Chapter Text
“You don’t seem excited.”
“For the outing? No.”
Renjun has been staring at his empty suitcase for the last thirty minutes while beside him, the hurricane in the name of Lee Donghyuk has finished stuffing all of his training clothes into his duffel bag, complete with two spare Uniqlo light down vests and a tattered skating boots that he said would come in handy when, in his words, ‘we’re doing rowdy, illegal games with the others on the rink.’
Renjun nearly jumped out of his cross-legged stance on the dirty floor of their shared dorm room when he felt the back of Donghyuk’s hand pressing against his forehead.
“What are you doing?!” He said, frantically swatting the dusty hand away from his face.
“Checking if you’re sick,” Donghyuk answered with a shrug, “because you’re the one who hasn’t stopped yapping about this MT since like… since coach Sicheng told us about it.”
To be fair, Renjun was excited for the MT. Really, he did.
Until…
Well until he found out that their yearly prestigious summer camp is going to be tainted by the presence of the speed skating club AND the hockey team.
He said exactly so to Donghyuk, and the lad dared to respond to it with a belittling laugh.
“They’re harmless!”
“Right…” Renjun squinted and gave Donghyuk a ten seconds grace period for him to surrender (which was more than he usually would’ve given him, mind you). But after seeing that he has no plans to back down anytime soon, Renjun decided that he too won’t hold back with his verbal beat down, “of course you’ll say they’re harmless. But wasn’t it one of the hockey kids who gave you that legendary hickey from last winter’s meet? Was he harmless then?”
That shut him up real quick.
Five, intensely awkward seconds passed before Donghyuk gathered enough energy from within him to mutter a disbelieved ‘not fair’ . His face was aflame in a dark red flush as he quickly made his way out of the room.
‘That should be my word,’ Renjun thought, as he scraped his will from the cool, tiled floor like he scraped his training top from the pile of freshly done laundry by his feet. He rolled it up into a tight bun, and pushed it to the corner of his suitcase.
This is going to be a long night.
_
“Yoooo! It’s twinkle toes!”
Renjun has barely (note that word: barely) made his way out to the parking area of their ice rink and already he’s heard like, twelve different voices hooting and hollering from the far reaches of the lot, slightly hidden by the two mini buses ready to take them to their destination. He gave the bunch of hockey kids a customary wave and went to his designated bus.
What is it that they eat, huh? Pure crack cocaine? Powdered caffeine snorted through their left nostrils? How could they be this energetic this early on a Friday morning when Renjun felt like he’s just gotten his soul pushed through a paper shredder as he dragged his, of course, overfilled suitcase with a hot water thermos on his other hand.
To be fair, he only managed to get 3 hours of sleep last night, what with his brain still functioning in its elementary form aka no sleep for you if we have an outing tomorrow.
He was hoping to get a good snooze on the bus, but looking at the reality of his situation? That was as impossible as his dream of winning Olympic gold in the next winter games.
“What’s uuuuuuuuuup!!! Long time no see man!” Renjun has just handed over his luggage to the bus crew to be tagged when he felt heavy arms plopped across his shoulders, burdening him with the idea of early morning socialisation so much it physically hunched his back.
“Morning gege ...” he said with a pained smile. To be honest, he shouldn’t have bothered to fake it. This person is so blinded by his positivity he honestly wouldn’t have noticed if Renjun didn’t answer his greetings with anything other than an annoyed grunt.
It’s a pity his parents taught him manners far too well.
“How many times should I tell you?! Call me Yukhei la~” To the nearly painful attempt at camaraderie, Renjun only gave Yukhei a grimace poorly masked as a smile. Thankfully, he didn’t need to deal with it for too long, as he was called to the circle of other hockey kids with shouts of even more informal language.
As in, ‘A-Hei come here you [Redacted]’ level of informality.
