Chapter Text
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Clang.
Hyunjin watches the baseball fly right over him after another great shot from Seungmin. He jumps to try and catch it, but he knows that Seungmin knows better than to hit right at the shortstop.
Hyunjin rolls his eyes when Seungmin salutes at him while running to first base—receiving a slap from Minho on the shoulder in the process—and past it, because the left fielder is slacking off, and he gives Seungmin enough time to get further. He teases Felix at second base, but Hyunjin knows that he isn’t going to try and aim for third base. Show off, he thinks with a snicker.
People say that Hyunjin is the star player of the baseball team, just because he is the shortstop as well as a good batter and also happens to be born with a face that others find attractive, but Hyunjin thinks that during his time away with his family, Seungmin has surpassed him wide and far in terms of baseball skills.
Seungmin has always been a passionate player, and he’s by far their best pitcher, as well as one of their top batters. He’s the one who has the most fun during their practice sessions as well, and Hyunjin can’t help but admire him for that.
Objectively, Seungmin is a better player, and yet Hyunjin is the one who has to deal with people asking him out after practice, which Hyunjin is honestly getting fed up with.
This town is a fucking curse and a blessing at the same time. The baseball team is quite good compared to other small town clubs, and because they’re from such a small town, everyone knows everyone else, and the baseball team is especially known between the people.
Which is why everyone also knows that Hyunjin is single, and the few people around Hyunjin’s age in town—and their friends and family from outside of town, too—just love to take advantage of that.
Hyunjin already feels dread filling his stomach when he’s cleaning up the bats and he sees Yeji and some unknown girl approaching him. Seeing Yeji here is not a surprise, since she’s been a big baseball fan since young, but today she’s not wearing her uniform today, and he doesn’t see any of the other women’s team players around either, so Hyunjin suspects that she won’t be playing.
Which means he will have to reject yet another person—unless…
“Hey, Hyunjin-ah,” Yeji greets him with a little wave, before gesturing at her friend. “This is Yesoo, she’s really great, and I was wondering if you’d consider exchanging numbers and—”
“I’m not single anymore,” Hyunjin blurts, cutting her off as he watches her eyes widen.
“What? Since when?” She raises her eyebrow at him in disbelief, and Hyunjin already regrets lying, but he doesn’t want to go on a date with some stranger.
“Since a couple of days ago,” he answers, trying to sound confident.
“Yeah? Who’s the lucky person, then?” she pushes, raising her other eyebrow as well. Hyunjin’s mind is ringing alarm bells, which makes it difficult to think of anyone else than the person who happens to laugh at something behind him—Seungmin doesn’t usually laugh so loudly unless the team is teasing Changbin.
“Kim Seungmin,” he blurts, and Yeji’s eyes grow comically wide.
“Fuck! The shortstop and the pitcher together? Of course it’s you two! That’s so cute! Congrats to you two, can’t wait to see you being cute around town.” She laughs as she punches Hyunjin in the shoulder, hard. Hyunjin flinches and scrunches his nose.
“Ouch, uhm… thank you,” he says with an awkward chuckle. He flicks his eyes towards Yesoo and gives her an apologetic smile. “Nice to meet you, Yesoo-ssi, but uhm… I gotta get back to cleaning up.”
“Sure. And—If you still want my number, Yeji-yah has it,” she answers with a wink, and Hyunjin swallows before humming noncommittally and turning away from the two.
His whole face feels hot as he speed walks towards Seungmin, who is just finishing cleaning up. Seungmin raises his eyebrows and straightens himself as he sees Hyunjin coming towards him. “You ready to go home? We can leave the others behind, if you want. Chan hyung, Minho hyung, and Lixie hid Changbin hyung’s mask and Changbin is looking for it, which is hilarious, but also I’m sweaty and I wanna take a shower.”
Hyunjin snorts and looks over his shoulder to see Chan, Minho, and Felix desperately trying to hold their laughter while Changbin is telling them to stop it and help him look for his mask. He thinks Seungmin might be leaving out his own part in hiding the mask, but that’s not important right now.
“Damn, poor Changbin hyung,” he says with a laugh, but then he turns towards Seungmin, and his smile turns into a guilty expression. “But, uhm… I need to tell you something before we go home.”
“Hmm, yeah?” Seungmin tilts his head in curiosity. Hyunjin takes a deep breath, his heart pounding in his ears because he still hasn’t quite processed what kind of disastrous situation he has gotten himself into.
