Chapter Text
Wooyoung felt the distinct pinching bite of his new wax laces as they pulled taught around his palm and that fatty swell of muscle between his thumb and pointer finger. Those already weathered parts of hand squeezed until they turned white as he wrapped the fortified skate lace around his hand one more time.. He could feel the ropeburn already chewing up his skin, it would bruise a straight line across the back of his hands by tomorrow morning. Or, depending on blood flow, as soon as tonight on the drive home from bootcamp.
Stupid fucking day to replace his laces, he knew that.
But his last pair had lasted an entire season of his last year in junior’s league and he wasn’t going to show up to his first practice at the university with chewed up blue laces that he had to retie every time he bounded off the ice onto the bench, praying they’d be tight enough in the last couple games but, for that moment, also praying just that they not break his ankles. He hadn’t really planned on replacing them at all really. That’s how sure he was that he wasn’t getting drafted this season. That’s how sure he was that he was going to be hanging up his skates forever at the end of the juniors championship season this past spring.
But, here he was in September, wondering how the fuck he got here and praying to whoever the hell would listen that he not fuck this up.
Apparently, the university team started the season with a 2 week bootcamp of daily multi-hour practices before regular practices began. Student housing wasn’t even technically open yet. He’d been given a dorm key for the duration, but with the warning that he’d be moved to his permanent accommodations in a few weeks. Everything was so temporary.
Based on what he’d gotten from Yeosang– who he played with at juniors before he got drafted out to this same team a year ago without Wooyoung (the traitor)-- the bootcamp didn’t mean shit to any of the players already on the team. It was just a waste of their time and they showed up because the coaches said they had to. They might as well wait for real practice with real scrimmages and real line adjustments and real practice drills that traveled outside of their fundamentals to actually give anything a true effort. The real practices where they actually learned things. But Yeosang said that new players (aka the rookies) had to really care a whole fucking lot about bootcamp week because their lives were the ones on the line. Wooyoung sort of wanted to smack Yeosang right now for how much worse he had made literally all of Wooyoung’s worries.
He shifted his eyes gently to the other 6 rookies, which he could only estimate were actual freshmen. Likely had come straight from high school, nearly 3 years his junior if he had to guess. All but two of them completely dwarfed him in size, but he was used to looking around a locker room and seeing he was one of the smallest ones there. It hadn’t always been that way, but as other boys kept getting taller and taller, his bones had not followed quite as enthusiastically as he would have wished.
He took off his shirt and diverted his eyes to the floor, a stupid habit he’d picked up when he was younger. Not a single person in this room knew he was gay. Not a single person in this rink had a way of knowing he was gay. In fact, when it came to the sport in general, no one would even feign to believe there was a single gay player in this or any league. Still. He’d experienced too much with other teams… when he was younger…when he wasn’t more careful. And he just didn’t want to do all of that again. He didn’t even want to look at the other guys in the room like that in the first place. But, he’d rather die than let any of them think he did want to.
The enveloping mirage of sound as he exited the locker room to approach the ice was comforting in some ways. The full sounding thwacks of sticks against pucks and pucks against the boards. The higher, lighter fuzz of white noise that skates scraping along the ice– sharpest and brightest when players cut into the ice for a stop. All rinks sounded the same. Sure, the echo was different. Some boards were thicker, making a bassier sound when hit by pucks and bodies. Some rinks were under temperature with the ice just soft enough that there’s a wet dampness to the cuts of blades against it. This rink in particular, with the stands and ceiling vaulted to accommodate the university team’s humble jumbotron screen, as well as the older foundations that came with all university buildings– was swallowing some of the echo. The world was a little muted here on the other side of the glass.
Wooyoung’s stomach flipped, imagining towering bleachers full of cheers…and not in a good way. In a scared way, in a way that told him he didn’t feel ready for that. He didn’t feel ready for any of this.
But, he didn’t have a choice. Either play. Here. On this team. Now. With academic scholarship and room & board. Or don’t go to college. Don’t get a degree. Don’t get a job. Be nothing. Never pay his family back for everything they’d given him. If he didn’t play at this school for his full 3.5 years, then his life was over. He didn’t LIKE thinking of it that way. But, no matter how he tried to slice it, that always came out as true. He didn’t have any other options.
The only godsend keeping Wooyoung sane right now was that Yeosang had beat him onto the ice. It was strange, once you had a teammate that you knew– really knew– you could recognize them covered in equipment from over a mile away. Just something about the way they moved or skated, or how their jerseys fell on their shoulders, the hold they had on their stick. He’d nervously scanned every white jersey player on the ice and his heart basically soared when he saw Yeosang’s recognizable figure stretching on the ice near the visitors’ bench. Fully rostered players had actual practice jerseys with the team info on them and everything– white for defensemen, blue for forwards. Wooyoung wondered if positional floats were handed baby blue jerseys until further notice, otherwise he couldn’t guess their purpose. Rookies, himself included, had been handed blank slate gray jerseys with no logos and no names, numbered 1-7.
“Hey,” he said, stopping to kneel on a knee next to Yeosang and begin to stretch too by pushing his weight against his stick.
“Oh, hey, man,” Yeosang shot over at him. “You ready?”
“Sort of have to be,” Wooyoung admitted.
“You seem to like hockey less and less every time I see you,” Yeosang noted.
“Yeah,” Wooyoung said slowly, as though he was working on a rebuttal. He breathed deeply for a few seconds, trying to think of something less dower to add, but nothing came to him. “Hey, how come we got different jerseys?”
