Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

So.

Sanghyuk’s not proud of it, but when you’re a 20-something in a largely conservative society, it’s not easy to get laid. He could go to gay bars but that would require him to get all dressed up after practice and head to sweaty, loud, and wild Jongno. While he’s not opposed to a good night out, he also doesn’t like putting in that much effort to get off in the first place.

So yes, he indulges in the occasional sexting and phone sex and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. What is wrong with forming connections on apps like Grindr is that there’s always a chance that you’re going to be catfished if you’re not being vigilant enough.

Which is what Sanghyuk thinks is happening to him now , as he walks into the headquarters of T1 and finds the face in the photos he’s been obsessively jerking off to (for the past 2 months) just sitting on the leather couch in the lobby like he’s waiting for Sanghyuk to see him. That’s his first thought, actually, that JustPeachy694eva has somehow doxxed him and found his day job and was planning on ambushing him here to extort and blackmail him for money (which, luckily for Sanghyuk, pro Valorant players don’t get paid all that much, so). But then they make eye contact, and instead of staring or looking away guiltily, the stranger just smiles and nods his head in polite greeting.

Huh.

This is when Sanghyuk starts to wonder if something’s wrong, right. Right.

His head is spinning and his heart is pounding. And he hasn’t even clocked in to work and downed his usual cups of coffee and red bull special at the pantry and tried not to throw up in the communal sink.

He looks down at his phone and pulls up Grindr. 

He examines very closely the last photo sent and looks back up at the guy on the couch. It’s him. As gorgeous as ever—long hair, half of it pulled into a bun at the back of his head. He swipes through the rest of the photos he’d been sent and comes across the one that convinced him to start chatting up the guy—a photo of him by the pool, using a shirt to wipe off the water splashed onto his face, a bright smile just peeking out behind the fabric. And the sheen of water on his skin glowing very, very deliciously.

And in Sanghyuk’s mind, there’s definitely no fucking way it’s not 694eva. Seriously, how many sets of twins out there grow their hair out to the exact same length and dress in the same style of flannel shirts thrown over T-shirts and jeans? And yeah, it’s not the most revolutionary outfit ever put together before but the evidence is irrefutable.

Sanghyuk really doesn’t want to do this. But he kinda has to. He gathers up his courage, marches up to the guy, and opens the conversation with:

“Excuse me, are you on Grindr?”

JustPeachy694eva —or who Sanghyuk thinks is JustPeachy694eva— just turns to stare at him like he’s confused. “What is that?”

“Are you shitting me right now because you’re closeted or you genuinely have no idea what that is?”

The stranger stares at Sanghyuk, brows furrowed in concentration. “Maybe you can tell me more about this grinding thing so I can help?”

And Sanghyuk is not about to stand here and explain gay sex to a very evidently—and painfully—straight man whose face was used to catfish him, so he just turns on his heels and books it for the employee entrance and prays that they won’t ever run into each other in the huge city of Seoul every again.

Hah. Fat chance.

Especially not when this guy was literally sitting in the lobby of his company, clearly with a purpose to be there.

2 hours later, they meet again in the meeting room when Coach Autumn is introducing to the team their new Initiator player. Coach is practically fawning over him even though the guy’s the literal definition of a nugu because Sanghyuk’s never heard of him anywhere besides Grindr before. And that wasn't even him.

His teammates don’t seem to find any issue with this at all—Jaehyun is nodding enthusiastically, Woonhak is marveling over the guy’s face out loud and Dongmin is clearly sizing him up with that same skepticism he regards everyone with. So apparently all of his teammates are Normal and have never been catfished by freaks on Grindr before. Great.

Sanghyuk’s been through a lot in his lifetime, to be honest. Ranked hell. Being vote kicked in Silver CS lobbies. Solo queue disasters. Dropping 3 ranks in one night. Scrims where he got utterly demolished by 15-year-old prodigies with cracked aim and zero respect who called him ‘unc’ in-game (which Sanghyuk didn’t even know how to respond to because he didn’t know what it meant until 2 minutes after the game ended and he googled it…). But this? This—this is a little crazy.

The man who’s just asked him to explain the ‘grinding thing’ with a straight face stands in front of their glass whiteboard and takes a deep bow. And his dimples appear when he smiles. And Sanghyuk tries really, really hard not to think about how much morality debt he’s in for jerking off to these dimples when he technically did not have permission to. The pearly gates are not opening for him man, he’s fucked.

“I’m Kim Donghyun! It’s really nice to meet you all, I hope we get along well.”

And worse, he looks even better under actual meeting room lighting. His long hair is neatly tucked behind his ears, his face unfairly symmetrical, and his hands are clasped casually in front of him as he nods at the team with that polite, clueless smile. The same smile he had in the pool photo. The photo Sanghyuk had been practically licking through his phone screen.

Sanghyuk keeps his gaze fixed on the table, mentally calculating his exit strategy. Maybe he could feign food poisoning. Maybe he could quit Valorant entirely and become a League of Legends player so they can have Lee Sanghyuk squared on the same team. Sanghyuk isn’t a model citizen by any means but surely, no one deserves this level of suffering.

And then—because fate is a cruel and unforgiving beast—Coach Autumn claps his hands and says, “Sanghyuk, since you’re our duelist, you’ll be paired with Donghyun for training.”

Sanghyuk finally looks up, eyes wide with betrayal. “I—what?”

“Duelist and initiator synergy is important,” Coach says, like he’s bestowing upon them a wonderful opportunity and not sentencing Sanghyuk to a path that leads straight off the top of their building. “You two will be working together a lot.”

Sanghyuk’s life flashes before his eyes.

“Actually, I was thinking of switching roles. Trying something new out. Maybe a flex role.”

“Haha, Sanghyuk, always the joker you…” Coach Autumn smacks his back extra hard and Sanghyuk nearly chokes on air. “But let’s try cutting back on that when a new person’s joining the team, alright?”

Next to him, Donghyun just tilts his head slightly, giving him another one of those painfully pleasant smiles. “Looking forward to it.”

Sanghyuk is not.

In fact, he’s considering dropping out of esports and becoming a monk.

At least he’ll never have any chance of running into catfishes on Grindr again.

★

“You’re clearly not from around here,” Woonhak says, breaking the silence as soon as coach leaves the room so the team can get ‘acquainted’. Sanghyuk remains sunken in his fucking chair because if he has to look at Donghyun any longer he might just spontaneously combust and leave his team without a duelist to fight with.

“What gave it away?” Donghyun asks, his voice good-natured and light.

“City people aren’t so nice. Ask Sanghyuk hyung.”

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DON’T ASK SANGHYUK HYUNG.

“Yeah, Sanghyuk hyung,” Donghyun says, turning to him expectantly. This guy’s a fucking open book—it’s almost as though Sanghyuk can see the gears turning in his brain. His eyes are moving over Sanghyuk like he’s still caught on their meeting from earlier this morning. “Are city people not usually nice?”

Sanghyuk forces himself to sit up, schooling his face into something that doesn’t scream I was busting a nut to your face last night and now I want to die.

“I mean—” His voice comes out weirdly disjointed and he clears his throat before continuing. “Depends. Not everyone’s mean, not everyone’s nice. We’re just... people.”

“Oh, but hyung’s an exception,” Woonhak teases, elbowing him. “Sanghyuk hyung is super friendly. Loves making connections.”

He might have raised him, but Sanghyuk also might just murder him tonight in his sleep.

“That’s good to know, then. I’ll be counting on you to show me around?” Donghyun asks, nodding like he’s taking mental notes on all of their personalities.

“No, I—he’s just kidding. The last person I ‘showed around’ ended up leaving on their first day crying and he never came back.”

The whole room falls into silence. Even Dongmin is looking at him like he’s crazy.

“He’s just kidding, by the way,” Jaehyun hurriedly fills in to cover up. “I’m Jaehyun, the in-game leader. I play controllers, mainly because none of them can throw a good smoke to save their lives.”

“Isn’t it because you aren’t good at anything else?” Woonhak asks, and gets blatantly ignored. 

Donghyun blinks, looking between Sanghyuk and Jaehyun like he’s recalibrating all his first impressions. “That’s… good to know,” he says slowly, like he’s not sure whether or not to believe them.

“He’s really not kidding, though,” Woonhak adds, just to be a little shit. His mouth is pulled into an exaggerated frown as he solemnly nods. “The guy before me legit cried in the bathroom. Some of the staff will be able to back me up on that.”

Sanghyuk kicks him under the table. Traitor.

Jaehyun sighs, rubbing his temples. “Look, we run a tight team. We take things seriously. And Sanghyuk just—” He glances at him, clearly choosing his words carefully. “—has a very direct way of giving feedback.”

That’s putting it lightly. The last guy did cry, but it wasn’t Sanghyuk’s fault that the dude refused to hold site and played ranked like it was a deathmatch. He was a sentinel, for fuck’s sake.

Donghyun, to his credit, only smiles. “That’s fine. I don’t mind direct.”

Sanghyuk makes the worst mistake of his life: he looks up.

Donghyun is looking right at him.

Sanghyuk swallows hard. “Cool,” he croaks.

“Sanghyuk hyung’s really nice once you get to know him,” Dongmin finally pipes up, buying him a short moment that Sanghyuk fully utilizes to hyperventilate in his head. “Provided you aren’t a serial team flasher.”

“I’ll scrim lots to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Dude, this guy has the right reply to everything. If Sanghyuk weren’t busy calculating how far he is from his retirement goals, he might actually find it in himself to be in awe of his social skills.

“Glad to hear it,” Jaehyun says, nodding approvingly. “We’ll start with some warm-ups, then hop into scrims later. We’ve got one scheduled with the ascension Sin Prisma team.”

Donghyun gives a polite nod, the picture of an ideal recruit. Meanwhile, Sanghyuk is still trying to regain full control over his body, currently operating at 30% brain function due to sheer stress.

Jaehyun claps, signaling the end of the meeting. “How about we take 20 and meet in the game room for some practice? Just to test things out, discuss some gameplay changes we might need to make.” Sanghyuk stands up right away, nearly knocking his chair over, and Jaehyun shoots him a look that says stay-back-and-meet-me-after-this . Sanghyuk decides not to. “And Donghyun? We’re really excited to have you onboard. Some of us,” —Jaehyun stares right at him— “just take slightly longer to warm up, so don’t worry.”

★

“So, are we going to talk?”

Sanghyuk yelps as Donghyun ducks into the pantry, amusement written all over his face as he assesses Sanghyuk’s current state.

“Talk? About?”

Donghyun leans against the door to close it, and Sanghyuk is a little unnerved by how easily this new guy’s acclimated to the environment already. He walks into rooms and all the walls fall down like they’ve been expecting him already. 

The effect is reinforced when he steps boldly into Sanghyuk’s space, and practically towers over him. Donghyun’s got at least a head on him. Sanghyuk debates standing on his tippy toes to even out the playing ground. He doesn’t usually runs away with his tail between his legs like this, but these are also not the most common of circumstances.

“I don’t know,” Donghyun says easily with a shrug. “You tell me. You were the one who came up to me this morning talking about grinding and stuff.”

“That is not what happened.”

Donghyun tips his head to one side. “I think I trust my memory on what happened to me just this morning…”

“Well, you know what they say about first day nerves—”

Sanghyuk tries to sidestep Donghyun, but Donghyun easily makes a move to block him from escaping, having foreseen it. “Can we not?”

“Are you always this friendly with new teammates, or am I just special?”

He really does want to explain—it’s just that the words all seem to arrive in knots and tangles on his tongue, which feels more like sandpaper in his mouth at the moment. He swallows, trying to draw some moisture into his throat. And Donghyun probably deserves to know that someone’s catfishing with his face on a gay app without his knowledge. Sanghyuk just isn’t sure if he’s able to deliver this news without compromising the fact that he’s on the app for reasons that are completely different from Donghyun’s.

