Chapter Text
Five weeks out.
When the whistle sounds, Beomgyu falls to his knees. The grass is sharp and harsh. He curls his fingers in it as one might a lover’s hair.
Silent. Fervent.
The white lights over Hong Kong Stadium blur, glowing orbs of fuzzy warmth against the cloud-softened black of night.
Silent. Silent.
Fade in.
Yeonjun is screaming, shaking Hyunjin back and forth. Changbin is struggling to lift Soobin onto his shoulders. The South Korean National team falls in an accidental dogpile against the low grass, forever a haphazard mix of sweaty teenage boys.
Someone grabs Beomgyu by the shoulders and lifts him off the ground, pulls him towards the action, shakes his numb hand. The grass has stained his palms, and his nose might be bleeding, but he manages a smile. Blood rushing in his ears makes the sounds of victory crash in and out like waves at low tide.
Hong Kong marks the last qualifier before the World Cup, and they’ve won 2-0.
South Korea is pinned to the ground, screaming at cameras and waving at crowds. They’re picture perfect, a wild mess.
Flaming red.
Four weeks out.
If you look Choi Beomgyu up on Naver, the first photo result is a horrible action shot from when he was 17 that looks a little like he’s falling to his death. His eyes look kind of crazed, and his feet are hovering a safe six inches above the ground. You can see his abs, though, so Beomgyu considers that a partial win.
The second result is his Daegu FC headshot. He looks, in that one, like a stoner with a failed bowl cut.
The third result--Beomgyu’s favorite--is another action shot from a recent qualifier in Thailand. His side profile is on full display, his gaze fixed up at the ball as Yeonjun launches it over his head and away from the Thai forwards. The crowd behind him is a sea of purple and black, phone cameras and flashlights glowing like stars. Sweat drips down his face and through his long hair, which falls messily over his eyes but fails to hide their fiery glint from the camera.
That picture is what propels Choi Beomgyu to cult internet fame.
“Hyung, oh my god, someone tweeted about how violently they want me to rail them and it got 9,000 likes.”
Yeonjun halts in his pacing. He’s been expelling a surplus of anxiety this way for the past seven days; it seems he enjoys spending his sparse free time hopping about and lecturing Beomgyu about how big a deal the World Cup is.
It’s one thing to kick around in some friendlies, he says. Any kid can do that. Somehow, even the Asian Cup pales in comparison to playing under the lights, 40 cameras broadcasting your dripping face to the world as 66,000 people scream your name. The whole planet is watching, he says.
This year marks Yeonjun’s second World Cup at the age of 23.
And Beomgyu? Beomgyu is 19, just as old as Yeonjun was when he blocked two goals on fucking Italy and nearly started a fucking war. Korea won that match 1-0.
Moral of the story is, Beomgyu is just old enough to make history. And he will, in due time.
For now, however, he’s greatly occupied with not giving a fuck. His young mind runs well on pure passion, everlasting immaturity, and unbridled horniness.
“I’m getting bitches, hyung. 9,000 of them. This shit is crazy.”
“Choi Beomgyu, I am going to unhinge my jaw and swallow you whole.”
“Mm. Think you can win without me?”
This is the type of shit that has the potential to get Beomgyu seriously beat up, but Yeonjun has always been a… nice type of guy.
(That, and he’s kind of legally obligated to look out for Beomgyu while they’re training in Cheonan. Beomgyu’s parents back in Daegu may have entrusted that responsibility to the wrong guy, but then again Yeonjun looks trustworthy enough in his image search results.)
“Yeah. You’re solidly replaceable. We’ll sub Lee Heeseung in for you.”
Beomgyu doesn’t bother looking up. The replies under the tweet are far too captivating. “You FC Seoul bastards...”
“Hey, some of us are respectable.” Yeonjun bends to properly condescend Beomgyu, inadvertently taking goalkeeper stance. “Seungmin. Hyunjin.” He purses his lips as though anticipating a scolding, but it’s all for show. “Taehyun.”
Beomgyu affords him a fleeting glance.
“Don’t say anything.”
“I didn’t say anything!” He would if he could without getting jumped by the entirety of the national team.
If you look Kang Taehyun up on Naver, you have to scroll a whole page before you find one unfortunate picture of him. The first few depict him smirking down at the ball as he fakes out a Saudi forward, him gazing up at the stands, sweat soaked and distressed, him pressing his tongue into his cheek as he kicks a volley. You get the idea.
