Archive of Our Own

Yeosang doesn’t believe in getting injured.

You can overcome anything, if you set your mind to it. It’s a truth he clings to, one that has taken him far—two time national mens’ figure skating champion far, Olympic bronze-medal far—and he holds it white-knuckled to his chest even under fluorescent hospital lights. He holds it tight against him in every doctors’ office, through every new medical professional telling him he’ll never skate again, their voices barely audible over the thundering in his ears.

Yeosang doesn’t believe in getting injured, but if pressed, he does believe in following directions. He also believes that what his doctors (and his coaches, and his manager, and seemingly every commentator on-air, and therefore the entire pool of spectators) are instructing him is that Yeosang needs to take a break, indefinitely.

He believes that nobody will leave him alone until they’re satisfied that he’s resting, off the ice and ‘taking care of himself’ like everyone keeps emphasizing, unwelcome and unnecessary sympathy oozing from their tone. He believes that without this, his sport, he and everyone else knows he’s not actually worth anything. He believes that if one more person offers him a pitiful look, he could spontaneously combust, red mist on the ice.

Now that would be a career-ending injury, he would joke.

Everyone would laugh at his joke, too, in this scenario. That’s the part he has the hardest time picturing, though. No one ever laughs at his quips; instead, he can see the image of himself unmoving on the ice in their concerned and shining eyes, and it makes Yeosang fume. He’s so good at not thinking about it, putting the proof of his weakness out of his mind, if only he didn’t have anyone and everything else to remind him of it.

And that goddamn YouTube video.

Fuck you user iceprincess217.

The thing is that it’s not just a career, not to him, not anymore.

He’s been on the ice nearly as long as he’s been able to walk, his parents putting him in classes with his elder sister when he kept toddling onto the ice during her lessons. He had a knack for it right away, but more than that, Yeosang loved to skate; he came to life each time he carved onto the ice and spent the rest of his time thinking about the next time he’d get to. By the time they were old enough to compete, his sister had lost interest in the sport entirely, but Yeosang swept onto youth boys’ figure skating scene at first place and there he has stayed for close to two decades.

Not quite two decades, though.

This is why he doesn’t outright laugh when his physical therapist mentions her new, slightly out of the box idea for recovery. He only scoffs and storms out of the room muttering about “fuckass ice dancing”.

Everyone knows ice dancing is the boring younger sibling of figure skating.

Well, maybe not everyone. It is, technically, a well-respected Olympic sport. But definitely Yeosang thinks so.

Realistically though, it is the less high-risk sibling. It’s the sport that is easier on someone with lasting chronic pain and tendonitis, who will be dealing with this pain for the rest of his life, which is why it’s Yeosang’s last chance, and the one that he takes.

❆

“Beautiful winter cottage,” the description for the rental had said, “peaceful and relaxing escape from city life!” When the black sedan pulls up to the property after a long drive up the mountain, Yeosang is still pointedly waiting for this relaxation to set in.

It’s not even winter yet, he half-snarks to himself, but as he stretches his stiff limbs out, he can’t pretend not to be charmed by this place in the privacy of his own company. And it really is just his own company; his driver makes quick work of unloading his suitcases into the entryway of the house, bids him goodbye, and peels away from the curb, all while Yeosang stands sentry at the edge of the garden.

Crawling branches of vibrant red frame the small house, trees rising on all sides of the clearing, and a couple of bloody leaves drop every few seconds. The ambient sound of the forest blankets him, insect hum and rustling breeze inhabiting the space between his ears, and he supposes he does get it, maybe, the peaceful part.

He stands there, basking in the feeling of being alone,for long enough that the late autumn air gets under his skin, and the cold makes his chest ache in the place where he yearns, where he needs the release of blade carving against ice.

“No,” he abruptly stops the train of thought in its tracks. One foot in front of the unsteady other, he crunches along the leaf-strewn path to the front door of his new home.

Six months, that’s how long Yeosang is in for. Not that it’s truly imprisonment, he needs to keep reminding himself, if he’s going to retain his sanity. It’s only a change of scenery at the end of the day; he’s still going to be doing what he was doing before — namely, not figure skating — but without the eyes of what feels like the entire world on him.

The privacy will give him the chance to try something new, too; the other reason for his stay in this particular town is the local ice dancing culture. Yeosang’s therapists (one for his injury and another to shrink his brain) found the city of Namjeon for him when he didn’t say an outright no to the ludicrous idea, a small community with a serious rink and a winter snow festival. Because, he concedes in the privacy of his mind, is it really all that ludicrous if it’ll get him back out onto the ice?

And it really is a nice change. He pushes the arched green door of the house open, and the warm air inside marbles pleasantly with the breeze at his back, chasing him into the small living room as he gently shuts the door behind him.

In the silence of the unfamiliar room, he instinctively reaches for his phone, and wraps his fingers around the useless rectangle in his pocket before remembering the newly-exchanged device serves him no purpose. This is by design, admittedly— Yeosang had traded in his smartphone for a rudimentary flip phone without internet access and limited minutes. It had sounded like a good idea at the time, taking a break from reading comments and watching videos of all of his former peers competing the way he should be.

Now, though, left alone with his thoughts, Yeosang regrets his choice enormously. He takes his hand back out of his pocket and leaves it to hang awkward at his side as he instead takes in his surroundings. His new home, he supposes.

The house that Yeosang is renting certainly used to be inhabited by a family, rather than one disgruntled young man, but that’s part of the reason why he picked this one. He knows how to live in a four-person home, recognizes the formula of the frillier bedroom and the more pointedly boyish version down the hall, the lived-in master bedroom refurbished to be less personal as a rental, and the carpeted stairs with a worn line trod down the middle of each step.

Yeosang had thought, when he booked it, that maybe it would give him one less thing to have to adjust to, but now that he’s here, he can only see the differences between this one and the house he grew up in. The one he’d lived in since he was a kid, suburban with a rope swing in the backyard and a breakfast nook with perfect early morning sun, it knew him.

Instead this house waits, gently creaking and dimly lit by afternoon sun through half-curtains, for Yeosang to introduce himself. For the life of him, he doesn’t know how to, not now that he has no sport or the community therewith.

