Chapter Text
There was something about the ice that Mingi always found incredibly calming.
Maybe it’s the way it shines after the Zamboni is finished, wiping away the day’s hardships, ready for a new game in the morning. Or maybe it’s because it’s the only place he ever felt needed; the only place he had meaning.
It’s already covered in new skate marks from the teams warming up. Mingi takes off his glove and runs his finger through a pile of the shavings from someone’s blade as he stretches deeper into his frog sit. He’s especially tight in the hips today and he probably shouldn’t push as far as he does, but he wants to play well today.
He needs to play well today.
There’s only a handful of games left before the championship games and being at the top of recruiters’ lists is Mingi’s only objective right now. He lets the scraping sound of skates on ice put him in the zone and drags his finger a few more times through the wet pile on the ice, but Wooyoung’s voice is incredibly distracting.
“... but he’s kinda cute.”
Mingi keeps his head low but raises his eyes when he registers what Wooyoung is talking about.
“Kinda weird to bring in new staff so far into the season, isn’t it?” Yeosang says. They’re a few feet away from the goal crease, each in a lunge that isn’t nearly deep enough to actually stretch anything. “He must be someone’s kid.”
Wooyoung shrugs and switches legs. “I’m not complaining about some eye candy to ogle during practice.”
“Who?” Mingi asks, eager to see the alleged eye candy, even if Wooyoung’s taste in men is, at best, questionable and, at worst, fucking insane.
“Oh, no one,” Wooyoung says in a sing-songy voice. “Just Coach’s new assistant. Jeong something or other, I don’t know. I was too distracted by his ass.”
Mingi rolls his eyes and switches into a pigeon stretch, grimacing at the pull in his joints. “You’re insatiable.”
The whistle from Coach tears their focus away from hypothetical ass and toward the board where the pyramid of pucks awaits them.
Mingi stands and takes his place in the net, replacing his glove and knocking his cage down, trying to ignore the way his stomach is churning.
By the time they’ve returned to the locker room, switched their jerseys, and filed back onto the ice for the game’s opening ceremonies, the pull in Mingi’s stomach becomes impossible to ignore. Almost twenty years on the ice and he probably will always get nervous before games, not to mention the fact that the stakes never lower in this game. You push for triple A, then you push for university, then you push for NHL, and then you push and push and push until you retire. There’s no time to be complacent.
It feels especially bad today, though, and for no discernable reason. Maybe it’s a full moon, or mercury is in retrograde or whatever Seonghwa would-
He’s torn from his thoughts by a sharp jab in his side from Wooyoung, who, when Mingi snaps his head to the side to tell him to keep his fucking hands to himself, is wiggling his eyebrows and looking pointedly to the benches.
Mingi’s lost, but Wooyoung keeps looking.
“The assistant,” Wooyoung stage whispers. “The hot one. With Coach.”
Mingi’s mouth forms a silent “Oh,” as he turns his head, eager to see just who has gotten Wooyoung in such a tizzy.
Mingi feels the pang in his gut before his brain recognizes why, feels the breath stolen from his lungs. The assistant is mostly turned around, only a sliver of his profile visible from where Mingi stands, but it doesn’t matter. Mingi needs less to know who this is.
“I remembered his name,” Wooyoung continues. “Jeong Yunho.”
Mingi swallows dryly and fights the urge to run, to skate off the ice and hide in the locker room and never play a game again, because how is he expected to focus when he’s here. Tears threaten in his eyes and his throat burns, but the national anthem is over and the lights are coming back up, so he swallows them down and heads for his post.
Suddenly a game that he was nervous, but ready for has become a game that he cannot fucking play right now, but he doubts Coach will let him leave now. It’s too late to be a healthy scratch and the puck is dropping and oh my god the game is starting.
Wooyoung tries to check in with him after he’s let in the third goal of the game, a wordless pat to the side of his helmet and a look that says everything.
And Mingi hates it, and insists he’s fine even though he clearly isn’t. It’s whatever, he thinks, it’s not their problem.
Mingi groans in relief when the buzzer signifying the end of the first period sounds, wasting no time in leaving the goal and skating straight to the exit.
The rest of the game follows in a similar fashion; Mingi lets the frustration start to take over, making his movements harsh and rough and sporadic. He’s so desperate to save the game by the end that nothing he does makes sense, but he needs to prove that he’s worth putting on the ice. That he doesn’t let stupid shit like this get to him, even though he clearly does.