“It’s… This is gonna sound weird, but— I’m sick and tired of people asking me out after practice and there’s no one else I trust like I trust you, so… Would you mind being my, uhm… my fake boyfriend?” he asks with a nervous chuckle, hoping that he doesn’t have to admit that he already told someone that they’re dating, but the way Seungmin’s eyes widen in shock doesn’t leave him with much hope.
“Oh—Oh, like, me? You want me to be your fake partner?” Seungmin vaguely gestures at himself and Hyunjin nods, giving Seungmin his best puppy dog eyes. Seungmin’s face contorts in a way that would render Hyunjin useless in laughter if he wasn’t so desperate right now.
“Frick, uhm… I don’t know how to tell you this, but… I already have a boyfriend, Hyunjin-ah,” Seungmin eventually admits with a constipated look. Hyunjin’s jaw drops and he straightens himself.
“W-W-What? Who?” He probably looks just like Yeji did earlier, another tinier version of himself frantically running around in his mind to figure out who it could be, and most importantly
why
Seungmin didn’t tell him.
“...Jisungie,” Seungmin admits, and Hyunjin might as well be on another fucking planet.
“Jisung?” he repeats, gesturing around vaguely to try and grasp the fact that Seungmin is dating the polar opposite of himself. Jisung is chaotic where Seungmin is organized. Jisung is—Jisung is…? Hyunjin doesn’t even know Jisung, while he knows Seungmin better than anyone else.
Seungmin lets out an exasperated gasp, but it turns into a chuckle. “Yes! Why are you looking at me like I’m lying to your face?” he asks with a laugh. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Hyunjin sputters a bit and tries to wrap his head around Seungmin and Jisung being together, but he decides that it’s best not to speak, because there’s something sour growing in his chest which he doesn’t want to acknowledge right now.
“It’s not. It’s just that—Since when? Since when are you two a thing? Why don’t I know this?” Hyunjin takes off his baseball cap and runs a hand through his hair before putting it on backwards. He’s a little bummed that Seungmin didn’t tell him.
“Since about a month, so not that long. We… We wanted to take it slow, you know? Figure things out before the whole godforsaken town knows about us. You probably understand. We both don’t like attention that much,” Seungmin explains with a shrug, but a little smile grows on his face as he speaks.
“J-Jisung doesn’t like attention?” Hyunjin repeats with a confused frown. He knows Jisung as being loud and a bit of a show off, but it’s been a while since Hyunjin has actually hung out with him. He realizes that he hasn’t actually hung out with anyone outside of the baseball team, except Jeongin, since he came back—which is a year ago already. Time flies.
“He’s changed since he was seventeen, yes,” Seungmin says with a laugh, but Hyunjin remembers Jisung still being a bit of a show-off before he left, when he was freshly twenty one. It doesn’t matter.
“Anyways… I’m afraid you’ll have to ask someone else,” Seungmin says with a shrug, but he pats Hyunjin’s shoulder in compassion. Hyunjin grimaces and gently pushes Seungmin’s hand off him. He takes another deep breath as guilt swirls in his stomach.
“Yeah, so the thing is… I already told Yeji that you’re my boyfriend…” he begins, cringing at himself, especially when Seungmin’s face contorts again. He quickly takes Seungmin’s hands in his again. “I’m sorry! I panicked. And—And I thought you were single! I mean, I assumed I’d know, you know? Not that I was thinking, but I—She asked me who it was and I—”
He swallows the words I had to be believable, and instead says, “Minho hyung and Jeongin would absolutely kill me if I’d say that they’re my boyfriends, and Changbin hyung, Chan hyung, and Lixie have this weird thing going on between the three of them that scares me.”
“Changbin hyung would love to be your fake boyfriend, Hyunjin-ah,” Seungmin retorts with a laugh and Hyunjin lets out a sigh.
“You’re right, but… I wasn’t really thinking,” he admits with a pout. He looks over his shoulder to see that Yeji is already gone. “I’m really sorry. What do I do now? I—I know I should tell Yeji the truth, but who knows how many people have already heard about us by the time I get ahold of her?”
“It’s okay, Hyunnie,” Seungmin assures him, squeezing Hyunjin’s hands. “We can think of something. We’ll, uhm… We’ll talk to Jisungie about it, maybe?”