The reality of his sentence hangs imminent, months for him to stew under the guise of mindfulness and recovery yawning before him. It takes about thirty seconds until every belief that he can get better, that he can be happy and worth something again without figure skating, evaporates in the stagnant air of the empty cottage.

Yeosang wrenches the door open again and goes for a walk.

❆

The trek to polite civilization is deceptively short, the semblance of perfect privacy at the cottage credited to the close-knit trees that crowd the short gravel road into town. It leads into the more commercial area, the other turnoff he passes on his walk being for the road up to the popular ski mountain.

(Skiing is not a sport worth Yeosang having an opinion on. Lions do not concern themselves with the hobbies of rich people.)

There are some scattered apartment buildings as the copse of trees starts to thin out, a laundromat and some other businesses with quaint matching facades, and then Yeosang is walking down the main street he’d seen online. He is not very experienced with small towns, a city kid by circumstance, but the setting is surprisingly comforting to him in its logical layout. He likes that there is a central location, with a large stone fountain from which he can learn to navigate around without GPS on his phone.

He walks past a well-stocked market with a man who looks like he’s been stationed there at his store for years, reading a worn paperback on a folding chair that’s been there for years too. It’s followed by a small music shop with guitars in the window and then a flower shop with beautiful box displays of chrysanthemum outside, where you can still hear occasional gentle melodies from next door.

Within two mere blocks, Yeosang would go so far as to say that he loves the existence of a main street, and every town should have one.

Not just because it saves him from an evening with his own thoughts, although that probably doesn’t hurt if he really thinks about it. Which he doesn’t.

Reentering the realm of public eye feels comfortably less exposed than standing in a cottage with only himself for company. It’s much more relaxing than venturing out in the city, and he can even putter around and do a couple of errands without feeling too seen or walking too far, since everything is so close together, and so far from the world he knows.

After exploring and cataloging the few block radius around the town square, Yeosang buys a ripe pear from the man at the market, and then sits down on a bench near the fountain to call his sister.

Hyeon picks up on the second ring, and to his relief it takes several minutes until she’s done updating him on her own life and remembers to pester him.

“So you sound pretty outside for someone who’s supposed to be resting in his fancy cottage rental,” she teases. Fuck, he thought he’d chosen a spot out where the wind would count as background noise, but this godforsaken machine probably doesn’t even filter out background noise, now that he thinks about it. Yeosang is sure to angle his heavy sigh directly into the input microphone.

“I’m just on a walk, that’s pretty relaxing to me,” he protests. In his mind, personified block letters spelling out REST and RELAXATION go up in a mushroom cloud of smoke and radiation.

“Yeah, and how fast were you walking?” She’s quick to retort.

The indignance that had been rising in Yeosang’s throat creeps back down as he remembers the reflection of himself in the shop windows, hurtling down each street on his exploratory patrol at breakneck homosexual walking speed. His heel only aches a little bit, he wants to say, but he preemptively hears how feeble it’ll sound, knows what Hyeon would say anyways and keeps his mouth shut.

“That’s what I thought,” she says, not unkindly.

“Don’t just stalk around like a weird blond spectre, give being a regular person a chance.” Her voice softens here, and Yeosang can practically hear her earnest, searching gaze. He’s glad he doesn’t have FaceTime anymore. “You could really like it there, Yeosang.”

He hums noncommittally, and if he’s honest, he knows in a small, private piece of his mind that she’s probably right, that logically eventually he’ll probably be happy somewhere. It’s an objective fact: he has no cursed choice but to keep moving forward. That doesn’t make him any less existentially pissed off about it, though.

Hyeon doesn’t push it any further, and they talk about their mom’s recent charity gala for a minute before hanging up. His sister leaves his ear with a chirped, “Now go do something nice for yourself! And stroll there, you freak.”

Yeosang lets the silence in her wake stretch out, and in the absence of anything left to do, he takes stock of what scraps of real-person-hood that he has left.

He has no career, no friends and no figure skating community to be apart of. He has a body that tentatively works, albeit in a completely different way than he has grown accustomed to in his first twenty-seven years, with a diminished capacity to skate and sometimes even exert itself in general. He has a cottage, and months of alone time before him, and a slim chance of getting back to doing the thing that he loves, even if it’s in a new and different way, and even if he resents it.

None of these things, Yeosang notices with his sister’s voice in his head, have anything to do with who he actually is as a person. For a year now, he has been circling the realization that he has utterly no idea who he is if he’s not a medal-winning figure skater, avoiding it in empty rooms and in the shower, looking down at the scar on his ankle from surgery. He faces it now in the afternoon light of his temporary new home.

Uncertainty expands in his chest, and he greets the familiar swell with resigned acceptance.

For perhaps the first time since before his injury, probably since long before that too if he’s honest, Yeosang decides to stroll somewhere and do something nice for himself.

❆

Walking slowly down a local street when the weather is nice is something that Yeosang could certainly come to love, eventually. Practice makes perfect applies to more than just sports, he knows this and is trying to internalize it too. He has recently started listening to his therapist’s heavy-handed advice more, mostly after the realization that he could be figuratively getting an A+ in therapy.

Practicing walking at a leisurely clip is easy for him after his harsh pace for the first leg of the walk, and he feels his sister’s psychic smugness about it across their distance. It’s nice, though, to take his time as he makes his way down the sidewalk in the direction of the chrysanthemums. The sun beats down at him as he leaves the shade of each tree lining the street, and the heat on his face is cut so satisfyingly by the breeze that the sides of Yeosang’s lips tug upward, just barely. He’s sure to manually squash the smile before pulling on the handle of the florists’ door.

There’s another customer at the front counter, behind which a willowy silver-haired man is making a bouquet on brown canvas paper, so Yeosang continues practicing his very best meander, studying the modestly-sized shop. Plants hang from the ceiling, vines pouring down the walls and tickling the top of Yeosang’s head as he picks his way through baskets and pots and buckets of flowers and other greenery tucked maze-like in every open shelf and on every surface. It is impressively verdant, and as he takes a deep breath he notes that the air is no different.

Fuck, it’s relaxing in here, isn’t it, he thinks bitterly. Strolling, and now relaxing; what’s next, frolicking? He glares down at a small bucket of cut peonies, chasing away images of flowers landing on the ice and the ghost of cheering thundering in his ears.

“Can I help you?” A light voice calls from the front of the store.

