𝐚𝐜𝐞・h.h.
— volleyball superstar and your personal hell hwang hyunjin proposes a trade-off you can't refuse: his matchmaking services for a passing anthropology grade. the plan is foolproof in theory; in practice, it is something else entirely.
words・15.2k
pairing・volleyball player!hyunjin x tutor!reader (gn)
genres・college!au, sports!au, fake enemies to friends to lovers, fluff, humor, hurt/comfort, slice of life, mutual pining, slow burn. two polar opposites sharing one soul. a seungjin fic if u squint. loosely inspired by the manga/anime haikyuu!!
warnings・mentions of anxiety, fear of failure, heartbreak, loneliness, and self-image. course language and callous banter (as always) ft. suggestive flirting and one kms joke. some of the referenced players and coaches are real; this fic is not.
playlist・collision by stray kids・value by ado・waiting for us by stray kids・eternity by bang chan・dreaming by smallpools・fly high!! by burnout syndromes
a/n・writing this felt like returning to my roots tbh. i love volleyball and i love sports aus and i love, love hwang hyunjin. thank u to my sahar for bringing this fic to life with me, as always; i can no longer write for him without also writing for you. i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i adored writing it. happy late birthday, our jinnie, our hyunjin, our forever ace; you are so unbelievably loved ♡
“Not a word out of you,” you say, tossing your backpack onto the floor of the lecture hall with a heavy-handed flick. “I’m serious.”
Hyunjin glances up at you with a frown. “When did people stop saying good morning?”
Your lack of an immediate comeback tells him the situation is dire. He observes you for a moment, his mouth falling open, hanging still, then curving into a slow, serpentine smile.
“Look at me.”
“No.”
“Look at me.”
“No.”
“Please, angel.”
“No! Leave me alone.”
Hyunjin slumps back into his seat, thinking hard. The solution occurs to him with a poke of his tongue into his cheek. “Coffee on me for a week.”
At this, your hands stop rummaging in your bag. You cock your head, your interest piqued. Got you.
When you finally humor him and turn around, you’re flinching like you’re in pain, eyes closed and breath held and all. He giggles and leans in for a closer look. Tendrils of your body spray reach him from here, floral and light like a tropical coastline. He could’ve counted your eyelashes if he wasn’t so flummoxed by the state of your forehead.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Tried to cut my own bangs,” you sigh. “It didn’t go very well and now I look like Rock Lee.”
Hyunjin lets out a forceful laugh. “You’ve seen Naruto?”
You open your eyes. Only then does Hyunjin remember how little distance he left between your faces, when he’s staring straight into them and all the strange, starry speckles they hold.
The air between you curdles like sour milk.
Things are awkward between you often, he’s realized recently. What’s more, he didn’t think he was capable of being awkward with anyone anymore until he met you. It was your ill-fated seat that he chose to sit next to on the first day of ANTH 111, your ill-fated lap onto which he chose to spill his Americano, and the rest was history (or, in this case, anthropology). His tongue ends up in sailor’s knots with every smart-aleck comment and pitiful laugh you’ve given him since. Maybe there’s more to it, maybe there isn’t—Hyunjin doesn’t think about it much. He doesn’t like thinking in general.
You pull away from each other in unison. You clear your throat, glancing elsewhere.
“Of course I’ve seen Naruto,” you quip, and everything is normal again. “Why do you seem surprised?”
“Because you’re so scholarly.”
“I am not scholarly.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You go to a park to play chess with old people on weekends.”
“I need to get my steps in somehow.”
“You didn’t know what Urban Dictionary was until I told you to look up—”
“God, I learned so much about you that day."
“Your favorite social media platform is Quizlet,” he bursts, exasperated. “Quizlet.”
“It is not.” An introspective pause. “Or is it?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Hyunjin throws his feet up on the chair below him, jabs in your direction with a bandaged finger. “There is no way you enjoy watching 2D men beat each other up in your free time. I don’t buy it.”
“Honestly, I thought you’d have more to say about my current appearance than my hobbies.”
He does, though. Matter of fact, he’s been curating a list since this conversation started: Vector from Despicable Me, Dora the Explorer’s hot older sibling, Spock. You face-planted into a lawnmower. You mistook a paper shredder for a hat. It goes on.
But then his head turns. Your eyes meet again. He’s reminded that it’s hard to sustain an inner monologue and look at you at the same time, Vector resemblance and all.
He reaches up, nudges a lock of your hair over a centimeter or so, and gives the patch of forehead a gentle flick.
“Watermelon,” he mumbles with a sickening smile.
You divert your attention to your lecture notes with a disappointed click of your tongue. “You’re getting soft.”
He spends the entire lecture daydreaming about tropical coastlines.
“I only get coffee from that one place on the east side of campus, by the way,” you say as you’re strolling out the building together, “and I get it a very specific way. Can you handle it?”
“Your faith gets me out of bed in the morning,” Hyunjin deadpans. “I’ll handle it, love. Text me your order.”
All of a sudden, you position your hands close to your stomach, the lapels of your jacket casting them in shadow. Your fingers begin to move in a sequence that he’d recognize anywhere.
“Body flicker jutsu,” you whisper, and then you’re scurrying off without another word—but you do glance back at him to gauge his response. Your smile is purely effulgent, your laugh but a faint sigh against the main quad’s busy thrum.
Hyunjin gapes at your retreating figure for so long that phosphenes start prancing around his field of view. Then he heads to the gym. His heart is pounding against his ribs like a battering ram.
“Hwang, I need you in my office.”
Hyunjin stops lacing up his shoes to see Coach Bang standing on the court’s sideline with a grim air about him. He glances at his captain, confused.
“Don’t look at me,” Minho says mid-stretch. “Godspeed.”
“Thanks, cap.” Useless.
Head volleyball coach Christopher Bang’s workspace reminds Hyunjin of a morgue. It’s all fluorescent lights and spotless white walls, the only decorative fixture a picture of his siblings, parents, and dog in front of the Sydney Opera House, framed and facing him atop his desk. Hyunjin once snuck the thing into the bathroom, an innocent plot to satiate his curiosity, and promptly discovered the man’s propensity for violence. He’s packing beneath those dry-cleaned polos, by the way.
Hyunjin closes the door and takes a seat. Bang taps a knuckle against the tempered glass of his monitor. “You can read, right?”
“Yes, coach,” he sighs. Everyone’s expectations for him are subterranean.
From: Park Jinyoung «
[email protected]»
To: Bang “Christopher” Chan «
[email protected]»
Subject: Not good
See email from Hwang’s antopology professor below . He submitted the complete script of the Trolls movie instead of his mid term paper and now he’s failing the class . Not good . Sort out ASAP
JP
Sent from my iPad
Bang snatches up his mouse and scrolls, his ears turning scarlet. “Wrong email.”
“Yep.”
From: Kim Kyeyoung «
[email protected]»
To: Park Jinyoung «
[email protected]»
Subject: Regarding Hwang Hyunjin
To Director of Athletics Park,
I am writing to inform you that, as of yesterday, Mr. Hwang Hyunjin has a D- (64.9%) in ANTH 111: Cultural Anthropology, due to his submission of the complete script of a kids’ movie instead of his midterm paper.
It is disappointing to see Mr. Hwang trivialize and ridicule my class to such a degree. Please see to it that he reorganizes his priorities lest his Student-Athlete Participation Agreement do so for him.
Regards,
Kim Kyeyoung
Professor of Anthropology
“That’s bullshit!”
“We’re in agreement there.” Bang folds his arms over his chest, throws his foot over his knee. “Do you know what your Student-Athlete Participation Agreement says?”
“Does anyone?” Hyunjin scoffs. Bang whips out a form and brings it to eye level, the thing covered from top to bottom in microscopic Times New Roman. “No way you just had that.”
“I had it delivered ten minutes ago,” Bang confesses, then clears his throat and begins to recite. “All student-athletes must complete the academic term with a C or higher in all courses, should they wish to continue their participation in athletics thereafter.”
Hyunjin stiffens. “What the fuck? I’ve never heard—”
“If any Department of Athletics personnel,” Bang continues, raising his voice, “have reason to believe that a student-athlete will not be able to satisfy this requirement, they are encouraged to utilize resources such as academic advising or peer tutoring in guiding said student-athlete back onto the correct path.”
He shoves the piece of paper across his desk. “Read that name aloud for me.”
Hyunjin stares at the signature at the bottom of the page, scrawled so carelessly that most of it deviates away from its designated line. There is a rare hollowness in his chest that he recognizes as anxiety. With it comes a glimpse of a life without volleyball, the question of what little of him would remain.
“Hwang Hyunjin,” he says under his breath.
The office goes silent. Bang tucks the form back into his drawer. It closes with a gentle click.
Then comes the yelling.
“The Trolls movie? Trolls?! Are you fucking with me, Hwang?”
“It was a cultural reset! The pinnacle of modern media! How’s that for anthropology?”
“BAD!” Bang explodes, gesturing to the email emphatically. “VERY, VERY BAD!”
Hyunjin slumps over, dejected.
“You’ve never had trouble with school before.” He leans over his desk imposingly. “What the hell happened this semester? What changed?”
Nothing is the first answer that comes to mind, but Hyunjin’s pulse spikes like a lie detector. Upon the inside of his eyes replays a scene of a certain someone with watermelon bangs doing teleportation jutsu at him from a few yards away, wearing a smile made of some kind of space dust that astronomists haven’t discovered yet.
He grits his teeth, annoyed. This is what happens when he thinks.
“Beats me,” he fibs. “Typical junior year stress, maybe.”
“Does any of it have to do with Piazza?”
Hyunjin shudders.
It just might, actually.
Modesty has no place in the career he’s had: high school national champion turned ace hitter in both the South Korean U21 roster and regular rotation for Seoul National University, the best collegiate volleyball team in the country. His name has lived at the top of ranking lists and the center of gold medals since he turned old enough to qualify for them; the press believes him the instigant of South Korea’s imminent volleyball revolution. It’s a mouthful, he knows.
It was never a question that he would go professional; the question was who he should talk to and where he would go.
At the start of the school year, Bang, acting in place of the agent he was advised to find and never bothered to, gave him a list of people to reach out to. On the very top was none other than Roberto Piazza, the chairman and head coach of Allianz Milano, one of the most eminent club teams in the world—and current home to Hyunjin’s personal idol, outside hitter Ishikawa Yuki.
Hyunjin thought his poor coach had finally succumbed to his old age. The thought of stepping onto the same court as Ishikawa felt sacrilegious, let alone donning the red, white, and navy blue of Allianz Milano with him. But Bang slapped him on the back of the neck and reminded him that going professional was equal parts preparation and opportunity; he was never going to know the answers to questions he didn’t ask. Hyunjin was coerced to fire off an introductory email despite his reservations.
Piazza replied within the week.
For the last five months, Hyunjin has been fighting with tooth and nail to manage his expectations. He scrolls past the team’s social media posts like they burn his eyes. He replies to Piazza’s emails right before working out with Changbin under the assumption that whatever the shredded libero does to him will eviscerate his brain. If his world is made of dreams, this is the one at its very core, imbued with destructive potential the second it became attainable.
But that’s the last five months. The last five weeks have been you kicking him in the shin because he’s laughing (or trying to make you laugh) and the professor is staring; you listening to him rant and rave about volleyball when he knows you couldn’t care less about the sport; you relaying the contents of your class readings like hot gossip, your eyes wild and hands flying around because you can’t contain your excitement. You, you, you.
He cards a hand through his air, regaining focus. “You know how I feel about Piazza.”
“Expect the worst, hope for the best.” Bang’s chair skids backwards as he stands up. “I think it’s a good approach.”
Suddenly, he is directly in front of Hyunjin, low enough to meet his eyes. His hands rest upon his shoulders firmly.
“But hope is hungry, and it will consume you if you let it,” he says. “Do not let it, Hyunjin. I’m not asking.”
Even while being squeezed to a pulp and regarded with the cold intensity of a statue, Hyunjin can’t help but feel anchored, somehow, to the floor of this miserable office. Protected.
Bang lets go of him. “I’m not asking you to find a tutor by the end of the week, either.”
Hyunjin groans. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on it.”
A set of bandaged fingers appear in your periphery to place a paper cup onto your laptop. Accompanying the smell of fresh coffee is that of smoky rose, as decidedly douchey as ever.
“I thought you said your order was complicated.”
You look up from your phone to see Hyunjin plop into the adjacent seat. His long, caramel-colored hair is damp and unstyled in the aftermath of a morning shower, droplets of water pearling on the lapels of a navy blue windbreaker, layered over a white long sleeve. You recognize the outfit by now as game gear.
“Was it not?” You ask.
“It was an Americano, love. I walked up to the cashier and placed an order for an Americano.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure if you could handle that much.” He flips you off as you squint at the cup. “Someone wrote their number on the lid, by the way.”
“What? Really?”
“No.”
He shoves you hard enough for your upper body to drape over the opposite armrest; you’re still cackling by the time you’ve straightened up again.
“Why did you get this, anyway?” Hyunjin grumbles. “I thought you had a sweet tooth.”
“I do, but you don’t.”
Only then does the fool understand that you had no intention of charging him in coffee just for a haircut reveal. He takes back the coffee hesitantly.
“Thanks,” he says at last. “Nice of you.”
“I know, right? Hated it,” you respond, and he almost chokes on his first sip.
