away, just in case, hoping it makes Taehyun feel like he can be honest. He doesn't want him to have to lie to his best friend.
“No,” is Taehyun's response, to Yeonjun's shock, and he has to try extra hard not to stare as he continues to talk. “No, Yeonjun was alright. Everyone was fucking scared of him, though, especially the ones who hadn't played with him before. Yeonjun Choi? On our team? Nobody wanted to get on his shit list – what if it got you blacklisted from the lineup next season?”
Yeonjun blinks hard at nothing in particular.
“We kept our distance just in case, but I had the other younger guys in my face like every other day, wanting to know what Yeonjun is like. One of them asked me if he sleeps on his back? Why the fuck would he need to know that?”
It's so ridiculous, Yeonjun can't possibly keep himself from looking at Taehyun, who's pulling a face of utter disgust while also staring off into space, to Kai's obvious mild amusement.
“I don't,” he says, mildly, and Taehyun looks at him, his eyes narrowed, face tense until he snorts and shakes his head, dropping his eyes again.
“I know,” Taehyun points out. “I was there.” He looks over at Kai, and a smile tugs on his lips. “He sleeps on his front – it can't possibly be good for his health.”
“It works,” Yeonjun defends himself with no fire behind his voice.
“For now,” Taehyun adds, voice gravely serious.
Kai laughs, and the tension is gone. “At least he doesn't snore.”
Taehyun's face scrunches again. “No, but he talked in his sleep.”
“What?” That's news to Yeonjun – it shouldn't be news to him.
Taehyun squints at him. “This one night, I swear to god, you narrated a whole match to yourself while I was trying to sleep. You might have a commentating career ahead of you if you decide to hang your jersey up.”
Kai snorts so hard Yeonjun thinks that he felt some of his spit land on the back of his own hand. Taehyun grins, obviously satisfied with himself, and stuffs a piece of lettuce in his mouth.
“Wasn't all bad though,” he adds, still chewing. “I scored at minute 19.”
Yeonjun didn't bring a lot of clothes with him.
They knew that they were going to multiple away games without going back home, but they also knew that they were going to be back-to-back, with barely a day or two in between them. When he was packing, Yeonjun assumed that he'd probably hit the gym on his Saturday off and then take a walk around the city before going back home, so he packed a set of casual outside clothes, but he didn't bring anything he'd wear to a club. He brought a shirt and a tie, just in case he was asked to do a media appearance, since he knows from experience that nobody on the coaching team has his size to lend him, but that's about it. He has a single, severely wrinkled white button-up shirt, a plain dark blue tie, some T-shirts, a sweatshirt, multiple pairs of sweatpants and a single pair of jeans.
Which doesn't leave him with a lot of options, unless…
He texts Soobin to check if he's in his room, then carefully goes over all the favors that the captain owes him on his way over to his suite door, which Soobin opens without him even having to knock.
Unsurprisingly, Beomgyu is there, cozy on the couch in the common area behind Soobin's back, using one of Soobin's hoodies as a blanket thrown over his lap while he looks at something on his phone with a protein bar sticking out of his mouth, even though this is not his suite. Beomgyu's room is one door over from Yeonjun's, but he's hanging out with Soobin like this is their own apartment.
Obvious. And still nothing like Taehyun and Kai.
“What's up?”
Soobin seems completely casual, though, leaning on the door, not looking happy or annoyed to see him, letting him stare over his shoulder at Beomgyu as much as he wants.
Yeonjun swallows his pride. “I need to borrow one of your jackets.”
Soobin's eyebrows shoot up to disappear in his bangs, and Beomgyu looks up curiously behind him, finally biting off the protein bar in his mouth instead of just drooling all over it. “Uh… sure? Why?”
“I'm going out tonight, and I brought nothing decent to wear.”
“You're going out?” Beomgyu asks, incredulously, even though nobody was talking to him in the first place.
“What do you mean ‘going out'?” is Soobin's question, not that much less incredulous than Beomgyu's.
He closes his eyes to stop himself from rolling them. He does go out, contrary to popular belief – just not as often as the others. It's just that work usually comes first, and work requires him to be in peak physical condition, which means keeping his diet strict and alcohol intake to the minimum, and enough sleep and enough rest and regular workouts, and—
And he has no one to go out with, usually, and it's not as fun when he's on his own.
None of that is an issue today, though – therefore, fun.
“We're going to a club, but don't worry – we're not there to get wasted, nobody's taking any drugs there on my watch, we'll be good to go tomorrow at two for our flight, cross my heart.”
Soobin narrows his eyes at him. “You better mean every goddamn word of that.”
“You know me.”
It gets him a raised eyebrow from Soobin, but he thinks he makes a good point – if there's one thing he has going for him, it's his professionalism. He's never failed a drug test, never been late to anywhere, except that one time he was stuck throwing up in his hotel room because of an especially rough case of the flu while the rest of the team was getting ready to leave for the airport. Yeonjun is reckless on the ice sometimes, but he's dependable off it.
And his captain has to realize that, because instead of arguing, he just sighs. “Which one do you want?”
Yeonjun shoots him the most grateful look he can muster without making an ass of himself. “Did you bring the leather one?”
“I'll go get it.”
Soobin walks off to his room while Yeonjun celebrates a little in his mind – he can pull off a look with a leather jacket. The rest of his outfit will barely even matter if he puts on Soobin's leather jacket.
Beomgyu sits up on his knees to hang over the back of the couch while Soobin is gone, shooting Yeonjun a sharp, curious look. “Who's we?”
“Huekang and I. They invited me out.”
“You're going out with Hyuka and Taehyun?” Beomgyu's eyebrows are up so high they're punching at his hairline.
“Yeah? Why?”
Beomgyu looks him up and down, appraising. “No reason.”
“Right.”
“And you're going in Soobin's jacket?”
“Yeah?” Now it's Yeonjun's turn to look suspicious. “He's close enough to my size.”
“So is Hyuka,” Beomgyu points out, head tilted to the side.
“I don't even know what clothes he wears; I know all of Soobin's four jackets.”
It seems to satisfy Beomgyu, whose face finally relaxes before he snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, you bought half of them.”
“Are you guys really shittalking my wardrobe when I'm being nice and sharing it?” Soobin asks dryly as he steps out of his room with the jacket draped over his arm.
“I didn't say I didn't like your four jackets,” Yeonjun points out.
“I have more than four jackets,” Soobin argues childishly, eyes going to Beomgyu as if asking him to back him up on this.
“You do, but the rest of the world will never know, because you'll never wear anything but your favorites,” is what Beomgyu chooses to say, which somehow manages to both be supportive and a dig at the same time.
“And I think that your favorites do look fucking nice, Soobin, so can I please have this one?” Yeonjun adds his best attempt at pleading puppy eyes, but with Beomgyu in the room, he knows he'll never be quite on the level Soobin is used to facing on the daily.
Soobin rolls his eyes hard enough to pull a muscle, but he does cross the room to hand Yeonjun the jacket.
“You're a lifesaver, Binnie, I love you.”
It just gets him another eye roll, and a laugh from Beomgyu who throws himself back down onto the cushions. “Sure. Stay safe. Don't stay out too late.”
“Aye aye.” Yeonjun throws Soobin a two-finger salute, then glaces behind him at Beomgyu. “You two stay safe, too.”
Beomgyu snorts loudly, Soobin blinks in surprise, and Yeonjun makes himself scarce before he needs to face the consequences of saying that.
“Nice jacket.”
Yeonjun looks down at himself, then up at Taehyun – he's quicker to get ready than Kai again, already dressed up and eyeing Yeonjun while Kai laces up his boots. It doesn't look like they put a crazy amount of effort into their own clothes, so Yeonjun doesn't feel as bad in his only clean work out tank top and Soobin's jacket as he thought he would. Taehyun just has a plain black shirt on under his jacket, but it's so tight that it hugs the muscles of his chest and clings to his abs, showing off his figure rather than looking flashy. It just looks like repurposed running gear, if he's being honest, but it works for him – he has enough to show off; Yeonjun has to fight to tear his eyes away from the curve of his waist.
“Thanks?”
Taehyun doesn't ask about it, even though his expression suggests to Yeonjun that he wants to – it seems that he can tell that Yeonjun borrowed it, but for some reason he doesn't want to point it out? But it's Taehyun; the bluntest person Yeonjun knows. It's odd, to see him avoid an issue like this.
He just blinks at Yeonjun slowly, then looks over at Kai's back. Silence stretches, then snaps when Kai jumps to his feet and turns around to smile at them. “Okay, ready – let's go.”
Kai tosses a coat on, and they leave their suite and pile onto an elevator together. Taehyun suggests places to go, listing off names, but none of them mean anything to Yeonjun, so he looks over to Kai for guidance, who pouts in faux seriousness, tapping a finger on his lips.
“I don't think Yeonjun is ready for the Swan – let's take him to the Big Dipper.”
Taehyun chuckles at something that Yeonjun can't begin to understand, so he just asks, “Does every club in this city have a shitty name?”
“All the good ones do,” Taehyun says with a little shrug. “You up for the Dipper?”
“It sounds terrible.”
“Looks terrible, too,” Kai admits, leading the way out of the elevator and into the lobby. “But the drinks taste great.”
Yeonjun sighs as he follows. “I promised Soobin we wouldn't drink too much tonight.”
Taehyun keeps pace with him, finally looking up from his phone. “What's Soobin got to do with it?”
“He was getting uppity about us being on time for checkout tomorrow.”
Ahead of them, Kai twirls around to walk backwards, facing them. “You should have brought him with if he was that worried – could've kept an eye on us himself.”
“Soobin? Out at a club? Please,” Yeonjun snorts. “He's a bigger homebody than me.”
Kai shrugs, smiling. “All the more reason to take him out.”
It's pretty late to say this, isn't it? While they're already walking out of the hotel without him. “I think he's got plans with Beomgyu already – you can take him out next time.”
“If you talk him into it for us.”
“Why not do it yourselves?” Yeonjun looks between the two of them. “You did a good job with me.”
Teamed up like this, they could probably move a mountain within 24 hours, honestly. They really are a tag team from hell.
“You two are closer,” Taehyun says, eyeing the jacket a bit too obviously.
“You know that you can ask, right?”
Taehyun meets his eyes, and there's something intense in his expression for a second before he asks, “What's with the clothes sharing?”
“I didn't bring any nice clothes with me, and I wasn't sure how serious you guys would be about dressing up.”
Taehyun's mouth falls open a bit, and it's more than a little cute. Yeonjun finds himself smiling at him, and then Taehyun smiles back and looks down at his phone.
“Let's take Yeonjun to The Glacier,” he suggests, diligently typing it into the search bar of his maps tab.
Kai throws his hands up like an excited little kid. “I love The Glacier! I'm having a margarita.”
Taehyun pulls up his map, looks over at Yeonjun, and grins.
Yeonjun doesn't remember clubbing being this overwhelming, but maybe that's a him problem; maybe he's getting old – or it's just Kai and Taehyun who are overwhelming, and it mixes with the booming music and unfamiliar environment in a way that makes it hard for Yeonjun to pinpoint the feeling. Once Taehyun and Kai ditch their overclothes at the coat check, Yeonjun himself weirdly unwilling to part with the safety of Soobin's jacket, they envelop him between them, each grabbing onto an elbow, and drag him right into the fray, into the mass of people and blue-tinted lights and music he can feel in his teeth.
It's easy to tell what the club is named after – the main source of light in the room is a gigantic plastic mock-up of the tip of a glacier, stretching up all the way towards the second floor, lit up in cool white that mixes with the blues in the other lights into the perfect icy hue. There's a little moat, for lack of a better term, separating it from the dancing patrons, which has to be filled with dry ice, surrounding the fixture in a hazy vapor.
If he's honest with himself, it looks cool as hell.
Taehyun laughs when he notices Yeonjun looking impressed, and he leans forward to exchange looks with Kai, who scrunches up his nose as a response to whatever Taehyun is telepathically beaming at him through his big shiny eyes.
They drag him to the bar, and Yeonjun puts down the money for Kai's margarita and a nice, conservative rum and coke for himself before either of the other guys can stop him. Taehyun hems and haws over the non-alcoholic options all the way until their drinks arrive, and Yeonjun almost doesn't need Kai leaning into his space to tell him that, “I think he just wants to leech off of us tonight.” to understand the puppy-like look he gives Yeonjun's glass as it's pushed at him across the counter.
Yeonjun hands him the glass, and Taehyun blinks in surprise until he breaks into a happy smile, taking Yeonjun's drink and coolly downing a quarter of it in one go before handing it back.
“Thanks.” He sounds a bit too satisfied with himself; maybe Yeonjun shouldn't be encouraging this kind of behavior, but he just snorts and takes a sip of his own.
It's good, and so has to be Kai's drink, given the sound he makes when he tastes it. He swears up and down that it's his favorite place to get margaritas in the whole city, then groans when he notices that Taehyun's wanting eyes have zeroed in on his drink now.
He still waves Taehyun over to let him take a sip, and casually asks about Yeonjun's favorite cocktail orders even though Taehyun is very obviously licking at the salt rim of his glass, the tip of his tongue flicking over it in what seems like absent-minded motion while he listens to their conversation. Should Yeonjun point it out? Kai probably doesn't want Taehyun's spit all over his glass. He's not rushing to get it back from Taehyun, though, fully engaged in listening to Yeonjun hyping up the Moscow mule. He has those dumb copper mugs at home to make them into, even, and the invitation for them to come over sometime and have some is at the tip of his tongue.
“I like stuff with tequila better,” Taehyun decides to contribute before he can do it, and Yeonjun bites the words back.
“Yeah?” He eyes the margarita he's holding, still pressed to his bottom lip. “What's your poison?”
“Tequila sunrise.”
“He likes the fruity stuff,” Kai comments, taking another sip of his drink, before Taehyun gestures at him to give it back, making Kai squint at him. “You know that it still counts as you drinking when it's not your drink, right?”
Taehyun wiggles his fingers again. “It's tasty.”