Renjun slipped out of his armhold and climbed the steep stairs of the bus, more content to hide his face behind the curtain and plug his earphones ASAP to ignore the rowdy laughter. He gave the empty bus a quick look around to decide the best position for him to be in. Middle to front, of course, as the back was reserved for them.
He spotted a tuft of unruly, strawberry blond hair peeking from the very front seat and let out the breath that he never noticed he’s held.
“Morning,” Renjun mumbled as he took his seat, and the kid pulled out one of his earphones to return the greeting with a beaming smile.
“You’re on time,” Jaemin playfully nudged Renjun on his ribs and lowered his voice to a stage whisper, “left Donghyuk to fend for himself again, huh?”
It was the first time that day that someone managed to coax a genuine smile onto Renjun’s face, “don’t worry, I already set fifteen alarms on his phone and ordered a taxi for him.”
“You’re too nice, man.”
“Don’t talk to me if your solution is carrying him unconscious on your own back.”
“Fair,” he gave Renjun a closing smile and returned to his own world, closing his eyes and plugging the earphone back to his ear.
This is why Renjun can slightly tolerate speed skaters. Slightly. Because even when on the ice they’re tripping hazard at best and a living rotary blade slicer at worst, when they’re off the ice, they’re a bunch of the chillest people Renjun has ever met. Overly ambitious, yes, as the trait comes together with sports where a millisecond of time difference is what it takes to determine a gold and a silver, but chill.
Trying to utilise this peace as best as he could, Renjun decided to catch that much needed, much coveted nap before any unforeseen circumstances could prevent him from doing so.
But of course, the moment he closed his eyes, he heard the booming sound of Mr. Choi, the hockey team’s coach, of course, rattling the windows of the bus with his loud greetings.
“GOOD MORNING Y’ALL.”
“GOOOOOD MORNING SIWON!”
Renjun’s eyes shot open with the rumbling footsteps of the entire hockey team, which meant, twenty five sets of large feet and toned legs, and the ensuing informality that comes from having a criminally young, criminally talented Korean American coach.
“Are we on the wrong bus?” Renjun asked himself as he squinted his eyes to read the reversed number printed on a sticker pasted on the front window.
He frantically checked the informational message on his phone from his coach.
He’s on the right bus. What the fuck. Why was he placed in the HOCKEY BUS?!.
“Ah! There you are!” Mr. Choi, the coach Mr. Choi, tall, tanned for the gods, and with hands as big as the circumference of Renjun’s face, caught him by surprise (as he was too busy trying to message coach Sicheng for a reasoning as to why he was placed in the friggin hockey bus) slapped him square on the back and nearly caused Renjun to choke on his last night’s dinner, “Sicheng’s kid, and uhh… Shimmy’s kid?”
Renjun could hear his conscience screaming inside his skull, ‘Shimm...y? WHO THE FUCK IS SHIMMY?!’
“Coach Changmin told me I’ll be in your care this morning.” Jaemin, the ever so charming Jaemin smiled at Mr. Choi and was given back an enthusiastic thumbs up.
“He sure did!” He spun around on his spot, and grabbed the mouthpiece of the central PA line of the bus. It came to life with an accompanying loud electrical crackle and a high pitched whine. Renjun too, whined with it and grabbed Jaemin on his arms, using his advantageous position of having his back towards Mr. Choi and the cacophony of random noises to beg, and he did mean beg for Jaemin to help him.
“What?” Jaemin asked him, straining his head so he could hear Renjun’s silent pleads better.
“Please ask him if I can move to the other bus…”
Mr. Choi said a random joke and the whole team erupted in a loud laughter.
“Huh? What??” Jaemin asked him once again after he let out his own version of courtesy laughter, which was far more genuine a.ka better faked than Renjun’s choked up heaves.
“ASK HIM IF I CAN MOVE TO THE OTHER BUS!”
Silence.
It was… silent.
Mr. Choi looked at him in silence.
Jaemin cringed at him in silence.
The whole entire hockey team was silent.
