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It’s an arrangement desired by many to be in a loving, healthy relationship. As with other seemingly unattainable things in life, there is something far-fetched about reciprocated feelings and mutual attraction that is able to spark its own kind of envy inside the hearts of fascinated onlookers.
Jungkook likes to think he's on the more favourable side of the scenario.
With a career in competitive sports, it does become a little less stressful when you have a significant other who is willing to time your 20-lap run at 5 in the morning, carry your uniform and sword back to the car, or simply sit by the bleachers to hand you water when you’re out of breath.
If you ask Jungkook, he'd probably try to gloat by saying something along the lines of:
"Amazing sex, squared."
but before he could even think about it, he’d get flicked on the forehead by his publicist and instead charm his way into the media releases with:
"Are we happy? The real question is—why wouldn’t we be?”
It’s not that Jungkook doesn’t mean his cookie-cutter answer, but it’s crazy how people eat up these stuff. And they’ve never even met Yoongi. He’s not really a meet-the-press guy. That role is Jungkook’s. Yoongi’s is driving him home from a full-day training just so that Jungkook can have lamb kebab for dinner instead of the usual boring fruit salad.
Which should be a normal occurrence given that they’re a couple, but once a week is already an impressive record in Jungkook’s book. Everyone knows his boyfriend could be doing something else entirely, like mind his own archery training schedule, for example, because the whole country reckons the Olympic bronze medalist in Yoongi should be aiming for gold this time.
Yoongi started shooting arrows at age 5. Jungkook picked up fencing as a hobby the summer before he entered junior high school. They didn’t meet in the middle until many years later.
The first time they saw each other was at Jungkook’s academy a few months prior to Yoongi’s first qualifying tournament, when Yoongi was dropping off his coach for some joined paperwork with the fencing committee. There was a broken vending machine involved but other than that, Jungkook doesn’t remember much about it. Yoongi didn’t leave a very good impression.
The second time they met, Jungkook only had a towel around his waist. He was in Daegu under the instruction of his club's public relations department—sent to the city for a fencing expo event at a local school in which his tasks were mainly to pose in his full uniform for the students to take pictures with, demonstrate an en garde when asked, and skitter along a makeshift piste in advancing and retreating steps, slipping in a few lunges here and there. The girls loved it. The boys asked if they could call him ‘hyung'.
Daegu’s range of gym options isn’t extensive, he figured that night following an impulsive workout session as he watched, with comically wide eyes, Yoongi enter the washroom. They locked eyes. It was awkward. On their third date they admitted to each other that they hated that encounter.
A few months after the run-in, Yoongi made his debut at the London Olympics. Jungkook recalls witnessing the competition through television, finding two things in particular intriguing: one, Yoongi’s expression when they won bronze in the men’s team event, and two, Yoongi’s expression when he had been eliminated from the individual event lineup in the quarterfinals.
The thing about the Olympics scene is that everyone’s bound to be on some level of acquaintance with everyone. The logic is that in the end, they’re all Olympians—hence it was not at all shocking that their coaches happened to know each other, resulting in forced greetings and small talks over soju at the 2012 Summer Olympics athletes’ welcome back party.
“If you’re setting your sights on 2016 Rio, you better come up with a plan,” Yoongi rasped, cheeks flushed. He thought he saw Jungkook’s eyes glint under the bright stadium lights.
“Can I have your number so I can text you for tips, then?”
The week before they made it official, they found themselves in a position where Jungkook was close to piercing Yoongi’s heart, both literally and figuratively. No one asked him to volunteer to be Jungkook’s sparring partner and yet, there he was.
“Please don’t kill me,” Yoongi begged from under his mask.
Jungkook chuckled at the plea. “I can, though.”
“Yes, but I haven’t kissed you.”
And to both of their surprise, Jungkook’s knees went weak at that, paving way for other things to progress.
Similar to the differences in Jungkook and Yoongi’s personality, there are striking comparisons when it comes to fencing versus archery. Fencing demands extreme levels of agility and physical strength, requiring one to spend hours practicing dodging swords and leaping into the air, constantly stretching their upper body in the process. It’s all about short bursts of action that could either make or break your status in a matter of seconds.
Archery, on the other hand, doesn’t require as much build.
