Work Text:
Renjun steps onto the ice and immediately, the glide under his skates feels like he’s come home. After a day of walking on solid ground, tripping over his feet, feeling the drag of gravity at every step, he feels like he’s been set free. Every push of his skates propels him far, and every slight movement that he makes with his body makes him feel strong and graceful. He skates fast, around the empty rink, enjoying the feeling of clean ice beneath him. The feeling is always exhilarating. Ever since he stepped on ice for the first time at the age of 4, there’s never been a single other thing that’s made him feel like this.
“That’s enough, you can’t start off practice by getting an injury,” a voice calls from the side of this ice and Renjun skates back towards the board, where his two coaches, Doyoung and Kun are waiting for him.
“I’m not going to get an injury from warming up, that kind of defeats the purpose of the task,” Renjun answers Doyoung snarkily. He takes the water bottle that Kun is handing him and takes a small sip.
Doyoung attempts to scowl at him, “You speed up so quickly on the ice when you’re distracted, Renjun. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve accidentally run into the side of the rink.” Doyoung’s words sound harsh, but, after training with him for three years, Renjun’s used to it and he knows that his coach doesn’t mean any harm.
“So what’s the program for today?” He asks instead, handing back the bottle to Kun.
“Another runthrough of the free skate, if you’re up for it. You’ve been struggling with that transition from the ina bauer to the combo, and there’s a few transitions that could be cleaned up,” Kun explains.
“Sure,” Renjun nods enthusiastically. With only two weeks left to go until the Olympics, Renjun’s daily training has been less technical and more focused on perfecting the finer details of his performance, which Renjun appreciates. He’s been training relentlessly for months and even his good placement in the Four Continents Championship had only been rewarded with one day of rest. Not that he needed a break anyways, Renjun had just taken that opportunity to take Jeno to the local ice rink and attempt to perfect his skating skills (read: get him to go around the rink once without falling flat on his face). The memory of that day makes him smile fondly.
Practice goes by without any major issues. The program’s engraved in Renjun’s mind by now, but he still puts every piece of concentration into his performance, making sure that every single movement is perfect, from the point of his skates to his fingertips. Kun’s right, he is struggling with the transition after his choreographic sequence, but he runs through it several times and it seems to get better every time, with his coaches’ advice and pointers.
Kun is all soft smiles and praises today, sneaking in jokes about Doyoung’s remarks in Mandarin to Renjun, which always makes Renjun laugh, mostly because of how frustrated it makes Doyoung, who can’t understand their conversation. It’s a relaxed atmosphere, and even serious remarks are treated with a small smile and a pat on the back. The stress of the Olympics is upon them, but their little trio has always felt more convivial than anything, and it’s not like any of them to change their habits just before a big championship, even if it is the championship of a lifetime…
To finish up the practice, Doyoung gives him the permission to practice his triple axel, his strongest jump and guilty pleasure. Renjun does two diagonals and, the moment he turns past the bend, he turns to face forward and takes off with barely any preparation time. His rotation is perfect and he lands with his legs at the right angle, carrying on and stopping to look back at his coaches.
Kun is clapping quietly, with a proud smile on his face, and Doyoung’s mouth is hanging open slightly in the shape of an O.
“You never cease to amaze me, Renjun,” he admits, handing Renjun his skate guards as he steps off the ice, “You always joke about the quad axel, but it wouldn’t surprise me if one day you actually manage to pull it off.”
Renjun beams. It’s not every day he gets this kind of praise from Doyoung, even if it perhaps quite far-stretched.
He feels Kun’s hand on his shoulder, “Now, don’t start getting ideas, Renjun. Focus on getting a clean sal before you think about learning any other jumps.”
Renjun sighs, as he unlaces his skates and takes them off. Although he’s landed the quad salchow in practice many times, he’s yet to land it successfully during a competition. It’s his nerves that always fail him. Doyoung and Kun never scold him for it, though. They’re here to help him get back up and encourage him to continue. It’s largely because of them that he hasn’t given up skating, he thinks. That, and the fact that he always feels an irresistible calling to the ice.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I just need to clear my mind when it comes to the jump and it’ll come naturally.” Renjun quickly slips on his sneakers and gets up fast, “Is it ok if I go now? Jeno’s waiting for me.”
Kun nods, “Go ahead, we’ll see you tomorrow for morning practice. Get lots of rest and eat well.”