The parking lot was silent.
The whole world seemed to hold their breath in silence and all Renjun hoped, all Renjun wished for, more than being able to finally land a clean quad salchow, was to disappear into particles of dust and be forgotten by everyone in this world.
“I’m sorry, Renjun, isn’t it?” Mr. Choi spoke to him after taking a peek at him and Renjun could only look at him with a trembling grimace-slash-apologetic smile on his leathery face, dyed completely in crimson pigment, “were you trying to talk to me? I’m really sorry if I ignored you.”
He could easily tell Mr. Choi his wish, right then and there. But he was petrified. This man could compact him into a puck-sized cylinder and hit him across the rink with only one easy flick of his wrist. A Renjun kind of puck, which probably means he’ll swerve suddenly to the side and miss the goal by a good 2 meters. Terrifying.
Renjun was ready to swallow his wish with a heavy heart when Jaemin, bless his heart, rose up to the occasion and took his words right out of his slacked jaw.
“All of his teammates are on the other bus, Sir. And didn’t you say that you want to discuss your programme with your coach too?”
Renjun gave Jaemin a thankful, yet still terrified, glance before whipping his head back to Mr. Choi’s kind gaze that he didn’t know for sure if it was genuine or if it was condescending.
“Aww, don’t worry about not having friends! You’re in good hands if you’re talking about wanting to have fun!”
There are quiet hoots of agreement coming from the back of the bus. It sounded suspiciously like Yukhei.
“Uhh… it’s just that… my coach said that… he wants to uhh… brief me on a new sequence he choreographed so…”
Mr. Choi rolled his eyes and in one clean swoop, took Renjun out of his seat by the back of his shirt’s collar, not unlike how a mother cat would pick up her kitten by the scruff of their neck. “MT, this is an MT! Time to have fun and relaaaaax for a while. Why won’t Sicheng listen to me… he shouldn’t push his kids too much!”
Renjun could only flail his arms in a silent plea for Jaemin to save him as he was being dragged to the thick of the forest. To the center of a feeding frenzy. Dropped in the middle of a gorilla enclosure (#RIPHarambe). Jaemin, again, bless his heart, only grimaced at Renjun from behind his seat before his gaze disappeared beneath the brim of a cap he pulled from the pocket of his jeans.
“Use this time to make some friends, okay?” He said, dropping Renjun cold on an empty seat beside… beside…
Beside the worst possible person for him to be stuck with for the next three hours, honestly.
“‘Sup,” Mark, the team captain greeted him from across the aisle and Renjun only gave him a thin smile in return.
“Hey! Will you pleaseee finally introduce me to Yerim? Like, pretty please?? You’re close with the girls right? We’re all soooo looking forward to this trip because of that ya know. Come on! Will you introduce us?” YangYang, the most talkative kid from the junior defense bunch, ignored the briefing Mr. Choi was giving at the front of the bus and blabbered non-stop from the seat in front of him and wiggled his bushy eyebrows in a confusing gesture.
Why is it that everything they do confuses him? Renjun never knew if their heckles and name callings and swears and laughter and snickers and firm punches on his shoulders and ruffles of his hair were done with a good or nefarious intent in mind. Well… honestly, Renjun knew the answer to that already. They’re good kids, if not a bit (a lot) rowdy. And insensitive. And rude. Slightly.
But they’re good. Renjun knew they never meant any harm from anything that they do.
Still…
The bus rumbled to life and Renjun has no other option than to accept his fate that he will be trapped inside a hell that he’s been actively avoiding, and that he won’t ever get the much needed sleep that has begun to haunt him as a constant throbbing from the back of his eyeballs.
They began to back out from the parking spot, and from the corner of his eyes he saw a familiar figure, looking like a dishevelled jobble top with a red bauble, flying across the lot before collapsing in a heap of bags and jackets against the steps of the other bus. Donghyuk.