“Arms don’t shoot the bow, the mind does,” says Yoongi everytime Jungkook points out the fact that he hardly exercises outside of his shooting-exclusive ‘Road to Rio’ plan.
If you’re lucky and were born with an archer’s bone structure where your wrist and elbow and back shoulder align perfectly in a shooting form, and you’re able to maintain that position for a good few seconds, you’re pretty much set for the archery range. Yoongi is one of this generation’s luckiest, but he still shoots around 1000 arrows on the daily.
It’s good to be prepared, granted that you can never expect what the winds are capable of doing on a certain day.
The basic techniques such as how to grip and release the bow properly are supposedly difficult to grasp, though, which is why it may have annoyed Yoongi a little when Jungkook scored a 10 on his second try ever in his entire life.
“How the fuck,” Yoongi sourly declared. The 70m distance should be near impossible for non-athletes. “You’re too talented. You disgust me,” he tacked on as Jungkook skipped towards the target with the biggest smile on his face, yanking out the arrow exaggeratedly. “Get out of this facility before I have to report you for continuously exceeding expectations.”
Jungkook gave him a blinding grin. “Some of us are just mechanically stronger than others, sadly.”
Before it was announced that Jungkook will be making his debut at Rio 2016, their phone calls would usually end like this:
“What are we?” Yoongi would stress.
“Olympic athletes,” Jungkook would answer, and then jokingly continue, “also positively gay and dating.”
Now that Jungkook had ranked well at the zonal championship and therefore qualifies for Rio, the pep talk format has slightly changed into:
“What are we, Kook?”
“Gold medalists, hyung.”
Things are especially great for Jungkook because Yoongi is, uncharacteristically, also an extraordinary handyman.
There was that one time where Jungkook had to skip practice because his body cord had stopped working. In modern fencing, scoring is done electrically—broken wire equals to unresponsive scoring machine equals to useless fencer. He was about to contact his regular armourer when Yoongi showed up with a voltmeter, wire stripper, and a handful of screwdrivers. It was plenty endearing that Jungkook kissed him right there and then, squeezing himself into the tiny space the doormat provided. Yoongi tilted his head to give better access and proceeded to nudge Jungkook with his toolbox when the elevator dinged.
There was also an instance where Yoongi offered to reinstall the wiring in Jungkook’s epee, which ended up being a much more difficult task than the body cord because for this he had to use a hacksaw blade—and Jungkook never told him this, but he thought that was the hottest Yoongi ever looked. Jungkook was gaping, mostly, while Yoongi tensioned the wire with a gluing jig.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see you get into woodworking and eventually build your own furniture,” teased Jungkook once. Yoongi built a chair three weeks later.
“Turns out that woodworking helps me focus and is a good exercise for precision and accuracy,” he had explained over their shared budae jjigae. “If your boyfriend was an archer you’d understand.” Jungkook punched him in the arm a little too hard that he choked on a piece of spam.
It’s their modus operandi: Jungkook slips up and breaks, Yoongi tests and repairs.
And unlike his dependency on the wires running through his weapon, up his sleeve and down his back in order to score, Jungkook doesn’t need a body cord to sense the signal that thrums along his skin whenever Yoongi brushes their fingers together.
In the same spirit of things being great for both parties, it should be publicly acknowledged that fencers have spectacular gripping techniques. And for archers, the body parts that release a shot aren’t actually the arms and shoulders—it’s merely the three fingers sitting on the bow string.
“Amazing sex,” Jungkook tsked at his publicist. “The dicking?” She slapped him across the head. “You should really stop asking me what's great about dating a fellow athlete if you're just gonna berate me for my honest answers.”
The fights are inevitable, of course. Imagine ridiculous expectations and constantly exhausting yourself 10 hours a day as means of testing your limits through practice. Multiply that by two high-strung adult men with their own Olympic-sized ambitions, and you get enormous load and tension in your shared baggage.
They fought over their schedule, twice, and it was ridiculous because Jungkook had always thought such misunderstandings would only be applicable to high-profile relationships, a category they refuse to relate to. Both times Jungkook unsuccessfully avoided confrontation—“The issue doesn't exist if I don't see it,” was his excuse—and both times Yoongi pulled him out of his comfort zone by dropping by his apartment past dinnertime in his full team uniform, iced americano in hand to keep them up throughout the night so they can put an end to whatever it is that needs to be discussed, babe, here, get caffeinated.