“Get your own!”
“You didn't pay for yours.”
“So I have the money to get you one if you want one, stop begging.”
It seems to be the last part that seems to work, making Taehyun drop his hand with a huff. “Rude.”
Yeonjun snorts. Maybe not a married couple – boyfriend and girlfriend. Not always, perhaps, but right now, definitely.
He lifts his glass towards Taehyun. “You want some of mine?”
Taehyun huffs again, but takes it, pressing the rim of it against pouted lips. He doesn't take down a whole quarter of it this time, though, thankfully, before he hands it back. “Thanks.”
“Don't mention it.”
It makes Taehyun smile, and they watch the crowd for a bit together. Kai does end up handing his drink to Taehyun again, but Yeonjun doesn't feel the need to point it out. It makes sense.
Yeonjun finishes his drink, tilting his head back as he knocks the rest back in one go. “We're doing a lot of drinking for people who came here to dance.”
“Then come dance, duh,” Taehyun retorts bluntly in a deadpan voice, handing the margarita back to Kai so he can finish it and set the glass down. He doesn't wait for either of them and just strides away to the dance floor, his all-black outfit and dark hair stark in the cool lighting, making it easy for Yeonjun to follow him with his eyes even in the crowd.
“Ready?” Kai asks lightly, and Yeonjun looks over to return his smile.
“Yeah, let's go.”
He doesn't know why he's still surprised. Of course that Kai and Taehyun are completely different on the dance floor, just like they are on ice, and of course that they still somehow make it work. Of course they don't split up to dance with other people, even if someone approaches them. Of course they make eye contact while Taehyun swings his hips in easy circles and figure-eights, while his body ripples like a wave to the rhythm, and Kai smiles at him so wide while Taehyun smirks with the kind of easy confidence Yeonjun has only ever seen him display on ice.
Kai is a bit awkward, thoughtless but sincere in his devotion to having fun. He's just as willing to bust out his best attempt at the robot as he is to jump and headbang to a quick song, to try and follow Taehyun's lead when the music slows down, a bit less smooth, maybe a little bit confident, the light, flirty, playful air around him making even the jerkier movements work for him.
Taehyun makes up for every flaw with unshakeable confidence, even when his movements don't match the music, when he dances to a fun song like he's showing off instead of letting himself just enjoy it. He sings along to songs and his voice is not half bad, backs up into Kai like it's second nature.
Maybe it is. They don't do anything too weird – there's no grinding, maybe they don't even touch, but Taehyun looks up and Kai looks down and for the first time, Yeonjun lets himself hesitate.
He tries to keep up, goof off with Kai to make him and Taehyun laugh with the most ridiculous dance moves he can think of, take Taehyun's body rolls as the challenge they seem to be when he meets Yeonjun's eyes in the middle of them and show off what he can do. It's probably not as impressive, when his shirt doesn't cling to him like second skin with every movement, but Taehyun seems satisfied, so Yeonjun doesn't worry about it too much.
And then Taehyun's back seems to hit Kai's chest, and his head tilts back onto Kai's shoulder, his face screwed up, and Yeonjun is briefly, terribly fascinated, as his mouth drops open.
Then Taehyun groans, says, “Fuck, I need to piss, hold on,” and Kai laughs while Taehyun peels himself off of him and wanders off, and the moment is broken.
They weren't having a moment – Taehyun was having a bladder emergency. Yeonjun should really get laid – he's being so desperate.
Kai looks at him across the empty space Taehyun left behind, and when the music slows down even more, his eyes shift up towards the light, like he's looking for the source of it, cool blues and whites reflecting in his pupils, catching on his jaw, creating sharp reliefs. Maybe Yeonjun has made up his mind, and he likes him more like this, when he's catching the light, rather than half-shrouded in the dark. There's a lot to look at, and he doesn't mind getting to see all of it.
He looks back down at Yeonjun, grins mischievously. “How long has it been since you last slow danced?”
Kai steps closer even as Yeonjun snorts. “No.” He doesn't take a step back, though, just lets Kai come up close.
“Come on. I'll let you lead.” Yeonjun doesn't stop him from reaching out, resting his arms on Yeonjun's shoulders. “I can be the girl if you want.”
It sounds like a joke, but Yeonjun's brain sees it as an opening. Is he just dying to come out to someone? How homophobic can a guy be while sliding up close to another man's body, even if the air between them stays teasing, even if it's just for fun?
Maybe more than he'd think, if Yeonjun can be gay and still feel an uncomfortable knot in his own chest while lifting his own hands to lightly hold that man by his sides. He's much thicker in the middle than Taehyun is; so firm. Built perfectly to toss other men around.
“Not… really.”
Can it be that simple? The lights glitter in Kai's eyes when he raises his eyebrows. “Yeah? Do you want me to lead?”
It can't, apparently. He shrugs even though Kai's arms weigh him down. “Don't…” But Kai looks like he's right there, like he's got it.
Can everyone read him like an open book?
“You don't need to be the girl.”
Kai presses his lips together – Taehyun does it too, but it looks different on Taehyun. “Yeah? Do you want to be the girl?”
“Not really.”
Kai laughs and presses in closer. Yeonjun is already hot in Soobin's jacket, but it's even hotter with a sweating Kai this close to him. Kai's sweater is made up of more holes than yarn, and he has a sleeveless shirt on underneath, but Yeonjun can still see the sweat dripping down his muscled arms, can see his skin shine with the white and blue. He's so handsome, so attractive, and Yeonjun is so gay, and so lonely.
Their foreheads touch; Kai's sharp nose bumps into his. If he tilts his head to the side, Kai's mouth will only be a breath away. He thinks about it, imagines it. The sting of the remains of a margarita on a hot tongue. Salt clinging to lips. Some sort of comfort, something he's been craving. A different kind of belonging, one that could maybe feel as good as the kind he's been craving, for as long as the kiss would last, if nothing else.
Yeonjun closes his eyes, and the music keeps going, and his hands get more confident on Kai's flanks, splay out until his fingertips nudge his ribs.
Then – arms around his waist, hands flat on his abs. A head peeking out in his peripheral when he blinks his eyes open, Kai's still firmly on his own.
“Hey.” And they look to the side, at the intruder whose hands pull back from Yeonjun as fast as they were to land on him. Taehyun takes a step away from them, obviously trying to laugh his intrusion off, but he can't quite manage to sound smooth or detached, not right now. “Back.”
Yeonjun can't figure out what to say. He lets Kai go, and he takes the hint, getting back out of his space again, letting his arms drop.
“Had a good piss?” It's a normal stupid thing he'd say to a teammate who took too long in the bathroom.
Taehyun rolls his eyes like a teammate would, but then glances between the two of them. “I ruined the moment.”
Yeonjun glances at Kai, who's looking somewhere in the middle distance, not quite at Yeonjun, a bit pensive. “No moment.”
Taehyun sucks a breath in through his teeth. “Right.”
“They put on good music for slow dancing,” Kai chips in, out of his head and focused on Taehyun now. He smiles, and Yeonjun admires the speed with which he's able to recover after that. “We wanted to try.”
“Kai wanted to try.”
“You didn't say no.”
“I did literally tell you no.”
Kai grins at him. He eats tension for breakfast, really. How does he do it? “It didn't sound like a no to me.”
“You're gonna get arrested one day with that attitude.”
It makes Kai cackle, and then Yeonjun smiles, too. Taehyun just stares at them curiously. Yeonjun appraises him, then takes a step towards him and wraps an arm around his shoulders.
“Let's go get more drinks.”
He buys Taehyun that Tequila Sunrise, and doesn't stop himself from watching while he drags the stirrer it comes with across his lips, licking at the drops of moisture clinging to it before sticking it back in. He watches the glass push down on his bottom lip, his Adam's apple jump as he swallows, his little smile when he takes in the taste. Kai is on Taehyun's other side, swishing a second margarita around in the glass. Does he look sullen? He does to Yeonjun. Everything seemed fine earlier. Taehyun looks unbothered, tilting the glass away from himself to watch the colorful layers mix with a satisfied expression on his face.
Once Taehyun is down to half his glass, he speaks up to say, “Maybe we should do shots.”
Yeonjun laughs. “We're not doing shots. What happened to I'm not drinking tonight?”
“I told you he'll drink if we drink,” Kai reminds him dryly.
Taehyun pouts, then drinks some more. “You guys are no fun.”
“We have a plane to catch tomorrow.”
“Okay? It's at two in the afternoon; we'll be fine.”
Yeonjun squints at him. “Where did this reckless streak come from? Doesn't sound like you.”
Taehyun lets out a wet snort, and buries his face in the glass again before letting it hit the bar top, spinning it between both of his hands. “What's the point of following rules if nobody else is doing it?”
He glances up at Yeonjun, and Yeonjun feels guilty again, not towards the Taehyun right in front of him, this flushed, sweaty, grumpy, stubborn one, but towards the old Taehyun, the one who was nothing but wide eyes, skilled hands and big hopes. A little guy with great expectations.
“You might have a point.”
It gets him a huff. “Thank you.”
Yeonjun signals the bartender, then raises his eyebrows at both of them. “More tequila?”
“Yes please,” Taehyun nods, clearly satisfied with himself.
Kai shrugs. He still looks more thoughtful than anything, lingering at the edge of their conversation.
Yeonjun gets them each a shot of tequila. Why the hell not.
If Taehyun isn't always giggly when drunk, then Yeonjun's presence has curious effects on his psyche, because Taehyun can't stop laughing the whole time they're cramming themselves into the back of a taxi. Someone should have sat out front, and Yeonjun can tell that the driver is thinking it, squinting dubiously at the three large guys trying to squeeze into the back seat, but when Yeonjun tries to point it out, Taehyun laughs him off, claiming too loudly that he's comfortable.
Yeonjun doubts it, but Kai looks so intensely fond of Taehyun in that moment that he decides to just let it go and tip extra once they get back to the hotel. He's been paying for everything but their admission the whole night, and he doesn't even care.
It's fun; he thinks maybe he's had the most fun today that he's had off the ice in years. They danced more after getting more drinks, and Taehyun was more uncoordinated this time, his confidence still rock solid but the execution lacking in a charmingly messy way, and Kai didn't even try to stop himself from not taking it seriously this time, doing whatever the hell he pleased. Yeonjun isn't sure what he was doing, but it was obviously nothing that the other two would find off-putting, and that's enough for him. If he did something embarrassing, then at least Taehyun should barely remember it, even though Kai almost definitely will.
Kai seems barely buzzed despite the drinks – he's loosened up since that strange moment on the dance floor earlier, but there's still a bit of a weird vibe to everything he does. They hold Taehyun between them on their way to the elevator, and their arms are pressed together, and Kai laughs whenever Taehyun stumbles, but it's muted, maybe because it's the middle of the night and they shouldn't be rowdy.
Taehyun collapses against the back of the elevator and declares, “I'm so fucked.”
Yeonjun blinks at him in confusion, and Kai chortles.
“Just realizing that you're gonna be hungover again?”
Instead of joking back, Taehyun's eyes stay wide open, like he's caught himself off-guard, and he points them at Kai, who seems to startle at whatever they're saying, in a language only Taehyun and Kai understand. Kai glances at Yeonjun, wary, then clears his throat.
“It's fine, Taehyun.”
What's fine? Yeonjun doesn't ask.
“This fucking sucks,” Taehyun complains to the air in front of himself.
Kai glances at Yeonjun again, then back at Taehyun. “We'll handle this.”
Yeonjun lets his own back hit one of the walls, looking between them. “You're fucking Huekang, what can't you handle?”
They both look at him, and neither of them looks confident – they're both too aware he has no idea what they're talking about.
“You've got this,” he says, regardless.
Taehyun takes a deep breath, and Yeonjun watches every single ripple of it run through his body, visible through his shirt. “Do we?”
“Yeah; of course.”
Taehyun smiles, and Kai rolls his eyes, looking at the number pad to see if they're getting to their floor. The door opens before anyone can say anything else, and Taehyun pushes off the wall, stumbling a little on his way into the hallway outside.
“Great.”
Yeonjun's room is closer to the elevator, but he follows them to the door of their suite and stands in front of Taehyun who found another stretch of wall to lean on while Kai gets their room card out of his pocket and scans it. Taehyun is staring at Yeonjun's face, not saying anything.
The door lock beeps, and Kai opens it, and he hesitates when he looks over at them.
Taehyun licks his lips. “How's the shoulder?”
Yeonjun huffs. “Can't even feel it anymore.” It's true; he's had different things to worry about today. Like almost kissing Kai; like all the mixed feelings he has about Taehyun, about their shared history.
He fails to take a step back when Taehyun peels himself off the wall, and for a second, they're too close, and Taehyun has to look up to look at him, and he's flushed and his eyes look strange, intense, full of messages that arrive to Yeonjun's own brain scrambled, indecipherable.
When Taehyun presses his lips together, Yeonjun thinks yes – this is what it looks like on Taehyun.
He's waiting for Yeonjun to say something, isn't he? But Yeonjun has nothing to say. What's a I don't need you to be the girl that would be appropriate under golden hotel hallway lights? I'm attracted to you Taehyun, have you noticed? Is that why you can't get your eyes off me? Is it mutual? Do you think I'm disgusting? I don't think you would. I can't bring myself to think that you would. Not you. Why not you?
What's special about you?
Taehyun hugs him. Not quite like a teammate, not quite like someone who's dying to fuck him. He presses himself into Yeonjun's chest briefly, with his strong arms around Yeonjun's waist, and then pulls back, smiles and wishes him good night.
“We'll see you tomorrow,” Kai adds, muted.
“Yeah,” Yeonjun breathes out, nodding.
They disappear into their room, and then Yeonjun is alone again, covered in cologne that isn't his, maybe lonelier than ever.
He blinks awake, lying on his back in his room, staring at the ceiling. This room doesn't have a window, so the only light slipping in comes from under the door. He can hardly make out anything around himself. His limbs feel leaden, heavy, even though he doesn't think he's hungover, not really.