You almost choke on nothing when Kim Seungmin materializes in the aisle adjacent. He holds out a hand in Hyunjin’s direction. “Yo.”
Hyunjin dabs it up mid-sip. “I fully forgot you were in this class.”
“Well, I’m due for my weekly appearance.” Seungmin slips into the seat directly below you, glancing at you over his shoulder. “Hey, Y/N.”
“Hi,” you say, somehow managing to stumble over the single syllable the word has. You thank your lucky stars that you fixed your hair yesterday.
You like Kim Seungmin. Not just in the cutesy, crushy way, but in the “I would relinquish all of my rights for you” way where you spend every waking moment cursing out whatever stroke of misfortune placed Hyunjin in the seat next to you instead of him. He’s funny, gorgeous, and talented—a vocal performance major with a student-athlete contract—and you think your infatuation is more than justified. Hyunjin thinks it’s hilarious.
You side-eye your blonde adversary, prepared to see one of three things: a suppressed laugh, a dramatic eye-roll, or a mature kissy face that usually results in the first option. You’re met with something far more worrisome.
He’s thinking.
That can’t be good.
Suddenly, his phone screen lights up with a text that temporarily wipes the conspiratorial gleam from his eye. Hyunjin scans it over and groans. “Can this guy do his fucking job?”
“He wouldn’t have to if you didn’t quit,” Seungmin answers. “I’ll never forget you, Manager Hwang.”
“Shut up.” You peer at Hyunjin, silently requesting an explanation. “Our captain is forcing us to help him look for a new team manager. We need one for playoffs because of some stupid U-League rule—Seung, why do you look morose?”
“I’m mourning.” Seungmin does look morose indeed. “Hyunjin committed larceny last year and our coach punished him by making him our team manager for the rest of the season. It was so funny.”
Hyunjin slides down his seat. “It was the worst experience of my life.”
Neither man seems inclined to elaborate on the mention of larceny. You choose to digress. “Can I ask why?”
“He had to be responsible,” Seungmin whispers. “For other people.”
The top of Hyunjin’s head stops right next to your armrest. You reach over and pat his hair in faux sympathy. “Poor thing.”
“Hardass refused to do it again this year, so now we’re recruiting.” Seungmin props an elbow upon the back of his chair, looks at you contemplatively. “I don’t suppose you have four hours to spare every day.”
Hyunjin scoffs from below you. Loudly. “This one? Team manager?”
“I can see it.”
“I can see killing myself, maybe.”
The next time you reach for him is to hit his forehead. A crisp smack resounds around the barren lecture hall. Hyunjin cusses into his seat cushion.
“Seems like a great candidate to me,” Seungmin muses, and the warm smile he gives you mirrors onto your face before you can think better of it. God, it’s pretty. You wonder how it would feel pressed against your own.
Hyunjin is now completely out of sight and halfway onto the floor. “I miss when you didn’t come to class, Seungmin.”
Eighty minutes later, you’ve just emerged from the classroom when Seungmin calls out to you. You come to such a sudden halt that Hyunjin almost trips over you, but you barely notice him stumble, utterly enraptured by the hand Seungmin brings to the strands of hair by your ear, the fingers that dust your cheek as they pluck a small piece of lint from out of the tresses.
“Sorry.” He flicks it away with a sheepish smile. “I couldn’t unsee it.”
You manage to thank him just before your whole body ceases to function. Hyunjin sidesteps the two of you, yawning.
Seungmin excuses himself not too long after you reach the main quad. You also turn to leave, sparing Hyunjin a curt farewell in the process. He hooks his pointer finger around the handle at the top of your backpack and lugs you backwards with infuriating ease.
“I didn’t like that at all,” you say.
“I don’t care. I have something to tell you.”
“You have a kid, don’t you?”
“Wha—huh? Who do you think I am?”
“The one-night-stand’s poster child. The champion of the contraception industry.”
“Yeah, contraception industry. It’s right there in the name.”
You can’t argue with that. “What do you have to tell me?”
A shadow of hesitation flits across Hyunjin’s face. Your smile falters. Is it possible that you’re about to have a serious conversation with him for the first time? Maybe you should’ve saved the secret son bit for another time.
“I’m failing anthro.”
So much for a serious conversation.
“Come again?”
He repeats the mystifying statement.
“You’re joking.” The look on his face says otherwise, though, and your eyebrows disappear into your hair. “You’re failing anthro?”
“I just said that, yes.”
“You’re failing anthropology?”
“Mhm.”
“Just so we’re clear—you’re failing Introduction to Cultural Anthropology?”
“Yes. I’m glad you’re having fun.”
This is the best day of your life. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“Yeah, well, our professor has no media literacy,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Hyunjin clears his throat. “Anyways, I was thinking—”
“Wow! Congratulations. That’s a big—oomf—”
Hyunjin puts his entire hand over your face. Your mangled noises of protest go unacknowledged.
“I was thinking,” he continues, pushing your head around like a stick shift, “you and I can work out some kind of deal.”
You shove his wrist off you with a revolted groan. “I think I just ate some athletic tape.”
“Happens. You wanna hear the deal or not?”
“Does it involve ingesting more sports equipment?”
“Do you want it to?”
“Just tell me the deal, boy.”
“Alright.” He takes a deep breath. “If you help me pass this class, I’ll set you up with Seungmin.”
Your head performs a triple-axel on your neck. You are unable to respond for what feels like multiple hours. Finally: “I’m gonna need you to elaborate.”
“On which part?”
“All of them. Everything.”
Hyunjin sighs, then scans the courtyard. His gaze settles on the student union a little ways off. “Are you hungry?”
You pick up a sandwich and a smoothie in a state of nervous stupor. One would think it’s the prime minister you’re about to have lunch with and not an imbecilic left-side hitter eating from three different entrees at the same time.
He’s chosen a table a few yards away from a planter of flowering cherry blossom trees. You feel jealous eyes on the side of your face as you take a seat across from Hyunjin, but they don’t know that his telephone pole legs still bump against yours even with them drawn as close to your body as anatomically possible. Or that he’s drawing up a literal Ponzi scheme on your sandwich wrapper. You wager you’ve had better company.
“You like anthropology. I like listening to you talk about anthropology.” He traces over the wrapper’s left corner. “And I kinda want you to boss me around. That weird?”
“Yes, definitely,” you mumble around a mouthful of bread. “Go on.”
“Conclusion one: you should be my tutor.” He taps in place as if applying a finishing touch, then swaps to the opposite side. “You also like my teammate, but he’s neck-deep in volleyball and music this semester, which makes him hard to get a hold of—for most people.”
“Let me guess. Not for you.”
“Ten points to Ravenclaw.” His British accent is nightmarish. “Seung and I live in the same building. We get dinner when we go back from practice together. Conclusion two: you should come with us.”
“To dinner or to practice?”
“To both. Which brings us to my third and final conclusion—”
He slams a fist onto the center of the wrapper.
“—you should manage our team.”
“I knew it!” You slam the table as well, your smoothie wobbling upon impact. “You’re trying to swindle me! You can’t pay for my labor with more labor. What do you take me for?”
“It’s not labor, dumbass! Ask our last manager! He didn’t do shit!”
“Yeah? Who was your last manager?”
“Me!”
Oh, right. “But you hated it!”
“I hate everything that isn’t playing volleyball. Try again.”
You fold your arms over your chest. “You said you’d kill yourself if I managed you.”
Hyunjin starts balling up your sandwich wrapper. “It’s true. I thought about you and my coach getting along and promptly got a rash. But it makes so much sense: you do whatever you want during practice, tutor me afterwards, and then you and Seung can eyefuck over ramen or something. My coach hops off my dick, you hop on Seung’s—”
“STOP!” A girl drops her receipt not too far away, startled by your outburst. “Stop right there. I get it. Stop.”
“It’s a good plan.” He slings the paper ball towards the nearest trash can. It drops into the hole without so much as a brush against the rim. “You know it is.”
You’re loath to admit that you do. “When did you even come up with all this?”
He flicks a thumb in the direction of your anthropology class. No fucking wonder he’s failing.
“What is this, mock trial?”
The owner of this voice is the third man you’ve seen today donning that navy windbreaker, white long-sleeve combo. He has a face that reminds you of your neighbor’s cat from back home, sleek and sharp and only slightly sinister. There’s a dash of humor in his expression as he approaches your table like he’s enjoying the company of a court jester.
“Slamming tables like fuckin’ tariff lawyers,” the cat-man hums, lifting a hand in Hyunjin’s direction. “I could see it from all the way inside.”
“Captain!” Hyunjin crows, dabbing him up without missing a beat. They really do that like breathing. “Just the man I was hoping to see.”
“Really? I thought you’d be avoiding me like the rest of our homunculus team.”
“I would never.”
“You did. Yesterday. When you saw me and started running in the opposite direction.” He pauses for emphasis. “As fast as possible.”
“Well, that was yesterday. Today is a new day.” Hyunjin tosses you a proud glance. “And today, I bring you a new team manager.”
You stiffen. “I haven’t—”
“Is that so!” When the stranger smiles at you, you feel the same satisfaction you did every time the cat let you scratch her on the chin. “Music to my ears. What’s your name, cutie?”
You catch Hyunjin’s eye across the table; he nods enthusiastically as if saying go on, then. You briefly picture yourself strangling him with his own athletic tape. You then picture yourself hopping on Seungmin’s—
Rigidly, you throw a hand out to the cat-man, your face aflame.
“Y/N,” you grumble. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
He shakes on it heartily. “Likewise. I’m Minho. Welcome to the team.”
“Yes, welcome to the team,” Hyunjin parrots, looking positively jolly. You gnash your teeth together so hard your jaw throbs.
He’s lucky that his proposal holds so much water. He’s lucky that you don’t plan to strangle him until after you try that eyefucking thing.
You do kick him under the table, though.
The team has five weeks to prepare for the Korean University League, the biggest college-level volleyball tournament in the country. You have five days to learn how the hell athletic tape works. You can’t tell which is the bigger endeavor.
“I’m going to cause him irreversible skeletal damage,” you tell Changbin.
The team’s libero is twice as kind as he is talented, a full-time sweetheart working part-time at the university’s sports medicine clinic. Only your first week on the job and you’ve already decided he’s the only person on Earth you would permit to usher you through the gym at 6:45 A.M., a roll of athletic tape pressed to your back like a pistol.
“You will not,” Changbin answers. “One, because this won’t involve his skeleton, and two, because I wouldn’t ask you to help if it did.”
“You’ve misunderstood me,” you return as the two of you stop in front of an examination room. “I want to cause him irreversible skeletal damage.”
“Oh.” He opens the door with a frown. “Oh dear.”
Inside, Hyunjin is sitting cross-legged on top of a taping table, fitted in a loose gray tee and athletic shorts. He watches in pessimistic silence as you enter the room and beeline straight towards the shelf on the right. You slip a thick binder into your hands and bury your nose inside it without so much as a greeting.
“I am going to get maimed,” Hyunjin tells Changbin.
“Have some faith, both of you,” Changbin replies sternly. You find the pages you’re looking for and begin poring over them like you’re cramming for an exam. “You’ll be fine, Jinnie. Y/N studied.”
“Studied?” He repeats. “For this?”
“I’m pretty sure Quizlets were made.”
“Three, to be exact," you interject, sticking out your hand. “Now tape me.”
Hyunjin mouths the words tape me in baffled silence. The latter obliges your request with a smile. “See? What could go wrong?”
The answer to that, actually, is a lot. Especially after Changbin gets called away to help stretch out a teammate named Felix who allegedly “sprained his ass,” leaving Hyunjin to you and your binder.
You detect no smoky rose in the air around him today, just the subtle smells of cedar and cypress—laundry detergent or shampoo, maybe. Figures he doesn’t wear that insufferable cologne to practice.
“Go easy on me, yeah?”
While Hyunjin’s tone is teasing, yours is downright somber.
“I can’t promise anything.”
With that, you turn your palms face-up in a silent request for his hand.
A few strands of hair fall into your face as you lean in for a better look. It’s the first time you’ve seen his fingers untaped; they’re pretty, long and slender and surprisingly manicured, but also battered in their delicacy, the veins running over the back of his hand and forearm prominent, his bottom knuckles discolored from the healing bruises they bear. His hard work is palpable upon the smooth skin as evidently as if tattooed.
Hyunjin says your name in close proximity. You respond with an absent hum.
“You’re not nervous, are you?”
“No. Maybe a little.” You let his hand fall free and go to rummage for supplies. “Fine, yes. Very.”
“But you made Quizlets. You’re prepared for anything.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” You realize only after spotting the gentle smile on his face that he’s making fun of you. “I hate you.”
“Actually,” he hums, “I think you care about me, love. That’s why you’re nervous.”
“Nonsense—I care about disappointing Changbin. That’s it.”
“And me. And hopping on Seungmin’s dick. All these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
You try to tackle him. Hyunjin catches your hands a few inches away from his face, fingers closing around your wrists with obnoxious agility.
“Have you lost your mind?” You whisper-shout, your face on fire. “Don’t bring that up here. I’ll maim you for real.”
The laugh that explodes out of him throws his entire body backwards, turns his eyes to crescent moons and his mouth into a little rectangle. You hate that you don’t hate when that happens.
“My bad, my bad. It slipped out. I won’t—”
One incremental shift of Hyunjin’s body later, you find that you’re precariously, alarmingly close to one another.