Choi Beomgyu thinks this is an unfair and lacking depiction of his new teammate.
Why?
Yeonjun clicks his tongue. He delights in Beomgyu’s rage, as all good friends do.
They lock eyes and think back a few weeks to less consequential times.
Eight weeks out.
They’re halfway through qualifiers and in the wake of Taemin’s enlistment when word gets out that FC Seoul’s Kang Taehyun has been called up to practice with the main squad.
Beomgyu doesn’t live under a rock; he’s seen the guy play. He knows he deserves the spot.
That kid is something special, the commentators all say. Social media has been buzzing with Taehyun’s name since that year’s Champions League.
(There’s a clip of him from Seoul’s match with an Uzbek club that got 130k likes in 24 hours. Beomgyu has a real eye for these things. He can’t remember what Taehyun was doing in that video, but he knows “maybe I’ll start watching football” trended in South Korea for a few hours.)
Kang Taehyun walks into the NFC three days before their qualifier with Saudi Arabia. He’s little different from his pictures; Beomgyu knew he was short and strong, but upon first glance Taehyun looked to him like a built pixie. His hair is platinum blonde and spiky and his sharp features seem set in this expression that’s halfway between exasperation and utmost focus.
And there was the matter of his eyes. Cold and hard as dark ice--too thin to skate on, too sharp to swim in.
Those eyes could kill a man, or maybe eleven.
Now, Beomgyu has no prejudices. He’s sure Taehyun will assimilate just fine--as it happens, half the team is fawning over him from the very start. He has no reservations--hell, no opinions beyond a pure and objective appreciation of skill--until nineteen minutes before the Saudi game.
Nineteen minutes before the Saudi game finds Beomgyu and Taehyun alone in the lockers. Everyone else is cracking their necks and heading out onto the field to catch their five minutes under the sun before they have to process out under lights and cameras. Beomgyu’s still fiddling with his jersey, forever bewildered by its stupid Nike double layer technology. Taehyun stands nearby performing stretches so perfunctory and useless it could seem to a slightly more prejudiced Beomgyu like he were trying to talk to him alone.
(It might make sense. They’d never had a chance to speak before, and Beomgyu considers himself to be a good person to come to for… advice, potentially, being closer to Taehyun in age and experience than most others.)
But advice cannot possibly be what Taehyun seeks as his gaze travels up to settle on Beomgyu, who continues to struggle to pull a fucking shirt over his head.
When Beomgyu finally succeeds, emerging from a sea of fabric with static-filled hair and a burning sensation in his cheeks, Taehyun is staring. Unabashed. Frigid.
Beomgyu thinks this might be what it feels like to be impaled.
Taehyun stretches a muscled arm across his chest, blinks maybe once, raises an eyebrow. “Play well today.” Is all he says. His voice sounds like a fucking tremor in the Saudi earth.
Beomgyu is at a loss for words. “Do I--Do I not--excuse--what?”
“Play well today,” Taehyun just repeats, sans honorifics. His gaze darts down to the still-exposed strip of Beomgyu’s midriff, but is back up faster than Beomgyu can blink. “Use that high work-rate for some good, yeah? You’re chasing air half the time.”
Then he walks off, cracking his knuckles. He doesn’t look like he’s accomplished much of anything, his movement controlled and unassuming as ever.
By the time they’re on the field, flames have started to spark up in the dark recesses behind Beomgyu’s eyes.
The game is moderately hellish. Beomgyu gets pushed over and spends a full minute cursing out the much taller Saudi player--his resulting penalty kick sails straight into the stands. Felix makes a beautiful fucking shot that bounces straight off the goalpost. Yeonjun dives, fails, grieves on the ground for a solid twenty seconds.
The only one to be spared from the agony is Taehyun, who’s in and out and back and forth faster than light. He assists both the goal attempts Korea makes with practiced ease.
His smiles are self-assured. Hollow.
They tie 0-0.
The flames haven’t died down by the time the game’s over. With no script in mind, Beomgyu catches up to a retreating Taehyun on the field and grabs him by the shoulder.
Taehyun shrugs him off without looking back. It’s like he knows what’s to come even when Beomgyu doesn’t.
As with everything else Taehyun does, Beomgyu finds it beyond comprehension.
Four weeks out.
Beomgyu doesn’t like to consider himself a petty person, but it would be a lie to say the recollection doesn’t leave a bitter taste on his tongue. He and Taehyun haven’t spoken since.