He needs that red bull in his system right about now.

Donghyun is raising a brow at him, though, clearly waiting for an answer. Sanghyuk sucks in a pained breath and comforts himself with the fact that things will probably hurt way less if he just rips off the bandaid in one go. Which is exactly what he does.

“Someone’s been using your face on Grindr.”

There isn’t an outright reaction, or a burst of disgust that colors Donghyun’s face or anything. Sanghyuk figures this is probably a good (or bad) time as any to explain what Grindr is so he drags Donghyun over to the pathetic and crickety two-seater table in the pantry and sits him down.

“It’s a dating app. For gay people.”

Donhyun blinks.

“Someone’s been talking to me on the app for 2 months now, using your pictures.”

Donghyun reels back in surprise, the smile completely wiped off of his face now. He presses two fingers to his temples and shakes his head. “Wow. Okay. But—why?”

Now it’s Sanghyuk’s turn to shrug and look away, trying to ignore the coiling feeling in his stomach that usually indicates he’s about to empty the contents of his stomach all over the table between them. He keeps his lips pursed for a moment longer just in case.

“So let me get this straight,” (Sanghyuk almost pauses to remind him there is nothing straight about this situation at all but decides against it when he sees the absolutely mortified look on Donghyun’s face), “whoever this is—you’ve been talking to him? Her? For months?”

Sanghyuk hesitates. But he ends up nodding anyway. The single hand he has put on the table between the for boundaries has curled into a little fist as he tries his best not to outwardly express how much he wants to throw himself off a bridge at the moment. “...Yeah.” The word barely leaves his mouth above a whisper.

“Can I see?”

Sanghyuk’s head snaps up. No.

“That would be—a really big breach of my privacy.”

“I’d argue it’s an even bigger one of mine, to be honest,” Donghyun says drily, but he aborts his attempts at reaching out for Sanghyuk’s phone. But after sinking into his chair, sucking in his bottom lip as he undoubtedly tries to process everything, Donghyun turns his hopeful eyes onto Sanghyuk again. “Can I at least see the profile? Please?”

Sanghyuk squeezes his eyes shut so hard his vision goes all blurry when he reopens them. He tilts his head upwards, staring at the wet patches on the ceiling where it leaks when there’s heavy rain. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s searching for, but some divine intervention right about now would be very nice. Why me. Why now. Lots of questions, no one to answer them. He can only shift the blame partially onto his dick and his laziness. If he’d wanted to get himself off he should’ve just gone to discreet gay bars where he could actually see the real deal in person. But why did he have to be unlucky enough to fall for a fucking catfish online?

Donghyun’s still got his gaze leveled on him, though, all expectant and way too patient. And much more beautiful than his pictures, which somehow makes all of this worse.

“Okay,” Sanghyuk finally caves in. He slips a hand into his pocket, pulls out his phone and unlocks it with a curse. “But seriously, don’t click anything else.”

“I won’t,” Donghyun promises, but Sanghyuk can see now that he’s looking a little nervous around the eyes too. Makes him feel better, he supposes, that they’re both kinda in the same boat. He flips it over in his hand. When Donghyun reaches for it, Sanghyuk pulls back with a warning. 

“You can see it just fine from here.”

Donghyun blows out an irritated breath but says nothing more of the situation. Then he leans in and scans the profile picture with a look that can only be described as deep personal offense. “This photo?” he practically shouts. “I was going through a terrible phase with colored lenses.”

“There’s nothing wrong with colored lenses,” Sanghyuk hisses through is teeth, withdrawing his device (to Donghyun’s dismayed whines). “I’m wearing them now.’

Donghyun looks up, meeting his eyes and gulping. “They look fine on you. I’m just saying it’s not a good look on me, okay? Can I continue looking, please?”

Sanghyuk is into a little begging. Catfish-Donghyun already knows this, but real-life-Donghyun is only learning this piece of information now. It feels a little like dejavu, this whole situation, but he succumbs to the puppy eyes and pushes the phone closer to Donghyun’s face anyway.

Donghyun mutters a quick thank you before leaning in again, scrolling through the profile with an increasing level of offense. “Oh my god,” he mumbles, “he wrote 5’11 in his bio.” He turns to Sanghyuk, eyes scandalized. “I’m six foot.”

“You’re not.”

“I am so.”

“I know six foot.”

“You look like you’d be more familiar with six inches.”

Sanghyuk is going to force his head into a blender and there’s nothing their manager can do about it. He takes in a restrained breath and tries to remind himself he’s too pretty for jail time. “Dongmin’s exactly six feet tall. Let’s have you two stand next to each other later, then.”

“No thanks,” Donghyun murmurs under his breath, and lowers his head to continue scrolling through the information on ‘ his ’ profile, pretending to be busy. He starts humming under his breath as he reads, and Sanghyuk watches as his expression slowly makes a shift from scandalized to vaguely amused. “Do you guys talk often?” he finally says when he’s done, appearing to be mildly disturbed on top of every other spectrum of emotions made obvious on his face.

“Yeah?” Sanghyuk clicks on the power button and turns his phone face down on the table as he scrubs at his face with his other hand.

“About what, mostly?”

Sanghyuk should’ve seen this coming. “Like, normal stuff.”

Donghyun gives him a look. A look that tells him he knows Sanghyuk’s on some bullshit. Why didn’t I just go to some gay bar? he laments.

“Normal stuff,” Donghyun drags out, voice dropping with skepticism. “Like how was your day? What did you do?”

“Uh-huh.” Sanghyuk shifts in his seat and the creaking fills the silence between them temporarily.

Donghyun sits back and makes a vague sound from the back of his throat that suggests he’s choking on his own spit. “So did he ever send you pictures?”

Now. Now would be a great time for an ocean to appear so Sanghyuk can walk himself into it. One side of him tells him there is absolutely nothing wrong with sexting on an app that’s meant for that. He’s an adult! He doesn’t have a normal job where he can meet people on the daily! He doesn’t want to date within the industry (he doesn’t like gamers all that much)! There’s nothing wrong with sexting an attractive man in his age group on Grindr! 

But somehow, all of these justifications fall short in front of the person he’s been jerking off to who has been none the wiser about all of this happening.

Donghyun has his eyebrows knitted together. He leans forward almost conspiratorially, hands clasped on the table prayer-style with a look that is a mix of curiosity and almost pitying, like he knows where this is going. 

Sanghyuk feels the heat creeping up his neck. He feels emotionally drained and it’s not even halfway through his workday yet. “He—uh. Sent some. Sometimes, not always. Faceless ones, so.”

“You’ve been sexting me.”

“No.” Sanghyuk holds up a hand to fully communicate how much he needs to shut down the notion—which is literally completely untrue. “ No. It wasn’t you.”

“It kinda was me.”

“It wasn’t you- you.”

“No, cause I’m me-me.”

“Donghyun, you are finding this oddly amusing for a straight person who has their photos up on a gay dating app.”

“I’m internally panicking right now.”

Donghyun's face does not look like a man in the throes of an internal panic. It looks like a man who is desperately holding back laughter at Sanghyuk’s expense. Sanghyuk wants to throw his phone at him. Or maybe himself off a building. Either option feels like a valid response at this point.

"You're panicking?" Sanghyuk hisses, keeping his voice low as he gestures vaguely between them. "You? I'm the one who—who—" He stops himself short before he can say anything even more damning.

Donghyun, the absolute menace, props his chin up on his palm and just watches him. "Who what?" he prompts, eyes twinkling.

“Who needs a fuck ton of therapy after this.” He slumps back in his seat, blowing out a sharp breath. “I can’t believe this is happening to me. I should’ve just lived a celibate life.”

“Or you should check if your Grindr boyfriend was using stolen photos,” Donghyun suggests rather unhelpfully at this ripened stage of his crisis. “Can we report the account now?”

Sanghyuk feels approximately 6 years closer to an early grave. He opens his phone again and takes a few screenshots for proof, then fills in the report form quickly, fingers flying across his keyboard as he drafts out an extensive report on the guy. He might feel a lot more pity for himself if he weren’t already fully occupied by shame and humiliation since Donghyun—the real thing—is staring at him as he does so. “Done,” he says when he’s clicked on submit. “You say a word about this to any one of them and you’re dead, you got that?”

Donghyun nods obediently, but his eyes are still twinking with an amusement that tells Sanghyuk he is definitely not quite right in the head.

“You don’t even seem mad about this.”

“I think I passed mad a few minutes ago and became more fascinated than not. Not, like, in a weird I’d-like-this-to-happen-to-me-again way, but more like… this is a lot to process for me.” Donghyun pauses, considering the next few words to come out of his mouth. “And I think it helps that I didn’t get to see the sexts.”

“Goodbye.”

Sanghyuk makes for the door, but Donghyun speaks up behind him again. “But seriously, where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know. Die, maybe.”

Donghyun snorts. “Well, if you do that, I’m not giving you an in-game tribute.”

“Unbelievable,” Sanghyuk mutters.

Donghyun pauses, tilts his head, and then—because he has no sense of self-preservation—says, “So. Hypothetically. If I were actually into guys…”

Sanghyuk freezes. His brain immediately bluescreens.

Donghyun continues, completely unbothered. “Would you have still been into me?”

Sanghyuk is going to pass out. Right here, right now.

He does the only reasonable thing left to do in this situation—grabs his drink, takes the biggest possible sip, and pretends he didn’t hear a single word.

★

Before Donghyun can come in and occupy some spot next to him, Sanghyuk forcefully wedges himself between Dongmin—whom he can count on to be normal—and Woonhak—whom he can count on to be dense enough that he doesn’t pick up on any weird tension at all.

That leaves Jaehyun in the seat next to Woonhak, and Donghyun in the last spot in the line of computers at their game room.

They start the queue on throw-away accounts in an Immortal lobby and end up at Fracture, which is arguably one of the worst maps in the game. Sanghyuk reacts with an abysmal moan and Dongmin sighs deeply, too. 

“Alright guys, don’t think too much, okay? We don’t have to think strategy or anything—this is just a match for us to get a feel of one another’s natural playstyle,” Jaehyun reminds them.

Sanghyuk instalocks Reyna as punishment to Jaehyun for talking a little too much.

“Bro.”

Sanghyuk leans back against his chair to give himself a proper full view of Jaehyun, who’s already fixing him with a deep look of resentment and disappointment. Unfortunately for him, Donghyun’s also looking over and they end up making very awkward eye contact as Sanghyuk’s smile slowly dies out. He clears his throat and fixes his stare back on the computer screen. 

Jaehyun shakes his head, sighing as he hovers over Omen. “I hope you know I’m not smoking for you.”

“I will, hyung,” Woonhak says, coming to his defense as he picks Brim as the flex player on their team.

Dongmin settles for Cypher, and Donghyun picks Tejo.

When the game starts, Sanghyuk can tell that the team is trying to play around Donghyun’s playstyle. He’s good. Sanghyuk can admit that, even though it’s rather begrudging. Coach Autumn waltzes in with Sungho, who’d been taken off the roster to be the assistant coach, each with a cup of steaming hot coffee in their hands.

Their composition has advantages and disadvantages—beyond Sanghyuk’s throw pick of Reyna—because while the double smokes allow Jaehyun and Woonhak to take more control over each site during the defences, they might’ve done better if Woonhak had picked Breach instead. Dongmin does all of his set ups with due diligence, aims with the kind of composure that helps him clutch two 1v3s against the enemy team. 

While Tejo doesn’t offer Sanghyuk any assist blinds, playing Reyna allows him to do that for himself during entries. Donghyun reads the situations well, makes good calls, and is all-around a clear communicator. He does mess up a few timings, but everyone on the team sans Sanghyuk coddles him with a massive amount of cope and shielding that makes Sanghyuk a little envious he’s not the new guy anymore.