Yeosang turns toward the noise, and catches the other customer’s back as he leaves the shop, Henley shirt clinging to broad shoulders and soft peppermint scent left in his wake as he whisks out the door.

The florist is smiling openly at him, and doesn’t repeat himself, patiently waiting for a reply. The name tag on his apron reads ‘Seonghwa’ with leaves and pink petals drawn in a flurry around the letters. There’s something comforting about him, an unimposing poise that puts Yeosang at ease. He’s certain this man must skate, would normally ask about it, but that’s not what this is about.

“Just a bouquet, please,” Yeosang says, and he sounds sufficiently press-ready, nerves tucked away where none of his new neighbors can see it.

Seonghwa blooms into motion, and it’s even more clear that he’s had a background in skating then. The way he flits around the space is mesmerizing, Yeosang would go so far as to say. The tall man plucks buds and leafy branches from nooks and crannies, arranging with a secret rhyme and reason Yeosang is not privy to but is happy to observe, and the resulting arrangement is a beautiful burst of lavender and gentle orange framed by green fronds.

It’s something nice, and it hasn’t yet killed him or otherwise maimed him, and he feels hesitantly positive. His sister knows him, he supposes, knows he needs someone to tell him he’s allowed to enjoy himself sometimes.

“It’s on the house,” That light voice interrupts his thoughts again, Seonghwa looking down the graceful bridge of his nose kindly as Yeosang begins to pull his wallet from his pocket. “A welcome to town gift.”

“Oh, are you sure?” Yeosang blinks.

“Of course, you’re the new cottage tenant, right?” Seonghwa says.

Yeosang blinks again, eyes opening back up a touch wider. “Um,” he begins, deciding how alarmed he should be.

“Oh, sorry sorry sorry that’s so creepy isn’t it, oh god. I’m not a stalker or anything, I just basically grew up there, and of course I recognized your name I’m not uncultured swine, and— Fuck, how far have I shoved my foot in my mouth?” He covers his face with his hands, such that Yeosang can only see his embarrassed grimace beneath his glued-together fingers.

He should’ve known he’d be recognized here considering the local rink and skating community, but he also doesn’t quite mind the way the florist before him is addressing it. The flustered awkwardness is familiar to him in a way that keeps him thawed.

Even knowing that it’s a case of the grass being greener on the other side, Yeosang has always envied people whose instinct is to open up and explain, rather than shut down, go silent, fold into oneself. He wants that, not his buttoned-up silence and his solitude.

“I’m Yeosang,” he says, holding out a hand.

Seonghwa only frees one hand, still cowering behind the other as he feebly shakes Yeosang’s hand and continues his hurried explanation. “Your landlord and I have been best friends since we were like, four years old, and—” He’s talking at a truly impressive speed, gesturing wildly at the door and perhaps the concept of the cottage, but he cuts himself off as he makes eye contact and notices that Yeosang is half-grinning. He sputters out a laugh, and both of them are giggling.

“Thank you, I appreciate the warm welcome,” Yeosang ventures on the tail end of his laugh. “The small town thing is a bit new for me, so this is lovely.”

“Ah of course, a big city guy. You’re here for a while, right?” Seonghwa’s lilt is careful, and Yeosang likes that he phrases it like a question despite his arrival here apparently being local common knowledge. Yeosang nods, and the other man continues, “It’s going to be a great festival year this year, I’m glad you found your way here.”

He’s so genuine, making such earnest eye contact with Yeosang as he says this last part that Yeosang can’t help but flick his gaze slightly up, to the right of Seonghwa’s head.

“I am too,” Yeosang says, and finally takes the bouquet from the outstretched hand before him. He excuses himself with a promise to return, and he means it.

❆

The arrangement helps the energy in the cottage considerably. It’s not perfect, of course; it’ll take getting used to much like anything else in his life, but maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world just to be.

Yeosang’s chief problem now, is that he’s not actually sure how to do that. He has no idea what to do with his off-ice free time that isn’t watching videos of skating or thinking about skating or obsessing about the future, all of which are pretty specifically bad for him and his ability to function at present.

Books, he thinks eventually, eyes landing on the shelves on either side of the fireplace. People read books.

Scanning the selection on the shelves, Yeosang inadvertently gathers three things about the owners of the house. Firstly, that they are in fact avid readers; the collection is too well-loved and genre-specific to be just placeholders for renters to look at. There are three solid rows of cozy mysteries varying in fright level, and a dedicated section of literary fiction alphabetized by author.

Secondly, one or more of these readers is extremely queer and has very excellent taste. The majority of the books across all genres are queer titles in some way, many of them ones that Yeosang has intended to read at one point or another but put off for the sake of practicing.

He lets a smile flit across his face when he gets to a shelf of non-fiction including titles about accepting your gay kid and queer history. He recognizes one book that his mom had read when he came out at fourteen, about celebrating your child and their relationships, and he snorts humorlessly. The only relationship he’s ever had to speak of is the one he has with his sport, and that’s over with. Sorry to make you read that for nothing, he thinks sullenly.

Lastly, he learns that they have a cat. On the leftmost shelf nearest to the floor, big blue eyes blink back at him rather than book spines. The round creature is perched upon a deep red pillow coated in a fine layer of beige fur.

Pets are not something that Yeosang is familiar with, in principle or in practice, and this additional guest was certainly not advertised on the rental website. His family never had one, and he hadn’t known to mind about it really until it became another thing that he was bad at. Interacting with animals confuses him, and this one is probably no different.

“Am I supposed to be making eye contact with you?” He mutters, already locked into her gaze. When they were kids, Hyeon told a gullible Yeosang very confidently that all cats are girls, and while he knows now that this cannot be true, this cat looks decidedly feminine to him.

The cat doesn’t react to his question, so he decides that he’s probably safe to grab a book despite the prolonged eye contact. Maybe from the other side of the fireplace, though.He ends up taking one of the cozy mysteries, a whodunit about a fox solving a murder in a small town of woodland animals.

His next task, which Yeosang has been dreading since he’d seen photos of the place online, is to carry his suitcase up the stairs. His physical recovery has been largely positive, despite the fact that he can’t fully get back to where he used to be. Carrying the bag might not truly be all that difficult, but it will be different, and the reminder hurts almost as much as anything else.