“Uh,” Yeosang started to say, glancing up to look at Wooyoung from his hip flexor stretch, hips flush to the ice, one leg splayed backwards, and bent in front of his hips. Yeosang always used that stretch and, even though Wooyoung knew it might be good for himself to do it as well, it always made him cringe because it looked so damn weird and painful. “In case any of you don’t survive, to be honest.”
“Heartwarming,” Wooyoung complained. He watched a goalie that had to be over six foot, scrape his skates in hatches across the goal crease. He was a brute, probably got the gig by just filling the whole net. He’d tried not to judge his new teammates, sure. But, he’d always been sort of annoyed by how this sport afforded privileges to bigger player. He could as hard as he wanted, but he’d never hit as hard, cut as long of a stride, or fill as big of a space to block a shooter’s line of sight. He shook his as if trying to shake out the bitterness that had just washed over him. “Hey, what do I need to know about the coaches today? Like, what do they like to see?”
“Uhhh,” Yeosang drawled again, clearly never having been drilled so thoroughly about something he’d done almost every single day of his life for the past year and a half. “I don’t know, man. Just don’t be a fucking bender.”
“Well, yeah,” Wooyoung agreed. “No shit.”
By the time practice had started, Wooyoung had taken good enough stock of the players on the ice. Yeosang had warned him that some of the fully rostered players might not be able to make it to pre-season, but that this was the bulk of them. League regulations said no more than 19 players… and there were currently around 20 on the ice right now… not including whatever missing players there happened to be. It was crowded and hectic and the implication was at least clear to Wooyoung: someone was getting cut. And he prayed to whoever was listening that it wouldn’t be him.
As the hour progressed, Wooyoung felt pretty confident about his showing– much more confident than he’d expected to be. Don’t get him wrong, he still felt so fucking far behind the seasoned players. But, the other rookies? He was keeping up just fine, physically out doing most of them in speed and finesse when it came to his skating itself. But, who cared, seeing as all small skaters usually took it upon themselves to be fast as all hell. Because, what better way to deal with heavy hitters when you can’t take a hit than to be able to skirt the hit entirely?
His stomach churned any time another blue jersey skated past him and he noted how much fucking worse he felt than them. Even if he didn’t get cut here in the pre-season, he feared that he might be trailing behind, warming the bench for the rest of his college career.
No, he told himself. He couldn’t think that. At least make it through scrimmage. He had to at least put his all into scrimmage. Because what the hell else did he have to lose?
And scrimmage did feel good, even if Yeosang was put on the opposite team of 8. Wooyoung could feel that he himself wanted this more than everybody. Everyone else might have been treating this like practice and maybe he was being a bit of a tryhard. But, god, did it feel good to sneak past the other team’s blue line and crash deep for a centering pass back up the zone, maybe even a wraparound if time better permitted. It felt good to feel his lungs heat up and feel the weight of the puck on his stick. He was a good wingman for precise positioning, even if this team didn’t have specific plays he knew about yet– everybody liked a winger who could easily drop low behind the net.
Everyone except the other team’s defense, of course. The defensemen always had to walk a delicate balance as the two of them bartered for the unfortunate and humiliating task of covering below the hash marks to try and stop him. And, Wooyoung liked that, because that meant he usually only had to deal with a defenseman who was desperate to get back in front of the net or a center who was desperate to not get so deep and overcommit to any individual defensive move because of it.
Usually.
Today, some hot head blue jersey center came out of fucking nowhere and Wooyoung tried to stop on one foot and pivot back out the other way (that’s the only other issue with playing behind the net, there is only 2 ways out). But, he didn’t have enough time. He stopped but the center was skating hard enough to be stooped low and he collided his shoulder against Wooyoung’s chest. The first thing Wooyoung felt was all of his air push out of his chest with an “oof” then it was the momentum slamming him backwards into the boards.
Next thing he knew, his ass hit the ice as he saw the puck slide with newfound freedom against the boards past the bruiser that had just hit him… right to where a white jersey’d defenseman already was getting their hands on it. Dirty outcome from a dirty play by… a dirty player?
The enemy center had taken the hit as hard as Wooyoung and was also scrambling to get back up on his feet to chase his team back up and out of their own zone. Wooyoung felt himself glaring, trying to find a few facial features to commit this face to memory. So that he knew who to watch out for, to make sure this didn’t become someone who was on his ass all season. So much for first impressions.
With each subsequent glance, Wooyoung was sure he must have been seeing things.
Maybe he had hit his head on the fall and just not noticed. Maybe it was just the stress and anxiety of the entire day. Maybe it was nothing at all.
But, what he saw, as he often did, was the same face he always saw everywhere. The face of a boy who had been his entire world once. An innocent face with eyes permanently pressed up with his smile. A happy boy. A boy that he hadn’t seen in what felt like a lifetime… and he’d missed him even longer than that.
The other player seemed to be just as taken aback, trying to figure out who had just skated that hard into a hit to get this reckless and sloppy– at a scrimmage no less. He looked sort of shocked and Wooyoung watched his mouth try to open, as if it let out some sort of word. Maybe an apology, but Wooyoung didn’t want an apology— it was hockey for fuck’s sake.
What he did want was to look away. So that he would stop looking for silly little answers in the face of the masculine man in front of him, whom he’d truthfully never seen before. Wooyoung hated looking at him. He hated letting his brain use so many faces in this world as a trigger. He hated the things it made him feel even more.
He swore his heart was pounding harder now than it had during any of the rest of scrimmage. And he knew it wasn’t the break-in or the hit or the length of this long shift. It was the pulling of his single most vulnerable trigger. Just a handsome face through the grid of a hockey mask and that’s all it took for him to be a scared little kid again. His heart wrongfully fucking begging him not to let that boy slip away again. But, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t ever be able to keep that from happening. The world was sort of just cruel that way, but at least Wooyoung knew to accept it.
