Chapter Text
If Seonghyeon was being honest with himself, he’d admit that he’s a fucking hypocrite.
Snowboarding has been his sole athletic focus for years. He’s lived and breathed mountain air from the moment he could stand on a board on his own without either of his parents holding him up, lived and breathed the snow, lived and breathed the jumps, lived and breathed the adrenaline—up until two years ago.
It was two years ago when Seonghyeon decided on a whim to take skating more seriously than he was, meaning he hadn’t been taking it seriously at all.
During the off season when he wasn’t practicing in the indoor snowboarding facilities, he was hitting the pavement with Keonho at skateparks, indoor and out, fucking around while Keonho hit tricks over and over until he was hitting them at the exact same angle, exact same speed, exact same landing every single time.
Repetition was Keonho’s best friend, even more so than Seonghyeon was. Repetition was an obsession of Keonho’s. He couldn’t leave the park without hitting the same trick at least seven times in a row perfectly. He refused to. Learning a new trick sometimes took Keonho deep into the night and into the early hours of the morning, perfection and its repetition at the only indication that he accepted as his sign for being done, even when sweat soaked his shirt and dripped off his skin, breaths coming in pants.
This was Keonho’s territory, this was the thing he’d been doing since he’d been able to stand on a board by himself and push without his dad’s help. Keonho has been able to kickflip since he was six years old, dropping in on his first bowl at the same age.
Keonho and Martin have been the prodigy kids of the skate world since they were toddlers. You couldn’t mention one without the other, and they were both constantly on the podium, taking turns between the gold and silver medals.
So really, Seonghyeon encroached on Keonho's territory first.
The only difference is that Keonho hadn’t been a fucking asshole weirdo about it.
Because Keonho is confident. He’s self-assured. He’s naturally talented and skating comes instinct to him like breathing, and even then, the self-imposed hours-long practices were only what made him better. The best.
He never seemed threatened when Seonghyeon admitted to him that he’d signed up for the Summer X Games qualifier just for the shits and giggles.
Seonghyeon has always known that his best friend is a better person than he is.
Between the two of them, Keonho is the kinder one, the friendlier one, the one people approach first. Seonghyeon is usually in his own world, sour expression stretched across his features even when he doesn’t mean to.
Seonghyeon isn’t really sure if this is all something that he is necessarily bothered by. Sure, it can be disheartening to think that people perceive him as scary or unkind.
Keonho has always assured him that the only people that matter are the ones that aren’t determined to misunderstand him, the ones that matter are the ones that take the time to get to know him.
But is he really misunderstood?
Seonghyeon is an egotistical asshole, arrogant with a superiority complex, an unlikable combination in their line of work.
He clearly isn’t too different from the way he’s perceived if he can feel the way he does towards his own best fucking friend.
Practices have been taking place nearly every day in the two weeks that they’d arrived ahead of the event.
People have begun to arrive to spectate, with the Games only being a couple days out, and casters and commentators alike have been observing the practice sessions, scribbling and typing notes furiously in the notebooks and phones, eagle-eyed for perfection, eagle-eyed for mistakes, for failures.
Seonghyeon has done some pre-event interviews, sat on some panels with Keonho and Martin, done photoshoots for sponsors, and he’s drained. He’s over it.
He’s said some things he hadn’t meant to say out of exhaustion and irritation in interviews—none of them particularly bad, but he doesn’t look like the smartest athlete on the mountain right now. In fact, he sounds like a walking snowboarder stereotype, and it bothers him more than he cares to admit.
To say Seonghyeon is tense would be an understatement.
He’s snapping at Martin, snapping at Keonho, so in his own head that he’s ignoring Juhoon and barely giving James the time of day.
One night after a particularly testy snap at Keonho, he hears James asking what’s going on as he’s getting out of the shower.
“He just gets this way pre-competition,” Keonho says, sounding unconcerned. He’s so used to Seonghyeon’s bullshit that he is virtually unaffected, but this isn’t a good thing.
On one hand, Seonghyeon is relieved his best friend isn’t taking any of it personally. On the other hand, the undercurrent of guilt thrumming under the surface of his skin since they landed in Colorado intensifies, sending a rushing sensation in his ears, anxiety pumping his heart harder.
“Every single time,” Martin agrees, and while he sounds mostly unbothered, there is a bit of hurt that punctuates each word. He’s always been the more sensitive one in their group, more affected by others’ moods, and while he tries not to show it, it seeps through the cracks sometimes. Seonghyeon is always trying to make up for it by season’s end.
“He’s the walking representation of ugly anxiety before every competition, but he’ll chill out after the first event,” Juhoon says, and Seonghyeon can practically hear the shrug.
“He’s like this every single time?” James asks, and he sounds like he’s judging, which makes Seonghyeon feel even worse, makes him wince, and he knows he deserves it.
Somehow during competitions and events, Seonghyeon is simultaneously at his best and his worst, and he’s showing it all to a potential new friend and he’s humiliated, but he doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn't know how his friends haven’t beat the shit out of him for the way he talks to them, the way he treats them. In fact, he wouldn’t blame them if they all ganged up on him right now and jumped him.
He takes a deep breath and opens the bathroom door and steps out. None of them look up from their phones, probably wanting to make it seem like they hadn’t just been talking about him.