The dream he just woke up from echoes through his mind – he dreamed about them, of course he did, in turns and then together, at the same time. He's desperate; he knew this. Kai seemed so receptive last night, until Taehyun interrupted them. Taehyun seemed so inviting last night, until he got tired of waiting around for Yeonjun to pick up on it. It's not his fault, not really.
There's an erection begging for attention from him pulsing through his crotch, but he doesn't think he has the energy to do anything about it. Should he do it, even? To his own teammates? Doesn't seem responsible.
Soobin and Beomgyu don't care, though. Maybe Kai and Taehyun don't care, either. What's the point of following the rules if nobody else does?
To Yeonjun, there has always been a certain self-satisfaction to it. When he was younger, he liked getting up to mischief, sure, but now that he's older, he takes pride in his professionalism. He's a stick-in-the-mud because it makes him good at his job, it keeps him the title of an ace, a star.
Does a star player jack off in his hotel room to his own teammates? Does a star player get all shaky thinking about kissing a defenseman on the mouth? Does a star player think about asking that man to come over on an off-day, pretending he just wants to get drinks, hoping it would lead to something else?
Kai would be open to hooking up, wouldn't he? Yeonjun can beg him for another massage. On his own bed, this time, and this time he'll let Kai touch him all over. He'd like that, wouldn't he? Didn't he look like he would? Was Yeonjun making it up?
Would Taehyun be pissed, if they left him out? He and Kai do everything together – would they do him together? Yeonjun isn't sure he'd want them to. In his dreams, sure, where once he's come all over himself, there don't need to be any pesky consequences to it, but in the real world, where he'd have to face him again?
He's not sure he could. Taehyun makes him nervous; his eyes scare the hell out of him sometimes. Kai is fun and a tease and a nice, kind guy, but Yeonjun gets the terrible feeling that Taehyun cares more than he lets on. There's no way he's getting tangled up in that.
Yeonjun drags himself out of bed, freshens up perfunctorily, changes into a different set of clothes and makes his way to the gym still half-asleep.
Kai is there, on a treadmill, with earphones in. He smiles when he notices Yeonjun but doesn't say anything, so Yeonjun just nods at him and goes about his morning workout. Taehyun is nowhere to be found. He tries his best to ignore Kai, making sure they're never doing their reps anywhere near each other, but he keeps glancing at him, out the corner of his eye; catching glimpses of his body where it peeks out of his loose workout clothes. His muscles look different under the harsh gym lighting, not quite as magical as they were when tinted with blues, but they're still just as appealing.
He thinks he could have this, if he asked, and he knows that it would feel good. Relaxing. Freeing. Kai would let him be himself, for a little bit. Would there have to be consequences? There are always consequences – especially when he thinks that what he's doing is harmless.
Maybe he should talk to Soobin about this – find out how the fuck their captain squares whatever the fuck he and Beomgyu have going on away in his own mind. What makes him feel like he can? Is it that he doesn't think he can't not? Are he and Beomgyu just that fucking deeply in love? Yeonjun could hold out, if he decided to, let this opportunity slip through his fingers – he just doesn't want to.
It's not love, it's not a crush, it's just…
Kai finishes his workout first, and he smiles at his phone when he picks it up off the bench while patting sweat off his neck with a towel. His shoulders are wide and firm, and he looks behind him, eyes catching on Yeonjun, like he felt his stare on his skin. He gives Yeonjun another smile, and walks off towards the showers.
It just makes him feel less alone. Seen. When someone smiles at him, directly. Shamelessly.
And who wouldn't want Kai's body? He's not blind.
He needs to think about this more, but it's making his head hurt.
“I sweat all over your jacket last night,” Yeonjun announces while sliding into the chair next to Soobin at the restaurant. Beomgyu is there with him, across from Soobin, savoring a cup of yogurt like it's ice cream, licking his spoon after each spoonful so thoroughly Yeonjun would worry about his eating habits if he didn't know that it's just a Beomgyu thing by now. “I'll wash it and get it back to you on Wednesday at the VP.”
Soobin scrunches up his entire face. “Gross.”
“I'm aware,” he replies mildly, picking up a strawberry off his plate to pop it in his mouth. “‘s why I'm not giving it back yet.”
Soobin acknowledges it with a hum between bites of his eggs, and that's that. Beomgyu is eyeing him from his seat, though, the spoon buried in his mouth again, eyes appraising.
“Did you have fun last night?” He asks once his mouth is free.
Yeonjun shrugs, careful. “Yeah, sure, it was fun.”
“You look pretty good for someone who partied last night,” Beomgyu points out, inquisitive. He'll box Yeonjun in until he gives him the answers he wants, won't he? Bully him into a mistake, like he does to the other team on ice all the time.
“We really didn't drink that much – and I don't really get hangovers.”
Beomgyu's eyebrows jump. “Lucky you.” He nods his head to his own right. “Taehyun looks like crap this morning.”
Yeonjun follows Beomgyu's gesture to a table tucked between two windows, the one that gets the least light, where Taehyun huddles over a cup of coffee, looking pale in his light gray sweatshirt, staring down at the table in front of himself. “Starting to think he's a lightweight.”
“Might be,” Beomgyu allows casually, and spoons more yogurt into his mouth.
He has nothing to add, so he just goes back to eating. Beomgyu's eyes still won't leave him, though.
“Any idea where Kai is?”
Yeonjun sighs. “I saw him earlier at the gym – I guess he's had breakfast already?”
It's a good point though – Taehyun is here; where the hell is Kai? They never spend time away from each other, and suddenly they're everywhere alone. Always so approachable. Let's work out together, Kai. Let's have breakfast, Taehyun.
He looks at Taehyun again – it looks like he's zoning out, fingertips drawing shapes onto the sides of his coffee cup.
“Taehyun doesn't have any food at his table. That's not gonna help a hangover.”
Yeonjun looks at Beomgyu blankly. He can tell where this is going, but something about that annoys him. Beomgyu always asks him to just go with it, follow all the unspoken rules, read all his hints. He wants to be as easy and effortless with him as Taehyun and Kai are with each other, maybe, just a little different in their case, and Yeonjun thinks that they've got it down pat, honestly. He knows what Beomgyu is thinking when they're working, playing, passing, building a play that will get them the win. Right now, he wishes he could turn it off, so Beomgyu would just open his mouth and say it. “Okay? So?”
Beomgyu rolls his eyes. Maybe he can read Yeonjun just as well; can tell the difference between confused and obtuse on purpose. “Whatever.”
“Did something happen last night?”
He almost forgot Soobin is sitting right next to him, so when he speaks up, Yeonjun genuinely startles. Soobin just seems sincere, a bit worried if anything.
Did something happen? It seemed to be all about the things that didn't happen last night.
“Not at all.”
Soobin looks him up and down, and shrugs. “Okay.”
Yeonjun rolls his eyes. Beomgyu pulls a face, and licks a long stripe up the flat part of his spoon.
At the table all the way across the room, Taehyun gets up from his seat, and Yeonjun pointedly doesn't watch him leave.
Soobin digs into some kind of salad he's piled up next to his eggs and hums appreciatively at the taste of it. “This is great, you want some?”
Beomgyu leans over the table with his mouth open and lets Soobin feed him a forkful. Yeonjun squints at them, unimpressed. They think he's being questionable, spending time with his teammates? They need to take a good hard look at themselves.
“‘s good,” Beomgyu agrees around his mouthful, and he and Soobin smile at each other from across the table.
Shameless.
They're waiting at the airport, and Yeonjun knows he's staring.
Taehyun is sleeping, slumped in his chair, with his head on Kai's shoulder. He has his hat pulled over his eyes to block out the lights, but the rest of his face seems soft and peaceful. Kai looks so casual about it, like he's used to it, using his phone with one hand so he wouldn't jostle Taehyun awake. They look comfortable, comforting, even. Yeonjun can't imagine feeling stressed while looking at this.
Kai doesn't glance up; doesn't catch him looking this time. Taehyun squirms a little at one point, making an ambiguous, sleepy noise, and Kai's eyes shift over to his face just for a second, and his mouth curls just a little bit.
Synergy. It always gets thrown around whenever people talk about them. They're a duo, a pair, a package deal. They fit together; match each other.
Is it that crazy to think they could be a couple?
Would anything have to be different between them, for them to be?
Do they love each other? Do they show that? Are they so intertwined at this point that the love part is an afterthought, and that's why it's so easy to miss? Like an old married couple. They've loved each other so long it's easy to rely on that love to be there. That they don't need to always be screaming it, showing it, flaunting it. Loving each other is just something they do on a daily basis, just part of their routine.
Or maybe they're just two guys, two hot best friends who like to tag team other guys. Platonically.
Maybe Yeonjun is reading all of this shit wrong.
But you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take, right?
Four days off. Voluntary practice on Wednesday, first mandatory on Friday, then another on Saturday. Next game on Sunday. Yeonjun's supposed to be on the local news on Thursday, for their morning show. Everyone wants to hear about his injury, apparently, and the quick comeback after the debacle last Wednesday. Great story for the media – he's not looking forward to it, even though he likes doing media appearances, usually. He gets to talk about his work, and he loves talking about his work, and the interviewers usually love him and make his job easy, at least when he's doing press in his city. Sometimes you can tell that the person doing the interview was rooting for the other team.
They get dismissed after their debriefing at the stadium, and the players slowly scatter – some stay to train or take advantage of the gym, attend their medical appointments or get a massage. Most of them head to the entrance, or take an elevator down to the parking lot. Yeonjun ends up on one elevator with Beomgyu, Soobin and one of their goalkeepers, who starts a friendly conversation about how excited he is to play a home game again. They all missed their fans, how rowdy the tribunes get when they're in their element, giving the viewers what they want.
Nothing's better than winning a home game.
The goalie asks about Yeonjun's shoulder before he gets off on a different floor than the three of them, and Yeonjun assures him it's fine. It sounds nothing like when Kai or Taehyun asked about it; maybe he's not crazy at all.
Beomgyu and Soobin parked on the same level as him, so they get off together, walking to their cars in companionable silence. Beomgyu breaks off first, tugging at Soobin's sleeve and quietly saying, “I'll text you.” before waving at Yeonjun and walking off. Soobin watches him go a bit like Yeonjun thinks a puppy would look when his owner leaves. Beomgyu looked tired, though – he probably wants to go home and take a nap alone as much as Yeonjun does. Soobin seems to realize it too, because he just sighs as Beomgyu's car starts up, and keeps walking to his own.
He pats Yeonjun's back and reminds him to launder that jacket before getting into his own car, and then Yeonjun is making his way to his car on his own.
Looking up from his own feet to see Kai feels almost inevitable.
His face is illuminated by his phone screen as he types something out. Taehyun is loading their bags into the back of a wine red hatchback, looking the most alive he has all day. Yeonjun's car is parked only one space over, and Kai looks up when Yeonjun releases the locks as he walks up to it.
“Oh, hey.”
Yeonjun needs to be normal about this. He pops the trunk of his own car, then looks over at them and smiles. “Hi. Headed home?”
“Yeah,” Kai replies and Taehyun adds, “I need more sleep.”
He squeezes his hand around the strap of his bag. “Bad hangover again, huh?”
Taehyun breathes out tiredly while he pulls the rear door down. “I'm never drinking again.”
Kai chuckles at the same time as Yeonjun does. Taehyun smiles a little.
“It was fun though, yesterday. We should do it again sometime.”
Yeonjun breathes in. He picks his bag up and throws it in the trunk, along with his heavy padded jacket, just to have something to do. “Yeah, definitely.”
Taehyun looks at Kai, and they have another quiet conversation. Yeonjun shuts the trunk, and leans on it.
“If you guys aren't busy this week, we could go out somewhere. Or you could come over. I could make you that Moscow mule, Kai, if you'd like.”
It's weird, to step out of that we, out of that vaguely plural you, right in front of Taehyun. He looks Kai in the eyes directly, and Kai seems surprised.
“Uh, yeah, maybe.”
He tries to smile, looks at Taehyun, too. Taehyun doesn't look surprised; not in the slightest. “You've got my number, right?”
“Think so,” Taehyun answers for them. For Kai.
“Great. Text me, or let me know Wednesday? If you're coming.”
“We're coming,” Kai assures this time.
Yeonjun slaps his hand on his car. “Nice. Soobin will be proud. I'll see you around.”
They give him vague goodbyes, and he gets in his car without another look at them.
His apartment is cold when he gets there. He calls his mom as he unpacks his stuff, shoving most of it straight into the laundry. When he gets to Soobin's jacket, he hesitates, sniffing at it. There's the vaguest hint of Taehyun's cologne on it. No trace of Kai. It mostly smells like his own sweat.
His mother asks about his injury too, and he tries to be honest with her. It barely even hurts, but it's tender sometimes, when he forgets it's there and rests against things the wrong way. She tells him to take care of himself.
He tells her he loves her, and she says it back fondly, wishes him good luck on his next match. She should be able to come see one next month. He should rest well and not forget to eat.
She puts a smile on his face, and it stays while he's showering, lingers when he grants his own wish by not putting clothes on afterwards. It's still cold, his heater not quick enough to warm the place up, but he just throws a blanket over his shoulders and wanders into the kitchen. This is his castle, and he'll walk around it with goosebumps covering his entire body if he wants to.
The copper mugs mock him from their shelf while he gets a mug out to put in his coffee machine. Kai didn't look eager to take him up on his offer. Whatever.
Can they still be friends, after all that? They probably could. If they would even want to.
His phone buzzes while he's waiting for his coffee to be done. He walks over to the bedroom to get it reluctantly, saving it from the dark gray sheets he messed up while unpacking.
It's a text from Taehyun. He has him saved as #14 Kang. A lot of things have changed very quickly.
It says, you can come over to our place sometime. Kai has a PS5.
Yeonjun's not sure what that means at all. He sits down on his bed, just in time for his coffee machine to signal that it's done. Figures.