‘It’s not him. It’s not him. It’s not him.’ Wooyoung chanted to his brain as he finally stood. The other player, not having suffered the same emotional baggage and shock that Wooyoung just had, was long gone and halfway out of the zone at this point. Wooyoung cut ice as fast as he could to catch up on the backcheck. What was he doing? Letting his stupid, old old old feelings completely ruin this day for him? What was he thinking?
‘We’re not ever going to see San again and that’s okay. That’s okay. That’s okay. It’s okay,” his head told his heart.
It had to be okay.
Wooyoung had decided it was okay not even a month after he’d lost him. It was okay to be without his best friend and confidant for the rest of his life– it had to be okay. Otherwise Wooyoung didn’t think he’d be able to breathe. Let alone live.
And here it was, interrupting everything again.
It wasn’t uncommon for Wooyoung to remember such a person while he was on the ice. Up until the moment they stopped speaking, Wooyoung couldn’t remember a time when he was lacing up his skates without that boy by his side. Wooyoung was especially embarrassed of the way big hits would trigger him to remember him because he used to be the one to rush to Wooyoung’s side when he struggled to get up or looked especially scared or hurt. Because that was the only thing that made him feel okay, his face, his voice, his words. Even now, sometimes Wooyoung would crash into the ice and feel just disoriented and scared enough to still just want that person who knew how he was feeling and knew even better how to make it all go away…The person who knew how to make him feel less scared of doing the hard things, like he used to.
Fuck, Wooyoung hated this. Years and he couldn’t fucking play without skating with a ghost constantly trailing close behind him.
He did his best to forget about it, like he always did. He still felt that nagging in the back of his head telling him he was forgetting something, begging to pull him back in. But, he ignored it. Instead, focusing on keeping stock on that brawler of a center out of the corner of his eye. He had one hell of a toe drag, which only made Wooyoung angrier. Because the only person he knew who relied on stickhandling smooth like that was… the boy he’d lost years ago.
Fuck this.
Fuck memories.
Who fucking cares.
Wooyoung wasn’t going to let him or any of the players who outskated him or the player who had said something about his height, ruin this day. Or make him look any worse in front of his new coaches.
Dumping off his equipment in the locker room, he mused that he didn’t know the last time he’d sweat this hard at a practice. That gave him a little security, knowing he’d done all he could. He packed up his oversized equipment bag a little embarrassed– the rookies were the only players that couldn’t leave their equipment at the rink because they didn’t have dedicated lockers in the main locker room quite yet. Which meant having to lug the damn thing that was at least 3⁄4 's his size through the corridor and lobby while the rest of the team walked around unburdened. Sure, he’d stick out, not any more than the other rookies. But, still. He didn’t want to be just like all the other rookies.
He dropped it like a body bag in the lobby, waiting for Yeosang so he could get out of here. He wasn’t much in the mood to do all his introductions today. He didn’t want to be introduced to people until he was finally, officially, without a doubt on the team. He didn’t want anyone to know him as just another rookie the second they met him.
Leaned back against a cinderblock wall next to a littered bulletin board, dark hoodie hood pulled over his head, Wooyoung let his eyes scan faces in the lobby while trying to figure out who was a player and, if they were a player, which person they’d been on the ice now that they were out of their equipment. Three bigger, sweatier guys immediately gave themselves away as some of the defensemen. A thin, but tall guy he remembered being a center. Goalies were always easy to remember because there were only ever 2 or 3 of them.
Wooyoung’s eyes halted on one player talking to their head coach. The brawler. Wooyoung hadn’t really ever seen a coach talk that one-on-one candidly with a player… maybe that guy was even more important than Wooyoung had thought. Maybe he was over there telling their coach to cut Wooyoung after the hit earlier.
Despite him being so far away across the lobby, Wooyoung could see his face all the clearer without the cage.
And he looked even more like his San, with a few glaring exceptions. And thank god for exceptions, Wooyoung needed them desperately to curb his delusions. His San had been a skinny sort of lanky thing and this guy had broad, masculine shoulders with a swelling chest even out of equipment. His face was full, jaw more squared. He wasn’t smiling, Wooyoung had yet to see a single muscle move on his face to suggest a single positive emotion had passed his mind. His face was too mature. Even if years had passed, his San’s face had been sweet and boyish. He’d never think of him any other way.
Wooyoung had frozen him in time, it had to be that way. It would break his heart too much to imagine he still existed somewhere out there, changing without him.
“Hey,” came Yeosang’s voice from beside him, jostling him out of his intense staring and even more intense thoughts.
“Hey,” Wooyoung said, noncommittal as he came back to the world of the living.
“Cap’s a beaut, isn’t he?” Yeosang chimed in, making it clear he’d caught the way that Wooyoung’s gaze had gotten stuck on one particular player.
“Who?” Wooyoung asked, eyes dragging over the player he’d been looking at. Of course he was team captain. It made sense, he was built well, his face was serious, and he looked adult and responsible. Wooyoung tipped his head in that guy’s direction, just to be sure. “That guy?”
Yeosang nodded.
Yeosang wasn’t wrong, that guy WAS a beaut. Gorgeous really. Not that it mattered, seeing as Wooyoung had told himself he’d never fall for a teammate ever, EVER again. He didn’t really give a shit about handsome hockey players. He wasn’t allowed to. But, that didn’t mean that guy’s features weren’t making him insane, even from this far away. All Wooyoung could see was a ghost. That’s why he asked Yeosang for a name. So that he could name this player something and always remember that name whenever his brain forgot reality and started to believe in fairy tales ever again.
“What’s cap’s name?” Wooyoung asked, trying to sound like he didn’t care.