By halftime, they’ve got a 2-win advantage so they’re sitting on 8-4, which is pretty respectable since it’s their first time playing together. Though, of course, they’re playing with a bunch of randoms who aren’t professionally trained like they are, so Sanghyuk holds back on the praises as he keeps repeating this to himself.

He’s almost a little tiny bit happy when Donghyun starts messing up—rockets off by a few meters, taking fights at a disadvantageous angle. But apparently it’s not a very popular sentiment because the rest of the team comes to his defense readily.

“It’s okay, that was super unlucky,” Woonhak says.

Dongmin (and Sanghyuk felt this betrayal shake him to the core) nods in agreement and adds, “You’ll get them next time. The enemy Vyse likes to raw peek that angle early.”

“Don’t hesitate to call for smokes if you need them, okay?” Jaehyun tells him, and all of this combined makes Sanghyuk want to gauge his eyeballs out and shove a whole mouse into his ear.

When they emerge victorious at 13-11, Sanghyuk excuses himself to the pantry to open another can of red bull for himself.

He comes back to Sungho smiling in the background, leaning against a wall as he watches the rest crowd around Donghyun’s PC to check his settings out. And because Sanghyuk is not interested in anything Donghyun-related at all, he joins Sungho at the wall and exhales through his nose noisily. 

“That bad?” Sungho asks quietly without even turning to look at him. 

They’ve known each other for a long time. After all, 2 years ago, they’d joined the T1 roster as rookies in the same season. Sungho knows what every single one of his mannerisms mean, and it’s not like Sanghyuk is being discreet about his indifference towards Donghyun. 

Sungho takes a slow sip of his coffee before glancing at Sanghyuk, a little amused. "You look like you want to throw hands."

Sanghyuk scoffs, crossing his arms. "Why would I waste my energy?"

Sungho hums in understanding, watching as Jaehyun leans over Donghyun’s setup, pointing something out on his screen. Woonhak’s practically draped over his chair, nodding along, while Dongmin listens with a thoughtful expression.

"They like him," Sungho observes.

Sanghyuk shrugs, feigning indifference. "So?"

"You don't."

“I haven’t been exactly known for my sunny personality to new recruits over the past few years.”

Sungho passes an unconvinced look to him. “Okay.”

“Where the hell did you guys even find him anyway?”

“On Twitch.”

Sanghyuk wants to yell and laugh and cry at the same time. “You guys hired a fucking streamer to join a pro team?”

Sungho doesn’t look the least bit shaken—almost like he’d expected this conflict to occur at some point. “The last guy was promoted from Tier 2 and he struggled to keep up. You were the one who told us to dig deeper for a better fit. And it looks like he’s fitting in just fine now.”

“How exactly do you expect him to keep up when he’s never played a day of professional Valorant his whole life?”

“He used to play Tier 3 for CS when he was just 16.”

“That’s an entirely different thing.”

“Look, Sanghyuk, he’s faring a lot better with the rest of the team than the last guy did. And might I remind you your contract almost got terminated over the last outburst you threw at the office? If I were you I’d just keep my opinions to myself if they were more personal than professional, okay?” Sungho’s expression softens the way it does for Sanghyuk when he realizes how harsh his words could’ve come off. “Listen… I get it. He’s new. He’s not what you expected. But it hasn’t even been a day and we’ve got a scrim scheduled in an hour. If he’s no good, Autumn hyung and I won’t keep him, and you have our promise on that. Just give him the whole probation period to prove himself at least.”

It's frustrating. It's really frustrating. Because Donghyun isn’t bad. And if he were bad, Sanghyuk wouldn’t have to be this annoyed. He wouldn’t have to sit here, arms crossed like some bitter old man watching a rookie slide into the team’s dynamic with embarrassing ease.

“Okay,” he says finally.

“Okay?”

“...Yeah.”

Sungho smiles at him. Kindly. He offers Sanghyuk a sip of his coffee but he has enough caffeine coursing through his veins that he can feel himself sweating a lot more than he usually does. He turns it down with a quick jerk of his head as he pushes himself off the wall and back into his seat. 

When he turns right, he finds that Donghyun is still looking at him—though he turns away right after he’d been caught.

They win against the ascension team. Rather comfortably, too. Donghyun still has a lot of adjustments to go and they only win because Woonhak is working overtime covering for his ass, but the team is so excited about having a good first training with a finally decent initiator that Sanghyuk can’t find it in himself to interrupt their cheers.

He just goes outside for a smoke while they’re still riding the high of the win and prays he doesn’t run into Donghyun outside here either (he doesn’t).

He’ll give Donghyun a chance.

Doesn’t mean he has to be all that happy about it, but there’s still a chance to keep things professional, he supposes.

★

Donghyun moves into the lower unit 4 days after his first day at work. By then, it’s already Friday, and Woonhak and Jaehyun have been given a pass from training so they can help Donghyun out with their apartment’s access and split the heavier load amongst themselves.

“No thanks,” Sanghyuk had said when Sungho asked for volunteers (Sungho didn’t even look his way when he asked) and Dongmin told the rest that he’d rather stay back and train with Sanghyuk—which he feels extremely grateful for, considering he’d feel the most betrayed if his longest friend in the sport were to leave him behind for the shiny new thing, too.

They’re halfway through their third match of the day when Dongmin leans over and asks, “Is he bothering you?”

Sanghyuk slides one ear cup off and raises an eyebrow at Dongmin, who repeats his question.

“Dongmin, you’re so fucking cute,” Sanghyuk says, reaching over to ruffle Dongmin’s hair. Dongmin closes his eyes in protest but he doesn’t move away either. He’s the resident black cat—when Woonhak had suggested that they raise an office cat for morale, Sanghyuk had vehemently pushed back against the idea because he thought he saw Dongmin sulking to himself. 

“Hyung ,” Dongmin says. He puts a hand on Sanghyuk’s and pushes against his wrist until Sanghyuk relents. The next round has started and they’ve both forgotten to buy guns and util and are currently actively being cussed out by the rest of their team. 

Sanghyuk turns back to the game, following the bottom-feeding Astra so he can pick up a gun when she dies. “I’m fine, Dongmin, don’t worry about it.”

“I do worry. You look uncomfortable around him.”

His fingers flex over his mouse and he wonders if he should adjust his sensitivity. It keeps slipping out of his grasp with all the sweat. “I’m not uncomfortable,” he lies. “I just don’t see the point in getting buddy-buddy with someone who’s still on trial.”

He can feel Dongmin’s unconvinced stare on him as Astra predictably dies in a horrible off-angle snipe. He snatches up her Phantom before she even hits the ground and starts to entry (much to the chagrin of the Astra who’s going on a rampage in his ear about how Sanghyuk is baiting his teammates).

He’s a master baiter alright.

Specifically to his teammate’s face. He’s really never getting over this.

“Trial or not,” Dongmin says eventually, “he’s still our teammate for now. The rest like him quite a lot.”

Sanghyuk sighs as he wonders if he’s contractually bound to sit through the exact same conversation for a fourth time. There was that time with Sungho, then Coach Autumn (who was more upfront about it and told Sanghyuk that he could receive disciplinary action for his belligerent and shit-starting attitude), and then Jaehyun, who tried to be nicer in a roundabout way but still ended up delivering the same point—which is that Sanghyuk’s hateful behavior is not earning him any points of sympathy from anyone.

Which is really fucking crappy, because no one knows the emotional turmoil he’s going through except for Donghyun, who he cannot consult for obvious reasons.

“The rest? Seems like you like him a lot too.”

“You sound jealous.”

Sanghyuk grits his teeth, about to deny it outright, but the game is getting too intense for him to argue properly. He pushes forward, flicking onto a target, taking them out with a clean headshot. He’s got his Raze nades now.

“Do you have a net?”

“Yeah,” Dongmin says, and they do a combo on the corner where the enemy is hiding and win the round.

He swivels around in his chair.

“I’m not jealous.”

Dongmin blinks at him in a way that makes Sanghyuk want to pick him up and violently shake him (he can’t, because he weighs nearly half as much and is at least half a foot shorter) and says, “Okay.”

“I’m not,” he insists again, jaw clenched this time.

“And I said okay,” Dongmin repeats.

Sanghyuk exhales sharply, dropping his head back against the chair. It’s not worth getting into a debate about. It’s really not. He has better things to focus on that isn’t this whole fucking cesspool of a situation he’s gotten himself into. 

Dongmin’s phone vibrates and, after a few seconds reading the new message that just came in, he looks up at Sanghyuk. “Jaehyun hyung just said they’re done moving in now.”

“Are they?” Sanghyuk deadpans, entirely uninterested already. 

“He also says Woonhak’s trying to get Donghyun to queue a game of league with him now. Apparently, he plays that too.”

“Hmm.”

“They’re heading for a BBQ dinner after this. Woonhak’s treat.”

“Sungho going?” he asks after a beat, feigning apathy as he examines his skin in game.

“Yeah. Coach too, I think.” Dongmin pockets his phone and stretches into his chair. “They invited us too, by the way.”

Sanghyuk only scoffs, refusing to make eye contact with anything that isn’t an inanimate object now. This whole situation is rubbing him the wrong way, and he feels a little horrible that he’s holding everything against his teammates who don’t know the full extent of why he’s being so cold to Donghyun, but, shit, he doesn’t really care. He does, but it’s not like this is an itch he can scratch either. “I’m not going.”

Dongmin hums in the background, the wheels of his chair getting caught in the rug as he kicks against the floor to reach a table on the other side of the room. “I am going, though. You sure you don’t want to come?”

Sanghyuk shakes his head. “I’ll pass.”

Dongmin is already grabbing his wallet and his jacket as he makes for the doorway. At the last moment, almost as though he’s driven by a final burst of guilt and empathy because Sanghyuk’s sitting all by himself in a game room for 10, he asks again, “So what are you going to do for the rest of the day?”

“Probably get some hours of streaming out the way.”

“Food?”

“I’ll order takeout,” Sanghyuk says quickly, but he knows he’ll probably be too lazy to do it. And the delivery fee for small orders has skyrocketed these days—if he really ends up being too hungry, he’ll scavenge for snacks in the pantry or something. His eyes slide to the time at the bottom right of his screen. It’s still 5. If he locks in now and stops giving in to temptations to catch a rest, he could probably take 3 to 4 hours off his monthly streaming quota and he’ll have the last laugh in about a week’s time as the rest of his teammates scramble to do 48-hour streams. 

But when the door closes behind Dongmin, he’s already thinking about how good a BBQ dinner would be now.

If only Donghyun weren’t there.

★

When Sanghyuk returns to the dorm only to find that Donghyun is going to be his roommate for the rest of his probation period, he nearly collapses to the ground laughing at his luck.

He stands in the doorway of his room, backpack slung over one shoulder, staring at the extra set of bags neatly stacked by the empty bed across from his. But Donghyun’s apparently already laid his new bedsheets out, pillowcases and everything. The corners are all tucked in neatly and everything about this setup is telling him that Donghyun has genuinely moved into the room fully intending to sleep here.

That’s kinda what being roommates entails, but what the fuck?

“You've gotta be kidding me,” Sanghyuk says, more to the universe than to anyone in particular.

Jaehyun comes up behind him and latches onto his waist. “Don’t be angry, you weren’t around so we flipped a coin.”

“There’s literally an extra bed in the upper unit too.” They’re divided into threes—Sanghyuk and Jaehyun in the lower unit, Dongmin and Woonhak in the upper unit. Sungho used to room with him, but ever since his position on the roster got removed, he’s moved to the staff accommodation in a separate building. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jaehyun says, burying his chin into Sanghyuk’s shoulder like it’s having any effect on him besides pissing him off even further. “It’s just that—you know, the universe has decided this arrangement, you know?”

“With a fucking coin flip? ”

“Yeah…” Jaehyun laughs nervously at his ear. “Woonhak’s idea. If you wanted to, you could move up to room with Woonhak. But you know how he is…”

Sanghyuk knows that’s true. Woonhak sleeps at ungodly hours, even for gamers, and has a bad habit of watching YouTube videos at full volume without headphones. One time, Sanghyuk walked in on him watching something definitely questionable and they still haven’t cleared the air about it since. Still, why does he have to be the one moving, not the new guy?