Seonghyeon clears his throat, which does make them all look up and train their eyes on him. He rubs the back of his neck, looking down at the floor to avoid eye contact with any of them, because he’s a fucking coward on top of everything else. “I’m being a dick,” he says eloquently, clearing his throat again. “Sorry.”
Keonho just snorts and puts his hand on Seonghyeon’s chest and shoves him unceremoniously onto their shared hotel bed, rolling his eyes when Seonghyeon lets out a yelp. “You’re being a bitch is more like it,” he says, shaking his head. “Go to sleep and get your beauty rest, princess.”
This gets a chuckle out of everyone and the tension in the room dissipates, because Keonho has always been good at that.
Seonghyeon is the one to make it awkward and Keonho is the one to smooth it over.
It’s why they work, but sometimes Seonghyeon wonders when Keonho will decide he’s had enough, when he’ll decide that he’s done picking up the pieces.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?”
Martin looks over at him, eyebrows raised as he adjusts the fastener straps on his gloves. Seonghyeon feels like being examined, so he looks away, fiddling with his own gloves even though they’re properly secured and he’d checked them minutes ago himself.
They’re in the athlete’s lounge and gearing up for Big Air, the first event of the games.
This is an event that only Martin and Seonghyeon compete in out of their friends. Their friends call them crazy. Martin and Seonghyeon like to call themselves adrenaline junkies. Same thing.
“Uh,” Martin says finally, eyebrows furrowed as he continues to look over at Seonghyeon.
“You’re not saying no,” Seonghyeon says, and the guilt and shame bubbling under his skin intensifies.
“Well, I’m just trying to figure out why they fuck you’re having some kind of morality existential crashout right before we’re about to go up on a very high platform,” Martin says, and Seonghyeon just shrugs.
“I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Seonghyeon says, rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, sick, that makes it so much better, actually,” Martin says, sarcastically, brows furrowed even more. “Do I need to tell Yeonjun to put your ass on suicide watch?”
“I just said I’m not going to do it,” Seonghyeon says irritably, scowling.
“And yet somehow, I don’t believe it,” Martin snorts, shaking his head.
“Can you just answer the damn question,” Seonghyeon says tiredly, and Martin’s eyes flit over his face, searching for something that isn’t there.
“No, you’re not a bad person,” Martin says finally, sighing.
“How do you know?”
“Dude, what the fuck goes on?” Martin bursts out, eyebrows furrowing again. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing,” Seonghyeon says, turning away. He tastes blood and realizes he’s finally done it—he’s torn that piece of skin off his bottom lip, and now it’s going to hurt like a bitch in the icy mountain air. “Nothing happened. Forget I said anything.”
“You can’t just ask shit like that all ominously and then tell me to forget it,” Martin says, and he sounds genuinely concerned, and Seonghyeon feels another wave of guilt crash over him.
One thing about Martin, he can’t let shit go, ever. You open up a little too much, you show a little too much of that inner layer and he latches on, prying with large, bony fingers. He’s earnest, too earnest, cares a little too much and it’s an admirable quality, but in this moment it just spikes Seonghyeon’s anxiety and makes him want to retreat further into his anxiety shell.
“It really isn’t that deep,” Seonghyeon lies, and he’s picking up his board now, checking the fastening straps there. “I’ve just been thinking a lot ahead of Italy and I’m psychoanalyzing myself and shit.”
“Well, stop that,” Martin says, as if it’s so easy to just turn off his thoughts and forget.
As if Seonghyeon hasn’t had his ugliest thought yet this morning when he’d had breakfast with him and the others, watching Keonho spread butter over his pancakes and soak them with maple syrup. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated himself more than today. He never thought he’d ever be this type of person.
The type of person to wish ill on a fellow competitor.
“Stop what,” Seonghyeon says, feigning cluelessness.
“Thinking,” Martin says, picking up his own board.
“You know I can’t do that,” Seonghyeon says, snorting. That’s like asking him to stop breathing.
“Yes, you can,” Martin says seriously, and he sounds so sure that it makes Seonghyeon stop avoiding eye contact. “I’ve seen you do it.”
“When,” Seongyeon asks, eyebrows furrowing.
“When you’re up in the air,” Martin says, and Seonghyeon swallows the lump in his throat. “I can see it in your face, in your movements. You’re your most relaxed up there. Everything is muscle memory for you, it’s instinct.”
Seonghyeon blinks at this, surprised. He didn’t know Martin paid this much attention to him. Martin smiles a little, knocking Seonghyeon’s elbow with his own, making their GORE-TEX swish a little.
“So just do what you do.”
Martin wins gold in Big Air, like he always does.
Seonghyeon thinks the bitter sting of the silver medal against his skin as he bites it for the photos isn’t so intense this time. Maybe Martin’s pep talk had helped after all.
But deep down, he knows that the hardest day is yet to come.
Tomorrow is superpipe, the day when he, Martin and Keonho would be competing against one another. The tension is already building up in Seonghyeon’s shoulders, the vein in his temple throbbing, anxiety thrumming in a way that is palpable, like static electricity in the air around him.
The ugly thought enters his mind again and he fights to shove it away, but it’s no use. It’s almost a mantra now and he can’t stop, he can’t get it out of his head.
Martin is wrong.
Seonghyeon is a bad person.