Yeosang hummed in acknowledgement, having just filled his mouth with water out of his squeeze bottle. Wooyoung did not appreciate the suspense.
“San?” Yeosang asked. Wooyoung physically flinched and his breath skittered. He didn’t answer, he just kept fucking staring at that stern face that refused to smile. There was no way that life was being this cruelly coincidental right now, was it?
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. But, his chest already hurt, his heart felt light like it was about to float away from him forever and leave his ribs empty, missing it dearly.
“San who?” Wooyoung said and as the word pushed itself out of his chest, he finally noticed he was now barely breathing. A name he hadn’t said in years. One he thought he’d never say again. It tasted so familiar and warm in his mouth. He wanted to wash it out.
“Choi San,” Yeosang said more slowly and Wooyoung could sense that he was becoming more and more skeptical of Wooyung’s deep interest.
“...Your team captain is Choi San?” Wooyoung asked, barely able to hear his own voice as his heartbeat drowned out every other sound except for a high pitch somewhere in the pipes in the lobby’s ceiling that was rising and rising in his ears as the world felt like it was collapsing in on him.
“Our team captain is Choi San,” Yeosand mused, almost sounding happy about it, happy that Wooyoung was officially playing on a team with him again. Wooyoung wanted to be happy too. So fucking badly.
But, instead, the words slammed into him again.
Our team captain is Choi San.
My team captain is Choi San.
That’s Choi San.
Fuck.
It had to be him. Sure, that name could have been anyone’s. But, not with a face like that. Not with the gait of his skating. Not with that perfect toe drag. Not with exactly the perfect number of years into school. Even knowing he was captain would have been enough.
Because his Choi San would have always been the best.
Wooyoung couldn’t help staring now. Just looking at every inch of him. Nothing moved on San’s face, stone serious as their coach continued to yammer. Like he didn’t want to be here. Like he was fucking miserable.
And his face didn’t change. Until, he glanced up– and, maybe it was Wooyoung’s fault, putting the pressure of his heavy gaze right on the guy’s face but still. San locked his own sight onto Wooyoung’s face right back. Gaze as sharp and intense as everything Wooyoung had seen from on the ice today– hell, as intense as he’d been when they were just kids.
His Choi San.
It was too far away, but Wooyoung almost felt like he saw that face soften. Maybe his eyes opened a little wider, but maybe he didn’t think of a single thing at all when he looked at Wooyoung.
Because, maybe it was the world’s stupidest coincidence.
San’s brows pushed up and in, like he was confused. Like he was trying to figure something out.
‘Don’t look at me, Don’t look at me, Don’t look at me,’ Wooyoung pleaded in his head. Wooyoung felt dizzy. He was panicking, he knew that.
It was just that… he wasn’t ready.
He was never going to be ready.
Because they were meant to be apart.
San eyes darted away again in a way that Wooyoung immediately recognized as a mirror of what he himself had just done. Wooyoung swallowed heavily, they were both thinking the exact same thing:
It’s you.
“He’s the guy who fucking demolished you earlier,” Yeosang explained, taking Wooyoung’s silence as ignorance.
“No, yeah.” Wooyoung shook his head like he was trying to clear cobwebs. He’d thought of that guy on the ice as San. Because it was. He was. And it was the first time in Wooyoung’s life he’d made that hopeless assumption and had it actually be true… Unless this was all a nightmare, which seemed just as probable. “I gathered that much.”
“Yeah, but he’s not really a heavy hitter. I think it was just a misunderstanding,” Yeosang explained, but Wooyoung didn’t hear him. “Do you know him?”
“Kind of,” Wooyoung lied. The corner of his eyes stung because the truth was ripping at his insides, begging to claw out of his chest and fall lifelessly onto the scarred linoleum of the rink lobby so they could all stare at it ashamedly. It wanted to scream and wail in frustration that Choi San had ruined his fucking life. Knowing Choi San had fucking ruined him. That he hated Choi San in the exact same measure that he had once loved him.
“Played with him before?” Yeosang asked, oh so innocently.
“Something like that,” Wooyoung lied again.
His brain was completely blank. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t deal with this right now. He couldn’t be put in the conversation he’d imagined to himself 10-15 times a day for years. He didn’t even have what he wanted to say completely under control. He should have had a manifesto by now, a string of evil, hurtful words that could make that Choi San feel exactly as destroyed as Wooyoung had the last day they’d seen each other. But, there was nothing there. And, he didn’t know if it was because there was too much to say or if there was nothing at all.
“I think I left something in the locker room, sorry.” Wooyoung said for his 3rd and final lie. He ducked down to grab his equipment bag before Yeosang grabbed his shoulder.
“I’ll take your stuff to the car,” Yeosang said, head tilted toward the front door in the opposite direction Wooyoung had turned.
“Thanks,” Wooyoung said. But, he felt a little bad that he knew it was a lie. He was just looking for a way to walk out the back door, away from the team captain, instead of walking past him at the front door. It was lame. It was childish. But, he needed some time to sit with this. Maybe then he could accept that one of the most important people in his life still existed. Not that he ever believed San had died. Wooyoung had just let him go a thousand times before and he was fighting against every single one of those moments right now.
The night air outside was wet and muggy like the start of any fall was. He trudged past the slush pile the zamboni had accumulated in the back pavement over the past few weeks. He deftly walked across the broken chunks of asphalt that had suffered being buried in ice and slush for however long this rink had stood. He tracked at the crests and ravines of the pavement with eyes and thought about relatively nothing up until he rounded to the side of the building and halted again.