He muscles the suitcase up pretty easily, using just his upper body strength in a way that effectively balances the weight, but he’s still out of breath by the time he gets upstairs. Left behind in the downstairs closet is the suitcase that has all of his practice clothes and skates and equipment, out of sight and somewhat out of mind.

Moisturizer gently sinking into his face, tucked into the navy blue sheets of the smallest and least frilly bedroom away from distraction and his failure and flagellation, Yeosang begins to read. He is rapt immediately. Why hadn’t he ever listened to anyone when they said to take a break, to open a book and fall into it instead of his own head? No matter, all that matters now is that this fox solves the murder, and that she realizes the brown bear sheriff wants to ask her on a date.

The flip phone sits uncharged and forgotten on the kitchen table next to his vase of flowers, and he doesn’t even miss it as he falls asleep to words swimming pleasantly on the page.

❆

Never a particularly heavy sleeper even on a good night, Yeosang wakes from his fitful rest to a sound outside. For a moment, he thinks it’s the cat, come to terrorize him again, but as far as he’s aware, cats cannot slam doors. That said, he also didn’t think cats could be as calculatedly evil as this one was while he had been trying to sleep throughout the night.

Mistakenly assuming it would be okay, he had shut the cat out of his room when he got into bed, on account of not having slept with a loose cat before. A harmless precaution, or so he thought.

Yeosang was repeatedly, systematically woken up multiple times an hour throughout the night to the horrific sound of claws squealing down the other side of the wooden door. He’d left it open after that, lest he incur her wrath. The next time he opens his eyes, not quite used to the creak of the house and the trees outside yet, he is being menaced from above by The Creature, smug and perched on the flat post of the bed frame.

Resigned to his fate of being watched for the indefinite future, he settled in under the watchful gaze of his new roommate and drifted off again. Another thing to get used to.

Not right now, though; the sound of the car door sends her flying, using Yeosang’s chest as a springboard as she streaks out the door. He lets out a weak wheeze. A headache pulses behind his eyes, the lack of sound sleep fogging his mind but not fully shrouding the annoyance that smolders beneath.

That car door better have been his landlord.

Sure enough, when Yeosang reaches the base of the stairs he can see a man standing outside in the driveway through one of the distorted panes of glass in the door. His broad shoulders are familiar through glass, Yeosang recognizes the other customer from the florist yesterday. He strains to remember anything else about him before greeting him, to no avail; he’d been too lost in thought.

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Yeosang braces himself and throws the door open. In the crisp morning air, he remembers the ratty tank top and shorts he had worn to sleep, but it’s too late now that he’s made his dramatic appearance.

The startled gaze of the man in the driveway meets his, and Yeosang shivers.

The wind sifts through the other man’s short black hair, lifting a tuft of it and making him look so boyish for a moment, before Yeosang notices that it’s just the guy’s face doing that. His shy smile is gently clever and his searching eyes somehow do not feel invasive, and he offers a stilted wave with one brawny arm.

Broad maybe wasn’t the right word for his build, so much as sturdy, or maybe solid. He’s not very tall, but he looks so visibly capable and strong. Durable, a little voice whispers, and Yeosang bats it away into the corner where it belongs. Good stamina, the voice wails. Mental bazooka.

Starting towards him, the man holds out the hand he waved with towards Yeosang, that timid smile crawling beneath the goose-bumped skin of his arms.

“Hi, Kang Yeosang, right? I’m Choi San,” he says, voice rich as the deep glow of red leaves around them in the morning sun.

Yeosang takes his hand to shake, and their palms fold together warm between them. He can feel San’s callouses against his skin, and they both make quick work of shaking, dropping their hands to their sides again.

The air sits quiet between them for a beat, then, “Welcome to—” at the same time that Yeosang says curtly, “No one mentioned a cat.”

San blinks, and the smooth olive skin between his eyebrows wrinkles into a confused frown. Yeosang blinks back, with his very best blank and intimidating game face on.

A sweet “mrrow” from down by Yeosang’s feet undercuts his tone. The creature winds in a figure-eight between his ankles, owl eyes glaring back from her inky face.

San rubs a hand against the back of his neck, “Ah. My bad, I thought you had met. This is Byeol.” Yeosang’s gaze snags hard on his bicep, on display under a tight short-sleeve workout shirt.

“No I—we’ve met, I just—” Priorities, he thinks, and tears his eyes back towards the other man’s face, where a bemused smile has joined the frown. “Why?”

“I don’t remember why we named her that, I guess? Maybe because she’s the star, main character of the family—” Okay, so his landlord is purposely obtuse.

“No, why is she here?”

“Oh. This is her house, she’s the one renting to you actually.”

“Right, funny,” Yeosang hears the frustration starting to bleed into his voice, and takes a deep breath to try to tamp it down. He doesn’t want to come off whiny, as he’s painfully aware he sometimes does when he gets upset about unexpected changes and altered plans.

Another lilting mew from below, and Byeol bites Yeosang’s ankle as punctuation, still staring up at him as though daring to request something.

“You’re not petting her,” San says, tilting his marble chin down at the creature.

Yeosang blinks. He is not. He’d been afraid to try all night, unsure of protocol. He flexes the fingers of one hand and hesitantly starts to lean down with it outstretched.

“I didn’t sign up for a cat,” he adds before he makes contact, a safety measure in case he’s doing it wrong. “I don’t know how to…do that.” To his surprise, Byeol hops up on her little black hind feet and presses her head up into his open palm, effectively petting herself using his unmoving hand. She’s extremely soft, and he feels the rumble of the purr in her throat, looking up in surprise.

The affection on San’s face looking at his family’s pet is clear, and against his better judgment, Yeosang understands the appeal. The gently vibrating little lady rubbing the side of her face insistently up into his hand, gums and tiny teeth bared in bliss is…extremely cute.

“You don’t have to feed her or do anything,” San continues. “I come by and do that every day, take care of the property and stuff.”

Yeosang’s back straightens, and he stands back up to eye level. “Every day?” The beautiful, clean privacy he thought he had is starting to sully in his mind, deep gouges intruding on the perfect, smooth ice.

“That a problem? I can stay out of your way if privacy is a concern, I just feed the cat and rake the leaves and the regular stuff, unless you’re interested in taking up caretaker duties,” His tone isn’t unkind, more notable is the still-mounting amusement in his voice.