There is, however, the matter of playing.
Beomgyu liked Lee Taemin quite well as a midfielder; his being the oldest of the team by a wide margin afforded him a plethora of experience and tricks up his sleeve. He was the youngest of the squad when they last made it to the World Cup semis, and even after everyone else enlisted he remained to teach the kids pretty much everything they needed. The internet called Taemin’s style vaguely Brazilian, which Beomgyu can’t consider anything but a compliment.
But now Taemin’s off serving the country, which puts Bang Chan in the well-respected position of team elder and Taehyun right by Beomgyu’s side on the midfield.
Chan’s been their captain for over a year, so not much changed in that respect.
Taehyun, however…
If Beomgyu’s goal at all times was to secure South Korean dubs, he’d have no issue with his new teammate. But Beomgyu’s pride and dignity hold no small weight, and thus he sometimes finds himself wishing Taehyun sprains his ankle or something before the World Cup.
But petty rivalries can’t be important enough to impede Beomgyu’s focus, can they? After all, football is a game to be played with friends.
Friends.
Yeah.
The World Cup qualification brings a shit ton of change to the NFC.
First off, practices quickly grow a little strained. Soobin is soaked in sweat 24/7, Changbin is starting to yell at anyone who looks at him funny, and Yeonjun is grinding away at his teeth so much he’s started wearing his retainer during the day. Han Jisung, their strongest defender, has made a habit of grabbing Beomgyu by the shoulders and lamenting the loss of his emotional support hyung mid-practice. There’s one day he makes a goal and screams into the sky, “Sunbae, are you watching?”
“Sunbae is fulfilling his civic duty,” Soobin reminds him forlornly. A gentle giant of a winger, Choi Soobin has taken on the role of group therapist. This makes Beomgyu abundantly thankful that he chose sports as his career path.
(Soobin’s search results, too, are quite flattering. There’s one from his high school instagram of him with a cat filter on his snow-bright face, surrounded by women.)
Their coaches sit them down for strategy planning more and more often, which goes about as well as you’d expect with a classroom full of pubescent jocks. It’s like high school again, but this time their teacher is a Spanish man speaking accented Korean at a board covered in circles and lines, and their classmates were once the 23 best kids in the country when it came to skipping school.
It reminds Beomgyu of his own youth (two years ago), and especially of the days leading up to the CSAT. Beomgyu scored 90 out of 450. His worst subject was Korean language. He’s never been the brightest bulb.
The topic of brightness seems a great segue to the next change brought on by FIFA qualification: Huening Kai.
There’s one day their manager leads them into the locker rooms after practice with a conspiratorial smile. Beomgyu’s always considered him a nice enough guy, not quite as scary as some of their foreign coaches but not quite chill enough to joke around with. His smile is a little threatening.
They all file into the room to find a stranger seated on their bench, his legs crossed daintily. His hair is blonde, his skin a porcelain white, his features angelic.
Beomgyu suddenly feels like quite a sweaty little boy--and so, it seems, does the rest of the team. There’s a dead silence as everyone adjusts their shirts and runs hands through their matted hair. Changbin swats Beomgyu on the arm and asks, “Is that a woman?!”
The South Korean National Football team has had, for the past few years, a streak of being utterly and tragically inept with women. There are rumors of Heeseung having a girlfriend and Minho having an ex but that’s the extent of it.
Their youthful stupidity does not do much to merit the model girlfriends and dating scandals typical for footballers of their time.
The stranger looks up from a clipboard with wide doe eyes. Their manager stifles a laugh.
“Excuse me,” Chan starts from somewhere in the back of the crowd. “Who are you?”
This pixie of a boy stands straight up, frazzled, and moves slightly toward the crowd. “I, uh…”
“Why are you idiots all standing?” The coach asks.
There’s a widespread “oh” and everyone moves to sit in the C-shape of benches behind the stranger, who turns, startled.
Coach now takes on a gentler tone than Beomgyu has ever heard. “Introduce yourself, please.”
The boy stiffens. “Hello everyone, I’m Huening Kai.” His voice is lilting and sweet and every single man in the room is a little stunned. “I’m currently a second year Sports Industry student at Yonsei University, but I used to play for the, um, USA football team before coming to school here.”
Both of these pieces of information spark a wildfire of whispers in the small crowd. “Yonsei-dae?” Jisung whisper-wails to Beomgyu. “I got a 20 on the CSAT.”