After their loss - no, decimation - Coach gives his usual soft-hearted pep talk to make them feel good, even though a lashing is in order on Monday morning. Mingi can hear it already, how he needs to push harder, work smarter, do better. He avoids looking at Coach and the staff behind him.
He waits for everyone else to leave the locker room before hanging his head between his legs and wondering whether or not to cry here or in his bed.
The sound of the door swinging open snaps him out of it and Mingi swipes at his face to try to hide the few tears that did fall, even though he’s sure it’s written all over his face anyways.
“Oh, sorry,” says a familiar voice. “I didn’t realize anyone was still in here.”
Mingi stands up a bit too quickly to be natural. He shucks his bag over his shoulder and pops his airpods in. “I was just leaving.”
He tries to push past Yunho and avoid the inevitable, but is stopped by a warm hand around his bicep.
“Min, I-”
Mingi pulls his arm from Yunho’s grasp with probably a bit too much force, but he doesn’t care. He’s sick of this, sick of today, and wants to go the fuck home. He’s sure Yunho’s eyes are big and sparkly and brown, and Mingi knows he stands no chance against them, so he keeps his gaze down and leaves without a word.
He’s almost to the front door of the rink when Wooyoung jumps in front of him, blocking his path. Demanding little shit.
Reluctantly, Mingi takes one airpod out and immediately regrets it.
“You’re coming tonight, right?”
Mingi’s confused. “Coming…?”
Wooyoung gasps dramatically and slaps his teammate on the arm.
“Okay, ow,” Mingi says, rubbing the sore spot. “That didn’t answer my question.”
“Jongho’s party, dumbass.” Wooyoung is still looking at him incredulously, as if this was the most obvious thing to have known.
“God, Woo, I just really want to fucking sleep.”
“All the more reason to go,” Wooyoung all but shouts. “You do this every time we lose, man. It’s sad.”
“Do what?” Mingi furrows his brow.
Wooyoung waves his hand, gesturing up and down at Mingi’s body. “This.”
“Again,” Mingi takes his other airpod out and shoves them in his pocket. “Does not answer the question.”
“You always just get so depressed and sad everytime we lose, like it was your fault.”
“But it-”
Wooyoung cuts him off with a sharp noise. “No, it isn’t. We’re a team, dude. I can’t let you go home and lock yourself in your room for the next few days doing god knows what like you always do.”
“And you think a party will help?” Mingi asks sarcastically.
Wooyoung gives him another dumb fucking look, one with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, as if to say duh! Mingi shakes his head and starts walking again.
“Come on, man,” Wooyoung says, following behind. “Let loose, have a few drinks, find some girl and-”
“Listen,” Mingi says, stopping once they’re outside the rink, “I appreciate your concern, but that’s the absolute last thing I want to be doing right now.”
Mingi turns to leave, shucking his bag farther onto his shoulder.
“Jeong will be there!”
Mingi continues walking, throwing up a middle finger without another glance back at his friend.
And yet later that evening, Mingi somehow finds himself crammed onto an old couch in Jongho’s garage, Yeosang on one side of him and Hongjoong on the other, both inebriated beyond belief from either weed or booze or both.
San and Wooyoung basically fucking kidnapped him from his apartment, using their spare key that was for emergencies only, god dammit, to drag him off of his much more comfortable couch, shove him into the shower, and pull his arm until he finally followed them out.
It’s like every other party that Jongho hosts during the season, the same thirty people all loitering around the garage, drinking cheap beer and smoking bad weed, with bullshit country music playing. Mingi’s not even sure if it even counts as a party, but everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves.
He wonders if maybe he should do what Wooyoung suggested, have a few more drinks and take someone home so he can make that sinking feeling of oh my god I fucked up again go away for at least another night.
Jeong shoots him a small smile before hiding it behind a red solo cup as he turns his eyes back to the girl next to him. Mingi watches as Jeong’s hand rests on the small of her back, her bare skin peeking out of the small shirt she’s got on. Mingi wonders if she’s cold; it is October and the snow is already threatening to fall, but the girl seems a bit too preoccupied with, well, other things to care.
He’s torn from his thoughts when Jongho perches himself on the arm of the couch nearest Yeosang, handing his drunk friend a red solo cup that, knowing Jongho, has nothing but water in it. “You played good today, Min.”
Mingi looks at his beer and mumbles a quiet, “Thanks.”