So much so that you notice the mole beneath his left eye for the first time, that you're nearly cross-eyed looking at it. That the tip of your nose actually brushes against his before you pull away with a quiet intake of breath.
Things are awkward between you often, you’ve realized recently. You’re both professional yappers, always quick to digress, quick to find a new topic to bicker about before the awkwardness marinates. But hours later you’ll look back on the interaction and still remember how the air shifted: like a layer of dust had been blown away and something untouched and unknown was discovered just underneath.
Since you’ve met him, Hyunjin has spent more time on your nerves than on your mind. You’re not exactly losing sleep over such a circumstantial acquaintance; you know that his presence in your life will end the way it began, naturally and anticlimactically and inside the ANTH 111 lecture hall. Still, it doesn’t go unnoticed when your heart and stomach launch into an elaborate gymnastics routine in the wake of something he says or does, just as they’re doing now.
Hyunjin glances into your right eye a moment, then your left. The mole just below his left eye disappears when he smiles, the expression soft, saccharine, and sincere. How anyone casually looks the way he does is beyond your abilities of comprehension.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
Your face continues to burn, now perhaps for different reasons. “What for?”
He lets go of your wrist, sweeps the lock of hair that keeps getting in your eyes behind the cuff of your ear.
“Caring about me.”
Then he flicks your forehead. You recoil with a quiet ow.
“Now stop stalling and tape me, dumbass.”
“Okay,” you mutter, rubbing the injury tenderly. “No need to get violent.”
It turns out the arduous taping procedure described in the instruction manual is for serious hand injuries. Hyunjin splints his fingers together for support, not rehabilitation, so it takes all of five minutes for him to talk you through his process. You finish taping both of his hands with nineteen minutes to spare. So maybe the Quizlets were overkill.
As you’re walking him down to practice, you take his hand and lift it to eye level, scanning your craftsmanship dubiously. “It’s not too tight, is it?”
“It’s perfect.” He swivels the hand around and grabs onto your entire face, the sensation by now eerily familiar. “Want another taste?”
You shove him down the stairs that remain. Unfortunately, there are only two. “You are truly grotesque.”
The gym has come to life since you arrived earlier this morning, now illuminated by shining ceiling lights in addition to the sun spilling through high, narrow windows. Most of the team has yet to step onto the court, still stretching or jogging along the sidelines: Minho and Coach Bang are talking strategy on the bench, the coach taking notes on a handheld whiteboard every now and then; Changbin is leaning over a recumbent Felix below the scoreboard, presumably trying to fix his ass.
The only one already with a ball in hand is Seungmin, setting to himself by the net. Once, twice, thrice straight up in the air, and then he glances in your direction and sends the fourth towards the left side of the court in a buoyant arc.
You only glean bits and pieces of the next few seconds. Hyunjin is at your side one moment, making a break for the net the next. His arms draw backwards in perfect synchrony. Feet hit the floor with laserlike intent. His entire body unravels like a fraying chrysalis as he rises to meet the ball, pounds it over the net and into the ground at an angle so clean that the sound of its landing resounds within your ribcage. It rebounds over the railing of the second floor and barely misses the doorway of the examination room you just emerged from.
Hyunjin drops lightly back onto his feet, following the ball’s tumultuous trajectory with proud eyes. A leftover breeze tosses a strand of hair over the bridge of your nose, and time starts moving again.
“Oi, this isn’t your backyard! Go pick that up!” Their coach booms, though his words lack their usual bitterness after what he just witnessed his ace hitter do.
Hyunjin swivels towards Seungmin first. “Crazy bitch. What the fuck was that?”
“Lower and faster. Further from the net too,” Seungmin returns. “How’d it feel?”
The grin on Hyunjin’s face reminds you of a wildfire, untamed and all-consuming and frightening in its fervor. “Like we just won everything.”
He tousles your hair as he jogs past you and back up the stairs to fetch the volleyball. Seungmin waves at you with one hand and palms another ball into his other. His face is warm and bare, his slim build flattered by his volleyball gear. You’ve witnessed few people so nice to look at and even fewer things as elegant as his setting form. But you are still thinking about Hyunjin—and you can’t move.
It is debilitating, watching somebody do the very thing they were destined for.
A little less than a week later, Hyunjin is approaching hour three of spewing hot garbage into a Word document when he decides to give up and call you.
“Hello?” He immediately starts laughing. “Where the fuck are you?”
You poke the top of your head into the shot of your ceiling, gesturing to your headband. “My face is preoccupied at the moment.”
“Oh, you have to show me. Please.”
You flip your phone up for no more than half a second. A camera shutter goes off, followed by a shriek so loud that it peaks your mic.
“Motherfucker!”
He basically sprints to his camera roll. His prize: you with your face slathered in cleanser, hair pinned back by a Miffy headband, looking like the abominable snowman if he liked cute merchandise.
“Thank you,” he says earnestly. “I’ll treasure this forever.”
“You’ll be punished, Hwang.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
You brandish your middle finger at him in response. He props his phone up against his computer screen with a chuckle.
“Aaanyways, I have a thesis statement to run by you.”
The first thing you did as Hyunjin’s tutor was help draft an email to Professor Kim, begging her to let him resubmit the two essays he royally botched. She replied with a lengthy quotation from her syllabus, specifically the section that talked about (and prohibited) resubmissions, but ended up making an exception for Hyunjin on account of the “truly piteous timbre” of his email. You fell out of your chair laughing when he read you her response.
“You should’ve opened with that.”
“I tried, hello? Someone distracted me!”
“Read. It. Before I change my mind.”
You spend a few minutes at most on the thesis itself, advising him to avoid passive voice, answer the prompt, establish a refutable argument, the works. Then he asks you a question about the research topic itself, allusions to the afterlife in Ancient Egyptian artwork, and the tutoring session takes a turn into what feels like a podcast episode.
You talk about the God of Death, Anubis, and his connections to the underworld; the elaborate, lavish funerary rituals intended to ensure the souls of the dead traveled safely; the vibrant murals that flanked their final resting spots as pictorial requests for divine protection. And you talk about them all with such confidence, such eloquence, that it’s as if you’re leading him through a history museum rather than talking to your phone as you do your skincare. He could listen to you for hours. He does, actually.
Around 1 A.M., Hyunjin stops typing mid-sentence when you come into frame for the first time, collapsing into your bed with a sigh of relief. Your eyes are soft and sleepy as they blink at your screen, strands of damp hair clinging to your cheeks. He feels his heart physically shift inside his ribcage when your mouth stretches into a yawn. It is the same sensation as the time you shot him a smile over your shoulder and he couldn’t move for ten minutes.
With that, his attention span has run its course.
“Baby,” he interrupts gently. “Let’s stop here, okay? You seem tired.”
You open your mouth as if to protest, only to yawn again.
“I suppose I am. Will you keep working tonight?”
“I think so. I hit my stride.”
“Text me if you have questions, then. I’ll respond when I wake up.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Your lips curve into the smallest of smiles. It copies onto Hyunjin’s face incurably quickly.
“I had my doubts about this tutoring thing, you know.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, you told me this class was the closest thing to daily naptime you’d experienced since preschool.”
“It really is.”
“You also told me you would rather slam your tongue in a car door than read more than three sentences in one sitting.”
“I really would.”
“And you once referred to academia as ‘Virgin Village.’”
“Didn’t you come up with that?”
“No, hello? I live in that village.”
He grins. “I know. I just wanted to hear you admit it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ah, don’t threaten me with a good—”
“What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t think you would take this seriously, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.”
Hyunjin leans back. “Well, turns out I might give a fuck about anthropology after all.”
“Really?”
“No.”
You pretend to punch him through the screen. It’s so cute that he forgets to think before he opens his mouth next.
“But I do give a fuck about you.”
There’s nothing crazy about the statement. You’re friends, sort of. You manage his team. It would be strange if he didn’t. But the seconds that follow are terrible, a silent prophecy of something disastrous, like a cloud of rubble before an avalanche, the standstill during a star’s final breath. And Hyunjin’s heartbeat is hounding against his ears like a performance of traditional taiko.
He says good night in a haste. The call ends. He stares at the wall of his bedroom in a muddled haze for who knows how long.
Then he opens his texts.
Hyunjin:
We have team bonding tomorrow btw
Hyunjin:
Don’t forget
Y/N:
i forgot.
Y/N:
pick me up at 6:45?
Hyunjin:
🫡
He picks you up at 7:53.
You approach his car with your fists balled and your eyebrows knitted together like a mean old curmudgeon and he’s walking too close to your lawn.
“His fault,” Hyunjin says before you start yelling.
Minho simpers at you through his open window. “Hey, you! So glad you could join us!”
You fix the man with a judgmental glare as you slide into the backseat. “Aren’t you the captain? Why are you this late?”
“Whoa, okay. I would’ve scheduled this for earlier if I knew right now was honesty hour.”
“You did schedule it for earlier,” you say. “You scheduled it for way earlier.”
“Yeah, well, you’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me, Minho.”
“I can too. Tell ‘em, Hwang.”
“I want nothing to do with this.”
When you step through the doors of the arcade, you’re met with a surge of sensory input that you haven’t experienced in years. The air hangs thick with the smells of greasy concessions; everywhere you look are flashing screens and neon signs, stuffed animals and fading posters; clamoring against your ears are the sounds of games being won or lost, of balls being pocketed or launched, and of a horde of fully grown men spectating a match of Dance Dance Revolution so passionately (and loudly) that they’ve scared everyone away from that side of the room. You recognize the current competitors as Changbin and Jeongin.
“I’ll go pay,” Hyunjin says. “How much time do we want?”
“Infinity,” Minho answers. Hyunjin doesn’t move. “Two hours.”
He flashes him a thumbs-up. “And you?”
“I’m okay, I think.”
“No you’re not,” the two men answer in perfect unison.
You glance between them warily. “I don’t mind watching, seriously. I don’t even know how most of these games work—”
“There’s Tetris,” Hyunjin cuts in.
You purchase an hour.
One would imagine the point of the evening is to break the SNU men’s volleyball team, not to bond them. You’ve never seen so many strained blood vessels in your life. Nor have you heard of half the insults they spew at each other as the night goes on. Felix has to pay a fee for lodging an air hockey puck in the side of the MarioKart machine. Changbin loses at skee-ball and has to down an XL slushie like it’s a shot. It’s a scary amount of boyishness expressed in scary ways.
But they’re happy. You’ve picked up on it when they’re on the court, noticed the raw elation they emanate just from playing together. Yet, their closeness has never been more evident to you than tonight. The men are either laughing or making someone else laugh, arms draped over each other at all times, equally happy to celebrate victories as they’re eager to punish losses. It dawns on you at some point that you’re glad to be here with them, grateful to be a part of something so special—especially because there’s Tetris.
“Have you ever considered going pro?” Hyunjin asks over your shoulder.
You waited until most of the team was distracted to slink off to your beloved machine. Hyunjin tagged along, undoubtedly with the intention of making fun of you, only to be rendered speechless by your mastery. He’s been watching in a state of stupor, forearms propped against the back of your chair.
You don’t respond for a while, too focused on a precarious patch to even blink, let alone partake in conversation.
“I already did,” you finally answer.
“Sorry, what? You played professional Tetris?”
“In middle school. Then I got bored and switched to backgammon.” You pause. “Then I got bored again and switched to chess.”
“How do you look like this with these hobbies?”
Your run ends a few minutes later with a somber sound effect. You turn around in your seat with an anguished groan. “I think I’m washed.”
He looks at you like you’ve lost your mind. “You just set a new record by three hundred thousand points.”
“It’s a small pond,” you say, and an idea occurs to you. “Do you wanna try?”
“I get the feeling I don’t have a choice.”
“Then you’re smarter than you look.”
“Well, you look—”
His eyes move between your shoes and your face, and then his voice is an inaudible mutter as he sinks into your seat. You think you hear something along the lines of unfair.
“What was that?”
“Ugly. I said you look ugly.” He cracks his knuckles. “Now let’s break some fuckin' blocks.”
When Hyunjin learns that the pieces can be rotated (so six or seven attempts later), a man walks into the arcade.
He has hair the color of dark chocolate, the face of a fairy prince—and he’s with someone. The two of them appear arm in arm, laughing at something he said. He looks at this person the way astronomers do to the sky.
Something shatters inside you like old porcelain.
Your hands loosen around the back of Hyunjin’s chair. You can’t watch. You can’t think. You can only feel a void of disappointment rip open, stretch over you like an elongating shadow.
“Seung!” That’s Jisung, you think. “You made it!”
“Yo, sorry we’re late.” That’s Seungmin. That is undoubtedly Seungmin. “Dinner took longer than I thought.”
“Min, are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” You don’t know who this voice belongs to and you’re not sure you want to. “I feel like I’m intruding—”
“Hwang,” you say suddenly. “I have to go.”
He turns around, confused. An unattended block falls into a terrible spot on the screen behind him. ”Already?”
“I forgot I had an important call to make.” You turn away, training your eyes on the patterned carpet. “Sorry. I’ll see you around.”
You have touched Hyunjin’s hands many times. He’s asked you to tape his fingers every day since the first; he likes the way you cut off his circulation, says it helps him hit harder. But you never hold his hand so much as you examine it, the act stiff and unfeeling, cordoned within the professional pretense of athletic treatment.