A long sigh. “No,” Yeosang utters, and he knows his dismay is leaking out, can’t do anything to stop it. “Don’t know how to do that either, really.”

San breathes out a chuckle, as though this is unsurprising information, as though Yeosang’s incapability is written across his forehead under white-blond fringe.

It’s Yeosang’s turn to frown now, not nearly so amused as the other man’s had been. “Something to say?” His voice comes out so much harder than he’d intended, slicing though the previously awkward but jovial tone. That familiar shame that comes with someone realizing how useless he actually is starts rising up in his throat, and he’s choking on the feeling.

An expression of surprise on the other man’s face settles into something less readable to Yeosang, perhaps most akin to a wary glare, immediately extinguishing the adrenaline fueling his uncharacteristic outburst. Great, so much for the nice start he’d gotten with Seonghwa. I’ve still got it, he curses at the countless echoes of announcers talking about him being a storm cloud on the ice, mean and competitive and ruthless.

Quiet falls uncomfortably between them, and Byeol stalks over to San’s feet and plops down onto his sneakers, wrapping her tail around her paws with an air of attitude that Yeosang does not think he is imagining.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to...” Yeosang starts talking, then trails off as he realizes he doesn’t even quite know in what way he’s ‘shoved his foot in his mouth’ as Seonghwa would say, he just knows that he definitely has a mouthful.

What exactly do you apologize for if your crime is just being painfully inept in social situations?

San gives him a tight-lipped smile, tinged with what Yeosang thinks could be offense, but he can’t quite tell in his fluster.

“I’ll just be by in the mornings for upkeep, and if that doesn’t end up working for you and your relaxing escape then we can figure something else out, how’s that?” His voice is gruff, and Yeosang feels a bit like he’s being scolded.

He breathes an agreement though, and San smirks minutely at his reluctant, “Sure.”

Turning on his heel to go back inside the house, he belatedly remembers that this is a person he’ll be dealing with regularly, and he is perhaps, definitely, coming across like a snobby asshole.

“Oh, and nice to meet you,” Yeosang tosses over his shoulder, as though he has already pulled the pin out of the false nicety and it’ll blow any second.

He’s about to close the door behind him, the last word safely his and his exit hopefully dignified-looking, when he remembers Byeol. He hold the door back open a crack, wide enough that behind the cat slowly winding down the path, he can see an inscrutable Choi San still standing there, hands stuffed in his pocket, brow furrowed.

❆

Tentatively, after gathering data for about a week, and therefore with subject to change at any minute sign of inconvenience or trial in the future, Yeosang does decide that he likes it here in Namjeon.

Never one to adjust naturally, he spends his first week adapting manually, putting together a new daily routine. He makes a habit of getting up each morning early enough that his bed is made and he’s sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of fresh coffee from the pot when he hears the car door outside.

On the first day, he doesn’t time it quite right, and he has to lie in wait before making his escape without any small talk with the annoyingly hot landlord. He watches carefully and not at all creepily from a crack in the curtains until San’s raking takes him around the back of the house, and then he makes a break for it down the road into town.

He grocery shops, dutifully gathering the items on the list he’d made on paper while San was taking ages to rake the front yard. He’d decided on getting three days’ worth of food, both for maximized produce enjoyment and to force him to come back into town and interact with real people.

On the second day, Yeosang considers bringing a cup of coffee out to San while he mows the freshly-raked lawn early the next morning, as an attempt at non-awkward interaction. Instead, he takes too long to decide and ends up drinking the second mug himself while he finishes his book, glancing out unsubtly at the strong bare arms haunting his psyche despite better judgment.

One cannot be interested in their landlord. He thinks. He’s not sure if this is a real rule, but he’s always been careful in his interest in men, and if his fellow skaters were off limits for professionalism’s sake, then the person whose home Yeosang is renting is probably also a non-starter.

This doesn’t stop him from admiring the view, he’s not that repressed.

San is beautiful in a way that makes Yeosang’s head ache. The soft sheen of visible sweat on his golden skin is entrancing, his waist an impossible slip of a thing that turns his upper body into something rather triangular. He is so methodical in his yard work, making uniform piles of leaves in spots he seems to know as predetermined, so abundantly clear in his calloused hands on the well-used rake that he’s used to this, likes it even, in the way he stops to draw in a deep breath and survey his work and surroundings every few minutes.

Yeosang grinds his teeth thinking about how deeply his foot is lodged in his esophagus and how, if it all, he might go about removing it.

Day three finds him finally exploring more of the house, peeking into the other bedrooms and actually studying some of the artwork on the walls. A lot of the decor is somewhat impersonal, paintings of the mountains and some abstract pieces in deep blues and vivid purples, but there are a few photos still.

On the wall of the main bedroom, there’s one of who Yeosang assumes to be San’s parents, and another of the whole family of four that he stops in front of.

In the photo, they’re standing together in front of the familiar backdrop of the pond, smiles stretched across their cold-flushed cheeks and arms tangled over each others’ shoulders. San is in the middle, and that clever, gentle smile is a beacon that draws Yeosang’s focus. Half-visible in the background, the cottage is adorned with twinkling strands of lights and even in the fuzzy, greywashed newspaper photo, Yeosang can feel that the home was alive when this was taken.

Another day avoiding running into him on his way out grocery shopping passes without effort, another day surreptitiously glancing out the window between chapters, and finally Yeosang decides he’s ready to be a person.

The following day, he resolves to at least be personable, and he has the two mugs of coffee on the kitchen table in front of him for a full hour before he realizes that maybe San’s not coming by today, because the leaves are mostly taken care of and the lawn is still nicely kept. He frowns at the mugs of cold liquid.

Byeol, perhaps noting the silence as an opportunity to be paid attention to, appears in the doorway and prances on inky paws over to where he sits.

Yeosang has learned a great deal about deciphering cat behavior in his time coexisting with her, but he especially likes that he is starting to be able to understand her tail. It twists into a question mark curve, flicks back and forth as she stalks toward him. This is not the I-want-to-play behavior, which generally involves rolling around in some way.

Is she hungry? San had certainly been taking care of her all week, so she must have been being fed, but he feels all of a sudden a bit alarmed by his lack of knowledge. Byeol is, in some ways, in his care, being that she is his de facto roommate. She even sleeps on his feet some nights, which is far too toasty, but what is he to do, move her?