He chews on his lips, looking around his room, vaguely trying to look for something appealing that would make someone want to come over. The truth is, he doesn't have a lot. He's barely at home, and when he is, he usually just watches TV, drinks coffee, eats and sleeps.
I have a bench press in my living room. You come over.
He hopes it sounds as teasing as he means it. Taehyun responds almost immediately.
Why do you have a bench press at your apartment?
I'm an athlete? I need to keep fit.
We could only fit a pull-up bar in the kitchen doorway, and Kai keeps smacking his head against it.
Right. Not everyone's apartment is as spacious as his. Not everyone makes his kind of money.
His fault for being a giant
That's what I tell him, too
Yeonjun smiles at his phone.
Yeonjun
What?
I'm serious
Come over to our place
He wants to type out why, but his traitorous fingers morph it into a when, and it's too easy to send after that.
Tuesday?
I can do tuesday
Okay
I'll send you the address
Yeonjun hesitates, or maybe waits for something more, for an explanation, maybe, but nothing more comes. He puts his phone aside, drops his blanket, and goes to grab his coffee, all of his skin buzzing, shivering.
On Tuesday, Yeonjun wakes up gasping. He'd sunk into it again in his sleep, into the memory of hands on him, of Kai's warm breath. Taehyun's lips glittering with moisture. Being too close under golden lights, near misses under blue ones. They crush his chest, heavy. He's tried not to think about it too hard; why Taehyun wants him there, why he's the one extending an invitation. Kai hasn't texted him at all.
It's four in the morning, and he washes his face and throws his running gear on and runs his usual track through his neighborhood, earbuds in, doing his best to zone out completely and let the sleepiness fogging his brain keep him from overthinking things. He gets back home, takes a shower, has a perfectly balanced, measured out breakfast according to the meal plan taped to his fridge, then grabs his training bag and drives over to the arena.
He misses being in his skates already, and everything feels a bit more normal, a bit more bearable, when he's racing two juniors in laps around the rink. Their city's junior team is doing their mandatory, but their coaches never have an issue with Yeonjun hanging around the kids. They think it motivates them, to see a grown-up pro doing his thing, giving them something to aspire to. One day, they'll beat him in a speed challenge. One day, they'll be the ones on the assist before he scores a goal, one day they'll catch one of his shots.
It feels good to watch them try their best, as he used to back then, too motivated for any measure of perfection but so, so passionate.
When his luck runs out, or his body gives up on him, maybe this is what he wants to do. This is what he wants to be. A mentor, an inspiration, a motivation. Helping people find the same thrill in the game as he does, so the next generation of players pours the same kind of love into every match that he does right now.
He'll teach them the value of being a close-knit team, knowing your teammates well. Synergy.
During a break in the practice, Yeonjun peels away to go to his own bag, and takes out his phone to text Taehyun between sips of vitamin water.
Do you have plans for lunch? I'm at the arena right now
The kids' practice cuts at noon, and Taehyun and Kai live nearby. It's an appropriate time to go see his teammates. He could pick up food for them on his way, even. Pay for their food to make up for how much more fucking living space he probably has, compared to them.
we're here too
at the gym
we were gonna grab lunch at the buffet
join us?
Right, it makes a lot of sense for the two of them to just use the team's facilities, rather than go to a private gym, especially if they live so close by. It makes sense, but it still makes his stomach churn; it feels strange, to know how close they are right now. He could see them within five minutes if he started walking now.
I thought you wanted me to come over?
after? Are you busy in the afternoon?
He almost wants to say he is, but what else would he do with his day? Monitor matches? Facetime with his mother? Do groceries? Spending time with Kai and Taehyun sounds better, even if Taehyun seems to have plans for him that Yeonjun is not quite grasping yet.
So calculated. Like usual.
not really
great
then we'll do lunch
when?
around noon? I'm on the ice with the kiddos
ok
have fun
go easy on them yeonjun
Go easy on them. Right. Don't give them a hard time, Yeonjun. Don't bully them. They could grow up to haunt your goddamn mind, and you'll never be able to keep up with what goes on in their heads.
Taehyun and Kai both look tired. They're both freshly showered when he arrives at the entrance to the buffet, and clearly fresh post-workout, with wet hair and flushed faces. There are shadows under Kai's eyes and Taehyun looks a little tense. When they smile at him as he approaches, it's like they're barely managing it.
He glances between them, and they glance at each other, just briefly, no obvious unspoken words exchanged this time. “No offense, but you both look like shit.”
To his relief, Taehyun's mouth ticks up wryly. “We had a rough night.”
“And a rough workout,” Kai adds, looking at Taehyun, who looks back at him a beat too late.
“Didn't ask you to try keeping up with me,” Taehyun points out, but he doesn't sound combative, just a little dry.
Kai shrugs. “If you're running yourself to the ground, you're not doing it alone.”
It sounds like almost too intimate of a thing to say with Yeonjun right there, the way Kai says it, the way Taehyun presses his lips together tightly, jaw clenched like he's fighting not to react.
“If this is a bad time…”
Taehyun shakes his head furiously. “No, let's go. I need food.”
He turns around and pushes through the double doors, leaving it up to Kai to catch them before they can swing back shut. He holds them open for Yeonjun, who gives him a doubtful look.
Kai musters a smile. “He's just in a bit of a mood today.”
Yeonjun throws him a doubtful look. “Is he pissed at me?”
“Technically not?” He sounds hesitant, and Yeonjun both appreciates the sincerity and does not feel reassured in the slightest. With a sigh, he leans against the door, letting it swing a bit wider again. “He's more angry with me and… just. General. Reality.”
That makes absolutely zero sense to Yeonjun, and it must show on his face, because Kai sighs and glances over at where Taehyun is putting in his order before attempting to clarify.
“We fought pretty bad last night. We technically hashed it all out, but things still aren't great. We both need a minute.”
Somehow the most shocking part of that is, “You guys fight?”
For some reason, Kai laughs at that, even though it's more of a quiet huff. “Yeah, of course. We're just human, too. You don't get to Huekang defense line without sorting some shit out the hard way.”
It makes sense, when he puts it like that, but it's still so shocking to Yeonjun. They always made coexisting appear so easy. Effortless. Never a wrinkle, not a ripple between them. But there were wrinkles today, weren't there? Cracks in the synergy. Taehyun turning Kai's way too late, the lack of playfulness in their banter. Everyone has bad days – even the famed Huekang line, apparently.
“This is a bad day for me to get involved then, no?”
This time, Kai's smile comes a bit easier. “I think it might help, actually. Taehyun does, too.”
Yeonjun doesn't understand that at all. “Okay…? What the hell are you two planning?”
Some of that well-worn playfulness settles into Kai's face again. “Nothing. We just want to show you our apartment. After lunch though. Starving.”
He doesn't wait for Yeonjun to react before walking off to join Taehyun at the counter, and Yeonjun has to catch the door before it slams into his face, too stunned to intercept it right away.
After an oddly quiet lunch, they drop by Yeonjun's car in the garage so he can drop off his training gear and grab his jacket and decide to walk the fifteen minutes that it takes to get to Kai and Taehyun's apartment building. Yeonjun is a bit relieved when he sees how modern and well-kept it is – if anything, he's surprised that it seems to be located in a family-centric neighborhood, with a playground across the street and mothers with strollers wandering the sidewalk that send them nods of recognition as they walk past, clearly familiar with the two of them.
The apartment itself is not too shabby, but Yeonjun can see why they would have a hard time fitting workout equipment in. Between a luxuriously big sectional, a sizable TV with two consoles under it, and a wide bookshelf which seems to be half filled with books and half with video games and movies, there isn't much space left for anything else. It's no shoebox, but it's not Yeonjun's big, empty, minimalist living room. It looks cozy, if anything. They have weights neatly stacked next to the couch, and a framed team photo from their last big league success on the wall. Someone left a blanket half spilled out onto the floor, and there's a light gray sweatshirt tucked into the corner of the sectional that Yeonjun thinks looks familiar, with the corner of a tablet peeking out from under it.
Is this what they meant by Taehyun being messy?
It would check out, because as soon as his shoes are off, he tosses his jacket over the back of the couch instead of hanging it up while Kai sighs at him, still unlacing his own. Yeonjun tries not to laugh while Taehyun takes his hat off as well and runs his fingers through his hair that's all messed up now from him covering it up while it was wet.
He looks cute like that, red cheeked from the cold with his hair a bird's nest, still looking a bit tender and exhausted. Did they get any sleep? Yeonjun wouldn't be surprised if Kai told him that they argued through the night.
Kai takes Yeonjun's jacket and hangs it up on a hook by the door before doing the same with Taehyun's, with an unimpressed look on his face but no verbal complaints. Taehyun props his hands on his hips.
“So.”
“So?” Yeonjun faces him. It's the moment of truth, right? For whatever reason, Yeonjun just had to come here, and now he should find out why.
Kai walks past them both to walk around the sectional, picking up the blanket and folding it neatly to lay by the arm of it, then doing the same with the sweatshirt, laying the tablet on it neatly. He's stress cleaning, and not looking at either of them. Great.
“Apartment tour?”
There's not really much to tour, but Yeonjun doesn't point that out. Taehyun takes him to the kitchen which looks like every other kitchen Yeonjun has been to, except it has a pull-up bar in the doorway that was very obviously installed at a height that is convenient for Taehyun and clearly not for anyone taller than him, and a breakfast nook with the most random crap strewn all over the table and the seat – a penguin plushie, a pack of bandaids, a roll of k-tape, an open book, an open empty shaker bottle, a packet of gum. It's all so… normal. They have dirty mugs in the sink and one of those gigantic glass jars full of chocolate-flavored protein powder. Their fridge has the same nutritional plan on it that Yeonjun has, but theirs is stuck on with cute, animal-themed magnets, and it has other things around it, postcards with shots of the sea, photos of what has to be Kai and his family. No photos of Taehyun's, though. Maybe they're just not the picture-taking sort.
Their bathroom is just as unassuming, just a bit neater than the kitchen was. Two sets of toothbrushes, two electric razors, clearly distinguished by color so they can tell them apart. They have one of those heated towel racks that Yeonjun's always wanted.
He's not sure if this is the point of the tour, but he's reassured by seeing how comfortably they're living. They can afford all sorts of little comforts, they don't live like two broke men who are barely making ends meet. They're living like two men with pro-athlete salaries who don't really have much to invest that money into.
Taehyun hesitates visibly once Yeonjun looks his fill of their wholly unimpressive bathroom. His hands are crossed over his chest. Kai is standing in the living room like he's not sure what to do with himself.
“Anything else to show me?” He asks, just as hesitant. Where do they sleep? There's only one more door. Does it just look like a dorm room? Two beds, two dressers, a desk or two. Posters on the wall. A mess of a bed on Taehyun's side, a perfectly made one on Kai's – something like that, maybe. That's what he imagines.
He watches Taehyun's chest slowly expand with a deep, slow breath. “Yeah. I have something to show you.” His eyes are intense again, and Yeonjun is afraid for no good reason at all.
Taehyun takes him to their bedroom.
It's not what Yeonjun expected, honestly.
They have a window with a nice view of the city – when a game is on, they can probably see the arena lit up from here. There's a walk-in closet and a chest of drawers, and the wall with the window is covered in trophies and medals. Kai's, Taehyun's, and the ones they earned together. Propped-up photos of all the teams they were on. A framed signed jersey of a defenseman Taehyun admires. A team scarf, with photos of them from each season they've spent there pinned to the bottom of it, hangs over the bed.
The one bed. The only bed.
It's neatly made, everything perfectly tucked in. The two pillows are perfectly spaced out, and an adorable trio of plushies is nestled between them. One side has a set of pajamas folded at the foot of it, into the same neat squares Yeonjun just saw Kai fold Taehyun's clothes earlier.
Right. Of course.
He did need to see this, didn't he? Since he won't take a hint.
When he's done staring at the bed, he looks at Taehyun, and it's almost surprising when he sees him standing in the doorway alone, instead of having Kai wrapped around him in some sudden, uncharacteristic, obvious show of coupliness. Because that's what this means, right?
“You're a couple.”
Taehyun's face is stony. He shrugs. “I blame those people who treated us like shit back when we got traded into the same team.”
Yeonjun almost snorts, but he just lets out a short, abrupt breath. Right – they had no one to rely on but each other, in an unfamiliar city, with a new team, with Kai still new to high-level competitive hockey. Kai needed someone to show him the ropes, and Taehyun was the only one who could, or was willing to. It could bring two guys close even if they weren't romantically attracted to each other. And if they were…
He looks back towards the bed. “Does it help with teamwork?”
Taehyun laughs, clearly taken aback. “The press seems to think so.”
A smirk tugs at his own mouth. “Does it help with motivation?”
“Sometimes,” Taehyun allows with another shrug. “Kai's not as easy to motivate as he might look.”
Yeonjun is stuck staring for a moment. Is Taehyun implying what he thinks he's implying? It's so insane for him to imagine, even now that the truth is out in the open, Taehyun leaning into Kai's ear before a game, making filthy promises in the hopes that it would make him put his all out there on the ice that day. There's no way, right? Maybe there's a look they have, one of those myriads of ones they shoot each other and immediately know what they mean without having to say it. Maybe one of them means I will suck your cock if we win tonight, and Yeonjun has been looking at it for years now without realizing.
He's not sure how that thought makes him feel.
The thought of them, secret but out in the open. The thought of them, together. The thought of them, separately, as men, as queer men – bi, gay, pan or whatever they think this is. The thought of Taehyun, the grown-up, hardened, mature version of the kid he knew, in a relationship, sharing a bed every night. Kai, as someone's lover, boyfriend, life partner.
Whatever they call this.
A couple.
Kai finally appears again, joining Taehyun in the doorway, but he just leans against the door frame, leaving space between himself and Taehyun. They don't suddenly become touchy-feely. Nothing's different; Yeonjun just has to wonder a little less.
He thinks Kai looks a bit apprehensive.
“What about you?” His voice is a bit too weak. Taehyun presses his lips together so hard they go pale.
“I'm motivated enough already.”