“Even Yunho thought so,” Jongho says. His arm extends along the back of the couch behind Yeosang to squeeze Mingi’s shoulder.
Mingi simply nods and swirls his beer. It suddenly tastes funny and bad and he resents Wooyoung and San for dragging him here. Once Jongho is fully preoccupied with how cute Yeosang is when he’s drunk, Mingi lets his eyes scan the room once more, but lands on no one.
It takes all the restraint that Mingi can muster to not get completely smashed; knowing him, it would probably make him feel even worse. Besides, someone has to get Wooyoung home and San has been well past drunk since his third beer. The former is currently on his lap, the latter on his shoulder, both disgusting and drunk.
Mingi doesn’t move from his spot on the couch until the weight of Wooyoung’s head makes it impossible to hold his pee anymore, forcing himself up with the strength of a thousand men and stumbling inside to the small bathroom on the main floor.
He takes a moment as he’s washing his hands to look at himself in the mirror, properly for once, the first time since the morning. His eyes are sunken and framed by dark circles and a furrowed brow, his nose red and his lips chapped. He splashes cold water on his face and pushes back his hair, stiff and crunchy from the sweat he didn’t wash out after the game.
Christ, no wonder everyone was walking on eggshells around him tonight.
He tried to talk to someone, a pretty girl who sat on the edge of the couch and handed him a beer, but she very clearly had not signed up for whatever kind of baggage Mingi was seemingly carrying and abandoned him before her cup was half empty.
“So you’re, like, the goalie?” she had asked him in that voice that all the puck bunnies use. Mingi’s sure she knows what a goalie is and rolls his eyes internally.
“Yep,” he replies, popping the p.
“That’s, like, really cool. Any fun stories?”
“Not really,” Mingi says. “All the action happens, you know, out further.”
The girl just laughed, shrill and harsh, and Mingi hopes the grimace on his face wasn’t too obvious. “You’re, like, really funny.”
Mingi just sighed and sank deeper into the chair, only mostly relieved when the girl rolled her eyes and slinked away.
Pathetic, he thinks to himself. A fucking loser. He shouldn’t have come, and he knows it. Shouldn’t have let Wooyoung’s puppy eyes work on him, shouldn’t have ruined everyone’s night with his shit attitude.
God, he thinks, they must think he’s the worst . Shit goalie, shit friend, shit person.
It’s not until a loud thud on the door snaps him out of his spiral. He lets go of where he was gripping the counter, leaving a sweaty imprint of his hand on the dark granite, and wipes the tears from his eyes for the nth time that day.
When he opens the door, a large body topples back. He almost steps on Mingi’s feet, but catches himself before it happens and turns around.
And Mingi is met with those eyes, brown and sparkly like they always were, and feels a pang in his chest that he hasn’t felt in fucking years.
“Sorry,” Yunho says, a smile that’s entirely too soft for where they stand on his face. “We thought it was, uh, empty.”
“‘S okay,” Mingi mumbles, shuffling past Yunho and his playmate for the evening.
“Hey, Min- Mingi.”
Mingi takes a deep, grounding, shuddering breath and turns around, raising his eyebrows in lieu of a real response.
“You played well today.”
“Who does he think he is? He can’t just tell me I played good!”
“Why not?” Wooyoung says, taking a large swallow from the bottle of Tito’s they’ve been sharing and passing it to San, who might not even be conscious at this point. “Like, what’s your deal with him?”
Mingi snatches the bottle from San’s limp hand. “There’s no deal.”
Wooyoung scoffs. “Clearly there is. You’ve been weird, like, all day, dude.”
“Have not!”
But Mingi knows he has. After the bathroom incident, he wasted no time in wrangling up Wooyoung and San and herding them back to their apartment, where he promptly began rooting through their cabinets for all the liquor he could find. Maybe he’ll turn into a sad drunk tonight, but only tequila makes him cry, and all that he could find was vodka.
That works.
So now he sits on the floor of Wooyoung and San’s apartment, well on his way to drunk, and angry as hell that the world would decide now of all times to throw Jeong Yunho back into his life.
“Whatever,” Wooyoung says, laying down so his head is in San’s lap. San must be at least somewhat alive, because his fingers immediately find Wooyoung’s hair, which is now long enough for him to play with. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re sooooooo upset that a hot guy complimented you.”
“I’m not upset that he complimented me,” Mingi says. “I’m upset that he complimented me. He has no right.”