It really was like being haunted like a ghost because there was the dark San-shaped figure standing on the corner, clearly surveying the parking lot for something… or someone. His arms appeared to be pulled across his chest in a strange way with something almost vulnerable or small about it. Wooyoung couldn’t have imagined that man in the lobby standing like that. He decided not to swell on it.
Wooyoung spun as fast as he could on his heel to round the building again– even though he could see Yeosang’s car from here. You could get to campus by foot from the other side of the building. San just wasn’t worth the hassle right now, but the awkward conversation with Yeosang about ditching him after making him carry his equipment more than was if it meant successfully running way.
But, it didn’t matter. Because, as soon as he turned, a voice stopped him again.
“Wooyoung?” it called. Something confusing about the sound of it– like an exclamation and a question full of the sound of a hopeful doubt.
Wooyoung felt his face heat up, he felt the corners of his eyes burn. He turned again. Because it really didn’t feel like he could just pretend he didn’t hear. He spun again, making his black hoodie hood fall off his head with the momentum. God dammit. He didn’t even get the comfort of hiding. Figures.
The guy… his captain..San.. Choi San… but not his Choi San, jogged over to Wooyoung as Wooyoung barely moved a muscle. As if not to crowd him, this San stopped a few feet ahead of him as if not to crowd him or maybe to take him all in. Wooyoung hated both possible reasons.
Air felt hot and sticky. Car tires spun on wet pavement around the front of the building. Still, here, hidden near the back, Wooyoung could hear San’s breathing. And he hated it.
He hated this.
“It’s you,” San’s voice barely sounded the way Wooyoung remembered it. It still had a youthful lilt to it but it was different somehow. More solid maybe. The smile on his face was just as bright as it had always been but his face had filled out quite a bit, so it didn’t take up his whole face like it used to. Wooyoung was comforted to see that it still reached up to crinkle the corners of his eyes no matter how much had changed. Wooyoung watched his broad chest rise and fall, widen and then compress again– had he run out here to find him? “It’s really you.”
San took a few more advancing steps toward him and Wooyoung felt himself hesitantly cowering away. He didn’t know why but the alarm bells in his brain were telling him that he didn’t want San to come any closer. What was more, he couldn’t let San come any closer.
San advanced anyway, probably because Wooyoung didn’t really try that hard to get away, feeling frozen in place. Nor should San have known how he was feeling, considering Wooyoung knew even his face had gone slack. Despite the confusion locking his muscles in place, his heart flickered when San got just too close and anxiety began to ebb around and through him again.
Now less than a foot away, San’s hands made landfall on either side of Wooyoung’s neck.
He was real.
Wooyoung could feel him. And he was real.
And, just like that, Wooyoung’s world tipped off its axis.
He should have said something, but he felt a chokehold in his throat. There was nothing else to say. His ex-best friend already knew what he was thinking– it’s you, it’s really you.
And that was the worst part.
He flinched at the tingling feeling the heat of San’s fingers left on his skin. Those hands tipped Wooyoung’s head up just enough as though this near stranger really needed to look at him, really needed to see all of him. Wooyoung let him mold him like that for some reason without resisting. Maybe for old time’s sake. Maybe because he wanted to gaze back. San’s eyes dragged over his face in a way that made him feel naked and so juvenile and exposed.
Wooyoung couldn’t look at him this close. It was too much. Even with his eyes fully focused on San now, Wooyoung saw two faces. One of a stranger. The face of a man he’d never met. A full face, square jaw, high cheekbones, wet hair pushed back to show off a strong brow. Wooyoung didn’t know who the fuck that was. Didn’t even know if he wanted to… no matter how handsome that face was.
But, it was the second face that really broke his heart. The face of a boy. A boy who had been so thin and long and awkward once. A boy who had laughed with him and cried with him and lived by his side for so long. A boy who had been his entire fucking world. Wooyoung could see him somewhere there, but it felt more like a trick of the light. It felt just like the hundreds of other times in the last 5 years where he’d thought he’d seen that face on so many strangers, just because his brain couldn’t understand that he wasn’t around anymore. That face, as far as Wooyoung’s life was concerned, belonged to a person who didn’t exist. Couldn’t exist. To believe otherwise meant falling apart completely.
But, if San were gone. If he were, by all intents and purposes, dead to Wooyoung’s reality—then why did Wooyoung see him there? In the wild eyes that were trying to tell him something, trying to express some fondness that Wooyoung had seen there a thousand times over and over when they were kids. Eyes that wandered in an innocent sort of curious way. Eyes that, as Wooyoung watched them, he thought he saw a glimpse of…home? No, that was stupid. Because that didn’t make sense.
Those were just eyes and nothing more.
…Eyes that looked like they were shining bright enough to cry. But, it’s not like Wooyoung had any idea what this person he didn’t actually fucking know might look like when he was about to cry.
“It’s really you,” San said, something frustratingly hopeful in his voice. Wooyoung refused to let some semblance of a sound break his heart. But, It seemed like, the more of Wooyoung's face he took in, the more San’s smile glowed. Was San really happy to see him? Was that really possible? “God, look at you.”
Wooyoung wanted to squirm away at words like that. But his body refused to fucking move. He was like a deer in headlights, but all too aware of the terror in his heart as those headlights got closer and closer and braced for the fatal collision. He wanted to run away. He wanted to leave this stupid conversation and this stupid parking lot and this stupid rink and this stupid school and his stupid life. He wanted to run as far as he fucking could away from Choi San.
“I thought I saw a ghost,” San said and his eyebrows pressed close and up his brow as though he might really cry this time at the mere idea that he could have been wrong. Wooyoung wondered for half of a second if San too had been seeing his face everywhere, for all this time. Lost in thought, Wooyoung barely registered the leadup before San very suddenly wrapped his arms around Wooyoung's shoulders and pulled Wooyoung flush against him.