“Are you sure?” Hyunjin asks, wondering why Seungmin isn’t telling him to undo his mistake and run after Yeji to make sure that she doesn’t tell everyone in town that they’re together. Knowing Yeji and knowing the other town residents’ knack for gossipping, however, every second counts, and it might already be too late.
“I’m sure. The least I can do is tell Jisung about this and—” Seungmin begins, but they’re cut off by Changbin’s loud voice.
“Kim Seungmin! Did you conspire with these idiots to hide my mask?!” he bellows, angrily holding up his mask. Seungmin bursts out laughing, making Changbin whine. “You guys are unbelievable. I’m lucky Lixie is such an angel. Let’s go home. I need a shower.”
“What if we told you this was Lix’s idea?” Chan pokes with a laugh and Changbin gasps dramatically, while Felix comes to beg Changbin for forgiveness with hugs and affection through his laughter. The friendly bickering cheers Hyunjin up a lot, but he’s nervous to go see Jisung.
Seungmin tells him to go take a shower at home and meet him at the cafe in an hour, since that's where Jisung should be right now. Hyunjin wonders what Jisung is doing at the cafe if Seungmin is sure that he'll be there for more than an hour, but he decides to accept things and instead mentally prepare himself to still fix his mistakes afterwards.
“How is it, by the way? Dating Jisung? How did you two end up together?” Hyunjin asks Seungmin as they're biking home together. Behind them is the rest of the group, but they're about to part ways. Seungmin shrugs with a bashful smile. “Come on, tell me. You know I'll be happy for you.”
“I know! I know. Well, we bumped into each other a lot in the cafe, so we started drinking coffee together. He actually plays music at the cafe, and… We got talking. I asked him if he wanted to play music with me. We both play the guitar, we like singing, he writes songs… It was only a matter of time before we met up to sing together. Jisungie wrote some love songs and I teased him about them until he admitted that he'd been crushing on me. I thought so already, so he fell right into my trap of getting him to say it out loud.” Seungmin laughs at himself and Hyunjin scoffs, but he can tell that Seungmin is happy with how things played out. Hyunjin can't deny that he finds the way they got together kinda romantic, but that same sour feeling from earlier is bubbling up again, so he pushes it away and tries to pay it no mind.
“That's adorable. I'm happy that your master plan worked,” he says with a chuckle, and Seungmin gives him a cheeky grin. Hyunjin reaches out to tug at his earlobe and coos at him.
Before he knows it, he's home, so he takes a quick shower before leaving for the cafe again. He hopes that Seungmin is there before he is, because he still feels awkward meeting up with Jisung and telling him about the fact that the whole town probably thinks that he's dating his boyfriend. Talk about humiliation.
The closer he comes to the cafe, the more he is starting to regret everything. He should have just run away as soon as he noticed that Yeji was there to set him up with someone, then he wouldn’t have to be confronted with Seungmin’s boyfriend in such an embarrassing way.
He greets Jeongin when he enters the cafe, and looks around until he sees Seungmin and Jisung talking to each other. Jisung has a guitar case on his back—apparently he really does play in the cafe—and is looking at Seungmin with a bright smile on his face.
It’s kind of adorable, and Hyunjin already feels left out.
He takes a deep breath and approaches the duo. Jisung sees him first, and his eyes widen, flicking between him and Seungmin. Hyunjin’s heart is hammering against his chest as he comes closer, and Jisung seems a bit nervous as well—maybe Seungmin already dropped the bomb to him.
“Hey, Hyunjin-ah! It’s–It’s been a while since we’ve, uhm, spoken. You look good,” Jisung says as he greets him with an awkward chuckle. Hyunjin tries to smile, but he’s probably failing. He can’t smile when he’s nervous, but Jisung seems just as nervous. “H-How are you?”
“Did Seungminnie tell you that I told Yeji that I’m dating him because I didn’t know you two were a thing?” Hyunjin blurts out, speaking at lightning speed. Jisung blinks at him in shock. Seungmin probably didn’t tell him yet. Whoops. “Because I’m sorry.”
“You—? What?” Jisung stammers, his eyebrows knitting together in concern. He looks at Seungmin, who takes rests his hand on his shoulder and gives him a calm look.
“He didn’t know about us. He—People from town have been asking him out after practice a lot, but Hyunjinnie… He’s a bit of a romantic, so blind dates aren’t really his thing and, well, I hadn’t told anyone about us,” he explains gently, even managing to soothe Hyunjin with his voice. “And, well… I suggested we’d tell you, since… There’s a chance Yeji or her friend already told people around town.”
“Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, people love gossiping here. I can imagine it would be big news if the stars of the baseball team were dating,” Jisung says with a chuckle, scratching his arm as he looks between Seungmin and Hyunjin. “So uhm… Okay. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Wh—What?” Hyunjin takes a step back and frowns at the smaller man. Thanks for the heads-up? “You’re okay with this? With me stealing your boyfriend? I mean—Not stealing, because, like, it would be fake. Of course.”
“Well—I’m… I don’t know. Yes? If, uhm… It’s fake, so…” Jisung stammers awkwardly. Hyunjin doesn’t understand why he gives up so easily. He expected Jisung to blame him, to put up a fight, to declare himself as the better boyfriend—not only because that’s what Hyunjin expected from the Jisung he knows, but also because he should do so , ‘cause he’s the real boyfriend—but he’s acting as if he’s just a friend, supporting their fake relationship.
“Are you sure?” Seungmin asks him with a small frown. Jisung hesitates, but he nods.
“I mean, if people already know about you two, there’s nothing much we can do, right? And… If Hyunjin needs a fake boyfriend…” Jisung trails off, a small pout growing on his lips despite his positive words. Hyunjin doesn’t know how to feel about it. “We could figure something out until Hyunjinnie thinks it’s okay to fake break-up again, right?”
“Good lord, thanks for being such a good sport about this, Jisung. I—I was super nervous, to be honest. I can imagine not everyone would take it so calmly,” Hyunjin says with a deep sigh. He could hug Jisung right now if he wasn’t feeling awkward about it.
Jisung smiles, but Seungmin still looks a little concerned. He then shrugs. “Okay. If you’re okay with it, I guess I’ll pretend to be Hyunjin’s boyfriend for a while.”
“You two are literal lifesavers, thank you so much!” Hyunjin brings the two into a group hug and ruffles their heads, feeling ten kilos lighter than before. He’s still a bit suspicious about how easily the two of them gave in—although Seungmin is Hyunjin’s best friend, so he can imagine why he did so—but that’s only in the back of his mind now. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
“I’ll buy your coffee for a week to show my thanks, seriously,” he says with a big smile, because the last thing he wants is for the two of them to change their mind or for him to make things super awkward between either of them.
Seungmin laughs in delight. “That’s very much appreciated, thanks, you spoiled man,” he says, his eyes scrunching up adorably and Hyunjin rolls his eyes, but he can’t help but smile.
“Oh shit—I promised Seungeun noona that I'd get groceries after baseball practice. I gotta go, but we'll text about this, right?” Seungmin checks his phone before giving the two an apologetic look. Hyunjin waves him off.
“Yeah, don't worry about it.” “Sure. Good luck, Seungmin-ah.” Hyunjin and Jisung speak at the same time before sharing an awkward look. Seungmin simply starts laughing and waves them goodbye.
“We'll get coffee another time, see you around!” he says.
“Make sure your sister doesn't kill you, we still need you!” Jisung calls after him and Hyunjin snorts as he watches Seungmin say goodbye to Jeongin before leaving.
He wants to walk away, too, but then Jisung speaks up. “Uhm, do you want to talk a bit already? We could order something—no need to pay, I get a free drink for playing here,” Jisung suggests with a chuckle, scratching his neck before patting his guitar case.
Hyunjin wonders if he's boasting or not, showing off his musical instrument and his privilege, or if he's genuinely asking. The longer Hyunjin takes to answer, however, the more nervous Jisung seems to become. “Or do you want Seungminnie to be there too?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Yes, I think it's good if we let it all sink in for a while and meet up or talk with the three of us,” Hyunjin answers. It's a bit of an excuse, because he still feels awkward about this whole situation—especially about Jisung—but he genuinely needs some time to think.
“Okay, sure. Should I… Do you want to give me your number? I don’t know if it's the same as the one you had in high school four years ago.” Jisung laughs before he fishes his phone from his pocket. Hyunjin holds his hand out, but Jisung frowns down at his phone and types out something before handing it to him.
Hyunjin is a little surprised to see the contact with his old number—he wouldn't remember if he has Jisung’s number from high school. He probably does, but ever since his time away from town with his family, he kind of forgot about the people from high school, mostly only keeping in touch with his baseball team.
“It's different from four years ago, yes,” he responds with a chuckle, typing in his current number. “Text me something to test it out. I'll save yours, too.”