Now, Hyunjin catches your hand like a gardener repotting their favorite flower: delicately, careful of leaving its roots intact and petals untouched, but firmly, securely, so the flower continues to stand tall even when it’s been extracted from the soil, not even a speck of dirt slipping through the cracks between their fingers. That is the image you conjure when he slips his between yours, his metal rings cold where his fingertips are warm.
He says your name. There is a pinch of pain in the word, and you know that he knows.
“Do you want to be alone?”
You have never been asked such a thing—you have never asked to be asked such a thing—but, for some reason, the question brings tears to your eyes.
“Yes, please,” you whisper, and you pull your hand away.
When you stalk past him, you hear Jisung notice you, call out to you, a note of worry in his question. You also count three pairs of eyes on your back: one concerned, the next confused, and the last you are wholly incapable of meeting.
Unknown to you is the fourth pair fixed upon the top of the Tetris machine, where you’ve left your phone.
You emerge into the parking lot. The frigid air stills your mind for a fraction of a second, the last moment of mental quietude you will allow yourself that night.
Hyunjin’s right; the team manager doesn’t have to do much.
Coach Bang allows you to come to whichever practices and games you feel like, during which you might at most lug around a ballbag or fill someone’s waterbottle before holing up somewhere to do your own thing. But you like the people you work for too much to do so little for them, so you attend everything your schedule allows.
Last week, you could be found helping Minho put up the volleyball nets before practice, your laughter echoing throughout the spacious gym as he complained to you about his biochemistry professor’s distinct “cabbage scent.” Or running to grab materials for Changbin as he treated his teammates’ injuries like you were assisting an orthodontist giving someone a root canal. The dinner invitations you extended to Seungmin were always turned down, but his teammates were more than happy to assist you and Hyunjin in your quest to establish the best kimbap joint in the area once and for all. You even had a heart-to-heart with Coach Bang during one of the team’s water breaks, in which you managed to get half a smile out of the guy; Hyunjin was convinced that was his way of asking you to elope. You spent more time in the gymnasium those ten days than you had your entire college career.
Then came the arcade.
Five days have come and gone. You haven’t attended practice since, but you still see Hyunjin every morning at anthropology. The two of you sit in uncharacteristic silence for most of the lectures. You’ve taken the best notes of your life. He doesn’t mention the previous weekend; he doesn’t mention much of anything.
In person, that is.
That Friday afternoon, you’re reading on the terrace of the library when you receive a text. It’s from Hyunjin, a two-minute voice note. You hesitate for a moment, stick a pencil into the gutter of your textbook to save your place, and slip your earbuds in. You listen to it.
Then you listen to it again.
And again as you wrap up your study session and go home. Again as you cook yourself dinner and load the dishwasher. Again as you shrug on a jacket and pocket your keys, setting off on the familiar trek to the gym.
As for what you plan to do there on a Friday night, long after the team has finished practice, you haven’t the slightest clue. You continue to move regardless, fueled by the feeling that there is where you need to be.
Coach Bang is leaving the building just as you’re approaching it. He halts in his footsteps and raises his eyebrows when he notices you. The man has always been difficult to read, but his face is exceptionally opaque now. Maybe it’s the shadowy landscape; more likely it’s the uneasiness that began to mount within you once you noticed the lights in the gym were still on.
“It’s been a while,” he greets.
“Coach,” you return, lowering your head. “I want to apologize for—”
“Save it,” he says, not unkindly. “There’s nothing to apologize for, alright? The team is lucky to have you.”
You manage a grateful smile. “I’ll be back starting next week.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He starts to walk away, stops himself, and glances into the illuminated building. “I would give him some space, by the way.”
Your uneasiness morphs into anxiety as you watch his broad back retreat into the shadows. You remain outside the gym for a few minutes more, accompanied by the distant melodies of cricket chorales and the muffled squeaking of shoes against laminated hardwood, the harsh sounds of flesh meeting leather.
Briskly, you walk home, rummage around, and return to the gym ten minutes later with your textbook tucked beneath your arm. This time, you unlock and enter the building without a moment of hesitation.
Hyunjin is positioned multiple yards behind the service line, rotating a volleyball in his hands. A high toss, two resounding steps, and a collision like the crack of a whip. The previous ball has barely landed in the furthest corner of the court when he’s picking up the next, retreating to the same spot to do it all again. His tank top is the color of charcoal over his sweaty skin, his hair auburn where it’s plastered to his neck. He’s alone.
You only catch sight of Hyunjin’s face when you descend the stairs. His expression is crystalline, hardened with concentration and fortified by courage, but fragile all at once, rendered delicate by fatigue and fear, spilling from his every seam and splintering off his person like a broken vase. You recognize it as clearly as if you were looking at a picture of yourself from the worst years of your life.
“I was told to give you space,” you call out, and Hyunjin drops the volleyball he’s holding.
His lips fall apart. Nothing comes out of them. The only sounds to follow are your footsteps as you make your way towards the bleachers, a vertical wall of plastic now that they’ve been retracted for the night. You fold your legs into a criss-cross as you take a seat at their base.
“Is this enough space?”
More silence. You gesture to the volleyball nervously.
“Don’t make me go further, please. I’m not ready to die.”
Finally, this earns you a smile. It’s not much, but it loosens the nervous coils in your heart, permits your lungs to contract once more, and it remains on his face as he swipes the ball back into his hands. You open your textbook.
The rest of the night elapses in turning pages and soaring volleyballs. You don’t care for minutes or hours; you give him all the time in the world, as he did you.
The only time you glance at the clock on the wall is around midnight, when Hyunjin hobbles to the middle of the court and collapses. You’re worried at first. Then he rolls onto his back and releases a guttural groan into his hands, and your held breath comes out a laugh. You set down your book and stand up.
There’s a lake of perspiration forming around him. You pay it no mind and flop onto the floor, your eyes instantly narrowing beneath the fluorescent lights.
“How do you see under these things?”
“I don’t,” he returns. “I complained about it to Coach once.”
“And?”
“He made them brighter.” Sounds about right.
Hyunjin spends the next few minutes catching his breath, his chest rising and falling in your peripheral vision. You sift through your mind for phrases of consolation or gestures of support and come up empty. You wish you had Hyunjin’s way with words.
But you think about the way his smile reached his eyes as he thanked you for caring about him, the tenderness with which he caught your hand at the arcade, the I give a fuck about you he blurted before ending the study call. You think about the voice note. It’s not that Hyunjin has a way with words; it’s that he’s brave enough to break the silences that you can’t, like he perceives your anxiety for the aftermath, shouldering the responsibility so you won’t have to.
This cannot be his burden alone.
You inhale. “What’s on your mind?”
Hyunjin doesn’t answer right away. You give up on squinting and close your eyes. The lights are still bright enough to dance around the murky darkness.
“I don’t think I know how to put it into words.”
You nearly laugh; you know how that feels. “Don’t think, just talk. I’m here.”
The same advice you gave yourself seems to work on him as well.
“Do you remember Ishikawa Yuki?”
His role model.
“He’s currently playing for a club team in Italy called Allianz Milano.” He blows out a deep breath. “I’ve been talking to their coach, Roberto Piazza, for the last six months.”
The gears in your head creak in their effort to process the implications of these words. “Holy shit, Hwang.”
“He emailed again, this morning. Said he was coming to the tournament later this month, he’s excited to see me play in person, whatever. And it hit me, finally, that this is all real. Like, this is actually happening to me. I spent all of today freaking out and asked Coach to let me stay back after practice. Usually, it wears out my brain if I tire my body, but it only half-worked today. I couldn’t wrap my head around anything. I still can’t.
“I am who I am because of that man, and now…I have a shot at playing with him. I keep asking myself why I’m not—not happier. I should be bouncing off the fucking walls, no? If I told my past self that this would be happening to him one day, he—he would—”
You open your eyes, confused by the sudden silence.
Hyunjin is sitting up next to you, staring intensely into the bleachers. You first notice the tip of his tongue prodding into his cheek, then his shuddering breath. He lifts a hand to his face, pressing against his eyes.
You stop thinking after that.
You sit up with him. When you settle your fingers around his wrist, he allows you to pull his hand back to his side. But he turns away as if trying to hide from you; he squeezes his eyes shut as if that would obstruct your view of his pain.
You reach to cradle his face, bringing him back to you. The cuff of your sleeves wipe at the saltwater on his cheeks, push the hair off his forehead with gentle sweeps. The two of you are close, close enough that your lips would meet the space between his eyes if you so much as lost your balance. His gaze traverses to your face, but you resolve not to meet it. You know you will traipse into uncharted territory the moment you do.
“Don’t fight it.” You trace over the hill of his cheek. “Healing becomes easier if you let yourself hurt. Trust me, Hyunjin.”
His first name should feel foreign on your tongue, yet you suspect the syllables have accompanied you all your life.
“You don’t have to continue if you can’t.”
“S’okay.” Hyunjin lifts your hand away from his face, presses a kiss to the base of your palm. “I want to.”
You feel yourself stumble ungracefully into the uncharted territory from before; does he do the same?
“I used to play volleyball on this expanse of cracked blacktop, behind my primary school. It was pretty brutal on my feet—I blew through so many different pairs of sneakers my mom almost made me quit.” He smiles at the memory. “But every time I came close to quitting, I’d go home and rewatch the same USA vs. Poland match from the 2008 Summer Olympics I asked my dad to record, and I’d promise myself it would be me on some other kid’s screen someday.
“That kid would tell everyone who’d listen about how cool I am. That I’m a secret superhero. That I’m living proof humans can fly if they really, really try—just like I talked about the volleyball players I grew up watching on my TV.
“The other day, Coach told me that hope would consume me. I thought it was just some senile drivel at the time, but..I think I get what he means now. I would do anything and everything to make that kid proud—even if it meant losing myself.” He lowers his head, auburn strands falling into his eyes. “That’s what’s on my mind.”
Amidst the ensuing pause, a storm approaches. It does not come in the form of rain or snow, sleet or hail, no; it is a gathering of words unsaid and emotions unacknowledged, all emerging from the deepest chambers of your heart in synchrony. The same entities you used to scapegoat for all the times things were awkward between you and Hyunjin when you were the culprit all along. You and your blind cowardice.
The storm tears open the seam of your lips. You do not resist; it’s long overdue.
“Every time Changbin sees you, he turns into a smitten schoolgirl,” you say. “He is physically unable to contain how endearing he finds you. He told me so himself.”
Hyunjin looks at you with widened eyes. You think you can see your own reflection in them, and you are the spitting image of a lighter dropped into gasoline, unstoppable in your vehemence.
“Jeongin comes to you for advice before anyone else,” you continue, “even for things related to school—which I still find hard to believe, I’m not gonna lie. But you have his best interests in mind, and it shows in everything you do for him. Of course your opinion matters more than anything in the world.
“I know you think he can’t stand you, but you are the reason Coach Bang loves this job, why he loves this sport. It’s written all over his face every time he calls you something mean, every time he makes you run another lap, every time he looks at you. You’re like a son to him. Everyone sees it but you.”
“Then there’s me.” You pause to catch your breath. “When I think about what my life used to be, I remember a lot of things. I remember loneliness. Insecurity. I remember my books and my backgammon boards and the way I taught myself to disappear inside them so the world would never find me. I remember avoiding mirrors like a vampire because I didn’t like seeing my own reflection. I remember feeling like I had to put on someone else’s personality every time I left the house because nobody would want to know me for me. All I ever wanted was a place where I could be myself, love myself, without consequence. I have yet to find that place.
“But I found a person. Someone who wouldn’t know time and place if they kicked his dick into his body. Someone who thinks instant ramen is high in nutritional value because it comes with dried vegetables. Someone who sweats the same amount of rain the Sahara Desert receives yearly—your body is not normal, by the way.”
Hyunjin giggles; it is soft and short, a small, tearful huff into the quiet air that makes you feel like you’re flying.
“Don’t get me wrong,” you say. “Your sense of humor sucks and your taste in coffee is so boring and you are the one with no media literacy, not Professor Kim. But I love spending time with you. I love who I am when I’m around you. And none of that has to do with volleyball.”
The next time you blink, you discover that he’s not the only one with tears in his eyes. How long has that been going on?
“There’s so much about you to be proud of, Hyunjin.” You give him a watery smile. “That kid will be spoiled for choice.”
When Hyunjin pulls you into his arms, you fall into each other like going to bed after a long day. Your face burrows into the crook of his neck in your embarrassment; he is laughing and crying at the same time when he mumbles something into your shoulder: “I knew you cared about me.”
You are so happy for the comedic relief you could sob. It helps that you already are.
“How the fuck are you still sweaty?” You choke out, and you think you like his cologne after all.
Six days later, Hyunjin opens the door of his apartment.
A fun-sized flurry of black and white barrages into the hallway outside and almost runs headfirst into the figure waiting there. You fall to your knees like you’ve just been gravely wounded, emitting an ear-piercing wail to match. All it takes is a few good head scratches for Kkami to stop yipping bloody murder and start whining for attention instead.
Upon minute five of watching you and his dog cuddle in the hallway directly outside his home, Hyunjin sighs.
“Can you come inside, please? My RA will think I’m doing some freaky shit again.”
You side-eye him as you walk into his apartment, Kkami perched happily in your arms. “What, exactly, does freaky shit entail?”
He smirks as the door falls shut. “You want me to tell you or show you?”
You turn to Kkami, disgusted. “Your owner’s a bit of a pervert, my dear.”
Kkami licks you on the chin. Hyunjin’s eyes narrow to slits.
“Traitor.”