A quiet, amused mumble sounded from his right. “Late again, huh?”
Renjun saw, from the corner of his eyes, the star forward of their hometown team and one of the newest additions to their national youth team, Lee Jeno. He was staring at Renjun with a peculiar look on his eyes. Like, morbid interest, or something.
“Morning, twinkle toes.”
_
Those were the first words ever uttered by Jeno to him in… oh, he didn’t know… 4 years?
It seems an impossible feat, what with them training under the same roof, albeit on two separate rinks. But don’t underestimate Renjun’s power of making a precise timetable and begging coach Sicheng to train when the youth hockey team has vacated the premises for at least an hour.
“Hi,” was all he could manage to say. Renjun spent the next minute rummaging through his backpack in the effort to nurture the precious silence he’s planted between them.
It was an utter failure.
“What are you listening to? Is that the song for your new program?” Jeno asked as he leaned over to peer at the screen of his phone. It caused the hairs on Renjun’s nape to rouse up in alarm. “Yo that’s my fave band! So you do have a taste, huh?”
“N,- no! No, it’s just… it’s nothing, it’s just a random playlist.”
Lies.
(Because clearly plastered on the song’s original artwork are words that said: “New Free Skate!!! <3 <3 <3”)
“Can I borrow an earphone? I stupidly forgot to bring mine lol.” Renjun was trying to rake his sleep-deprived brain for a polite rejection phrase when he was saved by another of Mr. Choi’s loud announcements from his shotgun seat at the very front of the bus. Saved? Try being taken out of a crocodile burrow and into a lion’s nest.
“Let’s sing some songs to keep our energy up!” He said, and the whole entire bus, sans Renjun, cheered (yes, even Jaemin).
Cheesy, 80s rock music blared through the bus, and he thought he was saved.
Not.
“Oh I love this,” Jeno grinned when ‘Eye of the Tiger’ played from the PA system, “don’t you? Do you know the lyrics?”
Renjun only gave a shrug with a half nod, “a bit.”
“Won’t you sing?” He said in between mumbles of indiscernible tunes.
Renjun kept his silence as he shrugged once more.
Songs came and went, and Jeno’s irrelevant attempt at striking easy conversations also came and went. It was a terribly… odd experience. He’s always thought that Jeno hated him. Or worse, loved him as an easy person to make fun of, maybe. What with the fact that he… did what he did.
Everytime he saw Jeno he was taken back to his days training at their old ring. The look on his eyes were colder than the ice that repeatedly caressed his cheeks as he fell on it, over and over again, while Jeno only watched at the side, circling around him like a shark would do to its dying prey.
So why, dear lord heaven above, was he trying so hard to have a conversation with a sleep deprived Renjun that day, out of all time?
It was hardest for him during the toilet break and snack time, because Renjun could no longer cite the loud music as the reason for why he couldn’t hear anything that Jeno was saying.
The buses stopped at a roadside convenience store but most of the kids decided to take shelter from the humid summer air inside the air conditioned bus. Again, jeopardising Renjun’s plan of taking his nap.
“Are you planning to go to nationals?” He asked an utterly stupid question after taking a bite from his power bar. Stupid, because the answer was so, so straightforward the question was essentially useless.
“Yes.”
He should’ve asked Renjun if he was going to do the Junior Grand Prix, that would probably entail a longer answer for him, which was ‘maybe’ . He did so badly at junior worlds last year that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be picked for the team or not.
And it was awkward silence once more.
Though well, it won’t be so for long. Because Jeno decided to drop a bomb right after Renjun took a bite of his banana.
“What have I ever done to you?”
Renjun nearly choked on the mushy, slimy, alien flesh inside his mouth. His eyes dart from Jeno, who said his question far, far louder than he did before, to Mark, who although to untrained eyes might look as if he was busy typing things on his phone, was very obviously perked by the prospect of drama unfolding just an arm’s reach away.