Jisung does as he asks and Hyunjin saves his contact. Han Jisung. They then bid each other goodbye and Hyunjin has to admit that he’s glad to go home. He needs to relax.
Relaxing to Hyunjin means sitting in his room by the window in his comfortable bathrobe while mindlessly painting something. It doesn’t need to look good—that’s what he keeps telling himself, at least—he just needs to relax.
He mixes the colors and lets the brush decide where to put it. He ends up recreating the sky as it changes, and he isn’t sure if he likes it, but he takes a picture anyway, debating if he should put it online or not.
Knock knock.
Hyunjin gasps and almost slaps the paint off his desk as he flinches at the sound. His parents aren’t home, and as far as Hyunjin knows, Kkami doesn’t know how to knock on his bedroom door. A burglar wouldn’t knock either, right? “...Yes, come in?”
“Good evening, Hwang Hyunjin.” The door flies open and Hyunjin flinches, holding his arms in front of his face in defense, but after a moment he sees that it’s just Minho—What the heck?
Hyunjin opens his mouth to speak, but Minho beats him to it. “Why the hell did I hear that you’re dating Kim Seungmin? Isn’t he dating Jisungie?” he says with a deep frown, pointing a finger at him.
Hyunjin gapes at him for a moment, not even having the mind to be embarrassed about being in his robes. “Hyung?! First of all, how the fuck did you get into my house? Second of all—”
“Your little rat let me in.” Minho interrupts him. Hyunjin snorts.
“ Kkami cannot open doors,” he corrects him.
“I never said he opened a door,” Minho retorts without missing a beat. Hyunjin is a little scared.
“Okay. Well, anyways… How do you know about Seungminnie and Jisung? I didn’t know about them until today,” he replies. “Did Seungmin tell you?”
“What? No. Why would he tell
me
and not you?” Minho shakes his head and leans back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Hyunjin shrugs. “Jisungie didn’t exactly
tell
me either, but he’s so incredibly easy to read, so I figured it out by myself. Which begs the question why people are talking about
you
dating Kim Seungmin instead. I sure hope you didn’t—”
“
No!
Good god,” Hyunjin calls out before Minho can finish. He doesn’t even want to
think
about stealing someone’s boyfriend. Cheating is worse than death in Hyunjin’s honest opinion, and Seungmin would
never
do that either. “I… I just accidentally told Yeji that I was dating someone because she wanted to set me up with someone. Again. I only wanted people to stop bothering me after practice, I didn't know about Jisung. And by the way, Jisung is okay with this.”
“What?” Minho looks just as taken aback as Hyunjin felt at the cafe.
“I'm not any wiser than you are, hyung. Seungmin and I told him about my… slip up, and he just said Okay, thanks for the heads up. Like, we're going to figure something out now, because Jisung didn’t even fight it,” Hyunjin explains, hoping that Minho might know why. Minho frowns and thinks about it.
“Okay, he might be an idiot. Or he might be trying to be too nice again,” he concludes with a sigh, but Hyunjin doesn’t really like the sound of that. But it’s not his fault if Jisung is an idiot, right? He asked if Jisung was sure about this, so if Jisung didn’t want this, he should have said so.
“...So? What do you think, hyung?” Hyunjin asks, because Minho clearly knows Jisung a lot better than him, and some advice would be nice.
“I don’t know. I think you should make sure no one gets hurt,” Minho tells him, but he doesn’t seem very sure about it. Hyunjin wonders what’s on his mind, but his hyung has never been the most emotionally open person.
“Well, I will obviously not intentionally hurt anyone, but I don’t really know Jisung that well,” he replies, pressing his lips into a thin line.
“I know you don’t, but he’s a good guy, alright? Trust me on that. It’s really all you need to know,” Minho assures him with a serious look. Such a look is rare to see on Minho, but it’s evident that he cares about Jisung and wants to look out for him.
“If Seungmin is dating him, I’m sure he is,” Hyunjin admits. He trusts Seungmin more than he trusts himself, probably, so he knows that Jisung is a good person. That doesn’t mean that he’ll trust Jisung just like that, though. He needs to see what he’s like first.
He shares one more look with Minho, but the older is distracted. He leaves the room telling Hyunjin that he’ll pay Jisung a visit, and Hyunjin hopes that he won’t try to change Jisung’s mind about this, because he’s actually kind of looking forward to pretending to date Seungmin.
Maybe it’ll be fun. After all, everything with Seungmin is fun.
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