“Hey, you’re back.”

Sanghyuk doesn’t even want to entertain that by turning around. But he can tell the new presence that’s joined their conversation is Donghyun.

“Jaehyun, how much to switch with you?” he asks slowly.

“No way dude, I literally deserve the solo room this year, okay? And it’s really not the end of the world.”

“Not your world,” Sanghyuk mutters, tossing his bag onto his bed with more force than necessary. It bounces once before sliding toward the edge and toppling off after a brief struggle against gravity. This is his last straw. He’s actually going to cry and rain fire on earth.

Jaehyun tries to console him by patting his back, but Sanghyuk avoids the touch and walks over to his bed, properly adjusting the bag on the ground. His teeth are sinking into his lower lip as he tries to not curse out every one of his ancestors that has failed to protect him from such misfortune.

“Look, it’s just two or three months, tops, okay? You’ll survive. We’ll have another roommate rearrangement right before the season starts.”

“That’s forever,” he complains, but it’s no use.

Jaehyun just snorts, ready to flee before the real barrage of gripes starts. “I’ve done my part now. You two enjoy bonding or whatever!”

And then he’s gone, leaving Sanghyuk alone with Donghyun, who—of course—has already gone back to unpacking like this is all normal. Like he belongs here.

Sanghyuk watches him for a beat, crossing his arms. “So you just let them stick you in here?”

Donghyun shrugs, carefully folding a hoodie and placing it in the closet. “I don’t care where I sleep.”

“Uh-huh.”

Donghyun doesn’t look up. “I figured you wouldn’t be happy about it.”

“No shit.”

This time, Donghyun does glance at him, his expression unreadable. “I’ll stay out of your way.” Then, as though he’s visited by another thought, he looks up at Sanghyuk again. “Come to think of it, I should be the one who’s unhappy about this arrangement. You’ve been sexting me for months.”

“For the last fucking time, it wasn’t you .”

Donghyun stares at him for a long, excruciating second before shaking his head in mock disappointment. “Right. Just someone using my face. Happens all the time.”

“It does happen,” Sanghyuk snaps. “Do you know how many people get catfished every day? Like, statistically?”

“Wow, I really didn’t know you were a statistics kinda guy.”

“That’s not—” Sanghyuk exhales sharply, dragging a hand down his face. He can already feel the headache forming. “Look, I don’t care if you believe me or not. Just don’t bring that shit up again.”

Donghyun hums noncommittally and goes back to unpacking, but the tiny smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth is infuriating .

Sanghyuk wants to march over and choke him. Hands around neck, thumbs on pressure points and all that. He could manage it (he thinks) (he’s taken 2 self-defense classes before) (he failed to get a certificate because he didn't attend the last 2). 

“You stay out of my side of the room, alright?”

“And which one is that?” Donghyun asks with fake innocence. He takes a break from putting away his underwear in the drawer he’d helped himself to to towel his wet hair. Some droplets land on the ground and it vexes Sanghyuk to no end that this dude is leaving his JUICES all over their floor. 

“This one,” Sanghyuk seethes, gesturing to draw an invisible line between them.

“The door is right in front of your bed though—am I allowed to walk out?”

“Stop playing stupid.”

Donghyun doesn’t reply, just smiles as he unzips his last carrier. He doesn’t have a lot of clothes, Sanghyuk realizes. The bulk of the stuff he’s brought is just various trinkets that Sanghyuk considers swiping across the back of his head with.

Fine. If he’s going to ignore Sanghyuk, two can play this game. He marches over to his dresser and yanks it out with more force than necessary, rifling through his sleep clothes with enough aggression that Donghyun knows it’s for him. 

Donghyun, though, seems determined to test the limits of his patience. “By the way,” he says casually, “did you ever send pics back to him?”

Sanghyuk nearly dislocates his own shoulder slamming the drawer shut.

“I thought we agreed not to talk about it.”

“No, you said I wasn’t allowed to talk to the others about it. I think I’m entitled to know more about this whole situation considering my face was used, no?”

“The situation is over because I’ve already reported the damn profile. You should be more worried about who’s out to get you because they could be scamming a bunch of other people with your face.” He hugs his clothes to his chest and stares at Donghyun straight in the eyes. “I’m really not enthusiastic about this whole roommate situation, okay? And I’m also really pissed that I’ve been catfished and it’s also really uncomfortable for me that the guy whose face was used to catfish me is the person I have to room and work with. I don’t want to hate you, but I don’t have to like you either… I’m just saying we should stay out of each other’s way so this doesn’t blow up in our faces.”

The teasing glint in Donghyun’s eyes slowly dims and the smile he’d been wearing fades slightly, too. He drags a hand through his damp hair and nods.

“Alright,” he says, quieter this time. “I get it.”

Sanghyuk blinks.

“Yeah, sorry—I was just messing around. And you’re right that I should probably be taking this more seriously.”

Sanghyuk bristles. Apology or not, he can’t help but feel like Donghyun would’ve already taken this more seriously in the first place had it been on Tinder or some other platform that isn’t for gay people specifically. It’s not like Donghyun is being outright homophobic or anything but clearly isn’t considered a serious enough situation to him either. Donghyun releases his bottom lip from his mouth and ducks his head. “I’m sorry. I won’t talk about it anymore.”

For a second, Sanghyuk thinks about dragging this out. Really making it an overall harrowing experience for Donghyun. But he really doesn’t think he has the energy for it and the faster they pass these three months without incident, the faster Sanghyuk can get to a point in his life where he no longer has to talk to Donghyun outside of work at all.

He stares at Donghyun, who’s just sitting on the floor, eyes downcast, shoulders a little less square than before. 

“I’m not going to forgive you or anything,” Sanghyuk tells him. “We don’t need to be friends either. There’s the rest of the team for that. Just—stay out of my way and let’s move on, okay?”

After a moment, Donghyun looks up to cautiously ask, “So, uh. Should we ignore each other or coexist like normal people?”

“I don’t know, can you be normal?”

“Define normal.”

He can’t believe he has to fucking talk to this person and explain things like they’re 5. It’s not the first time he’s had to deal with it, though—the day Jaehyun found out, he’d started searching up reddit threads on how to be a supportive friend to gay people. Watching all the YouTube videos on it, too. Sanghyuk found it endearing at first that he was making an effort to help him feel comfortable, but it got tiring pretty quickly after that.

What straight people don’t normally realize, it seems, is that gay people don’t collectively live under the same umbrella as one another either. While a more empathetic person in his shoes might be happy about it, Sanghyuk is just sick and tired of being treated like a separate species altogether.

Jaehyun’s gotten better now. He just can’t believe he has to go through the motions all over again with Donghyun.

For his own sake and sanity, he prays it will be quick.

“Look, just treat me like I’m invisible okay? I’ll do the same to you.”

He turns away, ready to end the conversation and move on with his night, but Donghyun’s voice stops him again.

“For what it’s worth, though… I really am sorry.”

Sanghyuk’s fingers tighten around the hem of his shirt. He doesn’t turn back around. He doesn’t say anything, either. Just forces himself to take a breath and keep moving.

Let it go, he tells himself.

It’s just three months.

Three months, and then he’ll never have to think about Donghyun being in his space ever again.

★

Esports is a terrible sport to be in.

When Sanghyuk touched his first multiplayer online game—Team Fortress 2 at 8 years old, he’d gotten hooked on the adrenaline, the rush of outplaying an opponent, the satisfaction of outsmarting them. Above everything else, he liked that he was good at any game he touched. And if he wasn’t immediately attuned to it, he’d spend obsessive hours over it and eventually become good. 

His family has always been on the stricter side, but Sanghyuk gets away with a lot because he’s the middle child. Sure, he’ll forever be told to respect the age hierarchy with his older brother and to acquiesce to his younger brother, but being stuck right in the center helps him get overlooked on many matters, including his grades.

When he was 13, he discovered that international competitions existed, that esports was a realm that was taken seriously. By a small community nonetheless, but it was there. A faint hope, a straw that Sanghyuk could grasp at.

At 13, it had merely been a dream—one he barely knew how to articulate, let alone start chasing. But the moment he saw footage of a world championship, the packed stadium with the fancy flashing lights, the deafening roar of a crowd as the favorites lifted up the trophy, it was like a switch had been flipped inside him.

He was considered a prodigy back then. The way he picks up game mechanics, figures out strategies he could exploit depending on the team composition, the way his flicky aim helped him climb ranks faster than new games could be released for him to consume and absorb like a sponge. When he turned 15, his game sense only got sharper, more honed in, but he was no longer relying on his prodigious skills alone.

All of a sudden, it was no longer a hobby for him, but something that was entirely possible .

Of course, the gap between “possible” and “attainable” was massive. He had no connections, no money for the best equipment—because his parents, at this point, still thought Sanghyuk was a “late bloomer” when it came to his academics, if there ever was a thing like that—no real roadmap to follow. Just his hands on a keyboard, a stable enough Wi-Fi connection, and a gut feeling that if he tried hard enough, he could force the universe to make space for him somehow.

He took apart replays of his own games, analyzing his mistakes frame-by-frame and considering all the alternatives he could’ve employed, ways he could’ve played out of tricky situations with less effort and a lot more brain. New players entered the server, each one younger than the last, each one more talented than the last.

But Sanghyuk didn’t just have talent. He had determination, passion, and when Valorant got its official release in 2020, he’d already been playing for months in beta, and he’d climbed the ranks so easily, he was Valorant Top 1 in the entire Asia Pacific server in 3 weeks.

By then, people had started noticing.

It was impossible not to—his name at the top of the leaderboard, a string of absurdly dominant matches, highlight clips spreading across forums and Discord servers like wildfire. Streamers analyzed his playstyle, Reddit threads debated whether he was cheating, and before he even realized what was happening, he wasn’t just some anonymous kid grinding in his bedroom anymore.

Sanghyuk had a reputation.

The first scouting messages trickled into his inbox soon after. Sketchy orgs promising high salaries, offers to boost accounts for cash, DM after DM asking if he was looking to go pro. Most of them were scams or low-tier teams that wouldn’t get him anywhere, but one day, he opened his email and found something real.

Vision Strikers Korea had e-mailed him, and it was an offer that was definitely too good to turn down.

All of this doesn’t change the fact that esports is a terrible sport to be in, though, but mainly because it wasn’t considered a sport at all.

His parents, predictably, hated it.

His father barely looked at him. His mother called it a waste of time. His older brother, already set on a stable career path, just shook his head. His younger brother was the only one who didn’t say anything, just watching with wide eyes as Sanghyuk packed his bags.

“Hyung, if you sign that, you can forget about coming home. Mom and dad will never allow it.”

So he didn’t.

Even though he’d lived in Seoul all his life and his real ‘home’ was a measly 30 minute drive from the company, he moved out with barely enough belongings to fit into the biggest carrier he owned and started making a life for himself in the shared accommodations with 4 other boys. It was a tight fit, and Sanghyuk didn’t get along well with all of them, but it was nice, stable. It was his dream. And it was also where he met Dongmin: scrawny, horrible temper to boot—that made Sanghyuk feel better about his own attitude—who’d drawn extreme boundaries about their living conditions. For a whole year, Sanghyuk wasn’t even allowed anywhere near Dongmin’s clothes—not even to mix their laundry or hang them up for the guy.

Then he started working part-time at the convenience store down the street, taking up more night shifts than his sleep schedule should allow, and subsisted mainly on company-provided meals or whatever flavor kimbap was on sale at night. Dongmin dropped by to visit him one time (though he never explicitly said he was there for Sanghyuk, he stayed until the end of his graveyard shift, falling asleep at the snack bar until Sanghyuk woke him up so they could walk home together) and his world became a little less lonely.