Having noticed earlier that his flower arrangement was wilting rather unforgivably, Yeosang resolves to keep his promise to return to see Seonghwa for another bouquet. Surely, the florist won’t mind if he has a couple cat questions as well.

❆

Yeosang has more than a couple questions about cats.

Luckily, Seonghwa is more than happy to answer all of them, and even seems happy to have Yeosang back and hanging around.

As it turns out, he’s also the person who takes care of Byeol when San can’t stop by, and she is universally considered a star.

“His mom and sister moved to the city a while back,” Seonghwa explains, as he strings together dried flowerheads on a garland for the shop. “To be closer for competitions and stuff.” He tacks on hurriedly when he notices the quizzical look on Yeosang’s face.

Yeosang frowns, and tries to figure out a casual way to ask his more pressing question. “Why doesn’t he…live in his own house?” He finally gives up on wording it nonchalantly.

A thoughtful look crosses Seonghwa’s face, and he puts his hands down, pausing his work fiddling with the twine and dried stems.

“So, you know about the rink here, right?” He begins, and Yeosang nods.

“Sort of, it’s a local ice dancing center, right?”

Seonghwa gives a small smile. “Yeah, I’ve been skating there since I was a kid, and the Choi family owned it when we were growing up. It’s just San’s now, since he’s still living in town, so he lives in the apartment in there to take care of things as best he can.

“Renting out the cottage is good money,” He adds, before seeming to remember that Yeosang is currently the one providing said money, and giving a sheepish glance. Yeosang just chuckles, and they fall back into a comfortable silence. He considers a tiny Seonghwa learning to skate, and his brain supplies a little version of his landlord as well, a grumpily pouting youthful ice overlord. He wonders what else he doesn’t know about Choi San.

Thusly, visiting the florist becomes a part of his routine as well. Autumn fades into the beginning of winter, and Yeosang watches the seasonal blooms getting changed out for cold hardy new flora as flurries of snow begin to fall on Namjeon.

❆

Yeosang has been awake for a moment, reading one of the later books in the series about the fox and her bear boyfriend, before he notices that he’s not just imagining it; he can hear the sound of skates.

There’s a window at the top of the stairs that’s just about at Yeosang’s eye level, a circular pane overlooking the large backyard that he has not ventured into yet. He goes to it now, peering over the edge to see that the snow, a light shroud before, has become a blanket over the landscape.

The sound, he finds, is coming from a pond he hadn’t realized was tucked away between a couple of trees. He’s sure it was a pond at one point at least, because now it is a flawless circular clearing sheeted in ice. Gliding along the surface are three figures, two of them recognizably San and Seonghwa, with a third, shorter skater alongside them.

The morning unfolds, and the sound of metal scraping is joined by laughter, the occasional hoot and holler, the sound of Yeosang’s childhood.

He knows he could go out there to say hello at least, and his skates carefully locked away in the closet downstairs calls to him in dulcet tones. He’s sure Seonghwa would welcome him, and maybe he could make a better impression on his landlord even.

Instead, he spends all day watching and listening and seething.

The second day finds the trio of friends back again, and Yeosang remains unable to complain because there’s really no good reason for him to be this annoyed, other than his own vicious and nonsensical jealousy.

Trying to be better than this, trying to make an effort with the one friend he does have in town, Yeosang decides to make cookies to bring out to them. Just to say hi.

They all stare at plate of blackened cookie pucks in his hand with a feigned politeness that Yeosang cannot decide if he appreciates or thinks is condescending. From Seonghwa and Hongjoong, the third skater in their group today, he appreciates it. The half-laugh from San’s direction makes his eye twitch.

“Join us! Did you bring your skates with you?” Seonghwa asks brightly, and if he does notice Yeosang’s sour face then he doesn’t let on at all.

He hums noncommittally. “Oh, they’re all packed away still. Not sure if I have the clearance anyways, either,” He lies. He’s been cleared since before he got here, he just doesn’t know how to try. And he sure as hell won’t start in front of people he barely knows.

Seonghwa concedes easily and Yeosang exhales in relief as he and Hongjoong start passing one of the cookies he’d made as a game with their makeshift hockey sticks.

Apparently though, San had been paying attention, because after a moment of true, wistful yearning to join, despite himself, a throat clears behind him.

“You know,” he starts, a tentative half-smile broaching his face as he catches Yeosang’s attention. “If you want to come by the rink sometime…” He trails off from his place on a tree stump off to the side.

Yeosang studies him, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn’t. He feels disturbingly seen, getting caught wanting. He’s sure to wipe any remnant of it off his face, and holds San’s playful gaze, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

It occurs to him, after a prolonged moment watching the brawny man perched down there with hands in his lap and cheeks flushed from the cold, looking up at Yeosang questioningly, that the other man would look fantastic on his kn—No. Nope. Harpoon gun to that uncivilized part of his brain.

“What,” Yeosang says dumbly.

“I don’t know, I know you’re some big shot,” Yeosang scoffs, but San presses on, “I know you’re some big shot but, if you wanted to come by my rink I could teach y—”

The exclaimed “ha!” that Yeosang interrupts him with is far louder and harsher than he’d intended, a growing theme for him in his interactions with San. Yeosang alights on the look in San’s eyes, an innocent bewilderment, and is that maybe judgment? Embarrassed and righteous anger spills over in him.

“I know how to skate,” he wishes he could unsay this next part before he’s even saying it. “Do you even know who I am?” Cringe. God, what the fuck?

He can hear how rude he sounds, fumbles in his head to find something to fix it but comes up empty. The sounds of Hongjoong and Seonghwa laughing at something together across the pond bounce off the inside of his skull like the DVD logo.

“Uh, no. I don’t.” San says flatly, and his face is harder than before. Yeosang hadn’t even realized he’d noticed the softness until it was missing, and now he finds himself looking for a dimple that isn’t there.

“I…yeah, sorry, um.” Yeosang stutters for a moment, and then he unceremoniously flees, tossing a cursory goodbye in Seonghwa’s direction as he absconds back inside.

❆

Byeol is up in the window watching him as Yeosang puts a skate onto the ice for the first time in thirteen months. He regrets to realize that her shrewd gaze from on high is actually deeply comforting to him, akin to the feeling of Hyeon in the stands watching and counting out his routines under her breath.