Yeonjun clears his throat. “So, the whole time? Since juniors?”
They nod at the same time, perfectly in sync.
“We had our first kiss in the shower room at that stadium,” Kai says carefully, then smiles when Taehyun looks at him, and Taehyun's mouth curls up a little, too.
And Yeonjun is only a man, so he really can't help himself but ask, “So you had your very first kiss butt-naked?”
Kai snorts. Taehyun rolls his eyes just a little. “Don't imagine it.”
“Wasn't until you said that,” he replies honestly, and then Taehyun's eyes stay fixed on his as he helplessly follows that thought to the visual, to their bodies, wet from the shower, twining together in some way that is vague even in his mind, with the lack of reference, to their lips that are so stark, drawn in so much detail, sliding together. Tequila kisses and some terrible, perfect kind of synergy that has them slotting together just right, at the perfect pace, in a perfect moment.
Taehyun doesn't try to chide him for thinking about it again, even though he must be able to tell that he is.
“So.” Yeonjun swallows heavily. “Is this your way of telling me to back off?”
Whatever relaxed on Taehyun's face tightens again. He sees Kai's fists clenching at his sides, too.
“It's my way of telling you that Kai is mine,” Taehyun says, firm, ignoring the look Kai sends him when he says it. “He's with me. I don't mind you being into him, I don't care if you're not into me. But we come together, or not at all, so make whatever decision you want, but you won't get one without the other.” Taehyun's arms cross tightly. Kai reaches out towards him but drops his hand again before it makes contact. “I get that this might not seem like a big deal to you, that it's not that important to Hyuka, but it's important to me. So those are the rules.”
The rules. The rules of what? Not casually hanging out with his completely platonic teammates.
Taehyun read that invitation on Sunday exactly the way Yeonjun meant it, didn't he. He saw right through him.
“I didn't mean to come between you,” he addresses Kai, though, meeting his eyes. They fought last night, because of this, because of him. “I'm sorry.”
Kai shrugs. “We should have been more clear with you from the start.”
Yeonjun looks at Taehyun again, who's lost some of that defiant edge he seemed so intent on projecting just moments before. “Why weren't you? To make it more fun? Let me wonder?”
Taehyun huffs through his nose. “We've never come out to a teammate before. We were hoping our reputation would do the talking for us.”
Something about that catches on Yeonjun's ears oddly. “Are you out to other people?”
Kai nods without hesitation. “Yeah. Family, neighbors. People know. We just wanted to keep it on the down low at work, just in case something…”
He trails off, and Taehyun takes over, easy, smooth. Natural. “We like it here. We like our team, this city, this apartment. We don't know how our teammates would react, or the coach, or management. And we're not planning on finding out.”
“If it's so important for you two to stay secret, then why would you tell me about it?”
Taehyun pierces him with an intense look again, flicking his eyes up and down Yeonjun's body. “Lots of reasons.”
Yeonjun feels hot on the inside, itchy, uncomfortable. “Like?”
“You owe me,” Taehyun says, flat and resolute. “You can keep a secret. And you care about the team more than about any of this shit. You know we're good enough to keep, no matter who's fucking who. What matters is what's on the ice. You know that. You've seen it.”
Of course he has. He's the third wheel of 3-Choi. Does Taehyun know that? Does he know what he's saying? It seems like he does; maybe that's why he's so confident. Like recognizes like, and Yeonjun has been playing with Soobin and Beomgyu without telling a soul a single peep about the shit he's seen them do together. Taehyun has a good reason to trust him with this.
Does Yeonjun owe him his silence? Probably. For all the shit that Taehyun never brings up when he could; all the past hurt he shoulders quietly, without bringing it to Yeonjun's attention. Or Kai's. Or anyone's.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Taehyun stands a little straighter. Kai shifts against the door frame.
“I won't tell anyone about this.”
Taehyun breathes out slowly, and it sounds oddly measured. Kai's jaw works, like he's chewing at the inside of his mouth. This was not the answer they were waiting for.
Instead of staring at Yeonjun, Taehyun turns to staring at the floor. “Thank you.”
“Are you guys happy?” Why is he asking that? He's being propositioned; they're waiting for his answer.
Taehyun snorts. Kai smiles a little, and finally does reach out, laying a hand on Taehyun's upper back.
“Yeah,” Kai answers for them. “We're really happy.”
Unless they're fighting over a stupid, lonely man who thought he could step in between this, just to make himself feel better. “That's great.”
He watches Taehyun swallow before he looks up again. “We didn't really mean for things to end up here,” he admits, and he sounds a little like he's making fun of himself. “At first, we were really just… worried about you.”
“Taehyun freaked out when you got injured,” Kai supplies, and Taehyun glares at him so hard Yeonjun almost smiles. Married couple, in all but name.
“I know you don't take injuries well.” Taehyun avoids his eyes.
Right; everyone knows that the last time Yeonjun had a serious injury, their captain had to basically drag him to a therapist to keep him from spiraling completely. Him needing psychological help got leaked to the press – everyone knew. Yeonjun couldn't mentally bear anything keeping him off the ice, a glass cannon. So fragile when not geared up and fighting.
“We just wanted to keep an eye on you.”
“And then what?” They both blink at him, confused, but he doesn't let it deter him. “When I got myself treated. When we won, and you knew I'd be okay.”
“That part's my fault,” Kai says, and he sounds apologetic, face tense, his hand sliding off Taehyun's back. Taehyun catches onto it before it can disappear completely, and holds tightly onto his fingers. “I was buzzed on the bus, and I got ahead of myself, and Taehyun and I…”
Taehyun squeezes his fingers harder. “We said some stupid shit we should have never said. Got ideas in our head. We were drunk when it came up, but we weren't drunk when we kept at it on Saturday. You seemed into it, until I…” he clears his throat. “Whatever. We weren't sure what we were doing, but it became clear on Sunday, when you tried to ask Kai out, what we should have been.”
“So you were coming onto me.”
Kai's mouth twitches, a bit wry. “Testing the waters.”
“You're into me?”
It's kind of a pointless question – they wouldn't be trying to get in his pants if they weren't. Still, it's satisfying when Kai snorts, eyes raking over his body blatantly.
“You're kidding me, right? Have you seen yourself in the gym?”
His fingers close around Taehyun's hand, and then Taehyun swallows and says, “I think you're hotter in the locker rooms, between periods. You're always so fired up. Ready to go even when you're supposed to be resting. So ready to give it to the other team, trash them so hard they won't even know what hit them.”
Yeonjun snorts. Of course it's about the hockey for him; should that be surprising? He knew Yeonjun as a player before he knew him as a person. Yeonjun wouldn't let Taehyun like him, so he developed a crush on his play instead.
Figures.
Taehyun's mouth curls up slightly. “You're no Kai at the gym, but you're okay, too.”
Yeonjun rolls his eyes, and Taehyun laughs. The ice cracks, just a little bit, in a good way. “You're no Kai at the gym, either, but I like that.”
Kai makes an affronted sound, and Taehyun lets out a breath that sounds like Yeonjun punched it out of his chest. “Oh?”
“You've got a quick build – you should have been on the wings with me.”
It's so much easier to say it like this, with the layer of the game in between them. He thought that Taehyun using it as a shield is a bit ridiculous, and here he is, doing the same thing.
Taehyun bites his lip. “So they say.”
“Someone compliment me too, before I get insecure,” Kai demands, but it's lighthearted, easy. Taehyun squints at him.
“I just did?”
“To compliment Yeonjun.”
Taehyun's eyes go wide, the way they do when he's being completely serious, but his tone doesn't match. “I think you fit perfectly in the back.”
Yeonjun can't stop himself from laughing. Kai's face scrunches up, and he lets Taehyun's hand go to slap him on the arm, making Taehyun laugh in his face, too. “God, shut up.”
“Ungrateful.”
“I'll show you grateful later.”
Kai is squinting at Taehyun dangerously, and Taehyun's chin is up, defiant. Is this how they flirt? That's what they're like, open? Unashamed?
They're cute; they're so cute in Yeonjun's eyes.
“Please do.”
Kai slaps at Taehyun again. Taehyun grins.
It's Yeonjun's turn to compliment Kai, but he doesn't want to intrude. He almost expects the two to kiss, but they don't – their hands only come together again, briefly, squeezing at each other before letting go. Then they look at Yeonjun expectantly.
He clears his throat. “Your body checks feel like I got hit by a car.”
Kai cackles, loud and easy. “Yeah? That's why you were staring at me in the gym? At the club?”
“Exactly.” Yeonjun crosses his arms loosely. He doesn't do this; flirting with men; complimenting them on their bodies, knowing they're attracted to him, and that he's attracted to them, too. “I keep wondering – how has this guy not landed anyone in the hospital yet?”
This time, Kai just snorts. “Pure luck, probably.”
“Would you have kissed me? At The Glacier?”
Kai's swallow seems a little awkward, his jaw a bit too tense. “Wanted to.”
“Yeonjun.”
He turns his attention to Taehyun, who seems serious again.
“I was serious. The choice is yours, but on our terms.”
“I'm not trying to steal Kai from you.”
“Okay,” Taehyun allows with a small nod. “Let's say I trust you on that. What are you trying to do?”
What is he trying to do? He's just acting without thinking right now; that's not fair to them. “I don't know – I don't think I even fully get what you're offering.”
Taehyun pulls his bottom lip through his teeth, horribly slow, then hesitates for a second with his mouth open. “We talked last night, and we think that if you're into us – both of us – we should do something about it. Purely physical. Just the one time, or every now and then, if we're still into it afterwards. Don't even think about saying yes just to get a shot with Kai. If I feel like you're shutting me out, I'm pulling the plug on the whole thing.”
Yeonjun squints at him. “You don't think I'm attracted to you.”
It's obvious, and maybe Taehyun knows that, because he doesn't flinch. “You didn't kiss me at the hotel, when I was giving you all the chance in the world to do it. You pulled back when I tried to join you and Kai. You don't look at me the same way you look at Kai. It's pretty obvious – but I guess I could be wrong.”
Or want to be. He is. Right? It was his body that was lingering on Yeonjun's mind when Kai came over to his room. His lips Yeonjun tried to memorize at the club, his proximity that had Yeonjun's head spinning in the hallway outside their hotel suite, in such a different way than Kai's did under the lights.
Taehyun feels different. Heavier. Weightier. Kai is hot and light and approachable and Taehyun is so closed off yet so tentatively open that Yeonjun has no idea what to do with himself around him.
“Taehyun…” his voice comes out too deep. Raspy? How does he show him that he wants him, for real? “What the fuck do you do with yourself in the shower after a win?”
Taehyun blinks, then his mouth twitches strangely, then he laughs, the sudden break in tension jarring. “What?”
“Kai told me that you have a post-win ritual – something about spending an hour in the shower?”
Kai throws his hands up when Taehyun shoots him a look. “Hey, technically, you told on yourself first. You babbled about it while you were wasted on the bus.”
Because he was wasted. Kai was so full of shit, trying to convince Yeonjun that he was sober. Maybe he was convincing himself, because they already knew what they wanted to talk about, when they got back to the hotel – Yeonjun, and their plans for him. His body. Whatever.
Taehyun looks at Yeonjun again, more intent this time. “What do you think I do?”
Yeonjun shrugs. His throat is closing, but this is the time to be shameless. Blatant. Obvious. Attracted. “I only ever got to you jerking yourself off before I lost my train of thought.”
It's too honest, maybe. Taehyun seems a bit amused, and a bit fascinated. “Do you imagine me in the shower a lot?”
“Lately? All the time.”
Taehyun smiles, for some reason, but his eyes stay dark. “Usually I just get myself ready for the real celly.”
Yeonjun looks at Kai, who's looking off into space, somewhere around Taehyun's waist. “And what's that?”
“It's a couple thing,” Taehyun counters, mildly, obviously teasing. There's no way they have the energy to go all the way after a game, do they? Yeonjun's not exactly experienced, but he's gathered over the years that penetrative sex isn't exactly effortless for gay couples. Topping sounds exhausting on a good day – and after a game? No way.
But it's on his mind now, and maybe that's the point. Who'd be topping? It has to be Kai, right? If Taehyun's the one getting ready, with the jokes he's made – he'd fit on top of Kai too, though. He's more limber; his hips move smoother. Kai's hands could stretch over Taehyun's abs, and Taehyun could take care of it. He's motivated; he's dynamic where Kai is passive. Offensive where Kai stays on the defense. He lets himself be caught, where Kai goes in for the kill. Slotting together perfectly, like always. Synergy.
“That's for us to know.”
Kai huffs, and for the first time ever, Yeonjun sees him reach for Taehyun and pull him closer. They don't fit like puzzle pieces – Kai holds Taehyun by the waist, but they're side-to-front, Taehyun's cheek on Kai's shoulder while Taehyun keeps his eyes on Yeonjun. There's space left there – there is an openness to it. Would it look different if he wasn't there? Definitely.
Taehyun lays a hand flat on Kai's stomach, but doesn't move it, just rests it there.
“Both of us, then?”
He didn't think Taehyun would want to – or did he? He's not sure anymore. What was anything before this, before he knew about this?
“Yeah. It's both of you.”
Together, apart, here, back at the hotel, on ice.
Taehyun's hand closes in a fist, bunching up Kai's shirt. “Okay.”
“Not…” Yeonjun swallows. His mouth feels dry. “After the game, alright? I. The game's important.”
They both nod, and he feels oddly but deeply relieved. “First home game in a while,” Taehyun says, straightening up a bit in Kai's hold. “We can't afford to be off our rhythm.”
Kai smiles a little. “I miss the cheers.”
So does Yeonjun. God. “Let's give them a barn burner, alright?”
Taehyun smiles, too. “Yes, sir.”
It's almost crazy to imagine right now, looking up while waiting for the puck to drop in front of Soobin at face-off, and seeing the two of them there, in-position, fully geared up, knowing what he now knows. They're together, and they want him, bad enough to go for it even though it's a stupid, reckless idea. This career is their everything – their whole life. If Yeonjun was a worse person, he could have tried to elbow them off the team with this information.