San’s body was more solid than Wooyoung had ever remembered it being. He didn’t know how he felt about San being bigger than him. And maybe that was because everything about this was so different. Maybe because he hated being faced with exactly how much time had passed since they last spoke. Maybe it was because he couldn’t even remember what the last thing they had said to each other could have possibly been.
Did San not remember either?
Surely, San could at least remember what happened. How could he not? Wooyoung hadn’t gone a single day without thinking about some part of it– the wedge that had been forced between them and severed them oh so painfully apart.
And Wooyoung still wasn’t sure if he forgave San for his parts in it… for not seeing it coming… for not speaking up… for not reaching out. And now? Did he really believe it was okay to approach him like this right now? As though all was forgiven, as though it would have only been logical for Wooyoung to have moved on from the angry parts of it by now.
And, maybe any other day, he would have believed it. But, not with San directly in front him. Not with this unfamiliar body burning hot pressed against his.
Wooyoung didn’t hug him back, he didn’t think he could. He didn’t think his body even would.
On instinct, Wooyoung’s eyes swept the lot, terrified (as he’d well learned to be) that someone would see them again and think the wrong thing. Or, rather, think the right thing but with negative intentions. He was disappointed to find he didn’t even know the faces he found there. He didn’t know how to tell if they were looking at the two of them like this or whatever the hell they might be thinking about it.
Regardless of his own mesh of feelings, he didn’t like the optics of this. He didn’t want to be implicitly linked to San, not again. As much as he hated having to resign himself to this fate, he needed to stay on this team. To stay in school. To save his family the tuition money. He couldn’t have everything get messed up on day one just because some specter from his past wanted to decide what water was under what bridge.
Wooyoung recoiled, pulling himself away from San.
“I have to go,” Wooyoung choked out through a tight throat, closing his eyes as thoroughly as he could. Just so that he didn’t have to see San’s face, just so that he could walk away by sheer force without a single thought in his mind.
“Wooyoung,” San said, sounding surprised that Wooyoung would so much as dane not to openly embrace someone who had not so much as given him a call in 4 straight years. Someone who had never apologized for everything that had happened.
Wooyoung braced to feel a tugging touch on his wrist like he used to. No matter how inert a body’s memory may seem, once opened, the feeling might have felt as new as yesterday. But, nothing pulled him a stop. Maybe, San had enough decorum not to try to control where he went.. Not forcefully make a virtual stranger stay.
“Hey,” San’s voice came again anyway, right next to his side as Wooyoung walked across the wet pavement of the lot to the far corner, where he was hoping Yeosang would already be in his car so that he could just get in. He prayed he wouldn't have to stop when the doors proved locked, trapped in this conversation like a wounded animal. “Where are you going? You can’t just leave.”
Wooyoung could hear what he really meant– you can’t just leave me.
“Woo, it’s me,” San said as though it was a reasonable plea to reason. But, it wasn’t. It meant nothing now. Wooyoung didn’t even really know who this person was. He was a ghost of someone really important to him and he actually resented that this person wanted to wear that memory’s skin like an imposter just to have Wooyoung melt to his words.
Still, if Wooyoung hated it so much, why did he find himself squeezing his eyes shut trying not to fucking cry?
“Please,” Wooyoung finally stopped walking, eyes glued to the rippled reflections of the streetlamps scattered across puddles on the ground. They each shimmered a little each time the last remnants of rain broke their mirrored surfaces. “San, please. Just let me do this.”
‘Let me do this, let us both do what we have to do to get through and graduate without ruining both of our lives,’ said the silent part.
“I don’t want it to be weird,” Wooyoung said, even though that’s not what he felt at all. It wasn’t awkward, it wasn’t weird. He’d felt the awkwardness of stumbling upon an ex or ex-friend in the wild, but it had never felt like this. There was a barrier between them, sure, but Wooyoung really just felt one thing. For the thousandth time.
Heartbroken.
He felt torn apart and chewed by life. And he had for years now. First, fate was going to take his San away and, just when Wooyoung had finally felt he might be done grieving for him, the world drops another San into his lap. Like a timeskip to the more empty and heartless story line. Now he was coming back to life on a dark, wet, muggy fall night– the air was suffocating, earthy, and thick. The entire atmosphere was suffocating.
San didn’t respond, he just stood there next to him. Looking at him.
Wooyoung started to walk again.
“I don’t want it to be weird either,” San said, speeding up to a short jog to catch up again. “But, it would drive me insane to know you’re on this campus and that I’m not– that you’re not– I just need to talk to you.”
Wooyoung couldn’t read his voice. He hated that it sounded like how he remembered, but deeper… and more hurt than he’d ever heard it. But, Wooyoung couldn't read between the lines anymore. He couldn’t guess what San was leaving out and seemed to think Wooyoung could guess.
“Just forget it, okay?” Wooyoung asked, almost angry again. Now he wanted to talk about it? After none of it mattered? After they were two people so removed that they probably couldn’t even remember the details of it?
“Are you crazy?” San asked, sounding angry too. Teeth grit undercut by a pained strain in his tight throat.
“Are you?” Wooyoung asked back immediately as he laid a hand on the rain-wet door handle of Yeosang’s old sedan. He pulled.
Locked.
Shit.
He was going to have to filibuster until his hero in a hard plastic helmet returned outside.
“Listen, I don’t know you,” Wooyoung said, eyes still on where his hand still grasped around the wet handle, making rain water pool in his palm. “You don’t know me. It’s fine.”
“Hey, slow down,” San said and it sounded shockingly patient. “Please, can we just talk?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Wooyoung tried instead. And it earnestly felt true. “We were kids.”