He thought, maybe, that in coming back home to the ice everything would slip away and it would feel like it used to, carried liquidly through the movements he knows in his bones.

Nothing falls away, though. Not the dull pain in his ankle, nor the ache that must be what happens to the average body after a long period of disuse. He’s clumsy, too, for what must be the first time in his adult life.

Yeosang despises firsts.

He hears his landlord before he sees him, as he’s growing accustomed to. The slam of a car door, muffled by the snow-laden trees, and subsequent footsteps crunching through the crusted snow and rotting leaves. Yeosang keeps his back to that particular copse of trees, and focuses on the feeling of his blades on ice; not the vicarious feeling he gets from other peoples’ skates, but his. He imagines the metal an extension of himself; his entire being rooted into the blue-white beneath him and slowly leaking out into the ice, veins of chrome spreading and whispering I’m back, I’m back, I’m back.

He forgets to listen for the telltale puff of judgmental air that means San has reached the pond. He honestly almost forgets the intrusion altogether, drifting forward absentmindedly on the weight of his good ankle. A sigh of relief at the scrape of steel escapes his lips, and the vulnerability of it makes him feel so real again, so substantial and rooted and strong.

“You’re a real idiot, you know that?”

The sharp voice is close behind him, and in his surprise the toe of Yeosang’s skate catches on an uneven hitch in the surface of the ice. He pitches forward with barely enough time to brace himself before he hits the ground, a shock of pain radiating up his forearms as he collides with it and slides a couple of slippery feet on his already-bruising ass.

All of the wind in his sails deflates, the whispered I’m back overtaken by the instinct to catalog the damage, see what he’s done to himself now. Or rather, he thinks with growing aggravation, what this intruder has done.

A bird chirps in the silence, and Yeosang looks up mutinously into the face of a livid Choi San.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said,” the insolent man repeats, enunciating clearly, “that you’re an idiot.”

Yeosang splutters. “What the—No I’m not, what are you talking about?” It occurs to him belatedly that he definitely looks at least a little idiotic yelling up at his landlord from a prone position on the ice.

He starts to scrabble to get up, feeling like a fawn on new legs on the uneven surface, and suddenly acutely aware of how little he knows about this pond, how deep it is, how far he’d plunge into freezing cold if it broke beneath his weight—

A gloved hand, radiating warmth, appears in front of Yeosang and he grasps onto it, letting himself be helped up. As soon as his skates are soundly back beneath him, he snatches his hand back brusquely, and glides deftly to the edge of the surface, breathing a secret sigh of relief to be on the real ground again. What is wrong with me?

“You’re welcome,” San’s voice heats Yeosang’s blood at a roiling boil. No, he thinks, what’s wrong with him?

“I’m welcome? I was fine until you showed up, you big oaf,” he spits, and San snorts.

“Oh yeah? How do you think you got yourself into this mess in the first place? You’re supposed to at least be supervised.” The venom in his voice makes Yeosang flinch, before he notices the other man’s slip-up. Yeosang’s eyes narrow, but San barrels on.

“You’ve been working yourself to the bone for your whole career, burnt out truly brilliantly because of it. You know perfectly well that if you get back on the ice with no one even there to make sure you’re okay you could mess it up even worse.”

“So,” Yeosang ventures slowly, sidling closer to San. He watches uncertainty blooms in those perturbed, lovely brown eyes, can hear his quick breath better. “You know who I am after all?”

Heavy silence, and his fear is confirmed by a sheepish blink.

Yeosang laughs, feeling slightly crazed. “Yeah, let’s all laugh at me together, huh? Failure of an athlete relegated to the middle of fuck-all nowhere to get stared at and pitied even more until I’m the boring old codger people treat me as already anyways?” He knows he sounds stark-raving mad now, but the loneliness is inescapable even when people are around, and people being around means a reminder that he’s nothing anymore.

“But you don’t even pity me, do you?” He can’t stop the tumble of uncalled-for vitriol now that it’s in motion, even as he catches his own stray blows. “You think I did this to myself.” The half-admission lies between them like a pile of guts he’s spat onto the snow. In truth, it’s what Yeosang knows; when you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes, and Yeosang has always been stupidly reckless with himself.

San still says nothing, his face stone, jaw locked tight. He has mostly deflated at this point, taking the berating on the chin with an unreadable but gentler shine in his eye, but this does nothing to calm the storm in Yeosang.

“It’s not enough to watch me miserably not skate, you also have to come out here and get in the way when I do, and better yet, you’re on fucking google dot com to see the full picture of what a failure I am,” His voice cracks but he pushes on, digging a hand into his pocket. “And how about I look you up then? Let’s see how you like the invasion when it’s you on display for the world to watch destroy himself.”

Heaving in a breath, he looks down at his phone, and the wind leaves his sails upon remembering it serves him absolutely no purpose re: the internet.

Heavy silence again. He is so goddamn stupid.

Waiting for the retort he thinks is coming, he sighs, defeated. It doesn’t come, though; instead, he hears the retreating crunch of boots, and gone is the warmth radiating off of the other man’s body, the steady presence opposite him.

“Oops,” Yeosang whispers past the full leg he has shoved down his gullet.

❆

The screen and the information on it stare blankly back at Yeosang, daring him to still think he’s right.

Of course, Yeosang has been wrong before, countless times in fact. He knows he interprets things differently sometimes, and it can often lead him to getting stuck in thought patterns that are, simply, incorrect.

He has never been wrong in a way that makes him this much of an asshole before, though.

Local Ice Dancing Star Sidelined By Chronic Illness, the headline reads. His stomach, already somewhere around his knees, drops through the floor.

The solemn-faced skater gearing up for a jump in the accompanying photo is unmistakably Choi San, albeit a younger version, but Yeosang can tell even before reading the first line of the article.

After qualifying for this year’s games through years of hard work through many obstacles, Choi San has dropped out of this year’s Olympic games due to deterioration of his chronic pain condition. This comes just after last year’s loss of the family patriarch, leaving the family-owned rink in a tough financial position.

A step away from himself, Yeosang wonders at what point he lost his grasp on perspective. Somewhere along the line in his pain, he’d forgotten to consider the magnitude of loss that everyone experiences all the time, so mired in his own misery that everything else seemed meaningless.