But he won't. Because at the end of the day, he's like them, more than they know. And he owes Taehyun some long-overdue kindness.
They're at the voluntary on Wednesday. They smile at Yeonjun when he enters the locker room, and he smiles back. He heads towards Soobin first, to drop off the jacket, and the captain looks genuinely surprised to see it find its way back to him. Yeonjun feels a little offended.
He's halfway into putting his training gear on when Beomgyu comes to hover over him, fully dressed with his helmet under his arm, eyebrows raised in a curious expression.
“You seem in a good mood.”
Yeonjun tries not to glance towards Taehyun and Kai's seats, already vacant, but it feels almost impossible. “Do I?”
“Mhm,” Beomgyu hums, even more suspicious now, if it was even possible. “What's going on?”
“Nothing? I got in a good night's sleep?”
It doesn't seem to impress Beomgyu, but for once, Yeonjun doesn't care. This is his. A knowledge he can carry in himself and let it make him feel a bit better. It's not that deep, but it still feels good. Being wanted, in some capacity. It makes him feel less alone. He has something more than an attack line binding him together with someone now. A secret, sure, but it's not that hard to keep his mouth shut. Technically, Beomgyu has never told him anything, either. They're used to keeping secrets from each other, halfheartedly, without any malice.
Some things, they just don't talk about, even as first-line wings.
“Right. How's that shoulder of yours?”
Yeonjun doesn't even blink, pulling the laces on his skates tight. “Perfectly fine.”
“Good. Then hurry up; it's so hot in here with this shit on.”
“Didn't ask you to wait for me,” he points out, repeating the same motion on the other side.
“Okay? Didn't ask you to come to practice today. We don't all get what we want.”
“What, you'd rather drill alone with Soobin?”
Beomgyu doesn't answer. Yeonjun looks up from his skates and into Beomgyu's unimpressed face.
“You're hilarious today; side-splitting, really.”
For a second, Yeonjun was afraid he went too far, but Beomgyu just sounds dry and sarcastic. He smiles at Beomgyu, reaching for his jersey, just as dry.
“What can I say, Beoms? I'm in a great mood today.”
Yeonjun thinks he's starting to understand how Kai and Taehyun do it. He drills, he sprints, he shoots until his arms hurt, listens to one of the coaches explaining a new power play strategy they're thinking of testing out, and it's easy to get lost in it, like it always was. He's been at this since he was a kid; it's as easy as breathing.
That doesn't mean his eyes don't catch on them sometimes. He looks over when Kai is particularly loud laughing along with one of their goalkeepers, Taehyun at his side as always, smiling along. When they take a break, Soobin has a million things to say about the way Yeonjun handles his passes again, but Yeonjun's eyes wander over as he lets the words wash over him without letting them stick, as usual, and Taehyun is patting sweat off his neck with a towel, having another silent conversation with Kai while Kai drinks from his water bottle, then hands it to Taehyun, who presses it to his own mouth without hesitation.
He should have noticed; that they're together.
That they're both handsome as hell.
Taehyun keeps his hair back with a cap when he doesn't need to have his helmet on, and his eyes look extra big whenever he peeks up from under it, taking in the lay of the land before he passes or shoots at the goal. Kai chews his lips in concentration when he has to listen to strategy, leaving them cherry red by the time the coach lets them go. Kissable. They're distracting in small, pleasant bursts. It doesn't feel like need, like something sharp that would drag him in their direction. It feels like…
Sharing a team with two attractive men, whose eyes shine a little differently than everyone else's while they hold their hands up for high-fives after Yeonjun does something impressive, and maybe they'll do something about that, once they have time.
Once there's time.
He makes sure not to shower at the same time they do, just for his own sanity, even though Beomgyu loudly makes fun of him for being slow when he takes his time to make sure they're done before he hops in. The only thing that stops him is Soobin wryly pointing out that being on Yeonjun's case is not making him any faster, but maybe what actually shuts him up is seeing Soobin in just a towel, striding over to his spot on the bench.
Yeonjun lets himself watch, for once in his life. Soobin is tall, wide-shouldered, muscled but far from burly – fit. He's lean and wide and long and all these other good things, and yet Yeonjun is able to measure all that objectively. Soobin's waist is slim, not perfect for his hands to slot into. His shoulders don't need his fingers digging into them, his throat doesn't need Yeonjun's teeth. He's handsome with his cheeks pink from the warm water, but he doesn't make Yeonjun's head spin.
He's just Soobin, just one of Yeonjun's teammates, and maybe, in some ways, his friend.
Beomgyu whistles sharply. Soobin looks over at him, but Beomgyu is glaring at Yeonjun.
Yeonjun rolls his eyes.
Taehyun looks like a teenage girl's daydream, leaning against his car with his head tilted back, hands in the pockets of his open jacket, pulling it to the sides to reveal a familiar skin-tight shirt. He's dressed in all black, his hair is a mess, and Yeonjun thinks he might be smiling even from afar.
“Waiting for someone?”
He's definitely smiling when he drops his head to look at Yeonjun as he approaches their parking spot, then turns around to rap at the back window, making Kai pop out of the front seat like he's on a spring.
“Maybe,” Taehyun replies coolly, even though there's nothing cool at all about them so obviously waiting to ambush him. Kai looks excited. Yeonjun wonders if he should be worried.
“I'm actually busy tonight, if you've got plans for me,” he admits and tries not to sound too regretful. His morning news appearance is tomorrow, and their PR team sent him some last-minute notes they want him to review – he's not looking forward to it.
“We won't keep you long,” Kai assures, and smiles at him pleasantly.
“Okay.” He tosses his training bag over his shoulder, standing a polite distance away.
Taehyun crosses his arms. “The mandatory is on Friday.”
“Right.”
“And the match is Sunday.”
“Yeah?”
“That's a long time away.”
His tone is loaded, and Yeonjun bites down on his bottom lip immediately. He takes a deep breath through his nose. “I thought we weren't getting distracted before the game.”
“I don't know about you, but I'm already distracted,” Kai says, way more jovially than the statement probably warrants.
Yeonjun doesn't feel like he is, hasn't noticed either of them slipping, either, but he doesn't point that out.
Taehyun smiles, almost too self-satisfied. “We might need to fight fire with fire.”
“As in…? You said you wouldn't keep me long.”
Kai cackles. “Nothing time-consuming.”
“Let's kiss.”
“What?” Yeonjun doesn't know why he's surprised, but he's gaping. Kai and Taehyun seem to find him hilarious.
Taehyun props one foot up on his car by the taillight, leaning back again, all casual. “Something to tide us over. You want to, don't you?”
“Not as romantic as The Glacier, but a parking garage will do, right?”
It's abandoned enough for them to make it work; Yeonjun was the last one out of the locker room with how long he spent lingering to avoid seeing these two naked. And now they want to kiss him and ruin his hard work?
He can't say no.
“Can't even make out on the hood of your car – no romance here at all.”
Taehyun snorts. “We can make out on the seats – would that make you feel better?”
“It would be hard for Kai to watch us there, though.”
Taehyun raises his eyebrows, tilting his head a little. “You want him to watch?”
“Weren't those the ground rules?”
“The rules were that you don't leave me out.”
“I don't feel as strongly about it as he does,” Kai explains, voice quiet.
“Yeah, I'm the insecure one,” Taehyun affirms, speaking a little too harshly, like the admission won't sound as bad if he says it confidently. “If it was up to Kai—”
“He doesn't need to know.”
Is Kai blushing? It's too dark to tell. Taehyun snorts.
“Maybe he should.”
“Not before the game,” Yeonjun offers, not quite letting Kai off the hook, not quite ganging up on him with Taehyun. “I don't need to be thinking of whatever you're thinking of.”
Kai just looks vaguely embarrassed – it's Taehyun who's sizing him up, saying, “Probably not.”
Have they traded places? Is Taehyun the one making moves now? Is this just what Taehyun's like when he's confident? They switch roles as seamlessly as they do with everything else.
Yeonjun's so unused to being on the receiving end of this – he's used to being protected by them by now, not attacked. If he had to face them on a regular basis, he's sure he'd be afraid of them too.
“Do the rules say who gets to go first?”
He means it as a joke, but Taehyun nods and tilts his head back. “Yeah, they do.”
Kai reacts immediately, and Yeonjun can't tell if this is a Huekang telepathy thing, or if they planned this, as calculated as always. He turns until he's halfway on top of Taehyun, one of his hands coming up to rest on his waist, so well-defined under his shirt, and something about the way his long fingers rest on it lightly makes it look delicate, gently affectionate more than anything else. It's not lusty, it's not rushed – it's a contrast to how tightly Taehyun's fingers hold onto Kai's head when they press their lips together, digging in so hard Yeonjun thinks it has to hurt at least a bit, but Kai doesn't wince or make a sound other than a pleased sigh when Taehyun parts his lips to kiss him deeper.
They don't fully slot together, keeping some space between them that they lean across – that part, Yeonjun knows is calculated. To let him watch, to make sure they leave him with something to haunt his dreams. Taehyun's tongue disappearing past Kai's lips; Kai's hand tightening on Taehyun's waist, pressing in but not grabbing, Taehyun's back arching in response, the little noise he makes when Kai nips at his lip before they let each other go.
How is he supposed to get any sleep tonight? He has to be at the broadcasting building at 6 tomorrow.
They're both crazy.
Taehyun keeps Kai close even when they move away, grabbing the neck of his shirt tightly. “First.”
Kai smiles. “First.” He punctuates it by kissing the corner of Taehyun's mouth, which Taehyun lets him do despite the grimace his face twists into. It makes Kai laugh as he's pulling away.
“I swear to god he likes being kissed, he just gets shy in front of other people,” he quips Yeonjun's way with a grin as he settles back against their car.
“I don't get shy,” Taehyun hisses, betraying himself with just the self-conscious tone of his voice.
Yeonjun has to take a deep breath before answering. This is cool. He can be so cool about this. “He didn't seem shy with his tongue in your mouth.”
“Oh, don't get me wrong, he's a show-off when he thinks he looks sexy. It's the cuteness he has a problem with.”
“Excuse me, think I look sexy?”
“You look sexy all the time, actually, you just don't always notice,” Kai says brightly, managing to sound like a boyfriend placating his sulky girlfriend with a hundred percent authenticity.
Taehyun squints at him with the fierceness of a woman scorned, too. It's kind of adorable.
“Like right now. So sexy when you're angry.”
It just gets Kai a huff that makes him laugh more, before he looks over at Yeonjun, drawing Taehyun's eyes to him, too. Yeonjun hesitates.
“My turn?”
“Your turn,” Taehyun confirms, lightly crossing his arms. Defensive, just a little.
“Rules?”
“Dealer's choice.” He sounds firm, and Yeonjun is a little surprised.
“This doesn't make you insecure?”
Taehyun purses his mouth. “Can you just enjoy it? I'm trying to be mature about this.”
That little show of vulnerability emboldens Yeonjun, and he finally steps forward, towards them. “Sure, but I'm curious now. What would be Taehyun's pick? Do you want me to kiss you, or do you want to watch me make out with your boyfriend?”
Taehyun's eyes narrow as Yeonjun comes to a halt right in front of him. “Both, duh. That's what this whole thing is about.”
“About you wanting me.”
“Us wanting you.”
“Right. And you're one half of us.”
“Right.” Taehyun lifts his chin, defiant. Yeonjun wonders what makes him so defensive. He already told him he was into him, just in the least straightforward way possible.
Yeonjun raises his eyebrows, and waits.
To his surprise, Taehyun cracks almost immediately, maybe because he does it in a way that sounds like he hasn't cracked at all. “You're my type.”
He wants Yeonjun to come chasing after that, right? He wants to bait so Yeonjun would catch him. When Yeonjun comes even closer, Taehyun is into it; he was waiting for it.
“And what's your type?”
Taehyun's throat jumps; is he nervous? Yeonjun is. “Tall. Right-handed. Decent shooting accuracy. At least one league win.”
Yeonjun snorts. Taehyun smiles, but it's a bit stiff. Nervous, but he's trying.
“Hard worker, but knows how to be reckless. Someone fun.”
Is this a boyfriend application? Isn't Taehyun supposed to be trying to seduce him?
“Am I fun?”
Taehyun's eyes stare into his. They're so serious again. He's so much less daring when they're close like this. “I don't know yet – looking forward to finding out, though.”
See? That sounds like flirting.
He leans in; they're a breath apart and he pauses, partially to see what Taehyun will do, partially because it conjures up memories of the scant handful of times he's done this before. They were girls, mostly, and while they were soft and pretty, they had as little experience as he did, and didn't make him feel much of anything.
Taehyun's eyes narrow, but don't close, and Yeonjun's stomach tightens when he huffs out a small laugh and his breath hits Yeonjun's own lips. “Nervous?”
Yeah; yeah, he is. Taehyun makes him nervous – maybe he just needs to accept that. “Not as much as you.”
He can see, even from up close, as Taehyun rolls his eyes, then closes the gap between them. Maybe he likes a challenge almost as much as he likes being chased after.
It's too gentle; just the softest of kisses against his lips, then a brush, then another. Taehyun sighs. His jacket rustles as his hands raise and fall without reaching out. Yeonjun feels frozen.
Taehyun pulls back. “Yeonjun?”
There's an odd swell somewhere in Yeonjun's chest – that's not good, is it? That's not okay.
Taehyun's lips were so warm – a bit rough and a bit wet from kissing Kai. He kissed Yeonjun so gently, compared to the enthusiasm with which he grabbed at Kai. They went right in; with Yeonjun, he was taking his time.
“Yeonjun.”
“Hm?”
“What's wrong?” Among all the ways Taehyun could react, he looks genuinely worried. “You froze up.”
He licks at his lips. Taehyun's wide eyes narrow slowly.
“That nervous to be kissing Taehyun?” Kai says it jovially, and maybe that helps. Yeonjun takes a deep breath.