“Jesus Christ, Hannie.”
From Beomgyu’s other side, Yeonjun is muttering at freestyle-rap pace. “I can’t believe this motherfucking shit. I can’t. Of all the fucking USA team members to come up here, it’s the goalie. God, Beomgyu, I’m going to die. I’m going to die. Why is he so beautiful? I wonder how young he was when he joined the--”
“I, uh--!” Huening Kai squeaks out another syllable and the room falls silent. “I’m going to be your intern manager for the World Cup’s duration. Don’t worry, I won’t be helping coach--instead, I will be helping take care of logistics and things like that. I’m here right now because, uh, I may have to be in contact with some of you for a variety of reasons--”
“God, I hope he has to be in contact with me,” Soobin breathes.
Beomgyu grimaces. “Hyung, are you gay?”
“No. I just have eyes.”
“--so I just wanted to alert you all of the change and introduce myself as a new member of your staff--!” Kai gives a quick bow and stands very still.
There’s a long moment before the room erupts in raucous applause.
At least, Beomgyu thinks as he claps numbly, Yeonjun will have something new to talk about.
After Kai scurries off, a thick silence settles over the locker room.
“The new staff don’t usually do that,” Renjun remarks dimly from the back.
Coach sighs. “He’s a Korean-American football prodigy. You numbskulls may not realize it, but having him on our side may help more than he intends.”
The numbskulls only nod solemnly.
“Plus, he’s around your age. Maybe you could make him feel welcome.”
Yeonjun and Soobin share a look that makes Beomgyu shrink down between them. At the very least, Yeonjun will have something new to talk about; despite the prevalence of heterosexuality in their team, Huening Kai’s arrival will no doubt bring the long avoided topic of romance back to the forefront in their dorms.
One night finds Beomgyu, Yeonjun, Soobin, Hyunjin, and Han Jisung in the room Yeonjun and Beomgyu share. They’re not the tightest of friend groups, more like a messy union of a group and a half, but tonight these not-very-close-friends bond over their utter bitchlessness.
“The women used to love me,” Soobin recollects with the air of an old drunkard nursing his eighth beer. “Everyone used to take stupid cat pictures with me because apparently I looked like a cat when I smiled.” He raises a paw forlornly. “Ya-ong.”
Yeonjun nods like he understands this deeply. “All my best friends were girls.”
A hiss of pain travels around the room.
“I don’t think a woman other than my mom has ever looked at me,” Jisung breathes.
“You’re on national TV every few weeks, doofus.” Beomgyu finds this pity party quite pitiful indeed.
“This is true.” Another sigh. “I bet no one thirst tweets about me.”
“That’s not true.”
“What?”
Beomgyu will not elaborate further.
Hyunjin buries his face in his hands. “I miss Kkami.”
“Kkami?!”
“Is that a girl?”
“Weird fucking name for a girl.”
“She was my girl,” Hyunjin moves his hands to his heart and fixes his starlit gaze on the far wall. “My beautiful puppy.”
“What the fuck?”
“She was a dog,” Hyunjin says sharply. “The type with four legs.”
“We were talking about women,” Yeonjun groans.
Hyunjin looks at him coldly. “Does this not sufficiently denote the state of my affairs with women?”
“Fair enough,” Soobin says glumly.
A thick silence falls over the room. Soon enough, Yeonjun’s gaze starts to sear holes in Beomgyu’s head. “What?”
“Choi Beomgyu, you’re yet to share.”
There is nothing to say. “I’m married to the grind, guys.”
“I wish I were married,” Hyunjin squeaks. He is freshly 22.
Jisung is the next to cave. “I want a girlfriend.”
“I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I’m considering men,” Soobin says frankly, and no one really questions it for a second.
Beomgyu jolts a minute late as though startled from a nap. “Wait--you can’t mean one of these bastards, right? Our bastards?”
Yeonjun mimes gagging. “I’ve seen everyone here undressed and sweaty and gross to the point at which it’s… revolting to even think about.”
Jisung and Hyunjin hum their agreement.
“There is one guy you’re yet to see naked,” Soobin says reasonably, and Beomgyu starts to get a little scared.
Yeonjun looks a little too hopeful.
Soobin gulps now. “Kang… Taehyun?”
The sparkle leaves Yeonjun’s eyes.
Beomgyu sighs a sigh of relief, but in doing so draws the attention of the dynamic duo.