Setting out for the flower shop with intention, he hopes that Seonghwa will give him the verbal lashing he deserves.

Of course, his friend does no such thing.

“You didn’t know,” he says gently to a tense Yeosang, who paces in circles around the shop.

“Yeah, well I didn’t ask, either,” Yeosang sort of wails.

“He also didn’t offer the information, but he offered his opinion pretty freely still. You were just reacting,” comes the logical reply again. Seonghwa’s legs are crossed beneath a long black tweed skirt, and from his perch on the stool he exudes a calm that Yeosang tries to leech off of.

He sighs. “He’s one of your best friends, shouldn’t you be defending him?” Peering out of the corner of his eye, he sees Seonghwa giggle.

“Well yeah, I'd be defending him if he weren’t wrong, but he sort of is.” His tone is still kind and caring, and Yeosang is once again touched by the way the two of them think and talk about each other, their consideration for one another.

“You’re not right either, but your information was at least all out on the table, whether you liked it or not,” Seonghwa elaborates. “You guys will get along just fine once he’s done being avoidant about it. Which he has to be now, since you finally remembered about search engines!” He claps his hands with a bit too much glee for Yeosang’s taste.

“Now go talk to him.”

This last part is an order and, when all else fails, Yeosang is at least good at following directions.

Blinking back bafflement about the avoidant in question not being himself for once, he bids his friend a sincere thank you for the advice, and sets off towards the Namjeon Skating Rink for the first time.

❆

When he steps foot into the building, there is music playing from the tinny speaker system. In fact, not only is there a song playing, the song in question is track 3 off of Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster, Yeosang’s favorite. San’s taste continues to be persistently and annoyingly good. Perfect.

He’s out in the middle of the ice, and Yeosang, glued in place, watches him dance from his shadowed corner.

Graceful ropes of muscle shift under his skin as he moves fluidly to a routine he clearly knows in some instinctual part of his memory. His wide shoulders, held high and open as he stretches his arms, moving fluidly and rarely leaving the ice. Even without a lot of jumping, the way San moves is mesmerizing and dynamic, maintaining an imposing presence on his stage, and doing so…safely.

He cuts a clean line across the ice, loops around and Yeosang can see how he’s consciously maintaining a protective stance for his ankles, and wearing a brace on one of them.

In truth, this is the future Yeosang has dreaded since his injury, one where he has to think about himself not only beyond the sport but while performing it. He has never wanted to be the body behind the athlete, the person attached to the name and the titles. The titles that aren't even his, not anymore.

He doesn’t realize he has fully zoned out staring the until San literally shouts his name over the music.

Yeosang starts, eyes focusing again on smooth shoulders, and his first instinct is to glance to either side of himself for somewhere to hide. He comes up empty, and by the time he looks up again, doused in shame, the speakers have been paused and San stands facing him in the middle of the rink.

A beat passes.

“I get it, you know,” San breaks the seal of quiet.

“Yeah,” Yeosang taps the toe of his shoe against the ground. “Could’ve told me that before I made an ass of myself, though.” The sound of both of them separately shuffling their feet echoes in the space, and they look up at each other again, shy eyes skittering carefully. All of the animosity from before has evaporated, but maybe it was mostly Yeosang harboring it anyways. The air between them is recalibrating, kaleidoscope shifting into something different.

San chuckles, conceding. “Sure. Next time I’ll open with ‘hey, I heard your body doesn’t work right either, do you want to practice with me?’”

“Speak for yourself, mine works just fine in a pinch,” Yeosang retorts smoothly, and San’s eyebrows shoot up in bewilderment, a flush starting to spread up his neck. Yeosang continues quickly, before he regrets the remark. “But yes, practicing sounds nice.”

The way San’s face crinkles up into a smile is a full-body experience. His shoulders tuck in, hands clasping into each other, and the effect of him looking so little and excited is so deeply goofy that Yeosang truly laughs, not hiding behind a hand or making an effort to wipe the grin off his face.

San walks him home to the cottage, hands pocketed and chatting all the way. They make a plan to meet to practice together, so casually that it feels like it’s been this way all along, and it’s not until San is crunching away down the driveway that Yeosang grasps firmly onto the feeling that this place could really be home.

❆

“Again.” San's voice echoes through the empty training rink.

Yeosang groans dramatically, pushing off anyways and gliding forward into the flow of the routine San choreographed for him to practice low-impact moves.

“You're enjoying this.”

“And so what if I am? Fancy boy having a hard time with something?”

“You're a terrible teacher.”

“Land without putting all your weight on your bad leg,” comes the insolent retort from behind him.

Yeosang does so, and San’s claps echo up to the ceiling, into his chest, bouncing around the walls of his ribcage.

The same way that he had fallen so easily into routine in his town, he locks into step with San. They'd been meeting at the rink every other weekday afternoon for a month now, and what had started as an open offer—a single lesson after their conversation out at the pond—has somehow become a promise, a part of their routine that neither of them questions.

In practice days, Yeosang walks to the rink in the afternoon after a leisurely first half of the day, usually from Seonghwa’s shop where he’s been helping out, or from his favorite reading spot in the square. At the end of their hour, always just one hour, San drives him home in the pickup truck.

It’s certainly not easy, not at first, and Yeosang hates being bad at things.

But it doesn’t feel quite so much like failure, not when San is constantly there, reassuring him with kind, softened eyes. He’s a patient teacher, the look on his face that Yeosang had originally construed as stern judgment re-contextualizing into a careful focus, a watchfulness that doesn’t feel pressurized but instead thoughtful.

San pushes gently away from the boards and holds out a hand. “Here, I’ll help you. Come on.”

Yeosang stares at the offered hand. He knows he could take it if he wants to, but San would still trail dutifully in position if he didn’t, the makings of a real partner.

The way the rink lights are hitting Yeosang’s face, the hand before him, waiting to find its home at the small of his back, it’s all brand new. He’s done this thousands of times, with crowds big and small, but the way it feels just with San at his side is incomparable.

He takes San’s hand, but instead of taking the lead onto the ice, setting out into routine and safety, Yeosang finally presses his lips to San’s.

For the first time in a long time, Yeosang believes not only in something, but in himself, and that’s enough.