“To be kissing anyone, I guess,” he admits, a bit too quiet, but it's obvious they heard him, anyway.
Taehyun's eyebrows jump up. “Why? That wasn't your first kiss, was it? You're, like, almost thirty.”
“I'm nowhere near thirty,” Yeonjun hisses, and Taehyun just looks unimpressed, looking him up and down dubiously. “And that wasn't my first. It's just. Been a while.”
“A while?”
He looks over at Kai, who seems a bit taken aback but mostly curious. It's a genuine question. Yeonjun runs his bottom lip through his teeth, and Kai glances down at it distractedly. “Year or two?”
“That long?” It's Taehyun, finally dropping his skepticism for just plain surprise.
“Yeah? I'm busy.”
Taehyun squints at him oddly. Kai huffs through his nose.
“Figures,” Taehyun says, but it's Kai who looks more like he's thinking it.
Kai breaks out into an easy smile. “I guess you need us more than we thought.” He reaches out to pat Yeonjun's back, then leaves his hand there, between his shoulder blades. “We'll get you laid, don't worry. We'll take one for the team.”
Yeonjun rolls his eyes at the same time Taehyun does.
“Don't listen to him.”
And Yeonjun looks over at Kai, who's closer to them now, still turned towards them, the hand on Yeonjun's back slowly descending somewhere to the middle of it instead. “I guess I don't have to, do I?”
Kai catches on quickly, meeting Yeonjun halfway before he manages to lean fully into Kai's space, catching his lips in an eager kiss – this one is more like the one he and Taehyun shared, but this time Kai is the more active one. Pivoting, switching roles smoothly to fit Yeonjun this time. He needs someone to lead to get past the weird nervous buzz in his body, the weird weight in his chest Taehyun's kiss left him with, so Kai steps in. It feels good; like someone's got him, ready to pick up his slack – like when he can pass across the ice blindly, knowing exactly where Beomgyu would be, ready to receive. Safe in a way that feels freeing, exhilarating. With a firm enough structure to push yourself off of, you can go anywhere… can't you?
Kai's palm pushes against his spine and it feels good even though a part of him wishes that Kai's hands would wander, but the only motion is him reaching up to Yeonjun's neck, to hold his jaw with gentle fingertips. He's passionate but not too wild, doesn't get sloppy, doesn't pull Yeonjun against himself. Yeonjun has never been with anyone long enough to be kissed like he was missed, but he imagines it would be a little like this.
Kissing a happy mouth, a flirty tongue licking at his own. Scrunched up eyes and knuckles caressing down his jawline when they part for air.
It's easy, just like Yeonjun imagined it would.
They're still catching their breath when Yeonjun feels a tug at his jacket, and looks over to Taehyun's eyes, which look severe. Challenging. His eyebrows are up. Ground rules are, don't leave him out – Yeonjun has let him down again, hasn't he?
It doesn't feel weighty and painful this time – not when he can fix that by pivoting again, switching roles, pressing his chest into Taehyun's firm, defined one, biting his lip. Everything feels better when he's not overthinking it, just acting, reacting to the way Taehyun is under his hands when he rests them on Taehyun's ribs, avoiding his waist for his own sanity, against his lips, on his tongue. It feels a little like Taehyun is fighting him, in a playful way, biting and pushing back, then chasing when Yeonjun pulls away.
It's such a sharp contrast to their previous kiss; this one is fun, exciting. Instead of tightening some kind of terrible knot in Yeonjun's chest, it loosens it, tension draining out of his back that Kai still keeps his hand planted on, skimming up and down his spine. Taehyun holds onto Yeonjun's elbows, like he's bracing himself, the pressure of his fingers through Yeonjun's jacket slowly proving to be a telltale sign of how he's feeling. He goes after the death grips, the things that make Taehyun's fingertips go pale. It's a challenge he enjoys rising to.
He loses track of time somewhere along the way, and maybe they take too long getting lost in each other, trading kisses and it should worry him, even if Kai doesn't think it's a big deal, if he's not the type to get insecure, or feel left out. Taehyun fits into him so well, back arched to get closer, and when Yeonjun can finally get himself to stop and move away, they part with a wet sound that would make him blush if he wasn't flushed already.
They're still pressed together chest to hip, and Yeonjun can feel Taehyun's semi pressing up against him. He's not too far behind – it really has been too long for him, and Taehyun's so…
“Hot.”
Kai sounds like he's trying not to laugh. Taehyun glowers at him, his fingers unclenching from where they dug into Yeonjun's elbows, palms sliding up his forearms to grip onto Yeonjun's own, pulling them away from Taehyun's body. He takes the hint and takes a step back; he thinks he catches Taehyun's breath hitching a little as he does – they've built up so much heat in between them, the cold of the parking garage suddenly feels shocking on his front.
“It's a compliment,” Kai argues in the face of Taehyun's glare, then leans over to land a peck on his mouth.
“Shut it.”
Yeonjun clears his throat, but his voice still comes out strange. “Doesn't look like he's showing off.”
“He just doesn't realize how sexy he looks right now,” Kai says lightly, smiling over at him then grinning at Taehyun's flushed face. “Told you.”
Taehyun rolls his eyes, then tilts his head back towards the ceiling, taking slow, deliberate breaths. Yeonjun and Kai watch his throat, the tendons in his neck straining. Would he be into Yeonjun peppering it with kisses, biting into it?
“I'm not driving today.”
Kai snorts. “I've got you.”
The e-mail Yeonjun got from PR warned him that someone leaked details of some contract negotiations to the press and he needs to be careful about dodging all questions related to it, and while he had no idea about it before, now he knows and it makes him restless enough that not thinking about kissing his teammates is easy all through his morning routine and getting over to the station for his interview. The male morning show host knows him well already and pulls him away to chat as soon as the hair and makeup people are satisfied with him, and he stays occupied the entire time until he's getting back into his car to go back home.
He thinks the interview went well – he played dumb when the hosts tried dropping hints to bait him into revealing insider news, and while he hates talking about his injuries, it was satisfying to be able to squash all rumors of him maybe slowing down this season with a theatrical show of doing pushups on local TV, making the female host flustered by having her hold his suit jacket for him. The media likes him like this, a bit dramatic, a bit of a show-off, and he laughs about it with them later. The push-up bit was planned, the jacket holding was not, but the woman assures him she didn't mind with an easy laugh. He thinks maybe she likes him, just a little, when a twinkle in her eye reminds him of the way Kai has been looking at him lately.
Before he starts the car, he checks his phone, just to see texts from #14 Kang again.
you looked good on tv today
a bit unnecessary though?
Yeonjun snorts to himself.
you loved it
we did
you have good push up form
There's a giddiness in Yeonjun's chest. He pulls up the contact #41 Huening, a number he's never texted before.
what do you see in this guy again?
All he gets in response is, lol.
On Friday at the mandatory, Kai and Taehyun enclose him between them while the coaches make them watch the other team play and talk strategy. They don't touch him or anything, just keep him pinned down with the knowledge that he's in the middle of something that is usually just a two-person thing. He feels like blushing, even though he really has no reason to. Nothing untoward is happening and yet it keeps him on edge even as he focuses on the head coach talking, determined to still do his job properly.
Taehyun smiles at him from across the locker room while he's pulling his pants on, and Kai's hand is on his shoulder casually as they're leaving, Taehyun walking on Kai's other side. They keep pace with him while running again today. Taehyun shares his water bottle with him, Kai helps him tighten the straps of his elbow pads. During a break, he stands between them again while Taehyun tells him about the goalie they'll be up against on Sunday. He's been on ice with him before; they were friends on Taehyun's junior team, before he was shuffled around to go join up with Kai. Excellent player; nice guy.
“He has flexibility issues, though – can't kneel as wide as some other guys can.”
There's a double entendre there, and Yeonjun can see that Kai catches it but doesn't comment, so Yeonjun doesn't, either. They're talking business – in Taehyun's mind, anyway.
Beomgyu corners him on their way back to the locker room, trying to pry into why he seems so close to the Huekangs all of a sudden, but Yeonjun just brushes him off. Is anything wrong with that? Is he not allowed to have friends outside first line? Is Beomgyu jealous? He has Soobin all to himself, and Yeonjun has to share. Doesn't that balance things out?
This time, Yeonjun doesn't linger in the lockers so obviously, to get Beomgyu off his back for a bit if nothing else, but he spends most of his shower with his eyes closed or on his own body. It stops Beomgyu from asking more questions, but doesn't stop Taehyun from brushing the backs of their hands together as they step out of the shower at the same time, for once leaving Kai behind instead of Taehyun taking care to leave with him as usual.
He leans in just a little and quietly asks, “Dinner plans?”
And Yeonjun licks his lips and admits, “None.”
“Our place?”
Yeonjun wants to see Taehyun's eyes so badly, but he doesn't want to draw attention to their quiet conversation, so he just asks, “What happened to not getting distracted?”
“We'll play nice,” Taehyun promises, brushing their hands again and then detaching to head for his own bag.
He sighs as he does the same, avoiding Soobin's curious eyes this time.
They'll get him in so much trouble, and they won't even know it'll be their fault completely.
Playing nice apparently means taking Yeonjun grocery shopping with them while Taehyun lists him the handful of recipes he feels confident making himself so he can choose what he'd like for dinner, and watching Kai and Taehyun argue about whether they should be keeping sugary cereal in their pantry at all – Taehyun is against it, arguing that it's just going to make it harder for them to avoid cravings while they're on a strict diet for the season, and Kai mostly just waxes poetic about cocoa puffs. They both turn to him for help at some point, to which he just holds his hands up defensively and admits that he's more of a shredded wheat guy, which just seems to disgust them both enough that they forget about the issue altogether.
He's a bit hurt, but it gets them to stop arguing, so he counts his blessings.
They end up finding some very reasonably-priced pork chops, and Taehyun pan-sears them for them in the kitchen while glaring at the meat with the same intensity Yeonjun would assume most people would reserve for high-stakes matches, and Kai anxiously picks their breakfast nook clean of all the junk left all over it. Yeonjun tried to assure him that he doesn't mind the mess at least three times, but Kai just waves him off.
“Just let him do it,” Taehyun says the third time, finally showing that he's been paying attention to them after he seemed lost in his own world the entire time he was preparing the food. “Makes him feel better.”
“It would make me feel better if you cleaned up after yourself,” Kai chips in, pulling a random ballpoint pen out of a gap between the backrest and the seat.
Taehyun rolls his eyes.
It's a tight fit in the breakfast nook with how long all of their legs are and the width of their shoulders, but they work it out even though it was clearly only meant for two. It feels a bit symbolic. The food is great, and Taehyun seems maybe the most relaxed that Yeonjun has ever seen him while he wasn't asleep.
They migrate to the living room after they're done eating, leaving each other ample personal space as they settle down on the sectional. Yeonjun sits between them again, and it gives him the same itchy feeling it did back at practice. He's painfully aware that he's in their space now, on their couch, between them.
“You really should come over to my place sometime,” he says just to have something to say, rubbing his hands together between his knees.
Taehyun raises an eyebrow at him. “Why? Do you want to show off your bench press?”
Yeonjun doesn't really have a good answer to that. “I won't say no if you want to just come over and lift.”
Kai snorts out a laugh. “If you want to watch us work out, just come to the gym at the arena? We're there every day.”
“Saves on gym memberships,” Taehyun quips, easy. “Really convenient.”
“Not as convenient as having a bench press in your living room.”
Taehyun rolls his eyes. “It's really not the flex you think it is.”
“I think you'd like my apartment,” Yeonjun argues, defensive.
“Why?” Taehyun's eyebrows pop back up, teasing. “Do you have a big bed?”
Well. “That, too.”
Kai grins and leans forward. “Big shower?”
Yeonjun scrunches up his nose. “Not big enough for three.” Two, maybe, but three would be pushing it. He's not a millionaire; he just lives more than comfortably.
Taehyun tilts his head to the side. “How about just one, but he needs a bit of space to work in?”
Right. That. “To get prepared for the celebration?”
He just gets a one-shouldered shrug from Taehyun. He tries to keep breathing at a normal pace, but it isn't easy. Why is it always Taehyun in the shower? Slippery, wet, well-defined, panting, pink, hard, wanting Taehyun, playing with his dick in Yeonjun's shower. Getting himself worked up, or getting himself loosened up, whatever the fuck preparing actually means. Maybe he just takes forever to get hard. Maybe he'd like Yeonjun to help. Maybe he'd like Yeonjun to—
“We can take it to your place on Sunday,” Kai offers, and Yeonjun snaps back out of his daydream and into the reality, where Kai's waiting for him to regain enough brain function to make plans to fuck them.
What the fuck has he gotten himself into again? “Do you guys really do shit after games?”
Kai shrugs. “Taehyun's into it – it's easy when he's so into it.”
“It's not all about me.” Taehyun sounds a little offended.
“It kind of is? The post-win sex is – let's be honest.”
Taehyun presses his lips together and glares, and Kai puts on some kind of heavy-handed expression of you know what I'm talking about that's entirely unhelpful to Yeonjun, who has no fucking idea what Kai is getting at. They have another, this time completely silent argument, and then Taehyun huffs and throws himself back into the cushions.
“It's good sex.”
“Didn't say it wasn't,” Kai points out mildly. “I said I like how much you're into it.”
“It's a good way to work off the adrenaline,” Taehyun argues as if either of them was fighting him on it. “I bet half the guys on our team go home and jerk off after a game.” Then he pauses and looks at Yeonjun, like he just realized something. “You do it, too.”
Yeonjun blinks. He's really not sure what gives Taehyun the confidence. “No? I go out for drinks with the others? Or I just go to sleep.” Maybe he's been doing more of the latter, lately. He's getting old. “Maybe when I was a teenager and I'd just jack off all the time, but—”
“At the championship, when we roomed together.” That would explain why Taehyun sounded dead confident then. “After our quarterfinals win, I went to hang out with the others for a bit while you went up to our room, and when I got there later, you were so loud.” Taehyun doesn't sound like he's making fun of him; more like he's stating a deathly serious fact. Kai isn't laughing either, even though to Yeonjun it's so clearly, sharply embarrassing.
