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There are three minutes left in the second period when the puck ramps up off a Duck’s stick and right into his face.
He’s always been diligent about wearing his mouthguard, and it’s saved him a lot of grief from high sticks over the years. It does not save him from a puck traveling nearly 100 mph. He’s not sure later that he even fully remembers what happens. He remembers it hurting, and he remembers going down to his hands and knees. He remembers being escorted off the ice by the trainers.
“Well kid,” the trainer says, when he pulls the bloody towel away from Hyunjin’s mouth, “you’re about to make real good friends with the dentist the next few days.”
Hyunjin whimpers at him.
They clean him up and, hey, it’s only the second, he could go back out and try and finish the game. That’s his first instinct. The trainer laughs at him.
“Yeah, no, you’re going to get x-rays,” the trainer says, and Hyunjin groans.
“Can I have drugs?” he asks, because if he’s not going to get to play, they better give him the good stuff. It’s hard to speak, hard to move his jaw. He wonders if it is broken. Would he be able to speak if it were broken?
“Yeah, we’ll get you drugs,” the trainer tells him.
The x-rays reveal his jaw isn’t broken. two of his teeth are embedded in his mouth guard and a third is broken in half. He’s holding them in his hand. He stares down at them, his mouth swollen, his head aching, and he starts to cry. He’s on so many drugs.
The trainer sighs at him. “You living an hour out of the city has never been more convenient than right this instant.” Hyunjin laughs, but it turns into a whine. HIs mouth hurts. “Han is coming to get you but he had to come from Newark.”
Hyunjin gives a thumbs up. The dentist comes in to see him, but there’s nothing he can - or wants - to do until the swelling goes down a bit. Until Hyunjin stops bleeding.
He’s dozing, ice resting on his face, when Jisung finally arrives to take him home. “We had a deal,” Jisung says, and Hyunjin jerks awake, almost dropping his ice pack on the floor. “Neither of us were going to get injured so we wouldn’t have to do this.”
“Sorry,” Hyunjin says, except it comes out like “sowwy,” and he can see Jisung holding back a laugh.
“At least you didn’t get your nose broken,” Jisung says. “You’ll still be pretty.”
“Very important,” the trainer says, then laughs. Hyunjin gives both of them the finger.
Hyunjin looks at Jisung, manages half of a smile before his swollen lips pull and start to split, then he says, “wanna see my teeth?”
Jisung’s nose wrinkles up in disgust.
Hyunjin sleeps through most of the next morning, given the morning off from practice with an upper body injury. He mumbles at his mom on the phone because he’s still a little swollen, because she saw the highlights (ha, “highlights”) of the game from the night before.
He snaps a selfie in the bathroom mirror and sends it to Jisung. He’s getting dressed to head to the rink when Jisung texts him back.
this is like, anti-sexting.
this is what i’m going to pull up when i need to kill a boner
It makes Hyunjin laugh, which hurts his face. And his tongue hurts because he can’t stop running it over the jagged edge of the broken tooth that’s still in his mouth. He has to go and see the dentist and see how the swelling looks, now that he’s stopped bleeding. If they can do anything at all today.
Once Hyunjin is in the car, he texts back.
please stop making me laugh it hurts.
Taking an Uber from where he lives in New Jersey into Philly to the rink where his car is stupid expensive, but Jisung had picked him up from the Farg the night before because Hyunjin was drugged and couldn’t drive.
In the end, the dentist ends up pulling the third tooth, the one that is snapped in half, and Hyunjin’s gums will have to heal before he can get anything done to replace what he’s lost. At least he’s not constantly slicing his tongue running it across the broken edge.
Jisung is in the kitchen when he finally gets home, and he walks straight over and rests his cheek on Jisung’s shoulder, looping his arms around Jisung’s waist.
“Well,” Jisung asks. “Are you ever going to eat solid food again?”
“I can eat solid food now,” Hyunjin says. “But they can’t put anything back until I’m healed.”
“Does it still hurt?” Jisung asks.
“Yeah,” Hyunjin says. They numbed him to pull the broken tooth, and now that he’s shot full of novocaine his lips itch. He’s pretty sure his lips aren’t supposed to itch, so he figures that has something to do with the numbing.
He straightens up. “I’m going to go take a nap,” he tells Jisung.
Later, Jisung brings him dinner in bed, and he only has to get up to brush his teeth and rinse his mouth out afterward. They lay in bed watching TV, Hyunjin’s head on Jisung’s lap, Jisung absently braiding and unbraiding locks of Hyunjin’s hair.
“Are you still going to love me now that I don’t have teeth?” Hyunjin asks, half asleep. He can’t keep his tongue out of the empty spaces in his mouth now.
“Of course,” Jisung says. “I didn’t love you for your teeth in the first place.”
“You love me for my sparkling personality,” Hyunjin says.
“Yes,” Jisung says, and laughs. He clicks off the TV and they shift to lay next to each other, Jisung’s arm thrown around Hyunjin’s waist.
“What if I never get to get new teeth?” Hyunjin asks.
“Then there will be more space for my tongue in your mouth, Jinnie,” Jisung says. “I’m not worried about it. Half your team is missing teeth.”
“Half your team is missing teeth,” Hyunjin shoots back.
“That’s hockey, baby,” Jisung says, then kisses Hyunjin, careful not to hurt his bruised lips.