It was still a distant dream, but at the first inaugural Valorant Champions ever held in 2021, Vision Strikers was the only South Korean team to make it into the brackets—not just make it, but scraped together a position on the final scoreboard where they evaded last place, and it was close enough that Sanghyuk could taste the victory in the air, felt it thrumming in his bones like it was calling to him, that he knew he’d made the right choice.

He continued climbing. He was there when Vision Strikers made the merger to rebrand as DRX, was there when T1 started putting together foundations of their second Riot Games team, going around plundering players from more established orgs.

He’d left first. Dongmin was dropped from DRX during their second identity crisis a few Masters later, and Sanghyuk had begged T1 for 3 months to give Dongmin a chance. If he was going to win eventually, he was going to do it with that permanently sulking kid who acted like he didn’t care about anything (when he cared too much about everything).

So maybe this thing with Donghyun was personal. Maybe the annoyance that pricks his brain and makes him click his tongue every time Donghyun saunters into the game room for practice runs deeper than just the fact that they’d gotten off on the wrong foot. Sanghyuk knows it’s no one’s fault that some people breeze through life a little easier, but it also does nothing to soothe the burn he feels in his chest when people talk about going back for the holidays on the rare occasion that they are given a break. He becomes irritable every time it’s the end of the year, mostly because he detests being surrounded by small reminders that there’s a road out there that leads to the exact same place where he’s stuck that had a lot less obstacles to jump over, and a lot less sacrifices required.

“Any one of you guys staying for the holidays?” Jaehyun asks one Saturday morning, strolling into the kitchen where Sanghyuk and Donghyun are both having cereal, separated by a whole ocean between them (they’re on opposite ends at the island). 

“Me,” Sanghyuk says, and ignores the curious look Donghyun flashes him.

“Could you—”

“I’ll wash the toilet once a week,” Sanghyuk says, scooping a spoonful of honey stars into his mouth. Jaehyun asks the same thing every time, and he’s not sure why.

“I’m, uh, actually staying too.”

Sanghyuk pauses mid-chew. He was expecting Jaehyun to follow up with his usual joke about how much better their bathrooms stay when Sanghyuk is around. Instead, the words he actually hears make his jaw lock.

He glances up just in time to see Jaehyun blink in surprise.

“Oh,” Jaehyun says, and then, with the kind of slow realization that only makes things more awkward, “Oh. You’re staying, Donghyunnie?”

Donghyunnie.

Sanghyuk wants to rush over to the windows overlooking the streets below and barf on a random unfortunate soul. The next spoonful of honey stars taste less like artificial coloring and sweeteners than soggy cardboard on his tongue.

“I told my parents I’m not going back this time—the off-season tournament’s happening in a month so I figured it’d be a good idea to stay back and practice some more.” He turns to lay his eyes on Sanghyuk’s frame, who immediately stiffens under the attention. “Maybe with Sanghyuk ssi? If you’re up for it. I thought, you know, it’d be a great time to build chem.”

Sanghyuk can tell Donghyun’s feeling all jittery about the tournament. Whatever. Sanghyuk isn’t expecting a win anyway—Donghyun’s still new to team strategies and he still has horrible habits ingrained into him from years of grinding it out in ranked. He doesn’t understand why Donghyun doesn’t get this simple logic. That it’d be better if he just went back to whatever beautiful, perfect, golden family he came from and left Sanghyuk to wallow alone in his misery wrapped in winter blues the same way he’s spent the last five years.

“Don’t call me that,” is all he says.

Jaehyun stands between them, eyes darting back and forth like he’s expecting a fight to break out soon.

Donghyun only lets his spoon clatter noisily against the rim of his spongebob bowl before he sits up straighter on his bar stool. “Would you rather I refer to you as Sanghyuk hyung?”

“No, just don’t call me anything.”

Jaehyun wedges himself into the tiny pocket of space between Sanghyuk and the next bar stool over and places a hand on Sanghyuk’s thigh. “Hey. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you guys to continue queuing over the break.” Jaehyun is smiling kindly at him, and Sanghyuk can only drop his gaze to his sad bowl of cereal, where the milk is already turning yellow from the dye, and close his eyes. He knows Jaehyun really means: “ It’ll be nice for you to have something to do besides being depressed all day.”

He feels the weight of their stares and knows they’re waiting for an answer or something. A concession. Maybe a tiny nod.

Instead, Sanghyuk pushes his chair back, the scrape of metal against wood loud in the silence. “I’ll think about it,” he mutters, grabbing his bowl and dumping the rest into the garbage can. He doesn’t look at Donghyun when he turns the faucet on, letting water run over his dishes as he loses himself in the repetitive motion of scrubbing.

When he feels like it’s enough pretense, he puts it on the drying rack and heads back into his room. Or, more specifically, their room now.

He can hear them discussing him behind his back ( “Has it really not gotten better yet?” “Yeah, no, no chance of that.” ) but Sanghyuk just tunes it out as he burrows under covers and attempts to get some more sleep.

★

Ten days.

He’s supposed to spend two weeks like this, trapped in an enclosed space with public enemy number one, without losing his mind. He might’ve moved into Jaehyun’s solo room the moment he left, if it weren’t for the fact that Jaehyun still has dirty laundry all over his bedroom floor that Sanghyuk would be expected to clean if he were to take up residence there.

He’s barely two hours into the second day before Donghyun starts making this unbearable for him.

“Hey, Sanghyuk ssi.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

It’s a pretty funny situation. They’re both still in their beds at 11 am, but they’re looking at the ceiling as they speak to each other.

“Again, what would you rather I call you?”

“Just fucking call me yah or whatever, it’s weird for you to address me like that.”

“Why can’t I just call you hyung?”

“Fuck, dude, what do you want from me?”

“Look, I just—I’m just saying. If you wanted to bring someone over, Woonhak gave me the keys to the upstairs unit. I won’t tell anyone, but… I’d appreciate it if you gave me a heads up before you do.”

Sanghyuk turns his head so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash. His phone lays abandoned on his bed, the rest of his COD Mobile game playing out. “What?”

Donghyun doesn’t meet his gaze, but even from Sanghyuk’s bed, even in the dim glow of the room because neither of them has untangled themselves from their covers since they woke up, he can see the redness starting to suffuse Donghyun’s skin—his cheeks, his neck, his knuckles. “I’m just saying.”

“And you’re assuming I’m going to hook up with someone because…”

“I’m not assuming anything, I’m just saying if you wanted to, I could give you guys the privacy.”

Sanghyuk figures no one must’ve told Donghyun the reason why he stays behind every holiday. He appreciates it, but it’s also probably not the best idea when Donghyun is clearly a kid with a hyperactive imagination.

Donghyun still won’t look at him, his gaze locked on the ceiling like he’s deeply invested in the way the paint cracks near the corners. His fingers tap against his blanket, a nervous tic.

Sanghyuk scoffs. “You’re so fucking weird, man.”

Donghyun huffs out a laugh, finally turning his head to look at Sanghyuk. Even as he laughs, the tip of his nose turns as red as his ears. “You’re the one making this weird.”

“Oh, I’m making this weird?” Sanghyuk gestures vaguely between them. “You’re the one offering me a secret fuck pad two days into living together.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“Are you assuming I do casual hook ups because I’m on Grindr?”

“I thought you forbade the subject from ever being brought up again.”

“I wouldn’t have to bring it up, if you hadn’t started talking about me bringing guys back to the dorm for a quick fuck.”

He probably shouldn’t be relishing this as much as he does, but something about watching the way Donghyun grows more flustered by the second, sputtering and tripping over his words brings some satisfaction to him. It might even be the first time Donghyun’s made him laugh.

Donghun draws his covers up to his nose, and it’s almost cute. Just almost. Winter’s freezing the cells in Sanghyuk’s head.

“Please stop,” Donghyun begs in superscript, and Sanghyuk sits up in his bed.

“I have morals, Donghyun. If I were to hook up with someone, I’d do it in a motel outside.”

“Good to know,” Donghyun gasps into his blanket, and Sanghyuk can’t hold in the laughter anymore.

Donghyun groans like he’s in physical pain, rolling onto his side so his back is to Sanghyuk. “You’re actually the worst,” he mutters to the wall.

Sanghyuk flops back onto his bed, still grinning. “You started it.”

“I was trying to be nice.”

“That’s your first mistake.”

Donghyun kicks his foot out from under the blanket, blindly aiming in Sanghyuk’s direction. He doesn’t land a hit, but the effort alone makes Sanghyuk laugh harder.

The silence that follows is almost comfortable. Almost.

Sanghyuk picks up his phone again, idly scrolling through his messages. No notifications. Not that he was expecting any—Dongmin and Woonhak aren’t great texters and Jaehyun and Sungo tend to go radio silence until they get sick of their family’s nagging—but still. He tosses it back onto his pillow. “For real, though,” he says after a beat. “Why’d you even bring that up?”

Donghyun doesn’t answer right away. The pause stretches just long enough for Sanghyuk to think he’s going to ignore the question altogether, but then—

“I dunno,” he mumbles. “You just… don’t seem like the type to stay in all the time.”

Sanghyuk furrows his brows. “And what type am I, exactly?”

Donghyun shifts, half-turning his head. His voice is quiet. “Someone who doesn’t like being alone?” There’s a crack in his voice towards the end of that sentence, and the uncertainty in it just tickles something in Sanghyuk.

“That’s dumb,” he just ends up saying. “Being alone is good. Less complicated.”

Donghyun shrugs. “Maybe.”

Sanghyuk stares at the ceiling, feeling suddenly restless. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. “I’m making ramen.”

“Cool.”

Sanghyuk hesitates in the doorway. “You want some?”

Donghyun peeks over his shoulder, surprised. Then he nods, almost shyly. “Yeah.”

Sanghyuk clicks his tongue. “Okay.”

And he leaves before Donghyun can say anything about Sanghyuk possibly warming up to him this winter.

★

It’s not as bad as Sanghyuk had imagined—though you have to factor in the fact that he was assuming and imagining the worst.

They’ve already worked out a routine that they follow every day at the dorm that would minimize them running into or having to acknowledge each other at all, so the first 3 days pass without anything remarkable happening. 

But by the fourth day, Sanghyuk starts to realize with building dread in his stomach that things are definitely starting to shift.

It happens in very small ways—subtle, almost unnoticeable if Sanghyuk weren’t completely suspended in this weird limbo of hyperawareness.

Sanghyuk starts cooking for two people, Donghyun volunteers to do the dishes for them both. At the beginning, Sanghyuk would leave the kitchen right as Donghyun collects the plates and bowls for washing, but now, Sanghyuk lingers around poking over Donghyun’s shoulders to make sure he’s thoroughly and actually washing with soap, not rinsing them the way Jaehyun does sometimes. 

Then there’s the way Donghyun hums under his breath when he thinks Sanghyuk isn’t listening. It’s nothing specific, just little melodies, half-formed, drifting through the silence between them. At first, it’s easy to tune out, but one night, when Sanghyuk’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, he catches himself waiting for the next note.

And the most dangerous thing—the thing that keeps messing with Sanghyuk’s head—is that they start talking more. Not just snarky remarks thrown back and forth, but actual conversations.

Like the one they have on the sixth night, when Donghyun catches Sanghyuk scrolling through his old match history in Valorant.

“You played for DRX before, right?”

Sanghyuk snorts. “Is that your way of pretending you don’t already know?”

Donghyun huffs, flipping over in bed to face him. “I mean, I knew you were a pro, but I didn’t follow your team or anything. I was never one to watch esports.”

“But you’re a streamer.”

“I’m good at the game,” Donghyun says matter-of-factly. “So, what was it like? With DRX?”

“Good.”

Donghyun squints at him. “That’s it? No humblebrag? No ‘I was the best duelist in the country’ or ‘I was called the future of Korean Valorant’?”