And, he was half right. They’d really been teenagers. Everything bad had happened in high school. But, the thing was, all of it mattered. 8-year-old Wooyoung hurt just as badly to lose his own best friend that day. Every version of Wooyoung lost every memory of him or, at least, the original versions of those memories.
“We’re still kids,” San said and, unable to see his face, Wooyoung started to pretend it was someone else. It sounded sort of pretty and hopeful and sweet. Maybe they were still kids. Wooyoung had seen 20-something hockey players do a lot stupider shit than children could. But, it didn’t feel like that. Those 5 years had felt so long and isolating, he felt mature and new in a way that he sort of hated but relied on too.
Wooyoung squeezed his eyes tight. Was he really going to open up just because this guy had said one vaguely sweet thing?
“I need this,” Wooyoung said, then rushed to clarify. “This team, this gig. I need it. I can’t have what happened last time happen this time.”
“It won’t,” San said rather confidently. Wooyoung just shook his head, San was an optimist and idealist. San was the one who had promised nothing would go wrong back then too. And he’d been so, so wrong.
Wooyoung heard the wet footsteps on the pavement and the jingle of zipper pulls knocking against each other. Glancing up to see Yeosang carrying both Wooyoung’s hockey bag and both of his hockey sticks. Oof, bad look. Wooyoung was so going to owe him.
But, that was the least of his worries.
He needed to get rid of San. He needed to get San’s obvious desperation and closeness and everything else away from Yeosang.
Yeosang was sweet. Maybe Wooyoung would tell him a little bit of something about this someday. But not on this, his first day. And probably wouldn’t consider it again until this season was long gone.
“Hey,” Yeosang said, eyes swimming between the two players standing at his car now that he had never seen speak to each other once in his life. Maybe he was a tad amused, but if he was actually curious, he didn’t show it.
“Hey,” Wooyoung and San said back in unison, Wooyoung surprised that San was clearly playing along.
“If I knew you were going to beat me to the car, I wouldn’t have offered to carry your shit,” Yeosang remarked, but he didn’t sound angry as he rounded the back to open his hatch and slide in Wooyoung’s bag and sticks, which took some maneuvering. Which meant that Wooyoung had just bought some time to tie this conversation off with.. Well, not a bow… maybe a padlock with no combination and a lost key. Yeah, something like that.
“Don’t fuck this up for me,” Wooyoung said hushing his voice.
“I won’t. I swear. But, you know we can’t just not talk.” San asked.
“We can and we will,” Wooyoung rebuttled.
“Can I have your number?” San asked then, almost like a challenge. Wooyoung didn’t want to talk? Too bad, San was just going to ask for every avenue to talk to him. Hearing the words come out of San’s mouth made Wooyoung’s stomach turn inside out like he was a teenager again. Made only worse that the main character of all his teenage fantasies had just said them out loud, to him, on purpose, and with some sort of extra weight to them.
Wooyoung caught San’s eyes jumping to Yeosang as though that was his shield against any nastiness Wooyoung might throw his way. As though Wooyoung turning him down would blow their cover.
So, Wooyoung just didn’t speak but said what he wanted to say anyway by shaking his head.
“You know I can just get it off the roster, right?” San said, not even sounding defeated, which also sort of pissed Wooyoung off. San was willing to back down but not give up. The worst part was, his San had been just like that too.
“Okay,” Wooyoung acknowledged the words without showing he gave them any weight. He pulled open the car door as he heard Yeosang close the back hatch.
San caught the door for just a second and said only one more thing.
“I bet I can still beat you end to end,” San challenged.
Wooyoung felt his mouth fall out open, felt his brow crease. San had NEVER beaten Wooyoung skating red line to red line in a dead sprint. They both knew that. Wooyoung had always been the faster skater. Not a single day since they were 10 years old had San EVER beaten him end to end.
But, he wasn’t taking the bait. He wasn’t going to make San think he remembered any of that.
“Keep dreaming,” he said instead, pulling the door all the way open as San smoothly got out of his way, clearly having gotten to say what he wanted. As Wooyoung climbed in the car, he took one more look at San’s face and there was something challenging there, smug even. Something that said San knew they both knew a thousand things they weren’t saying. Wooyoung returned it with a glare.
“See you soon,” San said, sounding harmless enough but Wooyoung knew too well it was meant to grind at his patience.
“Yeah, whatever,” Wooyoung said absentmindedly, but he couldn’t say more because San had just shut the car door for him.
Yeosang glanced at him in the passenger seat, surprisingly looking not-so-surprised. Maybe he hadn’t heard too much and they were all teammates now after all, right? The car was achingly quiet but, still, Wooyoung just gave Yeosang a false ‘i don’t know either’ shrug and pretended not to watch out the side mirror at San getting smaller and smaller in the parking lot as it receded where he seemed to wait a long moment before walking back toward the rink.
When Yeosang turned a corner and Wooyoung could no longer watch San’s figure anymore, he shut his eyes as tight as he fucking could. Hoping to make it go away. To make San go away.
Maybe it had only been a dream.
Or, worse, a memory.
—--
Wooyoung hated whenever people would wax poetic with that stupid ass line “I remember like it was yesterday”. He hated even more that there were times when it was true for even him.
Wooyoung had skated with his brother and dad when he was younger– pond hockey, street hockey, stick & puck. But, he didn’t join organized hockey until 10U. It was the last year his dad was around. It was the last year he really felt like a kid.
He’d just reached the age where he was able to tie his own skates without having to worry about breaking his still growing ankles if he didn’t pull them tight enough. He was still young enough to fear falling– especially in the places he’d learned still hurt even with all that pre-used equipment and padding on. But, he was old enough to begin to understand the broad strokes of the game from watching the pro’s on TV. What happened, where to go. He just didn’t really know what being on a team was like yet. Or seeing the same other kids every week, learning more than only what an older brother could teach him.