“Okay, sure, but until you tell me why, I can’t exactly be the hype man you want me to be.”
“It’s just…” Mingi takes another large swig. “We have, like, history. Or whatever.”
Wooyoung bolts upright. “Don’t tell me you slept with him.”
“No! No, god. I haven’t even seen him since we were, like, seventeen.”
“Was he your first love?” Wooyoung says, an overexaggerated pout on his face as he crawls across the living room toward Mingi. “Did he break your little closeted heart?”
Mingi pushes him back towards San, who looks like he’s going to be sick. “Fuck off. We just had a fight, that’s all.”
“Still, how serious can a fight between teenagers be? Like, can’t you just move on?”
Mingi sighs and picks at the label of the bottle. “I could.”
But it’s easier to stay mad, because it means he doesn’t have to deal with the other emotions he feels. Confusing, messy, overwhelming emotions that Mingi doesn’t have the time nor energy to deal with right now. Maybe after graduation, once he’s signed and can breathe without worrying about his grades or his stats.
Wooyoung drops it at that, though, which is uncharacteristic. Mingi is thankful nonetheless.
And maybe one day he can explain the way Yunho nearly ruined his life, how he spent weeks and months in a catatonic state. How he almost threw away everything he knew because life wasn’t worth living without Yunho. Today is not that day, and Mingi finishes the bottle with a loud sigh.
Mingi still has the vestiges of a hangover when he hauls himself to practice on Monday morning, his darkest pair of sunglasses shielding his eyes from the sun in a futile attempt to fight back his impending headache. He makes sure to pop a few extra Advil before gearing up.
Someone’s voice is way too fucking chipper and loud for 6 o’clock and it’s pinging around Mingi’s head like a pinball. After taking off his sunglasses, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light and find the newest source of his headache, and he really shouldn’t be surprised to see Yunho talking to a group of freshmen on the bench adjacent to Mingi’s. Yunho’s telling a story, one that Mingi recognizes, of a game that happened their sophomore year.
“We were tied but, like, it had not been an even game,” he says. Mingi can hear the smile in his voice despite forcing himself to look away. “Eventually it got pushed into OT and it was crazy. This team was, like, insane players, half of them already had soft commitments to the NHL and they were fucking scary, dude.”
Mingi knows he should move to another locker, that he’s probably not supposed to hear this. He probably doesn’t want to hear this. But he doesn’t, instead focusing on tying his laces as tight as possible.
“The shootout starts and they sent up their scariest fucking dude. He was tiny and could bob and weave like nothing else, but his slapshot was scary. Had to have broken a league record for fastest shot or something, like, insane dude. Anyways, he starts and we’re all about to piss ourselves because we really needed this win.”
The thought crosses Mingi’s mind that Yunho doesn’t mind him listening in. That Yunho isn’t nearly as affected by this sudden reunion as Mingi is. It stings a bit to think about. It makes Mingi feel like some pathetic, lovesick puppy dog, that he’s still so fucking mad about something that was nearly five years ago.
“But Mingi fucking caught it,” Yunho says, and Mingi feels jolt of electricity shoot up his spine. “And then he kept catching them, and in the end we only got one puck past their goalie but it didn’t fucking matter.”
Mingi so desperately wants to look at him. Wants to take a good, long look at his face, up close, to see if the freckles scatter across his face in the same way that he remembers, if his smile still quirks the same, to see if his Yunho is the same Yunho he’s been dreaming about for years. There was a time where that was his job, where holding Yunho close and memorizing the way they slot together was just an innate part of Mingi, and they were a package deal.
It makes Mingi angry that that’s not the truth anymore, and the fact that Yunho is mere feet away from him and he can’t just get up and touch him like he wants. It makes Mingi angry that it was Yunho who did this to them.
He so desperately wants to let it go and fix everything, but it’s not his fault this huge schism was torn between them. It was Yunho’s. And he clearly has no plans to amend that.
He finishes tying his laces with a harsh tug when Coach enters the room. It’s the usual post-loss sandwich of condolences, criticism, and encouragement that Mingi could probably recite in his sleep. Not that they lose often, but it’s not much different when they do win. Coach isn’t the most celebratory guy in the world; always more work to do, more boundaries to push. Sleep when you’re dead.
He takes a moment to officially introduce Yunho to the team. His assistant for the rest of the year, shadowing the coaching team before graduating. Mingi lets himself look at Yunho for the first time, properly. Not buzzed, not scared shitless, just plain old Mingi.