The Future of Korean Valorant —that was what the commentator had said when Vision Strikers collected a clean full sweep on all the local tournaments in the same year their org was formed. It’s a little surprising that Donghyun knows, considering that would’ve been when Valorant was still in its ‘infancy’ stage. “Okay, Mr.I-didn’t-follow-your-team,” he teases, and Donghyun looks away momentarily. “It’s not like any of that matters anymore, anyway.”

“Sure it does. Your contract was bought out, it’s not like you were kicked out from their roster.” Sanghyuk just smiles to himself. He likes talking about his rookie days. “Why did you move, anyway? It was clear DRX had the best team still when you announced your departure.”

“I always had a dream of hitting big with a growing org.”

“T1 is a mega name in the esports industry.”

“Not for Valorant,” he retorts. “Not when I joined it, anyway.” And now DRX still hasn’t won a single title, but they’ve come closer to it than T1 has since Sanghyuk had joined. While DRX is earning runner-up and top3 money, T1 is scraping by borrowed money from their LOL counterparts. 

“Well, you’re approaching your third year at T1 soon. Does that mean you’re going to leave?” Donghyun means those words as a joke, a throwaway comment meant to tease, but the moment the words leave his mouth, they lapse into a moment of silence that stretches just a little too long. “...You’re not actually thinking of leaving, are you?”

“I don’t know, Donghyun. Help us win a title and I’ll stop thinking of it, okay?”

They don’t talk for the rest of the night, but Sanghyuk can tell it’s on both their minds.

He hasn’t thought about it for a long time, leaving it in the back of his mind because it’s unbearable on the nights when it takes over the forefront of his head: Sanghyuk wants to win, and he doesn’t know how to get there after he's exhausted all his options.

★

The next day, Donghyun is the one who reaches out first.

“Are you busy today?” he asks, just as Sanghyuk retrieves a pack of chips in the snack cabinet and tears into it. 

“Yeah, I’m busy arranging for a hook-up to happen here in a few.” Donghyun was lying on the couch as he said this, but as soon as he finishes processing the last few words, he shoots up straight.

“I told you to give me a warning!”

Sanghyuk pads over to the living room as he pops a chip into his mouth. “I’m just kidding, dude. Here, have some.” Donghyun eyes him warily as Sanghyuk offers the bag to him but he takes two anyway. “Why’d you ask?”

“I was wondering if we could watch a movie.”

They don’t have cable and they’re also not subscribed to any satellite service at all, so he doesn’t know why Donghyun bothers asking. The TV in the living room is basically defunct and purely for decorative purposes only. Donghyun must know he’s thinking this, because he just says— “We could watch it in the room. I’ve got my laptop with me.”

“Oh. Let’s just hook it up to the TV with the HDMI.”

“Good idea.”

Sanghyuk watches as Donghyun gets up from the couch and heads toward their shared room, presumably to grab his laptop. He hears some shuffling, then the sound of a zipper being tugged open.

“Where’s the HDMI cable?” Donghyun calls out.

Sanghyuk thinks for a moment, crunching on another chip. “Uh. Try the drawer under the TV stand?”

A few seconds later, Donghyun emerges, holding the laptop in one hand and the HDMI cable in the other, waving it like a trophy. “Got it.”

They spend the next few minutes setting everything up, which mostly consists of Donghyun untangling the cable while Sanghyuk stands uselessly behind him, occasionally offering unhelpful commentary. When they manage to get everything hooked up correctly, Donghyun stands up with a lot more bounce to his feet as he exclaims, “It works!”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Sanghyuk says flatly, but he can’t help the smile that slowly creeps onto his lips. He rubs a wet tissue between his thumb and index finger as he spreads himself out lazily on the couch, leaving very little space for Donghyun. “So, what were you planning on watching?”

Donghyun works on mirroring the display of his laptop on the TV and hums to himself as he does. “I dunno. You pick.”

“Did you ask me to watch a movie with you so you could make me plan everything out for you?”

Donghyun rubs a hand at his nape, his back still turned towards Sanghyuk. “I wasn’t expecting you to say yes, actually.”

“So what were you going to watch if I didn’t say yes?”

“I was just going to figure things out as I go,” Donghyun admits sheepishly. “Do you mind doing a Harry Potter rerun? I always feel like they’re very Christmassy and it’s November, so…”

Sanghyuk considers saying no but—he really doesn’t have anything better to do with his time so he makes a gesture that vaguely conveys his agreement. Once the familiar Warner Bros logo fades into the dark, Donghyun moves towards the couch but doesn’t demand for space. He ends up plopping on the rug-covered floor, his head somewhere in front of Sanghyuk’s chest where he’s stretched out horizontally across all the space that he’s hogging.

For a while, the only sounds in the room are the movie playing and the occasional rustling of the chip bag as Sanghyuk absentmindedly munches. He watches as the snowy Hogwarts Express scene flickers across the screen, feeling a little too comfortable, a little too warm under the glow of the TV.

Donghyun doesn’t complain about being on the floor. He leans back slightly, resting against the couch near Sanghyuk’s ribs, seemingly content with his spot.

Sanghyuk watches for a few more minutes before sighing dramatically. “Dude, why are you sitting down there like a pet dog?”

Donghyun tilts his head up and to the side, just enough so Sanghyuk can see him, and vice versa. The living room’s grown rather dark, the heater’s all cranked up and the glow of the TV is accentuating the length of Donghyun’s eyelashes. Sanghyuk thinks it’s unfair, that it’s possible for someone to look like Donghyun. And maybe, he thinks it’s a little unfair, too, that Donghyun isn’t into guys at all. 

When Sanghyuk had first come across JustPeachy694eva ’s profile, his back went ramrod straight as he pinched the screen and zoomed in on the photos just to see if he could spot any wriggly lines in the background where they shouldn’t be, poring over the details to check if the was actually real or a product of heavy filters and editing. But he couldn’t find any faults with the photos he’d attached at all. 694eva was just an incredibly, ridiculously attractive man on Grindr who’d ticked every single one of Sanghyuk’s boxes when it came down to his type. 

So he tried to shoot his shot, and apparently, it worked.

It’s too bad 694eva wasn’t real at all, and was just another faceless coward behind a screen, using someone else’s pics.

Sanghyuk shifts slightly, shaking the thought away. No use dwelling on that now. He’s already blocked the account, deleted the messages, and—most importantly—buried the mild (extreme) mortification of having sexted with a catfish.

“Because you took up the entire couch,” Donghyun says, bringing him back to the present. Sanghyuk looks away, gaze flickering back to the screen because he doesn’t need Donghyun thinking he was too busy admiring his face to remember what they were talking about (he was, but doing something and actually getting caught for it are two very different things that warranted very different responses).

“You could’ve asked, dumbass.”

Donghyun doesn’t reply, turns back to watch the movie.

They’ve started with the Goblet of Fire because it’s apparently Donghyun’s favorite and Sanghyuk is surprised by how much he doesn’t remember from the movie. It’s during one of the slower scenes that Donghyun turns around and looks wistfully at the bag of chips on Sanghyuk’s stomach.

“You want a few more?” he asks, and he’s starting to feel like a real dog trainer when Donghyun smiles, nodding enthusiastically.

Instead of leaning over to take it from Sanghyuk, though, he opens his mouth. At him. The TV hums in the background, dutifully filling the room with white noise as Sanghyuk tries to deal with whatever this is. 

Sanghyuk should laugh it off.

He tries to. The noise just comes out all wrong and choked. He shouldn’t be staring at Donghyun’s mouth and noticing how red and shiny they are from the chapstick Donghyun carries around with him on a stupid keyring. He shouldn’t be feeling the slow, creeping warmth of arousal crawling up his neck slowly, making him extremely conscious of the exact gap he’d have to close to press his lips against Donghyun’s.

He swallows. “Dude.”

Donghyun only raises his brows expectantly, lips parting just a fraction more. His tongue peeks out, the tip barely visible, waiting to be fed. Asking for it.

This is immoral. Obscene. Why the fuck is Donghyun opening his mouth at him like this. More importantly, why is Sanghyuk’s mind making this all so fucking pornographic?

Sanghyuk exhales, long and slow. “You have hands, you know.”

Donghyun hums, tilting his head just slightly, like he’s making a point to not use them. His shoulders are relaxed, posture lazy—like he doesn’t care at all about how weird this situation is.

Does Donghyun know? How lewd this looks? Does he care?

Sanghyuk hesitates for just a second too long.

Donghyun flicks his eyes up to meet his, and something about that moment—the weight of it, the challenge in his expression—makes Sanghyuk move before he can think.

He picks up a chip, holds it between his fingers, and—because he’s an idiot—he doesn’t just drop it into Donghyun’s waiting mouth.

Instead, he places it on Donghyun’s tongue, right in the center of it.

Donghyun’s lips close around the chip, warm breath ghosting against Sanghyuk’s fingertips for the briefest second before he pulls back and crunches down. His eyes don’t leave Sanghyuk’s the entire time.

What the fuck —is what he wants to say. But they lie heavily on his tongue, refusing to budge.

Donghyun turns back to the TV, happily chewing on his singular chip as though nothing happened at all.

Sanghyuk is starting to think he needs to get his brain checked for signs of stress-induced damage.

★

When the second week of break begins, Sanghyuk and Donghyun finally find it in themselves to feel guilty about resting too much, so they make their way to the company for some training.

It’s a little strange, having just the two of them in the game room, but it kinda works out so long as Sanghyuk ignores the fact that Donghyun occupies the seat right next to his.

For the most part, it’s normal. Or at least, as normal as things can be after that weird moment with the chip (he’s never watching a movie or eating chips in Donghyun’s presence ever again).

Sanghyuk starts adjusting the sensitivity on his mouse the same way he always does after 3 days or more of not playing. They’re in a custom game to warm up first, and Donghyun keeps fucking netting him as Deadlock, and Sanghyuk ends up chasing him around the map trying to knife him. Donghyun’s extremely easily entertained—another weird Donghyun fact that he’s picked up on despite his brain trying to actively empty itself of the meaningless trivia it’s accumulated over the past 7 days. 

Donghyun’s laughter echoes through the room as he dodges Sanghyuk’s attempts, weaving through corners and sliding past barriers with an almost infuriating ease.

“Why are you so bad at knifing?” Donghyun teases, his voice barely containing his amusement.

Sanghyuk grits his teeth. “Why are you so fucking annoying?”

He lunges again, but Donghyun anticipates it, sidestepping at the last second. The knife barely whiffs past him, and before Sanghyuk can react, he’s snared in another net.

Sanghyuk makes a show of dramatically removing his headset as Donghyun spins his character in place, clearly having the time of his life. “I think I’m done. I think I’m actually just going to quit esports forever.” 

Donghyun grins at him. “You’re just saying that because you suck .”

This is maybe 10x worse than being called unc by a bunch of kids on a tactical shooter game. Because he’s not supposed to find himself growing so accustomed to Donghyun’s presence, to having conversations with him when the rest of the team isn’t around, to fucking hand-feeding him. 

He stands up. “I’m going for a smoke,” he announces, and unexpectedly, Donghyun bounds after him, too.

“I’ll come with,” he says, and he’s not asking for permission—he’s informing Sanghyuk.

Whatever, whatever. He’s deeply provoked by Donghyun’s relentless badgering paired with his smiley face, but he’s only going to be giving Donghyun what he wants if he blows up now. They end up in the smoking area of the 18th floor, which is where most of the admin team sits—but since it’s a Sunday, no one’s around at all. It feels like they’ve got the whole place to themselves, if they ignore the occasional patrolling security guards in uniform walking the perimeter.

Sanghyuk pulls out his pack and takes one out with his teeth. He catches Donghyun watching him intently but he doesn’t comment on it. 

When frees his hands again, he slides his lighter out from his pocket too but fuck the winter winds—

Sanghyuk exhales through his nose, annoyed at the wind and irritated by the way Donghyun is staring at him starting the lighter unsuccessfully. Everything is going wrong and Sanghyuk just wants a fucking smoke.