It was a big deal that Wooyoung even got to play a sport. There were so many kids in his family that it was hard for anyone to get to anything on time– especially when the only rink in town was a bit of a drive. He knew that choosing hockey meant he was choosing to skip every other sport, club,and interest left on his horizons. He had to be all in. Most of the kids in the locker room his first day probably weren’t thinking that way: that hockey was it. It was going to be everything.
Except for one.
Wooyoung was late, as was perpetually common for his entire family. He was a little embarrassed by it, especially because he didn’t know exactly how quickly he could get his equipment on all on his own.
Being late, he stumbled into the locker room into the single least coveted seat– right where the door swung open into the room. He’d have to turn his legs just right to keep from letting the door from hitting his knees every time a player or parent came in or out.
Wooyoung pretended not to notice the boy he sat down next to was already done putting on his bottom half of equipment (which was the hard part). He pretended not to notice the new look of that boy’s hockey bag, the unmarked surfaces of his equipment.
“What do you play?” said the boy next to him after a few short minutes.
“What?” Wooyoung asked, not really sure if he should really say the word ‘hockey’ to that or not right now.
“What position do you play?” the boy asked instead.
“Oh,” Wooyoung said, before realizing his mouth was frozen. He didn’t have a position he played. He knew what players he liked on pro teams, he knew he liked skating faster than anybody else. “I don’t know.”
“Oh,” the boy mirrored him, his head tipping to the side. “Why not?”
Wooyoung could not believe how many fucking questions one boy could have about a boy he just first saw a few minutes ago.
“I don’t know,” Wooyoung said, feeling embarrassed all over again. Maybe he would quit and never come back. His parents would definitely thank him for saving them the gas money. He tried to think of something redeeming to say, but his thoughts were drowned out by all the other voices and sounds of velcro straps and clasp buttons in the room. “I like forward, I think.”
The other boy’s face lit up. His smile was big and bright and white and it reached all the way up to pinch his eyes. Wooyoung glanced away again to focus on tying his second skate before he fell too deep into the features he saw there.
“Nice,” he said with an affirmative nod. He pulled his jersey on over his head then he ducked low so his voice was closer to Wooyoung’s ear where he was bent over his skates. “I’m a center. You should be my winger.”
Wooyoung looked at him again, sort of confused. He was usually the most outgoing person in the room. But, he’d never seen hockey players— or players at any boys sport– be friendly like this. He wondered if this boy’s belief that he’d make center was based on actual confidence of skill or the confidence that all his clearly fresh and surely relatively new equipment gave him.
“What makes you think I’m not a center?” Wooyoung asked, not because he actually cared what position he played but because he’d officially been caught conversationally by this guy. He was officially curious.
“Believe me,” the boy said, following Wooyoung as he sat up to slip on his shoulder pads over his head and pull at their velcro. “You’re always going to want to be on my line.”
And, for some reason, Wooyoung was inclined to believe him. Even though, as his eyes scanned him, Wooyoung could tell he wasn’t all that big and he didn’t look all that strong. His genuine smile and his playful tone made Wooyoung think that he wasn’t just some cocky asshole. Even though the sight of the new skates on his feet made Wooyoung a little irate.
“I’m San,” he said, as though he thought Wooyoung had been dying to ask. Wooyoung almost missed the words too, as he’d been pulling on a jersey.
“Okay,” Wooyoung said, not really sure where his manners had gone. But, in his defense, he was pretty focused on finding a way for his elbow pads to sit right.
And, he’d thought he’d found it. But, as he grabbed his jersey sleeve to pull it back over the damn thing, San grabbed Wooyoung’s arm by the elbow pad, making Wooyoung stop abruptly. Deftly and without any fanfare whatsoever, San pulled the velcro back off both the top and bottom until the little shell shaped piece of equipment fell into his hand.
“Hey-” Wooyoung almost swore at him, angry in an instant. But, his tongue stilled when all San did was turn the shell 180 degrees and tuck the crux of Wooyoung’s elbow back into it.
Figures.
It had been upside down.
Wooyoung glanced at that face again, a playful sort of gentle face. San just looked right back at him as though there was something they both knew but weren’t saying. As if they knew any other player on this team would have come down on Wooyoung viciously for making such a stupid mistake. But, San didn’t care. All San wanted was to get on the ice and, it would seem, to get Wooyoung to come with him. He didn’t care that Wooyoung seemed a little inexperienced or confused. For some stupid fucking reason, San had just chosen him and Wooyoung could feel in his gut– it wouldn’t be easy to shake him.
“Wooyoung,” Wooyoung said, forgetting everything else he was supposed to say around that. San’s head tipped to the side as though curious, like a cat playfully hunting prey it could never reach out the window. “I’m Wooyoung.”
San smiled for what felt like the millionth time in 5 minutes.
“Okay, Wooyoung,” San said, seeming pleased with himself as he pulled his helmet out of his bag. “I bet I can beat you skating end to end.”
Wooyoung felt his chest warm.
“You definitely can’t,” Wooyoung promised, this he was certain of.
“Alright,” San said, sounding pleased with the challenge. He nodded rhythmically to himself as though thinking as he slid on either of his gloves. “Bet I can beat you onto the ice though.”
With that, San was up off the bench and headed out the locker room door, leaving Wooyoung to scramble for his helmet and gloves.
He knew he wasn’t going to win. That much was obvious.
But, that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that there was someone out there, on the ice, waiting for him.
So, Wooyoung chased after him.
And, back then, it had felt like he always would.