Naturally, Hyunjin’s parents chose the eve of his final anthropology exam—and the week before the tournament that will determine the trajectory of his career—to ask him to look after Kkami for a few days. He nearly canceled their plane tickets himself, but his impromptu roommate is currently ransacking your face with kisses on his couch, and he thinks your laugh complements his studio better than any decoration.
“Do you want anything to drink?” He calls from the kitchen area.
You meander over, Kkami (still) perched happily in your arms. “What do you have?”
“Alcohol.” He opens his fridge far enough so you can peer over his shoulder. “Americanos.”
He stops speaking.
“Is that all?”
“Yes. Wait—and apple juice.”
“You are about to be a professional athlete.”
“What the Italians don’t know won’t hurt them. You want apple juice, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”
“Maybe. Can you open it for me? My hands are full.”
Hyunjin does so with far less reluctance than he feigns. You thank him jubilantly, popping the straw into your mouth.
“Let’s get this over with.”
At 10:32 P.M., all is calm. You are sitting on the floor, your back against the side of his mattress. Hyunjin is where the universe intended: curled up in bed, both him and his laptop lying on their sides. You have studied eight out of ten units in only two and a half hours, and the night is still young. Kkami is but a fluffy, sleepy Oreo by your waist.
At 10:33 P.M., the Oreo begins to retch.
You startle a foot into the air. Hyunjin is out of bed and on his feet in the blink of an eye, the very image of a dog dad on duty. He grabs three different things off the kitchen counter with one hand and scoops up the long-haired chihuahua with the other, and then he’s kicking open the door.
Seungmin appears out of thin air carrying two heaping bags of groceries. Hyunjin nearly knocks him and a month’s worth of fresh produce down four flights of stairs.
“Hyun—Kkami?” Seungmin swivels. “Yo, what the fuck is—”
Hyunjin is already out the door.
A few minutes later, Hyunjin squats off to the side, pouring fresh water into a portable dog bowl. A little ways away, Kkami is throwing up ebulliently; a set of footsteps approaches.
“What is this thing?” Seungmin squats down next to Hyunjin, picking up the piece of patterned fabric lying on the grass.
“Kkami gets sad after throwing up,” he sighs. “His blanket makes him feel better.”
Seungmin watches the chihuahua for a few moments, a soft flinch crimping his features. “He ate too fast again?”
Hyunjin rakes a hand through his hair. “I don’t get it. Nobody’s gonna take his food from him.”
Seungmin laughs. “I didn’t even know he was on campus.”
“I picked him up last night. My parents are traveling for work—they say hi, by the way.”
“I say hi back. I miss your mom’s cooking.”
“Me too,” Hyunjin says, smiling. “She would love to cook for you again—she’s always saying you’re too skinny.”
“She really is.”
A beat passes; it is then that Hyunjin has an epiphany.
Seungmin was the one who put a volleyball in his hands for the first time. Back then, Hyunjin was the lesser troublemaker between the two of them—a concept that neither of them can wrap their heads around to this day. Seungmin suggested they use the clotheslines in Hyunjin’s backyard as a makeshift net, despite Hyunjin’s dissuading; half of Hyunjin’s father’s wardrobe caught on fire, Seungmin had a black eye for a week, and nobody knows what happened to that volleyball. The two of them have been attached at the hip ever since.
It is a crazy thing, having your best friend as a teammate; a singular flick of the wrist or a point of his shoe and Seungmin will know exactly Hyunjin wants the ball down to the net’s fraying fibers; Hyunjin will be exactly where Seungmin needs him down to the flecks of paint on the volleyball court. Hyunjin has always been Seungmin’s hitter—Seungmin, always Hyunjin’s setter. Nothing will ever change between them so long as that remains the case.
At least, that’s what Hyunjin used to think.
Learning that Seungmin was in a relationship was as much a wake-up call for Hyunjin as it was for you. At first, he was just fucking pissed; how could Seungmin be so stupid as to turn down someone like you, especially when Hyunjin had shot his mouth off about his wingman services? More importantly, how long had his best friend of eighteen years been in love, and why was he the last to know?
Only now, as they wait for his nine-year-old chihuahua to finish barfing, does Hyunjin realize that he can’t remember the last time he and Seungmin talked. Not “talked” as in a brief exchange inside the locker room or the lecture hall, about a new approach he wants to try or what Seungmin got on number four or if he wants a ride to practice—“talked” as in talked, about Hyunjin, about Seungmin, about the eighteen years they shared, about all the years yet to come.
Hyunjin sees his setter every day; he stopped looking for his friend a long time ago.
“Yeonwoo, right?”
He senses surprise in Seungmin without having to look at him. But he also senses a smile, a subtle show that Seungmin recognizes what he’s trying to do—and forgives him.
“Yeonwoo,” Seungmin affirms. “We’re in the same songwriting intensive this semester.”
“Also a singer?”
He shakes his head. “Piano player. Performed at the Carnegie Hall in the United States at, like, seven years old. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so talented.”
“Wow, that’s—hi, old man. You done?”
Kkami walks over with his head hung low and tail between his legs, and Hyunjin hurries to drape the pup in his favorite blanket, pulling the bowl of water in front of him in tandem. Seungmin runs a hand over the top of Kkami’s head as he hydrates.
“You’ve suffered,” he tells him solemnly, and Hyunjin snorts.
“As I was saying—that’s crazy to hear, coming from the most talented person I know. You guys looked so good together.”
“Thanks. It’s weird. I’m happy.”
“You deserve it. You really do, Kim.” They exchange smiles, and Hyunjin gives Seungmin a playful nudge. “When are you introducing us?”
“The arcade wasn’t enough?”
“Don’t insult me.”
“Whenever you want, then.”
“Dinner with my mom, dinner with Yeonwoo,” Hyunjin recounts. “I’m holding you to it.”
“Bet.”
They shake on it. If Hyunjin wasn’t already reassured by Seungmin’s smile, he knows by his clasp around his hand that they’ll be okay.
“What about you?” Seungmin asks. “Are you together yet?”
Hyunjin knew this was coming. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” Seungmin strings his hands together, letting them dangle in the space between his knees. “Someone you have questions for that you’re too scared to ask. Someone who’s lived in your mind since the day you met. There’s someone like that, isn’t there?”
Hyunjin pokes his tongue into his cheek.
Ever since that night on the gym floor, Hyunjin’s been having these dreams. By the time his alarm goes off in the morning, every detail of the dream has eluded him, leaving behind only a ghost of emotion, akin to the breeze that grazes your face moments after walking past another person.
But then he’ll get out of bed, and walk to that café on the east side of campus, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. There, he’ll order a vanilla latte with extra sweetener, then turn around to see you standing five feet away, holding an Americano and trying not to laugh. And he’ll just know, with everything in him, that you are where his head goes when he’s not keeping watch.
He still addresses you by the pet names you hate. He still finds any excuse to be close to you; he still pesters you like a child with a crush. But now, he calls you his baby like one wishes on a star; his eyes drift to your lips every time you’re within two feet of each other; he makes fun of your likes and dislikes only because he’s happy to know about them at all. Ever since that night on the gym floor.
It’s impossible for nothing and everything to change at once. Two people teetering on the precipice of something cannot withstand a gust of wind so powerful. He’s already hanging off the ledge, losing his grip; where are you?
Next to him, Seungmin lets out a soft laugh. “There is.”
Hyunjin doesn’t know what to say.
“It might’ve been me, at some point,” he hums, returning his hand to scratch the back of Kkami’s ears. “But it has always been you, Hyun.”
Four floors above them and inside Hyunjin’s place, you are pacing between his fridge and his bed, nervously awaiting his and Kkami’s return.
Something catches your eye, wide and flat and hung on the wall by his bathroom door. You approach it curiously, your lips pulling into a fond smile the moment you realize all that’s in front of you.
Many of the photographs are of Hyunjin: him in his preteens, dead asleep in bed while dressed head to toe in volleyball gear, braces visible because his mouth is open; an action shot taken at what must’ve been a U21 match, the South Korean flag stitched into the shoulder of his jersey; him with half a birthday cake in front of him and the rest smeared all over his face. There are headlines, too: Underdog team earns district’s first high school volleyball state title; Hwang Hyunjin proves himself worthy of “ace spiker” label at South Korea V. Croatia U19 match; Coach Bang “Christopher” Chan leads Seoul National University to second consecutive KUL championship. There’s one—Who is Hwang Hyunjin? Meet the twenty-year-old instigant of South Korea’s imminent volleyball revolution—beside which he’s written the singular word “mouthful.” You laugh; you agree.
But pinned to the corkboard is also a photograph of Minho, surrounded by stray cats in the alleyway outside a K-BBQ restaurant; his parents cradling Kkami in an apple costume; his high school volleyball team silhouetted against a pretty sunset. Him and Seungmin as kids, covered in grime and scrapes but beaming nonetheless; him and Seungmin at age nineteen, stadium lights on their backs, unadulterated elation on their faces as they charge towards each other, beaming still. Changbin piggybacking Felix through the hallways of the gym, neither of them wearing a shirt; Jisung offering Coach Bang a beer while the latter looks direly unamused (you make a mental note to ask about that one later); what looks like a Rock Lee cosplayer grimacing in the middle of your anthropology classroom.
You rush forward as if decreed by gravitational force. Not too far away is another picture of you, in which you boast a Miffy headband and a face full of foaming cleanser. Then another, your eyes narrowed like that of a sniper taking aim as you’re playing Tetris; you with so many volleyballs piled into your arms that you can’t see your own face; your cheeks squished by a bandaged hand after you lost a bet about pandas (they can swim); you clutching your stomach on the library floor, brought to hysterical tears by Professor Kim’s email. You, you, you.
You bring your pointer finger to this last image, tracing it over the curve of your own cheek. You see a dimple on your face you didn’t know you had. You realize it only comes out for him.
It has always been him.
The front door opens. A man with telephone poles for legs and a long-haired chihuahua in his arms appears behind it. You sense in him that something has changed since you last saw each other. The two of you lock eyes.
It’s not awkward this time.
Multiple yards behind the service line, Hyunjin is rotating a volleyball in his hands. It feels solid and sentient, an extension of himself held in cotton-clad fingers. He knows how this story will end.
He moves his eyes to his best friend’s back. Four fingers flash back at him twice, signaling a high lob set to the left, the very play they’ve practiced tirelessly for the last five weeks. The breath Hyunjin blows out of his cheeks seems to crystallize in the air, almost solid in all its exhilaration.
He bends low and throws high. His arms drop behind his body like a spread of feathered wings; his feet fall into place below him like a meteor shower, two consecutive strikes against the earth that fissure its mantle. The lights overhead are bright. His palm pulls taut when it slams into leather. He knows how this story will end.
The volleyball tears towards the ground. It trembles as if scared by all that it holds: the guarantee of a flawless denouement, the catalyst of a radiant future. Hyunjin’s heart is beating hard enough to crack his ribs when he lands back on the ground, when the volleyball lands in the furthest corner of the court. He’s not scared at all.
He balls his fingers into fists.
“JUST LIKE LAST YEAR, BACK TO BACK ON AN ACE—”
An arm seizes Hyunjin’s neck; another drags him onto the floor. His head thuds onto the hardwood with a sound he hears over the whole world detonating. His vision fills with the faces of the people he cares for most, some covered in tears and others rivaling the ceiling with their blinding smiles. He can’t feel most of his body; his sweat drips into his mouth. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.
“—DEFENDING THEIR TITLE FOR THE THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR—”
His eyes find Seungmin’s among the fray. Their hands clap together with such force that Hyunjin cusses at the impact. Seungmin’s gaze burns into his with a ferocity that Hyunjin plans to take to his grave. His setter. His best friend.
He says something inaudible, but Hyunjin reads the words off his lips, and his eyes fill with tears: we win everything.
“—YOUR NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: SEOUL NATIONAL UNIVERSITY!”
Hyunjin’s post-game interview is a lawless affair. He is allowed at most half an answer before a new teammate is barreling over with an animalistic screech or a new friend is screaming congratulations from out of frame.
The reporter is visibly agitated by her final question, unpursing her lips to ask: “Is there anyone you’d like to thank?”
Hyunjin exhales. “You want the short answer or the long—”
Changbin seizes him by the head. Hyunjin bursts into a peal of high-pitched laughter as the libero litters kisses all over his face, nearly crumpling to the floor in his attempt to escape.
“Love you,” he yells before hurrying off.
“Love you too, Bin.”
Hyunjin turns a sheepish smile to the reporter.
“The short answer,” she deadpans.
He starts counting off his fingers. He thanks his family—his first and last teammates, his eternal anchors. His other family, his actual teammates, the best boys he’s ever known. His coach, who will let him call him Chris someday. His best friend and setter, Kim Seungmin, who set a clothesline on fire once and changed his life forever.
In the distance, a figure emerges from the locker rooms. There’s a navy blue SNU banner draped over your shoulders, two overflowing duffel bags in your hands. Jisung and Jeongin run over to take them from you, and the smile you give them is wide and flushed, a remnant of the elation you shared from afar. The three of you start walking out of the gym.
Hyunjin thanks you.
You didn’t ask for the position, he tells the reporter, but some idiot roped you into it, and they’re all so grateful that you decided to stick around. You know the team better than they know themselves—it’s hard to believe you’ve been with them for five weeks instead of five years.