Donghyun reaches over and plucks another from Sanghyuk’s pack before he can protest.

Sanghyuk blinks. “You smoke?”

Donghyun rolls the cigarette between his fingers before he tucks it between his lips. “Not often,” he says, smiling around the filter. “But I want one now.” He walks closer, closing the space between them. They’re so close that Sanghyuk thinks the tips of his battered converse are touching Donghyun’s black and white air maxes now. Then, without warning, Donghyun leans down, looks down, his eyelashes fanning across his cheekbones, and places his hand over Sanghyuk’s. 

Donghyun’s palm is warm against the back of his hand, fingers resting lightly over his own like he’s done this a million times before.

The lighter flickers to life between them.

Donghyun tilts his head down further, cigarette still balanced between his lips as he cups a hand around the flame. His thumb presses against the back of Sanghyuk’s hand, just slightly, steadying him. Then, with practiced ease, he lowers his own cigarette toward Sanghyuk’s, positioning them so that the tips touch, ember to ember, like some kind of wordless ritual.

The wind howls past them, but the glow flares up, spreading from one to the other.

Sanghyuk inhales.

Something beyond just smoke curls between the spaces of his ribs, pressing up against his throat, his nose. Donghyun watches him through hooded eyes and nothing but lashes for days on end, his lips slightly parted so a wisp of white smoke can escape from one side. Donghyun is a world class asshole, he thinks.

“Hyung—”

“I don’t fuck straight guys.” Donghyun pulls out his cigarette as he stares at Sanghyuk. He sees Donghyun opening his mouth to speak, so he adds, for good measure: “I don’t fuck straight guys or guys who are ‘figuring things out’.”

For a moment, it’s just traffic and pigeons. Government spies. The wind. Microbacteria breathing, if Sanghyuk’s ears were good enough to hear it.

Then, Donghyun just smiles to himself and looks away into the distance. His dimples are out again, and the wind is whipping his hair across his face and he looks just like a scene out of a fucking movie. He taps the ash off the end of his cigarette against the railing and drags his eyes over to Sanghyuk in a sideways glance. “Okay,” he says nonchalantly, neither offensive nor particularly defensive. If anything, he sounds more interested now. “So what do you fuck.”

It starts as a light buzzing first. And it’s strange, Sanghyuk briefly thinks at the back of his mind that desire starts out like a fly you can’t swat away. It just gets louder and louder, more insistent, growing into an alarm blaring into your ears.

He’s aware of the fact that he may want Donghyun like that, but he also knows he shouldn’t and can’t.

“I don’t fuck people who don’t know what they want, don’t fuck with gamers either, and I also don’t like younger guys.”

“I think you spend a lot of time thinking about me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he dismisses Donghyun. He takes a few more steps towards the edge of the building and steps up onto the little ledge from which the glass is lodged. The top of the railing is metal and it’s fucking cold when Sanghyuk leans over. 

Unfortunately, nothing seems to deter Donghyun in the least. He crowds into Sanghyuk’s space, reaching eye level without even having to gain some footing on the ledge as well. He meets Sanghyuk’s glare with a smile that has melted his eyes into something sickly sweet and tempting. “No? Sounds like you just made up a bunch of rules that describe me.”

“I know what you’ve been trying to do, kid.”

“And that is…”

If Donghyun comes any closer, his heart is going to capsize.

“I’m not going to fuck you. And I’m not letting you fuck me.”

Donghyun exhales a slow stream of smoke, gaze flickering downward to Sanghyuk’s lips, where a cigarette hangs loosely. The wind only tugs at Sanghyuk’s hair and he has to clench his jaw against both the frost and Donghyun’s shameless staring.

“Did I ask?”

“Didn’t have to. I know that look.” Sanghyuk puts out his cigarette against the metal and takes a step down. “So don’t even bother, okay?”

By the time they make it back to the game room, they’ve both come to a quiet understanding between themselves that they will, decidedly, not talk about it.

★

Dongmin is first to come back, 4 official days before the break ends.

He brings with him a packet of dried persimmons that Sanghyuk engulfs him in a hug for, while Donghyun is less enthusiastic about. If he notices that Sanghyuk and Donghyun are now on talking terms, he doesn’t bring it up and make it a huge deal, which Sanghyuk appreciates.

And because he hasn’t seen Dongmin in a while, he drags the guy over to the couch in the living room and forces him to recount his holiday, play by play. Halfway through his storytime, Dongmin found himself a comfortable spot with his head on Sanghyuk’s lap, left cheek pressed against his thighs, fingers absent-mindedly playing with the fraying threads around the huge hole of Sanghyuk’s ripped jeans. 

It’s a rare treat so Sanghyuk doesn’t try moving, not even when he’s starting to feel pins and needles in his legs.

Donghyun, on the other hand, looks vaguely unimpressed from his spot on the floor. He’s sprawled out with one arm propped behind his head, legs stretched out lazily as he scrolls through his phone. Occasionally, he flicks his gaze up, expression unreadable, before going back to whatever pointless doomscrolling he’s doing.

“So, what I’m hearing,” Sanghyuk says, running his fingers absentmindedly through Dongmin’s hair, “is that you spent half your break getting dragged to family dinners, and the other half getting scammed by that claw machine at the arcade?”

Dongmin hums sleepily. “I wouldn’t say scammed. I just underestimated how slippery those prizes were.”

“You spent, what, like fifty bucks on a plushie you never even got?”

“Sixty.” Dongmin sighs dramatically. “And I almost had it too. Claw was rigged, I swear.”

“I’m sure,” Sanghyuk snorts, and Dongmin smiles against his leg.

“Don’t tease me, hyung. It was a Shin-Chan plushie and I wanted to get it for you.” Dongmin wraps a stray thread around his finger and pulls on it, hard enough that the color washes out of his skin. Sanghyuk pries it free of Dongmin’s tugging. 

“What a waste of money. You could’ve just gone to a store and bought me one without gambling your earnings on a claw machine.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dongmin grins. “The thrill of the chase, hyung. The satisfaction of victory.” He turns his head in Sanghyuk’s lap to look up at him, eyes all shiny and his smile all gummy—Dongmin’s always hated the way he smiles but it’s one of Sanghyuk’s favorite things about him. “You were the one who taught me that.”

Sanghyuk swipes his thumb across the tip of Dongmin’s nose and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Rascal.”

“Did you miss playing with us?”

“Yeah, Donghyun’s still too shit to keep up with me, you know.”

Surprisingly, Donghyun definitely hears that but he doesn’t make a move to defend himself at all. His lips just twist into a disgruntled scowl as he scrolls even more furiously, his thumbnail making scratching noises against his phone screen. Sanghyuk doesn’t even think anyone can read the daily news feed when he’s scrolling so fast.

Eventually, Dongmin says he’ll go back up to rest in his room before coming down to join them for dinner. As soon as he makes it out his door, Donghyun asks— “Are you two always that touchy-feely?”

The truth is no . Dongmin only allows himself to be coddled when he’s been separated from the group for a while, and you can’t force him into it. You have to cautiously lure him closer, closer, and slowly stroke his hair until his eyelids become droopy with sleep and he forgets you’re there at all. It’s a learned art, one that Donghyun clearly is not a fan of.

“Yeah,” he says instead, and watches as Donghyun puts down his phone to walk to the kitchen without another word. “Hey, get me something to drink while you’re there,” he calls.

Donghyun still doesn’t speak, but he stops by the living room to slam a can of red bull onto the coffee table before he retreats into his own room like a gathering of dark, stormy clouds.

★

Unfortunately, another thing Sanghyuk uncovers about Donghyun is that he’s probably never been told ‘no’ as a child. Because he won’t fucking shut up now that Sanghyuk isn’t as cold to him anymore.

They queue as a trio in the morning, have lunch and dinner together as a group, but no one can save Sanghyuk from Donghyun’s inquisitive nature which only seems to turn on when it’s just the two of them in the dorm at night, and Dongmin has already parted ways with them.

It starts off with easy questions, questions that Sanghyuk doesn’t have to think twice before answering. His favorite color, his first Valorant main, dirt on his ex-teammates. Why his crosshair is so ugly (rude), if he’d still play professionally even if he went blind doing it (which makes no sense, but whatever). 

Then, questions that would take Donghyun a lot more observation skills to point out: “Do your knees ever get cold? Why are you always wearing ripped jeans?” Sanghyuk doesn’t really have the proper answer to that. “Did you know your whole body leans together with your keys when you’re peeking a corner in-game?” No. He didn’t. But now that he does, he’s grown rather self-conscious of it.

He should’ve known all of these questions would eventually build up to this:

“Hyung, when was the last time you had sex?”

Before Sanghyuk can even reply to that, Donghyun follows up with another question. “What did you use to text me about? The guy you thought was me?”

Nothing decent.

Sanghyuk turns around in his bed so that he’s facing the wall. He cannot be doing this right now.

“All of those things—do you want to do them?” With me is the unspoken part of his question. 

“Yah, Kim Donghyun,” he calls into the dark, and instead of taking it as a sign to shut the fuck up as Sanghyuk had intended, he shuffles out of his bed and kneels by Sanghyuk, folding his hands on the mattress as he stares, and even if Sanghyuk isn’t looking in his direction, he can feel Donghyun’s two eyes burning holes through his back.

Sanghyuk shuts his eyes. If he ignores Donghyun long enough, maybe he’ll go away. Maybe this whole conversation will evaporate into the night, and they can both pretend it never happened.

But Donghyun is persistent. And patient. And has absolutely zero concept of personal space, apparently, because after a few seconds of silence, he nudges at Sanghyuk’s back with a finger.

“You awake?”

“No.”

Another nudge. “You’re talking. That means you’re awake.”

“I’m trying to sleep.”

“Liar.”

Sanghyuk exhales, long and slow, gripping his pillow like it might anchor him to sanity. “Donghyun.”

“Hyung.”

He rolls onto his back. Sure enough, Donghyun is still right there, chin resting on his arms, looking up at him like he has all the time in the world. The glow of the hallway light from under the door outlines the curve of his cheekbone, the soft mess of his hair. His expression isn’t teasing or smug—it’s just expectant. Like he’s genuinely waiting for an answer.

Sanghyuk swallows. “Go back to bed.”

Donghyun tilts his head slightly, not moving. “You didn’t say no.”

Sanghyuk sits up abruptly, glaring. “Because it’s a stupid fucking question.”

Donghyun doesn’t flinch. He just blinks, slow, as if considering his next move.

Then, carefully, “You did want it, though. Before.”

It wasn’t even you . He wants to say it, but Donghyun is staring, looking, licking his own lips while looking at Sanghyuk’s like he’s already imagining what they would taste like. The way he’s devouring Sanghyuk with his eyes is making all his words stick to the roof of his mouth like melted toffee.

“You don’t even like men.”

“You don’t know that. You just made that assumption about me.”

“Well, is it false?”

Donghyun nods slowly, the fabric of Sanghyuk’s bedsheets crumpling and bunching up in his tightening grip as he really considers it. Sanghyuk wants to reach out and pry his fingers off, but he knows that it’s probably not a very good idea for him to make contact with Donghyun at all now. “I don’t know, but I want to find out.”

“Fuck, Donghyun, I’m not Akinator for gay people, okay? Figure it out with someone else.”

“I don’t wanna,” Donghyun insists stubbornly, feet cemented on the floor, apparently. “I want you.”

“I’m your teammate.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Do you really not see how horrible of an idea this is?”

“They didn’t specify no kissing within the team in the contract…”

Sanghyuk drops his head into his hands and groans, loud and long. “That’s because they don’t expect it to happen in the first place!”

“Then it might really be their fault and not mine.”