In contrast to epee fencing, where his whole body is exposed to the opponent, Jungkook in real life retreats in the face of conflicts. In theory, he shouldn’t like it, the absence of control.
His mother did warn him about love potentially making you do stupid things.
Things cool down the winter before Rio as both Jungkook and Yoongi begin to slip into their respective practice regimens, unintentionally putting a freeze to their other more romantic affairs.
Not that Jungkook misses the fights, but at least when they’re fighting they can actually see each other’s faces.
So Jungkook decides to sneak quietly into Yoongi’s favourite indoor range on the way home from the training center, hoping to see him at least one last time before they fly out for the Games. It's way past closing time for regular visitors. Most of the lights are already turned off and the sound of his sneakers scraping against the floor echoes all over the place.
From the door, Jungkook watches as Yoongi lifts his bow, aims more hastily than usual and lets the arrow go with more force than needed. He ends up hitting the edge of the target, and it looks like he hasn’t hit a single bull’s eye in a while, judging from his exasperated gestures.
Quietly, Jungkook steps forward to cover Yoongi’s eyes in a sweet attempt at surprise.
“You insensitive rascal,“ Yoongi yelps. There’s a massive scowl plastered on his face as he turns his head around and elbows Jungkook in the chest. Jungkook's first instinct is to drop a playful peck on his forehead. “Get off me, you're sweaty,” he mutters, wriggling away from Jungkook's hold.
Jungkook giggles like there are butterflies in his chest. “You like me sweaty.” Yoongi's scowl grows deeper. It’s only when Jungkook raises his arms and dramatically shoots an imaginary bow does Yoongi break into laughter, knocking Jungkook on the back of his head when he persists with the joke, “Can my stage name be Mr. Masterful Form?”
In less than a week, they’ll be in Rio. In less than a week, “It’ll be the big boys’ league,” Yoongi whispers into Jungkook’s mouth as they part ways in the carpark.
The fireworks are being set off. It's an unspoken rule that they don’t see each other after the opening ceremony.
Some of the most memorable moments in Jungkook's life have always been a product of long-term commitment and work. Attending a free trial fencing class; being accepted to one of the best academies; exercising until his legs give out underneath him; competing in the Olympics as South Korea’s youngest epee fencer to ever be nominated.
Likewise, seeing Yoongi for the first time; reading up on him online after his loss in the quarterfinals; initiating dates; getting to kiss him at breakfast.
The irony comes in the fact that on the piste, no matter which weapon you fence, you are trained to manifest important achievements in quick succession. Epee, being a strategy-based game, is to be performed most cautiously—you can spend the first 40 seconds of a bout testing your opponent, and then three things happen at once: he advances at you, you trick him, you score.
Retreat. Parry. Gold, gold. Lunge. Gold, please. "Unbelievable!" Gold?
“Jeon has done it! The first-time Olympian! He has won Korea's first ever epee Gold medal!”
It's all quiet in Jungkook's head for a split second before he registers the roaring in his ears. He rips the mask off his face and punches the air, vision blurry and chest full, but there are hands patting his back, ruffling his hair, and in the distance he can hear the commentators’ retelling of how he caught up and turned things around—from losing by 4 points to finishing as a winner.
Jungkook didn't realise he was crying until his coach holds his face between his palms and wipes away the tears with his sleeves, laughing.
Outside, the sky is cloudless.
Jungkook breaks the rule seven days later when he surprises Yoongi at his hotel room door after an intense Men's Archery Gold Medal Match, his own medal hanging around his neck. “Congratulations, boyfriend.” He's smiling from ear to ear, holding up the piece of gold. “On the matching couple items.”
“How did y—”
“Sorry, either you let me in quick or we'll have to make out at the door.”
(“As the wind grew in strength, Min only needed 8 or better to win Men's Individual Gold... and Gold it was!” )
On August 22nd, they wake up at noon in a mess of tangled sheets and confetti papers that stick to their closing ceremony uniforms. The sun is blinding even through the curtains.
“Hyung,” says Jungkook, voice thick like honey, “what are we?”
Burying his nose in Jungkook’s hair, Yoongi answers, “Gold medalists.”