Jeno looked at him like this was supposed to be just another simple conversation for them to make, as if he was only asking Renjun about the weather. Or his last night’s dinner. Or the health of his goldfish back at his parents’ house. Simple, wasn’t it? Everything is always so simple for him.
“I’m only trying to make the journey less boring. Is it wrong?” Renjun felt as if there were a dozen pairs of ears trained to him. Right on him. Right on Jeno, who, of course, just can’t keep his mouth shut for once. Not even for one goddamned second.
It was probably a miracle, but Renjun managed to swallow his half chewed banana and gave Jeno the half-truth of his situation, “sorry, I’m tired. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
He thought it would be the end of everything, because surely, surely Jeno would understand his reasoning and leave him alone? Syke. Because YangYang, who’s surely eavesdropped on them since the start of the journey (because when has he ever not) , carried his words like an unfortunate breeze of hot wind to the rest of the bus. “Aww, twinkle toes is super stoked for the MT he couldn’t sleep guys, that’s so adorable!”
The bus broke off into a chorus of laughter, and for a brief second, Renjun was taken back to a particular winter afternoon five years ago, when the exact same noise rang within his ears like scrapes of bare fingernails on chalkboard. In the past, his old, nearly deserted ice rink echoed their laughter into unending waves, just like how the enclosed bus caused the noise to be amplified beyond human measures on that day.
“Shut up.” Renjun found his mouth moving on its own, and he found his hands moving on their own too, clasping a bunch of trembling fingers in front of his lips in an effort to muffle his words that seemed to automatically flow out of his throat. Just like his nausea, who swelled and pushed against his tonsils like lappings of a snake’s tongue. ‘Don’t antagonise them,’ his brain’s screams went unheard and unheeded, as the nearly garbled string of shut up kept on tumbling out of his uncooperating mouth.
Don’t antagonise them don’t antagonise them don’t antagonise them don’t,-
“Hm? What was that?” Jeno asked him, his eyes wide with genuine curiosity.
It felt as if his consciousness was split into two entities. One, who was rational, and the other, trapped in fear he thought he’d left behind on the chapped ice of his old ice rink. He didn’t want to ruin it, again. He didn’t want to start all over, again.
But there seemed to be a magical hush that crawled through the length of the bus and everyone heard him. From Yukhei who was lounging at the four seater at the very back to Mr. Choi who was chatting with the driver, they heard him.
“Shut up!”
Jeno’s eyes narrowed into a puzzled look but Renjun wasted no time deciphering it because this time, his legs were the one who moved on their own. Picking himself up from his seat, down the aisle, and out of the bus. They picked up his walking gait into a jog, then into a sprint the moment the soles of his shoes hit the sizzling asphalt of the parking lot. He didn’t stop, not to address Mr. Choi’s concerned calls, nor to the near-miss attempt of stopping him in the form of a hand grabbing around his wrist courtesy to Jaemin, until he’s found himself cowering beside the sleeping form of his coach at the very back of the other bus.
He was the main point of interest to the whole entire bus in this one too, but Renjun didn’t really care. They’re his friends, here. They’re his friends and he’s finally found himself in the right element.
“What is it?” Sicheng asked, not even bothering to pick up the eye mask from his face, “aren’t you supposed to be on the other bus?” Somehow, he sounded a little bit disappointed when he asked Renjun that. But he couldn’t care less. Just once. Let him defy Sicheng’s words just this once.
“Can I please crash here?” Renjun asked, nearly begged in return. He waited in bated breath for Sicheng’s decision, and sighed out in relief when his coach nodded his head.
He made himself comfortable, cushioning his head against Sicheng’s crossed arm, and closed his eyes. The warmth and familiarity of Sicheng acting as a surefire remedy to calm his racing heart enough that Renjun could finally make a worthwhile journey to the realm of slumber.
The MT hasn’t even started and he’s already re-lived a nightmare of his past.
It’s going to be a long weekend indeed…