“What was that, Choi Beomgyu?” Yeonjun starts.
“I’m tired.” It’s half past six in the evening.
Soobin not-so-subtly hums a K-drama OST. “What was that, Beomgyu?”
“Oh my god.” It seems he can’t even sigh in this society.
Jisung shrugs. “Maybe it’s justified. Taehyun’s a good-looking kid.”
Beomgyu means to fake throw up, but the sound kind of gets stuck in his throat and his mouth falls open in silence. He thanks god his long hair covers the tops of his ears.
“Yeah, if you’re into the cold, silent type,” Hyunjin mutters.
“Some people are!” Yeonjun says quickly. “The kid’s got some real skill, too.”
“Yeah, because I’m totally attracted to how well you can kick a ball around,” Beomgyu drawls. “You’re being ridiculous.” He fails to mention that he is not attracted to men.
Hyunjin slaps Jisung on the arm. “If you had to introduce one of us to your sister--”
“I only have a brother.”
“--your theoretical, fake sister, who would you choose?”
Jisung looks a little sick at the thought.
That’s the point at which Beomgyu’s hearing starts to waver a little. Despite eruptions of raucous laughter and indistinct yells, he stays cross legged in his corner, staring at the flecks in the white tile and trying to will the red from his ears.
Three weeks out.
Yeonjun concludes that Paris will suit him well. He tells Beomgyu how terribly he wishes to taste an authentic baguette, and that’s about when Beomgyu stops listening.
A tweet on his phone screen reads: in prep for the world cup can we just appreciate the south korean teams visuals… like they should form an kpop group fr
Below are pictures of Heeseung, Soobin, Hyunjin, and Taehyun - all action shots, all from qualifiers. Beomgyu can’t even remark on his own exclusion because two tweets below, four images of him exclusively are aptly captioned “You cant talk abt SK’s visuals without showing ✨HIM✨”.
That makes him feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.
Yeonjun peers over his shoulder at this point. “How long are you going to spend reading your own thirst tweets?”
“A man needs an ego boost every now and then. Don’t pretend you’re not guilty of it.”
Yeonjun only hums. Unlike Beomgyu, he takes pride in all the more mundane internet content; their team’s ranking, their members’ net worths, those kinds of things. For every few thirst tweets Beomgyu ghost likes, Yeonjun spends at least 20 minutes musing about how Kang Taehyun’s transfer value got to be so damn high.
“80 trillion won before his first fucking World Cup,” he breathes, panicked and static-filled at 2 AM as a restless Beomgyu does push-ups on the floor. “How. How?!”
Beomgyu is steadily growing sick of the Kang Taehyun mania that’s been plaguing the national team for the past two months. He fixes himself in plank position against the cold linoleum, affording Yeonjun a sideways glance. “He’s good, that’s how.”
The high school kid who just got called up to the national team is good. What a fucking surprise.
And yet, thinks Beomgyu as he furrows his eyebrows at the floor, it explains everything.
Or it should.
“You’re good, Gyu. I’m good. Kang Taehyun has got to be some kind of…”
“God?”
“I was going to say prodigy, but that works. God, 80 trillion…”
Beomgyu turns back to the tile. He was a prodigy too, to an extent.
(“The real prodigies,” Soobin likes to remind them, “Are all in fucking Europe playing U20 right now.”
“Yeah,” Beomgyu always scoffs. “Or maybe just the rich ones.”
His entire paycheck goes home to Daegu.)
Accepting defeat, Beomgyu collapses to the cold floor. He rolls about before turning to face Yeonjun. “If you’re all so curious about him and his stupid market value, maybe you should talk to him about it.”
The words fall a little sharper than intended. Yeonjun raises an eyebrow.
Beomgyu thinks it’s a little late to back off, but retreats to the safety of his own bed.
“You’ve got hate in you,” With a hand grasping the cotton of his shirt, Yeonjun gives Beomgyu a sympathetic purse of his lips. “Right here.”
Beomgyu rolls towards the wall.
“How can you live with this much hate in your heart?” A sigh. Yeonjun was always one for melodrama. “Does it not eat away at you from inside?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“You really seem to love that word recently.”
“Yes! Because all of you are ridiculous!”
Yeonjun’s smile melts from his voice. “Are you not?”
Beomgyu grimaces. There’s a beat too long.
“That’s what I thought.”
Yeonjun flicks the light off.