“See you tomorrow!” Renjun practically runs down the corridors to the exit of the rink, barely noticing the strange hardness of the pavement beneath his feet.
Jeno’s waiting for him outside in the parking lot and Renjun breaks out into a huge smile when he sees him, wrapped up in his coat and scarf, blonde hair tucked under a blue beanie. He’s looking down at something on his phone, so Renjun is able to surprise him by hugging him from behind.
The other boy yelps in surprise and almost drops his phone. When he turns to face Renjun, though, he has a smile on his face. “Hey,” he breathes out as he leans forward, reaching out to take Renjun’s hand in his automatically. “How’d practice go?”
“Mhm, really good. I’m hungry, though. Want to go for dinner?”
“Sure. Sushi? You’ve been wanting to go to that new place for a while.” Jeno reaches out to brush Renjun’s fringe from his forehead carefully, making Renjun shiver at the touch of his cold fingertips. He holds onto Jeno’s hand tighter.
“Get a room, lovebirds!” They hear Doyoung jokingly call out and Renjun sticks out his tongue at his coaches as they walk out of the arena. Jeno chuckles.
“Don’t listen to them, they’re silly,” Renjun complains.
“But it’s true, isn’t it? That we’re lovebirds.”
Renjun blushes from head to toe and pulls Jeno’s hand to drag him off to dinner, hiding a small smile from his boyfriend.
Renjun moved to Korea three years ago, to train with his hero, Kim Doyoung, silver medal olympian, and his partner and choreographer, Kun, triple national Chinese ice dance champion. It had been a wild ride, convincing his parents to let him go, convincing his coaches to take on a fifteen year old with barely anything more to his name than a couple of junior national titles. It had been worth it, though, coming to Korea, the country where his ancestors came from. He felt a force here that motivated him to train harder, although that may have just been Doyoung’s incessant nagging.
It hadn’t always been easy, though. He’d attended school partially for about half a year before deciding to completely stop going to lessons to focus on his training.
Funnily enough, that was how he got to know Jeno, who’d been assigned to come and pass on homework and lesson material to Renjun because he was the class vice-president. Jeno became Renjun’s first friend in Korea (because obviously two grumpy old men like Doyoung and Kun didn’t count). It was strange that Renjun hadn’t noticed him much when he was actually attending school, he’d been too busy attempting to balance school and training and catching up on sleep during every five minute break they got.
Jeno was actually really funny and charming, Renjun soon discovered, after the first time Jeno stayed over to tutor Renjun in Maths after Renjun’s repeated laments about derivatives. Not only was Jeno smart and a good teacher, but he was also good company, and for the first time in a long time, Renjun was able to put the ice rink at the back of his mind, and focus instead on the math equations in front of him. And okay, he admitted to himself that Jeno did have really nice dark brown eyes and long lashes that he often caught himself getting distracted by.
Renjun liked to explain that they had ‘clicked’, like those cheesy lines you read in books, but it’s true that there was something about Jeno that put Renjun completely at ease and that made him happier than he had probably been off-ice in a while. And it had only been after a couple of tutoring sessions that they’d started going to movies together. Then, after Jeno found out that Renjun had never had the time to visit much of Seoul, he’d started dragging him out of his apartment on his rest days to random Seoul neighbourhoods, where they walked around, ate food, and almost made it a contest to see who could make the other laugh.
Jeno had introduced him to his closest friends, Jaemin, the class president, and Chenle, a younger exchange student from China, who both immediately adopted Renjun into their group, often joining them for their weekend adventures. It felt nice to have friends again, to have something to stop him from thinking about skating even when he was off-ice. When he got out of practice, there would more often than not, be a message in their group chat about plans for the evening: pizza night, game board night, horror movie marathon… Doyoung and Kun noticed a change in his skating too, he felt more relaxed, they said. He stopped limiting his life to the ice and began to live more.
Their first meeting had been three years ago, but it was only about a year ago that Jeno and Renjun started dating, although their mutual feelings for each other had become apparent much earlier. It was as if they slipped into the relationship, the change ever so slight that no one else really ever noticed it, perhaps assuming that it had been the case all along. It was visible to the two of them, however, manifesting itself in the small kisses Jeno would now press into the crown of Renjun’s hair when they cuddled in front of the TV or in the words that they would whisper to each other softly when no one was around.