“I—”
“Whiny.”
Yeonjun covers his face with his hands. “Okay, I get it. I used to be horny, too.”
Taehyun doesn't say anything, but Yeonjun feels his hand sliding onto his thigh, fingers shamelessly slipping all the way to curl around the inside of it. “It's my favorite memory from that championship.”
Slowly, Yeonjun puts his hands down to look at Taehyun dubiously instead. “We won silver that year.”
“Yeah? Means that we lost the last match. Had to watch the other team get their flowers and act like we didn't think it should have been us instead.”
“So you'd rather think of me jerking off in our room?”
Taehyun's hand rubs at his thigh, up and down. “You were hot; you sounded hot. I was like sixteen and—” he blinks, shakes his head, squeezes Yeonjun's thigh. “Everyone was so star-struck by you; I was just the only one gay enough to feel like it's something more.”
Something more? I-want-to-fuck-my-role-model something more or…?
Did Taehyun have a little crush on him? It sounds crazy. Taehyun hated him, or was afraid of him. He said it himself. Wouldn't stop him from being attracted to Yeonjun, though.
“You were into me since we were kids?”
Taehyun gives him another one-shoulder shrug. “I told you you're my type.”
He did, but Yeonjun thought he was joking – he's not sure why he assumed that. Why else would Taehyun want to sleep with him bad enough to let him in between himself and Kai, even though he himself admits it makes him insecure to see them together?
“Is Taehyun yours?”
Yeonjun almost forgot for a second that Kai is right there with them. “What?”
Kai has a placid little smile on his face. “Is Taehyun your type?”
Is he? Yeonjun hasn't spent a long time thinking about his own type, if he's being honest. Now he sizes Taehyun up, his compact form, the smooth line of his jaw, his curious eyes and the hand on his thigh that hasn't let go yet. It's all attractive – he can't find a single flaw, if he's being honest. Does that make him Yeonjun's type? Or is Yeonjun just being desperate again?
“I guess.”
“You guess.” Taehyun pulls his hand back, but Yeonjun catches it in his own.
“Left-handed. Aggressive play. Fast skater. Not afraid to throw a punch.”
Taehyun looks away, but his mouth twitches up. Kai slaps a hand to his own chest dramatically next to them.
“Ouch.”
Yeonjun smiles over at him. He doesn't actually look upset in the slightest. “Wide shoulders, thick thighs. Takes a decade to get his gear on.”
Kai snorts, but it makes him grin. “I like to go slow and steady.”
He squeezes Taehyun's hand a little without thinking about it. “Do you?”
“Mhm. Lasts longer that way.”
Yeonjun blinks hard. He looks over at Taehyun, who squeezes his hand back before letting go. “He really does take forever.”
Kai pouts at Taehyun. “You say that like it's a bad thing.”
“Sometimes I just want to get it over with – I don't want to have to wait for you every time.”
“Is that why you're looking for a threesome?” Yeonjun feels a bit bad about stepping in between them, but he's curious. He's so curious. Have they done this before? Is that why they do it?
Taehyun presses his lips together, his joking expression gone. “We're not looking for a threesome.”
Kai tries to put on a lighthearted smile, but something is off about it. “We're looking for you, actually.”
“Me?”
“We both want to sleep with you, Yeonjun. It's not any more complicated than that.”
Yeonjun stares at Taehyun. That doesn't sound simple to him at all.
Taehyun leans over and kisses him, stamping kiss after kiss on his mouth when he doesn't move away. “We'll celebrate. Like we didn't back in juniors. It'll be fun.”
He says it against Yeonjun's mouth, and Taehyun is trying to simplify this for him, make it easy, but it feels so heavy. It sounds so heavy. Something long in the making.
“Okay.”
He presses his hand into Taehyun's jaw and kisses him back. It's sharp, angular, and fits perfectly into the cushion of Yeonjun's hand.
Definitely his type.
HLSSK 3 : 2 EHC (GWS)
(1-0, 0-1, 1-1)
(OT: 0-0)
(SO: 2-0)
Choi Y. (Choi B., Choi S.) — 3:25
Choi B. (Choi Y., Huening) — 52:51 (PP)
If nothing else, they give their fans a show on Sunday. They score early on in the first period, giving the other team a taste of the famed 3-Choi line teamwork, passing like they can read each other's minds and sneaking one up top shelf right under the crossbar, Beomgyu barreling into his chest afterwards like it was their winning goal and not just a lucky opener to the match. It fills him with the kind of fire that he likes, motivating him to do better, fight harder, but the rest of the period is a bit of a cold shower.
The other team are no pushovers, and they make them fight for every opening, every chance for a shot on goal, and the rest of the period is exhausting and uneventful. If Yeonjun is honest with himself, he seethes a little back in the locker room, even as the head coach seems happy enough with their play. They're not an easy match, and the crowd loves this push and pull. Just don't let them down, boys. Don't let them down.
They let them down in the second period. After ten minutes of fruitless attempts at attacks, they slip up in their defending zone and the other team's forechecker scores before they even know what happened, tying the game up. Yeonjun looks on from the bench in disbelief as the other bench cheers, and he glances to the side to exchange looks with Soobin, who is clearly trying to stay calm. They can't let it get to their heads, not during a home game.
The arena boos, and it's not Yeonjun's time to get on the ice yet. One of the coaches pats his shoulder, but it doesn't really help. Behind him, he can hear people in the stands hitting the plexiglass separating them from the players below. They can turn this around.
Taehyun gets into a fight somewhere around the 35th minute when one of their opponents' forwards gets a little too excited trying to play the rebound and hits their goalie hard in the arms. He skates back to the bench just so the medical team can hand him tissues for the blood trickling out of his right nostril, and heads right for the penalty box without a word of complaint to the referee, even though Soobin does try to talk him out of a roughing penalty by pointing out that he fought cleaner than the other guy. He got worse than he gave, really, and he was just defending their goalkeeper. A 4-on-4 is not the worst thing that can happen to them, though. Maybe it'll motivate them. They'll fuck them up for messing with their goalie.
They don't. The rest of second period is just as miserable as the first half. Taehyun's nose is always bleeding again when he gets back to the bench, smearing over his top lip. Beomgyu gets restless, starts another fight and starts fumbling passes. They're lucky to have their goalie, and their pillars of a defense line in the back, or they'd be in deep shit by the time they make it back to the locker room.
Soobin isn't a very loud kind of captain, not keen on big speeches or lectures, usually more there for his players if they need him and to politely argue with referees for them than anything else. This time, once he's done giving the interview he got pulled aside to give, he stands in the middle of a locker room while they all lick their wounds, real or metaphorical, and tells them seriously how much they can't afford to fuck this up. He makes eye contact with Beomgyu at one point, who just looks away, chastised. When Yeonjun looks over at Taehyun and Kai, Kai's holding an ice pack to the back of Taehyun's lowered head while his eyes stay focused on the floor, sweaty hair hiding his face from view.
Kai catches Yeonjun's eyes and his face twists into a kind of a wry smile, a bit too tight to be genuine. Yeonjun returns it, and makes sure to pat Taehyun on the back as they're flooding back out of the lockers.
Third period is a mess, there's a weird tense energy to the entire team the whole time it's happening. Sink or swim. That's what it feels like.
Right at the top of the third period, while Yeonjun is on the ice, the entire five man unit comfortably parked in the attacking zone, trying to figure out a way to throw the other team off their game, their defensemen try to pass across the blue line, but the pass is just slow enough for one of the opposing forwards to swoop in and steal the puck, dashing through the neutral zone at a speed that their defense can't hope to keep up with even if they try their best. Taehyun might, but not those two, and with a clever little fake-out that has their goalie stumbling, they're suddenly losing the match.
The arena boils, and so does Yeonjun's blood. Not this. Not at a home game. In front of the people who have been cheering him on all season so far?
I miss the cheers, Kai said at some point, in some world where his life matters outside of what's on the ice.
He misses them, too.
They're halfway into what seems like a losing fight when a third-line forward on their team gets tripped while attempting a two-on-one and they go into power play. Yeonjun is in their team's first power play line, and he's the last to make his way on the ice out of all of them. It's almost strange to watch them pass through the gate, hop over the board to get in. Soobin. Beomgyu. Kai. Taehyun.
Something weird stirs in him, watching them take their spots, taking his own spot as they line up for the face-off. They know what play they're going for. They've been here before. They need to do this – take advantage of this.
And they can, can't they? Soobin glances at Beomgyu, then at Yeonjun, and Yeonjun looks at Beomgyu, who seems nothing but grim and determined, rather than frantic and pissed off like he was in the second period. He looks at Taehyun, who pulls his jersey down where it hiked up his pads, then lowers himself closer to the ice. He looks at Kai, who's flicking his tongue over his mouth guard, focusing.
Some kind of calm enters him afterwards, and it's not quite Beomgyu's determination, or Kai's sharp focus. If anything, it almost feels like comfort. The stands roar around them, knowing that this is the time to turn it around. 3-Choi, Huekangs, lining up to save the day. There's no one he'd rather be on the ice with than these four. No one he trusts more to have his back than Kai and Taehyun, no one he trusts more to fight like hell with him in the front than Soobin and Beomgyu.
They can do this.
And it's true.
Huening at the blue, Choi on the right wing, Choi in front of the goal for the tip-in. Bang, bang, bang. 2:2, seven minutes before the end of the match, twenty seconds into their player advantage.
Kai literally picks Beomgyu up off the ice while they're celebrating and spins him like they're doing a figure skating routine. Soobin laughs his face off at it next to Yeonjun while they watch them, breathless, sweating. Happy. The arena is so loud it's overwhelming. Taehyun's nose has stopped bleeding, Yeonjun notices as they're piling back onto the bench.
The match ends in a tie, and no one is sure how to feel as they go into OT. Yeonjun gets to go back on the ice, of course, it would be crazy if he didn't, and Soobin and Taehyun go out with him. Taehyun is quick and aggressive – the kind of defenseman they'll need in a 3-on-3. A part of Yeonjun buzzes with the need to show Taehyun what he can do, even though they just scored together earlier. He's worthy of the admiration Taehyun used to have for him. He's worthy of fitting between him and Kai. He deserves this, deserves them, deserved both of their hands on him on their couch on Friday, sliding up his torso as they kissed him with promises of Sunday. After the game.
He wants to kiss Taehyun dumb at the parking garage, knowing that he wants this, that he's worked up from a win, that Yeonjun earned it.
Soobin hits a post. Taehyun rings one off the crossbar. Yeonjun hits the goalie center mass, uselessly, not even giving them a rebound to try to play. They lose control of the puck only twice and cover all counterattacks with ease, between the three of them and then when the next line gets on the ice with Beomgyu at the point, but it's useless. Nobody scores in overtime.
Yeonjun sinks into the bench, defeated, as they clean the ice up for shoot-outs. Someone taps him on the shoulder, letting him know that he'll be first up to shoot, and he just nods without properly processing the words. He stares off onto the ice until someone comes in between him and his view, and he slowly tips his head back to look at them.
Taehyun tips his own head back to take a drink of water, then hands him the bottle and watches him do the same. His helmet is off, sweaty hair a mess, sticking to his forehead. His cheeks are red and there's sweat rolling down his neck.
He's beautiful.
Yeonjun couldn't score for him tonight.
“Relax,” Taehyun says, and Yeonjun doesn't feel relaxed in the slightest.
Then Taehyun smiles, and Yeonjun feels his shoulders loosen.
“We haven't won yet.”
“So?”
But then it's time to get on the ice again. The audience chants his name as he lines up, as he skates up to pick the puck up, as he cuts an elegant curve through the attacking zone to fake the goalie out and back-hand the puck somewhere above his leg once it looks like he's missed his shot.
Except he just misses his shot. The thought is good, and he can see the goalkeeper struggle to cover the space above his pads, but he doesn't manage to lift the puck properly to sneak the puck in. He lets his back hit the boards. Taehyun is right there, leaning on the boards by the bench, with his eyes on him, and Yeonjun can't tell if he looks disappointed.
The other team fails to score a point against their own goalie, and Yeonjun stays as far away from Kai and Taehyun as possible, even as the team huddles together to watch their third best shooter line up for his penalty shot. They're keeping Beomgyu for round three, and Beomgyu's eyes are dead serious, even though Soobin's arm is thrown around his back for obvious emotional support.
Their no. 3 scores, and Yeonjun shouts in celebration along with the others, high fives him and pats him on the butt as he rejoins his team.
The opposing team's second penalty shot is a fail too. Yeonjun holds his breath. If Beomgyu scores, it's over.
He's their second most productive player. He's Beomgyu Choi. He winks at Soobin as he goes to line up for his shot. The arena is deathly quiet as he comes up, then slowly gets loud as he gets closer to the goal.
It's no-bullshit, a clean quick shot between the legs, and it goes right in.
Beomgyu doesn't really celebrate, just cuts a curve past the goalkeeper looking behind him at the puck slowly making its way back out the net, tilts his head back, and lets the noise wash over him.
Yeonjun has spent all his career as the center of attention, but when he watches Beomgyu just then, it feels like Beomgyu is the star, and he can't bring himself to feel bad about fumbling his penalty shot anymore.
He hugs Beomgyu tight when the whole team gangs up on him later. He doesn't miss it when he and Soobin knock their heads together when they think no one is looking. He joins the others when they decide to douse Beomgyu with water since they have no champagne to pop, once he's done giving interviews as the player who's scored all of the most important points today. The man of the hour. He screeches like a girl when they douse him, and Yeonjun lets Beomgyu hug him close to get the water on him as revenge, even though Beomgyu does it to get back at him.
They did it. They were a mess along the way, but they did it.
Yeonjun is in the shower by the time he remembers to seek out Kai and Taehyun with his eyes, but they're keeping to themselves, with their backs to him. Yeonjun tilts his head back, and closes his eyes.