What are you like? What aren’t you like, is the better question. You’re caring, smart, strong; you see so much goodness in the people around you, all while unaware that it is your warmth that brings it out of them. Flowers only bloom in the sun’s doting radius, and so did he.
You have the sort of soul that incurs the scorn of the stars. They are the only ones to deserve you, they'd argue; you’re wasting your potential among humans when you belong to the sky, and they’d be right.
Hyunjin pokes his tongue into his cheek, suddenly annoyed.
“Why the fuck am I still talking to you?”
“Pardon?” The reporter returns, but Hyunjin is already vaulting over the bleachers, making a mad dash for the exit. She gives her cameraman an affronted glare. He shrugs.
He explodes onto the concrete, looking around in a frantic haze. He finds the blue banner heading toward the team bus and flanked by his teammates with ease.
He calls out to you.
You glance backwards. Your smile is purely effulgent, your laugh but a faint sigh against the area’s busy thrum. His heart is pounding against his ribs like a battering ram again, but he’s used to this feeling by now. Jeongin and Jisung make themselves scarce.
You’re beautiful. God, you’re fucking beautiful. That was the first thought to enter his mind when he spilled an iced Americano on your lap all those months ago and you looked at him like he hailed from another planet. And it is the first thought to enter his mind now, when he runs up to you and cradles your face in his hands, his touch infinitely, impossibly gentle, and you look at him like he’s everything that has ever existed, everything that ever will.
Tendrils of your body spray reach him from here, floral and light like a tropical coastline. He could’ve counted your eyelashes—if he didn’t have something far better to do.
“Tell me now if you don’t want me to do this,” he whispers.
A stupid smile crosses the face of the smartest person he knows. “My lips are sealed.”
Hyunjin kisses you. He kisses you until the banner around your shoulders is wrinkled under his touch, until your hands are tangled in his hair and aching his scalp, until the breaths you take are breaths you share, passed between your mouths like a puff of smoke before they’re colliding again.
He kisses you until he’s crying, again, until he’s no longer tasting your lips but your grin, and he kisses you only harder when those scornful stars start to dance before him, for you are his, not theirs, and he’s really won everything, now.
“Hwang, I need you in my office.”
Six months later, Hyunjin sees Coach Bang standing a few yards away with a grim air about him. He stops in his footsteps and glances at his captain, confused.
“I know nothing,” Seungmin says, walking away. “Good luck!”
“Thanks, cap.” Hyunjin swears he’s had this exact exchange before.
Head volleyball coach Christopher Bang’s workspace still reminds Hyunjin of a morgue. But there are two picture frames on his desk now: one of his family in front of the Sydney Opera House, the other of a band of boys clad in navy blue, draped over one another in exhausted bliss. The latter lends the room a much-needed sense of vitality. Too bad it still houses a rusty cyborg.
Hyunjin closes the door and takes a seat. Bang taps a knuckle against the tempered glass of his monitor. “Read.”
From: Nicola Daldello «
[email protected]»
To: Bang “Christopher” Chan «
[email protected]»
Subject: Re: Allianz Milano V. Pallavolo Perugia practice game
Christopher,
Allow me to apologize for my delayed response as I shared your request with Chairman Piazza.
It is my great pleasure to inform you that we would love for Mr. Hwang Hyunjin to participate in our practice game versus Pallavolo Perugia. The match is scheduled for Monday, October 7th, 5-7 P.M. CET in the Giurati Sports Centre in Milan. Mr. Hwang will be playing for Allianz Milano as an outside hitter alongside Mr. Matey Kaziyski, Mr. Osniel Mergarejo, and Mr. Ishikawa Yuki.
Please let me know of your availability to call regarding Mr. Hwang’s travel logistics. His transportation and lodging costs will be paid for by the club.
I’m looking forward to speaking with you and welcoming Mr. Hwang to Italy once and for all.
Yours,
Nicola Daldello
Assistant Coach, Allianz Milano
“I told you, some opportunities just present themselves,” Bang says, turning his monitor back around. “As for next steps, I need a holistic calendar view of your entire month of October, including social ev—Hwang, is that foam coming out of your mo—NOT ON MY CARPET! HWANG!”
In a park about a ten minute walk away, a small crowd of elderly people are scattered across a few stone tables, hunched over the fading chess boards painted into the granite surfaces. Mrs. Choi whisks away Mrs. Baek’s king with a triumphant yelp.
“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! That opening is unbeatable!” She swivels towards you, shaking a fist threateningly. “You! Get over here. Your reign is over.”
You are sitting cross-legged in the shade of a broad magnolia tree, clearing out your storage. You tried to take a picture of a particularly rotund pigeon to send to Hyunjin earlier and couldn’t even do that. It was then you decided you couldn't live like this anymore.
“As excited as I am to beat you again, Mrs. Choi, I need ten more minutes,” you call back.
She presents you with an unpleasant hand gesture. You turn your attention back to your phone, grinning. Two new notifications sit at the top of your lock screen.
Hyunjin:
Omw now. Sorry had to talk to Chris
Hyunjin:
Same park?
Y/N:
yes
Hyunjin:
Who’s our opponent today
Y/N:
mrs. choi
Hyunjin:
Not that bitch again
Y/N:
?
He’ll be here in eight minutes.
You return to the task at hand. You’ve already cleared out your apps, your documents, and videos; all that’s left is the audio files. You conduct a quick mental review. Surely you’ll live without your downloaded music and accidental voice memos.
Instead of hitting the “delete” button, you extract a pair of tangled earphones from your jacket pocket.
You go back to your texts with Hyunjin, open the shared attachments tab, and scroll for a long time before you find the voice note he sent you seven months ago.
He finds you a sobbing mess.
“Hey, hey, whoa.” He’s on his knees in an instant, gathering your hands into his, a world of concern in the brown of his eyes. Your earbuds fall out and clatter onto the cement below. “Baby, what’s happening? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” you say in a flustered haste. “Yes, I’m okay. I don’t—I don’t really know what’s happening.”
“Did that hag do this to you?” He asks this question so seriously. “I’ll beat up a senior citizen, I don’t give a fuck—”
“No!” You let out an ugly laugh through your tears. “No, no. Leave Mrs. Choi alone.”
“Then what is it? What’s wrong?”
Eventually, your vision clears enough for you to look at the man kneeling in front of you. His roots grow out longer every day, his hair by now nearly equal parts gold and black. A spot of sunlight infiltrates the magnolia leaves and lands on his left eye, turning it the hue of melted bronze.
Your fingers drift to the sides of his beautiful face as you lean in close; he smells like a combination of smoky rose and tropical coastlines.
“I’ll tell you later,” you murmur, pressing a kiss to his hairline.
He is dissatisfied with this, hooking a pointer finger beneath your chin, guiding your face back to his. He laves the saltwater from your lips, your tongue, and then you’re smiling again, barely able to remember why you cried in the first place.
You rest your foreheads together. “Have I told you that you look like a bumblebee these days?”
He smiles. “Does that make you my flower, then?”
“Because you’re irresistably drawn to me?”
“No, because I wanna put my pollen in—”
You shove him away. “You are grotesque.”
He returns in a flash. “You love me.”
You kiss him again. And again. And one more time for good measure, during which you mumble I do against his lips, and then you remember something.
“Why did Coach hold you back, by the way?” You pull away, tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. “Are you in trouble again?”
“No, no. The opposite, actually.”
Your brow furrows. “The opposite? What—”
“In this lifetime, please,” Mrs. Choi hollers from the chess tables. You roll your eyes. Hyunjin smiles helplessly.
“Duty calls, my love.”
“Tell me your thing later too?”
“Of course.”
You dust yourself off and stand up, making your way to the battleground. But not before you whisper to Hyunjin, “now watch me beat up a senior citizen.”
He laughs with his whole body, his eyes the shape of crescent moons, his mouth a little rectangle.
“Hypocrite.”
Hyunjin:
[1 Audio Message]
This is my seventh take and I’m not recording an eighth. What you get is what you get. I don’t care anymore.
I understand if you don’t wanna talk about what happened at the arcade. I wouldn’t, either. I just wanted to say that you don’t have to do this tutoring thing anymore. I won’t be able to fulfill my end of our deal, so…yeah, it wouldn’t be fair to you. You’ve already done so much for us. For me.
As for team manager, you’ll have to talk to Minho and Coach Bang if you wanna quit. Doesn’t sound like a fun conversation, I know—but if that’s what you decide, I’ll have your back. They don’t scare me. Well, they do. Sometimes.
You’ve been…distant, this week. I’ve known peace and quiet for the first time since we met, and I fucking hate it. I realized I couldn’t care less if you’re my tutor or my team manager or whatever—I just don’t want you to be a stranger. Maybe that’s selfish of me to say, but I’m tired of pretending the idea of losing you doesn’t terrify me. It does. It truly fucking does.
I’m gonna end this here, because I almost just stopped recording on accident and I would’ve committed first degree murder if I had to do this all over again. Sorry that this got so long, and…I’m sorry about everything. You deserve better.
Come back to me whenever you’re ready, okay? I’ll be waiting.
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© 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐱 (est. 090323) · liked this work? please consider reblogging, commenting, or sending me an ask to let me know; or, read my other writing here. thanks so much for the support ♡
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Zoro, Sanji, Luffy, Law, and Ace with fem S/O with healing water powers. The catch is that whenever she uses those powers, she feels pain from the wounds she’s healing. And this isn’t a Devil Fruit ability. It’s sorta like water bending from Avatar.
A/N: I really debated on how to lay this one out, but I chose to have them find out about her power. If anyone wants a head canon follow up on how they act now that they know, send me an ask :) I maybe made this a bit too long, but those soft moments with each of these boys are my WEAKNESS. (Law may seem a little OOC but I truly believe that man gets tunnel vision when he sees you in pain)
Characters: F! reader x Zoro, Luffy, Sanji, Law, Ace
Cw: blood, pain, injuries, angst, all those fun things. Sanji’s contains slight spoilers for WCI
Total word count: 6.3k
The Pain of Healing
Zoro
Word count: 1.2k
“It’s only five more minutes until my Haki returns.” Luffy says between pants, trying to catch his breath.
“Then I have five minutes to help you. Sit down.”
Luffy collapsed onto the ground at your command, and you examined his body as he slept. It didn’t look good. His body was riddled with scrapes, scratches, bruises, and he was bleeding out from his side. Several minor injuries could be more painful than large ones, but Luffy had a mix of both. The best thing to do would be to focus on the large ones first, and if you have energy left, fix the small stuff as well.
You guided water out of your flask and started with the hole in his side. You were used to the pain that came with healing by now, but it still made you flinch every time you started. You had to grind your teeth together to keep from crying out, not wanting to wake Luffy. He needed rest, and you didn’t want him to see the repercussions of your decision to help heal him anyway.
After five minutes, you’ve taken all of the major injuries away from his body, and you managed to take a few small ones away from him as well. You wipe the tears from your eyes before you shake him awake.
“It’s time, Luffy. Wake up.” You put on the biggest fake smile you can muster before his eyes flick open.
“Aw man, that was the best nap in my entire life! I feel amazing!” You stay seated as he stands up, your body too riddled with pain to move.
“Go get them, Captain!” It hurts to even speak, but Luffy’s already up stretching, too hyped up to notice your exhaustion.
“Thanks for whatever you did to make me feel so great! Leave the rest to me!” Luffy calls back, bounding off to finish the fight.
Once he’s out of sight, you fold your head into your hands and weep. The pain was immeasurable, and every time you helped Luffy recover, you don’t understand how he’s still alive. You sit there for a long time, crying until there are no tears left. And then you hear cheers from the village nearby, signifying Luffy has won and your work paid off. Knowing that you helped him win makes you feel a little better, and you need to see everyone again.
You stand up, ready to go meet the rest of the crew, but your body seems to disagree with your movement. Your legs shake, and when you go to take a step, you can feel your body collapsing, falling to the ground. You brace for the impact of your worn body against the solid ground, too tired to do anything else.
It doesn’t come, though. Someone catches you as you stumble forward. Strong arms wrap around your back and your legs, scooping you up and pressing you into his bare chest. Zoro.
“Easy.” His expression is stone as he stares at you, but you can see worry underneath. “You gonna tell me what the hell you just did to Luffy?”
You avert your eyes from his gaze, running the tip of your finger along the scar on his chest. “I healed him.”
You can feel his body tense with your words. “That didn’t look like healing to me. And since when do you have a Devil fruit power anyway?”
You bite your lip nervously. Nobody had caught you healing someone before. It wasn’t something you flaunted, or even something you told people about. “It’s not a devil fruit power.”
“Woman, if you don’t tell me-” he breaks off mid sentence, and you look around for any sign of danger. But there’s nobody around besides the two of you. You risk a glance up at him, and you see his face is pained as he stares down at you with a form of understanding. “You took his pain from him, didn’t you?”
Your mouth falls open from shock. You’re not sure how Zoro was able to guess something so accurate after seeing your power one time. You nod, confirming his suspicions. “He’s got an incredibly high threshold for pain tolerance.”
“How are you still alive?” Zoro shakes you a little when he asks the question, which causes you to groan in pain. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll be more gentle. Do you want to sit? Stand?”
The thought of being upright makes you dizzy. “Can you just keep holding me for now?”
He nods, and returns to questioning you about your mysterious power instead. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Yeah.” It hurt to talk honestly, but you didn’t want to tell Zoro that.
“How often have you been doing this?”