Rather than distracting Renjun from his skating, Jeno grounded Renjun, gave him a warm embrace to come home to after a particularly difficult training session or a disappointing competition, someone to talk to about his stress and the upcoming Olympics, that he’d dreamt of his entire life. With Jeno to support him, Renjun skated better, focused more on conveying the story of his performance, mastered jump after jump, up until this moment, with the final line in front of his eyes. All he has left to do is give it his best and trust that he wouldn’t fall.
***
It’s the day of the short program and the nerves won’t loosen in his chest. He’s been off-centre since this morning, falling on his axel attempts during the warm up and getting so distracted that he almost ran into another competitor who was doing his runthrough.
There’s thousands of people in the crowd and the projectors are blinding. He’s been searching for him in the crowd, hoping to see that uncanny smile and maybe gain some recomfort, but all he managed to get was a reprimand from Doyoung about how now wasn’t the time to “dilly-dally”.
His coach is right. This is his one shot. He’s worked so hard to reach this place, hours and hours of training all for this one shot at something that’s been his dream his whole life. He keeps it in mind as he lets go of Kun’s hand and pushes off the board to go to his starting position. He doesn’t look up, focuses on his breathing and concentrates on the task ahead.
As he gets in position, he finally lifts his head up, hands stretched out in front of him. That’s when he sees him in the crowd, sitting next to Chenle and Jaemin, holding up a banner with Renjun’s name on it, and he’s practically beaming, looking straight at him with nothing but admiration. He notices Renjun looking at him and his smile grows wider. He mouths something, but Renjun can’t hear it and doesn’t have time to register because all of a sudden the first notes of piano are heard in the arena and Renjun’s body reacts immediately and he takes off.
He skates smoothly, his blades barely grazing the ice, he feels like he’s flying, turning, jumping, using his entire body to communicate a story. For the first time in years, he’s able to skate without any pressure on his shoulder. He doesn’t need to think about the next element to come because the music speaks to him and he feels it come naturally. He’s skating for just one person, he realises, baring himself in front of him, and showing the person he loves what he’s been working on for months and years. He forgets about the competition and just thinks about making his performance come alive.
It goes by so fast that the next thing Renjun knows he’s standing in his final position and the crowd cheers loudly, as flowers and gifts land all around the ice. He’s out of breath but grinning from ear to ear as he bows to the crowd, multiple times. It’s not until he’s skating back to the edge and gets pulled into a bear hug by a crying Doyoung that what he’s just done finally hits him. As they get ushered to the kiss and cry, Kun has his arm around Renjun’s shoulder, praising him and looking like he’s two seconds away from crying himself. “That axel was amazing, Renjun, and you landed that quad sal perfectly! An amazing performance… I’m so glad you didn’t let your nerves get the better of you.”
On the bench, he sits between Kun and Doyoung, who still hasn’t stopped the flow of tears down his cheeks. He’s a bundle of emotions, he doesn’t know what has just happened or how he’s supposed to feel. It’s only when his score appears on the board and he’s pulled into a hug by both of his coaches that the tears finally break and that he thinks to himself, ‘I’ve finally done it.’
He breaks into tears again when Jeno runs up to him after the competition and pulls him into a kiss, holding him tight and kissing him sweetly.
“Are those tears of happiness?” He asks when he pulls away, concern filling his eyes.
Renjun nods, wiping away at the tears, trying to control his emotions.
Jeno smiles and plants another soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. “Good. Because I’m really really proud of you. It was beautiful.”
“There- there’s still the free the free skate tomorrow,” he reminds him, in between hiccups and tears, but Jeno hugs him tighter and reassures him.
“You’ve already done so well, Renjun. I don’t need to see your free skate to know that you’ve done enough. You’re already a champion.”
Renjun believes him because damn it if Jeno doesn’t have a way with words that makes you believe everything he says. And so the next day, when his free skate goes worse than could be expected, Renjun still manages to smile through the pain from the falls and takes another bow.
It’s all made better when his coaches decide to treat him and his family, who’s come over from China, to a dinner, which Jeno, Jaemin, and Chenle also invite themselves to. Sitting there laughing and eating with the people he loves, holding Jeno’s hand under the table, it seems that ranks and scores are just numbers, a minor detail of his life and career. The big things that bring him happiness, that’s what he wants to focus on.