He looks good. He’s lost his baby fat, grown a few inches, maybe, but he’s still the same Yunho that Mingi remembers. Kind eyes that are crinkled in a near-permanent smile, pretty cheekbones, slim, tall, broad. Just older now. He’s wearing a baseball cap with the university’s logo on it and a quarter-zip sweater. Khakis and a pair of converse. He looks so adult and Mingi’s heart clenches at how much time he’s missed with Yunho.
He was supposed to change gradually with Mingi, see him everyday so he wouldn’t notice how much they’ve grown until they look back at photos and realize how much they’ve grown. Now there’s a years-long gap in Mingi’s knowledge of Yunho, and it’s an odd dichotomy of the Yunho he knows and the older one that stands in front of him now.
Coach sends them out on the ice with one last pep talk and practice begins. Yunho doesn’t get on the ice like the other members of the coaching team, Mingi notices. He sits on the bench with an iPad, taking notes of whatever Coach says to him between drills. It’s grueling and Mingi already feels like shit, so the drills are rough and he gets sloppier the more he fucks up. He must look awful if Coach isn’t yelling at him like he usually does, just a few notes and a harsh slap on the back before they resume, one of the assistant coaches shooting at his weak points.
By the time practice wraps up, Mingi is beaten physically, emotionally, mentally, and his headache has only been made worse by the fluorescent lights of the rink. He showers quickly and redresses, choosing not to partake in whatever conversation his teammates are having. Wooyoung’s looking at him like he’s some sort of baby animal again and Mingi does not want to deal with the pity again.
He shoves his gear bag into his locker and retrieves his backpack. By the time he’s done, the room is mostly empty save for a few staff having a conversation by the door. One of them is Yunho, who, after the others leave, is alone with Mingi in a room for the first time in years.
They lock eyes, and Mingi wants to say something, anything. He longs so desperately for things to go back to the way they were, even though there’s no proof that it’s what’s good for them. He’ll leave again, Mingi’s thoughts say. He’ll leave you alone. Abandoned.
Mingi would let Yunho do it again, though, for a few more years together.
“Hi,” Yunho says.
Mingi wants to run, wants to avoid this whole awkward conversation, but Yunho is leaning against the door, as if to trap him here. He wants to laugh and scream and punch Yunho, but he settles on replying, “Hi.”
“Hungover?”
Mingi nods. Yunho crouches down to rifle through his bag before standing upright and approaching Mingi. In his hand is a Gatorade, orange. Mingi’s favourite.
“Take this. You probably need it more than me.”
It’s infuriating how easily Yunho moves and speaks around Mingi and how Mingi becomes a dumbstruck teenager.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, stuffing the bottle into his backpack.
Yunho’s looking at him, smiling. Not fully, just enough that his eyes are starting to crinkle and if you didn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the many smiles of Jeong Yunho, you might not even notice.
“You look good,” Yunho says. “You filled out.”
And here it is again, the nonchalance that Yunho can somehow always get away with, as if things between them didn’t fall to shit because of him. As if he didn’t ruin Mingi.
“Why are you doing this?” Mingi says. He forces himself to look Yunho in the eyes. “Why are you here?”
Yunho chuckles and it lights Mingi’s skin on fire. “I work here.”
“You could have worked anywhere, with any team. Why mine? Why now?”
Yunho opens his mouth to say something, but the words seem to fall from his tongue. His smile fades and is replaced by a much more confused and bewildered look.
“I have worked too damn hard for you to ruin this,” Mingi says, standing up so they’re eye to eye. “You don’t have the right to just waltz back into my life and my career because you feel like it.”
“You don’t have the right to tell me what I can and can’t do,” Yunho scoffs. His tone is biting, but Mingi’s sure his own is equally as sharp. “I was offered a job and I took it. I didn’t even know you went to this school.”
Somehow that hurts the most, that Yunho doesn’t even know the basics about his life. But how would he? Mingi’s had him blocked since he graduated high school, and it’s not like their mothers were ever close enough to send each other updates. It’s stupid and pathetic, but Mingi feels it in his gut.
“Whatever,” he says. “Just leave me alone. It’s not like we’re friends or anything.”
He tries to push past Yunho to leave, but a hand around his arm stops him. Mingi looks back, but Yunho is just staring. He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it before releasing his grasp.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Mingi rolls his eyes and leaves, letting the door slam shut behind him.