“Only like three or four times for Luffy, I think.” You're certain it’s been more than that, but you can’t tell Zoro that right now.
“Three or four times?? For Luffy?” You can feel him trying to figure out the meaning behind your cryptic words.
“There’s been a few other people I’ve done it for too.”
“Have you done it for me?” He's scowling at you, like he already knows the answer you’re going to give and he's waiting to scold you for it.
“Maybe once or twice,” you lie, and you feel your cheeks burning. He squints at you, and you know you’ve been caught in the lie. But he says nothing, he just readjusts you in his arms to hold you closer.
He had been walking for a few minutes, and you had almost fallen asleep. He had managed to keep you mostly still while he walked through the destroyed city, and you were too tired to care if he was lost or not. “It’s a neat power,” he finally comments. “You gonna tell me more about it? Or do I need to keep asking questions?”
“Can I tell you later?” You mumble into his chest. Between the safety of Zoro’s arms, the warmth of the sun on your face, and the exhaustion that’s set in from all that pain, it's hard for you to stay conscious.
Zoro doesn’t say anything for a few moments, and you struggle to stay awake while you wait for an answer. He was never one for mindless chit chat, but you could tell that something was on his mind, so you decide to indulge him.
“It’s not a devil fruit. I was born with it,” You start, and you feel a heavy weight lift off your shoulders with those few words. You’re so relieved that you can finally tell someone about your secret now. “I was never supposed to let anyone see it being used. If the World Government knew…” You trail off, thinking of how the Navy would turn you into a weapon. You shutter at the thought, and continue on in your explanation.
“The power isn’t perfect, though. I feel the pain of whoever or whatever I heal. It’s not permanent, but if it’s too much for my body to handle at the moment, I might die. I’m really not sure, I’ve never tried to heal a fatal wound before.”
Zoro is looking off into the distance with a faraway look in his eye. “Just like Kuma.”
“Who?”
“Back on Thriller Bark we met a Marine named Kuma,” Zoro begins to explain, and you focus all your energy into listening to him. “He took all of Luffy’s pain and told me if we wanted to save Luffy, I had to take his pain upon myself. It was just after his big battle with the warlord Moria, and the pain…” he trailed off, and you knew he was reliving the moment in his mind.
“Does he know about your sacrifice?”
Your question brings him back to reality, and he looks down at you. He chuckles at your question, and bends over to kiss your forehead. “Does he know about yours?”
Sanji
Some light spoilers for WCI arc
Word Count: 1.2k
You didn’t realize that your ability was keeping Sanji up at night.
Anytime he had a cut, or a burn, or any other kind of injury, you waited for him to doze off before you pulled out some water and healed his hands. The injuries were never serious, and after a few times, you barely noticed the pain.
You didn’t mind, and you knew how much your boyfriend valued his hands. It was your silent act of love to him, something you wanted to give him but could never tell him about. One morning after you healed a bad burn, you found him sitting up in bed, staring at his hands.
“Is something wrong, Sanji dear?”
The cook was examining his hands thoroughly, flipping them over again and again. “I could’ve sworn I had a burn here yesterday.”
Your cheeks tinted at the thought of being found out. “Oh, well maybe you just have superhuman healing powers!” You laugh it off, trying your best to act natural.
“Yeah, maybe…” You could tell something was bothering him, but he didn't say anything further.
You caught him staring at his hands throughout the day, as if he was waiting for a bomb to explode. At dinner you noticed a particularly bad cut on the topside of his hand - a cut he must’ve gotten while chopping vegetables - and you made a note to heal it that night.
He stayed awake later than usual that night, and he seemed more wound up with anxiety than normal. You peppered his face with a few kisses, trying to get him to relax some.
“Sanji, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” He sighed, pulling you into his chest and laying down to finally get some sleep. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
He fell asleep quickly with you pressed into him. His slow, even breaths signified he was finally unconscious, and you pulled out some water to cover his wound. It stung you a bit as his flesh stitched back together, and you let out a low hiss in pain, and you froze as Sanji stirred slightly in his sleep. This wound was deeper than his normal cuts and burns; he must’ve been really distracted when he hurt himself. He wasn’t usually so careless around knives, but you knew whatever was bothering him would be revealed when he was ready to talk to you about it.
With his wound healed and Sanji’s breath returning to normal, you curled back into place against him, and fell deep into sleep.
You woke to a string of curses falling out of Sanji’s mouth, his body tight and tense against yours.
“Hm? Sanji?” You rub the sleep from your eyes and open them to find him staring at his hands again. “Sanji, what’s wrong?”
“That’s impossible,” he mumbled, speaking mostly to himself. He looks panicked, staring down at the place where his cut was yesterday. “That’s not humanly possible.”
You feign innocence as you have in the past, but you can’t ignore the nervous look in his eyes. “What is it, Ji?”
“I had a cut here yesterday. It was deep.” His breathing quickened, and you could see that he was scared for some reason. “It couldn’t have healed overnight. It’s not…It can’t be…”
“I’m sure it’s just-”
“You don’t understand.” He cuts you off mid-sentence, something he’s never done before, and it takes you aback. He gets out of bed abruptly, his eyes never leaving his hand.
“Sanji?”
“I need to go. I need to get out of here.” He’s pacing the room now, his stress overflowing into the space between you.
“Go where? Sanji, calm down. Talk to me-”
“I can’t be here! I can’t endanger you! Or anyone else, for that matter!” His face is contorted with such pain you’ve never seen before. You don’t know what’s going on with your boyfriend, but his reaction to such a small cut is starting to scare you.
You jump out of bed and stride over to him. When you reach him, you clasp his face between your hands, forcing his eyes away from his hands and up to your eyes. His eyes are wide with pure fear, and his breathing is rapid and shallow. You can feel his body shaking as you hold him.
“Sanji.” You push down your own fear and speak to him in a soothing tone, trying to bring him back to you. “Talk to me.”
“I’m a monster, Y/N.” Tears fill his eyes, threatening to spill out as he speaks. “If my body is regenerating like this…I’m a threat to you all.”
“You’re not,” You whisper. “You’re not a monster, Sanji.” You stand on your tiptoes to try and kiss the space between his eyes, but he pulls away from you.
“You don’t know.” He backs away from you, fear returning to his eyes again. “I am a monster. And now that I’m-”
It’s your turn to cut him off now. “I healed you, Sanji.”
His brows furled in confusion, but his eyes looked less panicked now. “Wha..?”
“I have this power,” you explain. You walk back to the bedside table, gathering some water from a cup and suspending it in the air. “I can heal people with water. I’ve been healing your small injuries for a while now. I wanted to make your life easier, I swear. I’m sorry I kept it from you. I just…I wanted to help.”
You see him relax the more you explain your powers, which was not the reaction you were expecting. He watches you move the water through the air, and tears finally flow from his eyes.
“Y/N-chan,” he sobs, running over to you, embracing you in a hug. He’s holding you tight, smothering you into his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why did you hide it?”
Your face burns against him, embarrassed that you had kept it from him for so long. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, and I knew you wouldn’t want me hurting myself for you, but-”
“Hang on.” He pulls back from you, peering down at your face with a frown of concern. “You’re being hurt?”
“Just when I heal people,” you rush to explain, seeing his frown deepen. “I just feel the pain of the injuries I’m healing, it’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” he corrects, staring at you disapprovingly. “Promise me you won’t do it anymore.”
“Sanji-”
“Promise, Y/N.”
“No! Let me do this for you!” You’re pouting now, but you know Sanji won’t cave on this matter. You know he can’t let you hurt yourself at his expense.
“I appreciate that you want to help,” he says sternly. You can hear the love in his voice as he speaks, and you know you’ll have to agree to his request. “But there are other ways for you to help me without hurting yourself. Please-”
“Fine. Promise.” You give him a fake pout, but when he pulls you back into his chest and holds you tightly, you melt into him. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ji? You seemed scared earlier.”
“I’m fine, really.” He rests his chin on the top of your head, drawing in a long breath before he says more. “I just thought my past was coming back to haunt me again, that’s all.”
You all stand there for a long while, just enjoying eachothers closeness. You only break apart when you hear Luffy screaming for breakfast, and you give him one last kiss on each of his hands before you let him go.
Luffy
Word Count: 1.1k
“Stay still, idiot.” You held Luffy down, looking at his wound in his foot.
“I can’t! It hurrrtttssss!”
“That’s what you get for wearing sandals in the jungle!” You could tell from the way the stick speared through his foot, Luffy wouldn’t be able to walk easily, and you still had another half mile before you made it back to the ship.
You knew you weren’t supposed to heal people while they were conscious, but this was Luffy. He was the love of your life, and the Strawhats were your only family. If you couldn’t trust them, you deserved to be locked up anyway.
You sighed, pulling water out of your flask in soft, flowing movements. Luffy was still writhing in pain on the ground, overdramatic in his reaction to his current impalement. It was possible that you might be able to heal him without him even realizing it.
You surrounded his foot with an orb of water, and imagined the wound being stitched together, just like your mother had taught you. You saw his rubbery skin begin to mend together, and braced yourself for what came next.
Your grip on Luffy’s ankle tightened when the pain came. It was sharp and fast, and it took the breath out of your lungs. You squeezed your eyes shut, but kept your focus on the wound and the pain that came with it.
“Wooooahhhh!” You could hear Luffy’s sigh of amazement, and you knew he had caught you healing his wound. “That’s so cool! The hole is just closing up!!”
You didn’t speak, afraid that your voice would betray you. The last thing you wanted Luffy to know was that you were in pain because of the healing process. You could hear him freaking out about how cool it was that his injury was healing before his own eyes, but you did your best to ignore him and focus on the healing process. You kept your eyes closed the entire time, using the level of pain to guide how much longer you had to fix his injury. Finally, the pain dulled, and then disappeared. You dropped his foot and opened your eyes again, trying to ignore the lingering effects that your body was dealing with.
Luffy was examining his foot closely, looking at it from all angles to see if there was any damage. He stood up, putting all of his weight back on his foot, and jumped up and down a few times.
“It’s like brand new!” He shouted with glee. He came over to you and wrapped you in a hug. “You’re the best, Y/N!”
--
Over the next few weeks, Luffy offered up your services to others throughout the ship. You knew that Luffy was incapable of keeping secrets, and you had never explicitly asked him to keep that information to himself. You never minded healing your family though, and the injuries were always minor. Luffy sent Ussop to you when he got a burn on his hand, and Franky when he got a bad cut on his face. Chopper sent Zoro when he had a sprained wrist. It wasn’t until Nami came to you with a nasty cut on her shoulder that the secret of your healing was revealed.
You smiled when she asked, and pulled water out to start the healing process. You coated the wound in a bubble of water, and clenched your jaw to prepare for the worst.
You were aware of Nami’s eyes watching you. Everyone else watched their own wound magically heal, but her eyes remained on your face, watching for any signs of discomfort on your end. You had a feeling that she was suspicious of your powers already. She had been the most interested member of the crew from the start, asking about the stipulations and origins of your power from the moment she had found out about it.
You kept your eyes on the gash, trying your best to mentally steel yourself for the pain that would come. You knew it wouldn’t be easy to hide the pain, but you were determined to make it look natural. When the feeling of pain ripped through your shoulder to match her wound, you gritted your teeth and kept your smile, but you could feel your muscles involuntarily twitch.
If Nami noticed, she said nothing. When you finished, you looked back up at her and let out a shaky breath, smiling. She eyed you suspiciously, but thanked you politely and left you alone. Once the door swung shut, you collapsed back onto the couch you were on, desperately needing a nap after that performance.
--
Luffy was awoken by a smack on the head.
“What?” He asked groggily. “Are we at the next island?”
“Are you some kind of sadist,” the tangerine-haired girl scolded, shaking her finger at him. “Or are you just a moron?”
“What are you talking about, Nami?”
Nami rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, staring daggers down at Luffy. “Y/N’s power.”
Luffy rubbed his head, wondering if you could fix headaches. “What about it?”
“She feels pain when she heals people, you idiot. She probably feels whatever pain she’s healing.”
Luffy’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that she just healed my shoulder. And she was in some serious pain while she was doing it. She hides it well, but I could tell she was hurting.”
Luffy bit his lip, trying to think back to when you had healed him in the forest. But he had been so amazed at watching his own wound heal, he hadn’t noticed your reaction while you were doing it.
“She seemed kind of tired after mine, but that’s it. I felt great though, so I carried her back to the ship!”
“So you are just a moron!” Nami punched him again. “No more free healing! Stop taking advantage of her!”
--
You woke up from your nap to rubber arms wrapped around you and Luffy’s round eyes staring at you intensely.
“Good morning,” you groan, trying to pull away from him to stretch.
He let you go enough to stretch out, but kept a tight grip on you. “Does it hurt?”
You freeze mid-stretch, silently cursing Nami for her hyper awareness. “It just makes me tired.”
“You’re lying.” He knows you so well. You move your fingers up to his hair, twirling his locks around your index finger.
“Yeah,” you sigh the word out. You’re painfully aware of his gaze, transfixed on your face.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because Luffy, it’s not that bad.” Your eyes move back to his finally, and you can see the hurt and confusion that is held within them. “And I like doing what I can to help my family.”
He nods, accepting that answer, and snuggles up into your chest, holding you tightly against him. You let him lay there for a while, twirling his soft strands of hair around in your fingers. There are few quiet moments between you and Luffy, and you cherish every moment you can get like this.
“Nami said no more free healings, by the way.”
You laugh and give his forehead a quick kiss. “Guess I’ll have to charge you double.”
Law
Word Count: 1.2k
“Fuck.”
Law’s breath was ragged as you pressed into his stomach wound. Blood coated your hands as you tried to stop the bleeding, but it didn’t seem to be working very well.
“I just need to...” Law coughed, and you could see red staining his lips. A small blue orb began to form in his palm, but it flickered out quickly. He was too weak to use his devil fruit powers.
“Fuck.” You repeated. There was only one thing you could do now. It meant exposing your secret and showing your captain your biggest weakness, but you’d do anything to save him.
You pulled away from his wound, and let your hands guide water from your flask, maneuvering it through the air. “Don’t freak out,” you say, and you cover the wound in water. You let it sit for a moment, and then begin imagining the wound healing.
It started as a dull, throbbing pain in your stomach. You began to think you were getting used to the pain, but then it began to grow, turning sharp and stabbing. You flinched at the sudden change in pain, but held your focus.
Law watched you work for a few moments with wide eyes, unsure what was happening or what he could do. You wanted to scream from the pain that was growing rapidly, but you held your tongue, hoping he didn’t notice your facial expressions contorting into pain. Tears filled your eyes, and you finally felt Law move into action, his hand gripping around your wrists.
“Stop,” he demanded, trying to push your arms away from his wound. You ignore his demand, keeping your arms locked against him, continuing the healing process at your expense.
“Stop! Y/N-ya, Stop it!” His voice rose in pitch, and you could tell he sensed your pain. His efforts to push you away are getting stronger, proof that his energy is returning to him. You feel relieved in the fact that he is healing, even if it is exhausting you in the process.
He finally succeeds in pushing you off him, and you fall backwards to the ground and lay there, dazed and stunned from your work. He quickly straddles you and pins your arms to the ground to ensure you’ve fully stopped whatever you had started doing to him.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Law stares down at you, angry and scared of what you’ve done.
You know his rage is out of fear, and you give him a small smile, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes. “You okay now?”
He stares at you, baffled at your question. He has energy now, and his wound in his stomach is almost completely healed. He knows it’s due to you, but he doesn’t know how you’ve managed to heal him so quickly. Fear. Betrayal. Anger. So many emotions run through him all at once. He has so many questions that he doesn’t know where to start.
He tightens his grip around your wrists, keeping you pinned down. “Explain.”
“It’s a power I was born with,” you say, closing your heavy eyes. “I can heal other people’s injuries through water.”
Law watches you carefully, certain that you’re hiding something. He squeezes your wrists tighter until you finally open your eyes again, looking anywhere but at him.
You can’t make eye contact with him or you know you’ll tell him everything. You can’t afford for him to know your secret, it was bad enough that he knew this much.
“You were in pain.” He says it as a statement, not a question.
You squirm from underneath him, trying to get free, but his grip doesn’t let up. He’s determined to get to the bottom of what you just did. He needs to protect you. He needs to keep you safe from all harm, even if that means protecting you from yourself.
“Let go.” You say, still trying to get free. His grip is starting to become painful, and you try to pull your arms away from him again. “You’re hurting me, Law. Let go.”
His eyes stare down at you, unmoving from his current position. The more you squirm, the tighter his grip gets, and you know he won’t let go until he has an answer. “Y/n-ya, why were you in pain?”
“It’s a side effect!” You cry out in frustration, finally giving in. You suspect he knew the moment he saw it. “I feel the person’s pain as I heal them.”
In his shock, Law’s hands loosen their grip, and you finally pull free from him. You try to turn away from him, but he’s still sitting on your stomach, and you don’t have enough energy to push him off. You rub at your wrists, trying to get the sting from his grip out of your body.
Law is frozen, staring down at you with wide eyes. He grits his teeth, watching you massage your wrists. “I’m sorry,” he says, reaching for your hands again, more gentle this time. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
You let him grab one of your hands, and he begins massaging your wrists gently, whispering apologies to you. You close your eyes and try to forget that you’ve broken your number one rule about your power: telling other people. You focus on his wrist massage for a while, his own way to apologize for his outburst.
“Y/n-ya?”
“Hm?”
“Why did you save me?”
You sigh, opening your eyes again. This time, you meet his gold eyes, radiant against the sunlight. “You never want anyone to save you, Captain.”
“It’s my job as a ca-”
“I saved you because I love you, you idiot.”
You can see Law’s eyes twitch in surprise; his hands freeze against your wrist.
“You don’t get to decide what sacrifices I make for you,” you continue. “You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do to save you. That’s my decision. You’ve made many sacrifices for me, some extremely painful ones. Remember the incident at Low Sand Creek?”
Law doesn’t respond, but he slowly starts to massage your wrists again, which you take as a sign to keep talking.
“I don’t get to criticize your decisions on sacrifice. And you don’t get to criticize mine either. I love you, and I know you love me. Do I want you to risk your life for me? No. But that’s just something I have to live with. And so do you. Okay?”
Your captain says nothing, and you can tell he’s sulking over your lecture. It wasn’t uncommon for you to have to do this with him. Law was one of the smartest people you knew, but relationships weren’t really his strong suit. It resulted in you having to do a lot of explaining and voicing your needs.
“Law, do you understand?” You insist, needing to stand your ground. He had a tendency of not responding when he didn’t agree with something.
He huffs out an irritated breath. “Okay.”
You scrunch your face at him, shooting him a semi-fake glare.
“I understand, okay?!”
You twisted your hand to intertwine with his, and grabbed his other hand with your free one so that both of his hands were now holding each of yours. You locked eyes with him, and you could see there was something else there, something that was bothering him.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
He was quiet for a moment, as if he were working up the courage to admit whatever he was feeling. His eyes moved away from your gaze and focused on one of his hands instead, still intertwined with yours.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice comes out slightly choked, and you realize that you had forgotten to explain the most important part to him.
Your cheeks redden, embarrassed at your oversight. His eyes snapped back to yours, and now it was your turn to avoid eye contact.
“It’s… I was told to never tell anyone about it. Or let someone else see it.”
You can feel him staring at you, his eyes willing you to look at him, but you refuse. He waits patiently, and you know he’s asking you a silent question: Don’t you trust me?
“I trust you, I just…” Neither you or Law had really talked about your past much. You preferred to live for the now, for the future. The past was just too painful to think about. “People died protecting that secret. I didn’t want to add more names to that list.”
Law gave a dark chuckle at your response. “And after all that preaching about not deciding who gets to make sacrifices.”
Now it’s your turn to sulk. “That is not-“
He cuts you off, pulling you up to meet him, and his lips collide with yours.
He pulls back briefly, basking in your beauty. “No more secrets. Promise?”
“Promise.”
Ace
Word Count: 1.5k
Ace wasn’t used to being hit, and when someone made contact with him, it hurt. He grimaced as he limped from battle, blood dripping down his leg from the giant puncture wound in his thigh. You had your arm around him, helping him run, but his injury was slowing you both down, and the enemy was closing in quickly.
“Sit,” you commanded. “Let me help.”
“I just need to get back to Marco, he can help.” His breathing was labored, and you knew he was expending too much energy just speaking to you.
“I can heal too.” You helped him sit down, and you could feel his eyes staring at you, trying to understand your cryptic words. You chose to ignore him for now, and examined the wound. It was deep, but manageable. You braced yourself, and summoned some water out of your flask, covered his wound, and focused on stitching it back together.
Pain ripped through you, and you had to bite your lip to keep yourself focused. It wasn’t the worst pain you had felt, but the wound was deeper than you had initially thought, and you could feel your muscles tearing apart, just like Ace’s had when he was cut. You knew that it was just a phantom pain, no actual bodily harm was being done to you, but it was still pain nonetheless.
You could feel tears pooling at the corner of your eyes, but you refused to stop until the job was done. You watched his muscle stitch back together, and when it was finally completely healed, you sat back and closed your eyes, exhausted and riddled with aches.
When you opened your eyes again, you could see Ace in front of you, you could feel him shaking you violently. He was screaming something, but you couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying over the loud ringing in your ears. Slowly, your hearing returned, and you realized he was screaming your name.
“Ace.” Your words were slow. You were still trying to come out of the fog of pain that always came with healing. “Stop shaking me.”
He finally stopped, but his hands were still tightly gripping your shoulders. He was staring at you in terror, fear spread across his face.
“What were you doing?” His voice was loud and piercing, causing you to flinch. “How did you…What do…Where did…” He struggled to find the right words, and you stared at him with still-glazed eyes while he tried to form a sentence. You were struggling to refocus after the pain, and were thankful that Ace was tongue-tied for the moment.
Ace took a breath, finally able to form a sentence. “I didn’t know you had a devil fruit power.”
“I don’t.” Normally you let people believe whatever they wanted in order to guard your secret, but this was Ace. If you couldn’t trust him, you couldn’t trust anyone. “It’s just an ability I was born with. I can heal people with water.”
Ace’s facial expressions had always been easy to read. Even in your dazed state, you watched as his concern turned to shock and then to confusion. You waited for the inevitable question to come, and it did. “If you’ve had this power, why haven’t you used it more often?”
“I…” you hesitate. You didn’t want to tell him the weakness of your ability. Not because you didn’t trust him, but because you did. You knew that if Ace discovered the trade off of your powers, he would never want you to suffer for him or anyone else.
You had told Marco about your power when you joined the crew, and the doctor had forbid you using your ability except in dire circumstances. Marco trusted you to make judgment calls on what you could handle, but you didn’t think Ace would feel the same way.
You could hear the enemy's battle cries getting closer, and you take the opportunity to avoid the question. “Let’s go. We need to get back to the ship.”
Ace stands, and you follow to do the same. You take a bit longer to get to your feet, still light-headed from the trade off of healing Ace. His attention has shifted to the enemy pursuing you now, and thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice your sluggish movements.
Ace’s fist becomes engulfed with flames, and he stands between the enemy and you. “Go back to the ship, I’ll hold them off.”
“Idiot! That’s what got us here in the first place!”
“Yeah,” He smirked back at you like the devilish fiend you knew he was. “But this time I won’t lose.”
You can feel your knees start to go weak, but you’re not sure if it’s from exhaustion or from the man in front of you. You hate to leave him, but you know you’ll only be a liability in this fight. With Ace’s energy replenished and the ability to fight in an open space, he’d finish off the enemy easily now.
“You better not die.” Your words hang in the air, and you take off towards the Moby Dick.
As soon as you got aboard the ship, you went straight to your room. You didn’t bother giving a report. Ace would do that when he returned. Sleep was what you needed now.
—
You woke with arms wrapped around you tightly, and the warm body of Portgas D. Ace pressed against your back. You weren’t sure how long you had slept, but there was no longer any light coming in through the porthole in your room. You shifted, trying to get out of Ace’s grasp without waking up, but his strong arms tightened against you when you moved, keeping you close to him.
For a long while you laid in the silence, unsure if Ace was asleep or awake. He wasn’t snoring like he normally did when he was asleep and he refused to let you move away from his grasp, but his breaths were even and he didn’t speak to you. You didn’t mind the quiet, your body was still exhausted from the fighting and the pain of healing today, and Ace’s warmth was almost therapeutic against your tired body.
“Your healing…” Ace's voice finally breaks the silence, making you tense from surprise. His voice was low and quiet in your ear. “It hurts you, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
You can hear the sadness in his voice, and you know that he’s figured it out. Whether he solved it on his own or if Marco told him, it didn’t matter now. You’ve always been a bad liar, and you could never bring yourself to lie to Ace anyway.
He squeezed you tighter, pulling you closer to him. There was another long pause, and you let him hold you while he processed everything.
“How bad is it?” His voice is level, but you can hear it beginning to grow thick with tears.
“It depends on what I heal. I just feel the pain of the injury.”
His forehead presses into the crook of your neck, and his breath becomes shallow and ragged. You can feel his emotions coursing through him, and all you want to do is comfort him. You squirm, trying to flip over so you see his face while you talk, but his iron tight grip refuses to let you move.
“Ace,” you speak gently, your hands pulling at his arms, and his grip loosens just enough for you to turn over onto your other side. You’re laying face to face with him now, but his eyes are squeezed shut. His freckled cheeks are wet with tears, and your heart constricts seeing his sadness.
You press your forehead against his, and use your free hand to brush some of his hair away from his face. You continue softly sweeping your fingers through his hair, soothing him as you speak. “It’s not so bad, Ace. But that's why I don’t use it very often.”
His eyes are still closed, but you feel his hands ball into fists against your back, gathering the fabric of your shirt in them.
“Why did you use it to save me then?” His voice comes out more of a demand than a question. It’s harsh, and you know he’s angry. Maybe at you, maybe at himself, probably both. His question makes you freeze, your fingers still entangled in his strands of hair.
You feel a slight prick of irritation at his question. You pull your head back and tilt his face up to look you in the eyes, but they’re still tightly shut. “Look at me,” you demand, your tone matching his from a moment ago. You feel him stiffen slightly at the intensity of your words, but his dark eyes open to meet your own.
Your hands find his cheeks, cupping his face, and you press your forehead back into his. Your eyes never leave his, and you can feel his grip against your back finally start to soften as he focuses on you instead of what you’ve done.
“I did it.” You pause for a moment, still staring at him. God, he was so stupid. You swipe your thumb across his freckles, wiping the tears from his sad, sweet eyes. “Because you deserve to be saved.”
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