Sanghyuk tries to rein it in. He’s picked up on breathing exercises before, in his second year when his nerves had gotten the better of him and he couldn’t go up on stage without his medication because he was certain he was the problem that stood directly in the way of his team’s victory. The breathing exercises never helped, but he’d go through them with Dongmin anyway because the guy always insisted. They’re not doing a thing right now, either—Sanghyuk should’ve guessed. 

There’s a very thin line between frustration and desire, Sanghyuk finds. And this line has been blurred with Donghyun from the very first time he’d met the real him in person and realized someone could look better than their photos. In photos, Donghyun had looked calm, shy, reserved in his small smiles and full lips and gently curved eyes. In photos, they’d failed to capture every bit of the quiet but stubborn defiance Donghyun wore like a second skin. There was no denying he had lesser words than Jaehyun and Woonhak, of course, but he also had none of the apprehensive nature about Dongmin.

Meeting Donghyun in person has only made him so much more attractive, so much realer. There was no way anyone would’ve been able to continue sustaining the fantasy with just pictures after seeing him in real life.

And Donghyun, he’s never been the most patient person—which is why Sanghyuk should’ve expected what comes next.

Donghyun lays his cheek down against the bedsheet, loosens his grip on the fabric, and adjusts his knees on the floor. It’s all quiet in the room, suspiciously silent, and even though Sanghyuk knows for a fact no one but them is around, he can’t calm the violent thudding in his chest, the adrenaline snaking down his back in drops of cold sweat. He feels like they’re about to get caught . Donghyun pushes. He nudges forward, throwing more of his weight onto the mattress, and Sanghyuk can feel the springs in his mattress giving way. Donghyun pushes, pushes—he bumps the tip of his nose against Sanghyuk’s knee, and even through the thickness of his pants, he swears he can feel the spread of hot air over his skin when Donghyun exhales. 

Sanghyuk has abandoned all pretense of even indulging in his fucking breathing exercises anymore.

He doesn’t even move.

He could—should—shove Donghyun off, tell him to stop trying and just go to sleep, that they have practice in the morning, that this is beyond stupid. But Donghyun’s inhaling him, looking up through his lashes like he’s drunk on the thoughts he’s having about Sanghyuk, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to reason with himself why this is a terrible idea.

Another breath, and the heat that seeps through the cotton spreads ups his thighs and he feels something coil tightly in his stomach.

“Donghyun,” Sanghyuk says.

—you’re pushing it is the remainder of his sentence, but he doesn’t get to voice it. Donghyun lifts his head slightly, just enough for Sanghyuk to see his lips part when he replies, “Keep calling my name.”

And Sanghyuk—he’s never been averse to bad decisions, okay? You don’t need to look any further than his choice of career for proof.

He wraps his fingers around Donghyun’s left wrist, pulling instead of pushing, and Donghyun only takes the opportunity to rub his cheek over his phalanges, hard enough that they create an gentle dip in Donghyun’s skin where moonlight pools.

And suddenly, Sanghyuk’s tugging, and his pulse is electricity skidding off his skin, and his body is locked with a kind of decisiveness he’s never allowed himself when he pulls Donghyun’s weight over his own.

Donghyun makes a quiet sound when he lands against Sanghyuk, all breathless surprise and a glee he can’t keep out of his eyes. He makes a quick study of things, though, and his arms move instinctively, one pressing against the spot next to Sanghyuk’s head to balance himself, the other finding its way to Sanghyuk’s shoulder like it should’ve always been there.

Sanghyuk doesn’t let himself think too hard about it—because if he does, he knows he’s going to stop. And right now, the last thing he wants to do is play with the scales weighing the consequences and the inevitable fallout of whatever the fuck this is. The only thing he wants to feel in its weight in is Donghyun pressing into him, sliding into him, groaning as Sanghyuk arches into him. 

Sanghyuk cups a hand over the back of Donghyun’s neck and encourages him to draw closer. It’s almost respectable, how long Donghyun hovers over his lips like he’s waiting for the final permission to be granted before he leans forward and just kisses Sanghyuk like he’s fire seeking oxygen. 

Sanghyuk expects the kiss to be awkward, too fast, too unsure—because this is Donghyun, and Donghyun is a lot of things, but he’s definitely not experienced with men. Not that Sanghyuk has kissed enough girls in his lifetime to know if there’s a distinct difference, but he’d figured Donghyun might’ve approached this with a lot more hesitance and nerves. And yet, when their lips meet, Sanghyuk feels himself sinking instead of recoiling. Donghyun doesn’t fumble. He doesn’t hesitate. He kisses like he means it, like he’s been thinking about this for longer than he’ll admit, like he knows exactly how much of Sanghyuk’s breath he can steal before it’s too much.

It’s maddening.

Sanghyuk’s fingers tighten against the nape of Donghyun’s neck, and he wonders if he should push or pull, but the decision is made for him when Donghyun tilts his head slightly, chasing deeper contact, his knee pressing between Sanghyuk’s thighs. He gasps into it, and Donghyun seizes the opportunity—tongue flickering against the seam of his lips, teasing, testing.

Fuck. Sanghyuk’s fingers bunch at Donghyun’s sweater at first to anchor himself, but it only serves to drag Donghyun closer, close, until there is no air left between them at all. It’s hot and consuming, like Donghyun’s trying to imprint himself into Sanghyuk’s skin, and it’s working. Sanghyuk already knows he’s going to feel the ghost of this kiss long after it’s over.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s in trouble. A lot of it.

Sanghyuk doesn’t know how long they stay like this, tangled up in heat and half-muffled breaths, but it’s long enough that the pounding in his chest is competing with the faint creak of the bed beneath them. 

Donghyun shifts, just slightly, his fingers curling against the dip of Sanghyuk’s waist, like he’s testing the weight of this—of them. His lips drag, slow and deliberate, along the seam of Sanghyuk’s jaw, down to the hollow of his throat, and Sanghyuk swears he can feel his pulse kick against Donghyun’s mouth.

And then, just as easily as he started, Donghyun stills. His breath is a warm rush against Sanghyuk’s collarbone, his forehead pressing lightly into his shoulder.

Sanghyuk waits. His heart is a hammer against his ribs, and his body is wound tight enough like a string about to snap, but he waits .

Donghyun exhales, slow. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, hoarse.

“I like guys. Definitely.” Donghyun shifts enough that his nose is brushing against Sanghyuk’s collarbone. “I like this a lot.”

Sanghyuk should’ve seen this coming—and he did—but he also should’ve done a lot more to prevent it from coming to this point, where, instead of being a hunch, it’s become fact.

He lets his head tip back against his pillow. His fingers twitch where they rest against the back of Donghyun’s neck, like he wants to pull him close again when he knows he needs to let go.

“Okay,” he answers, and he doesn’t even know what the hell he means by that. Okay, I hear you. Okay, I don’t know what to do with this. Okay, stop touching me. Okay, do it again.

“Hyung…”

Sanghyuk makes the mistake of looking at him. Donghyun’s all wide eyes in dim light, lips parted, pink and red from where Sanghyuk had kissed him back. He looks nervous now, like maybe he’s bracing himself for Sanghyuk to take his ‘okay’ back.

“Go to sleep,” Sanghyuk just tells him in an exasperated exhale. Because he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with this either, and how he’s going to put everything back to the way it was, to the way Jaehyun had left them, before he comes back. 

Donghyun, thankfully, listens this time, but not before he steals another kiss. 

Over the past 9 days, Lee Sanghyuk has learned a lot about this new teammate of his. And tonight, he learns that Kim Donghyun never does anything halfway.

★

Sanghyuk wakes up the next day feeling like everything’s gone off course.

Seems like the sentiment is not shared by Donghyun, though, considering how, when Sanghyuk goes over to his side of the room to wake him up, Donghyun still hums contentedly and asks, very sweetly, for 10 more minutes as he always does.

So Sanghyuk gathers his clothes for the day, heads into the shower, comes out exactly 8 minutes later, and goes back into their room to wake Donghyun up a second time.

As expected, Donghyun groans and buries his face deeper into his pillow, mumbling something unintelligible that Sanghyuk assumes translates to 5 more minutes. Normally, he'd let it slide—maybe give Donghyun an extra minute or two before resorting to more drastic measures—but today isn't normal. Today, Sanghyuk is running on a grand total of 3 hours of sleep, half of which was spent staring at the ceiling, and the other half was spent pretending that everything hadn’t just changed, like his world had upended on itself and the universe said fuck you to him.

So instead of nudging Donghyun’s shoulder like he usually does, Sanghyuk grabs the edge of his blanket and yanks it off in one smooth motion.

Donghyun lets out a disgruntled noise, curling in on himself against the sudden cold. “Hyung—” His voice is thick with sleep, still groggy and slow and scratchy in a way that does things to Sanghyuk’s mind. Then, like the universe personally decides to ruin Sanghyuk’s morning even further, Donghyun finally peeks up at him through half-lidded eyes, hair an absolute mess, mouth pink and kiss-bitten from the night before—a living, breathing, reminder of a suggestion that he failed to thwart when he should’ve.

Sanghyuk's stomach flips.

"Up," he forces out, determined to keep his voice steady, unaffected. "Now."

Donghyun squints at him. “You’re extra mean today.”

“Yeah, well, maybe—” Sanghyuk sucks in a deep breath as he tosses the blanket onto the floor, “—you shouldn’t have stayed up so late.”

At that, something shifts in Donghyun’s expression. A flicker of amusement, the barest hint of something smug curling at the corners of his mouth. “That’s a relief. I’d thought you’d end up pretending that last night was a product of shared hysteria.”

When he leaves the room, Sanghyuk makes sure to slam the door extra hard on his way out.

★

Sanghyuk makes sure to take the first seat in the row when they reach the practice room. Naturally, Dongmin takes the seat to his right, leaving Donghyun sulking in a corner. 

“How many hours are you behind on?” Sanghyuk asks Dongmin, and relishes in the way he immediately winces. “5? 10? More?”

Besides practicing on a work day, they’re also contractually obligated to put in a set number of streams in month. And while it’s not widely practiced anymore, it’s still the standard in the Chinese and Asia-Pacific regions.

Dongmin rubs the back of his neck, grimacing. "Eight," he admits, sounding pained. "I was gonna do a double session tonight, but I might die before I hit the quota at this rate."

“Eight’s not bad,” Sanghyuk says flatly, scrolling through his phone. “Myung Jaehyun’s probably going to end up pulling another 24-hour off at the end of the month.”

“Ah, dude!” Dongmin wails into his hands, and it’s almost like you can see the moment the bright idea pops up in his head. “Let’s just stream our trio queue today.”

Sanghyuk flicks his gaze up from his phone, unimpressed. “You just want free hours.”

“C’mon,” Dongmin pleads, “you really wouldn’t help your teammate of 4 years?”

“4 years and a half,” he corrects with an affected sniff.

“Exactly!”

Sanghyuk shakes his head to himself as he turns on his settings for the stream. “You don’t even remember the number of months we’ve been together and you want me to help you? No way.”

Dongmin stares at him incredulously as Sanghyuk promptly invests himself in two tasks: setting up his stream and ignoring his teammate (both of them). After a few minutes of what seems to be Dongmin talking to a wall, he starts whining and groaning and stamping his foot on the ground dramatically, which is exactly what Sanghyuk likes seeing. “Hyung, please , I’ll owe you one.”

“You already owe me one. From last time. And the time before that.”

“Yeah, but those don’t count,” Dongmin says quickly. “Those were different circumstances. This is life or death.”

“More like contract breach or not,” Sanghyuk mutters, but his fingers move to adjust his audio levels anyway. “You owe me 3 stream hours if I ever need someone to cover me on my account, got that?”

Dongmin claps his hands together like he’s just won a battle. “That’s the spirit! Let’s go, let’s go—”

“Wait,” Donghyun interjects, pushing himself off the couch from where he was lounging and waiting for his game to boot up. “Are we really streaming trio? I thought we were just gonna—”

Sanghyun doesn’t even spare a glance his way. They jump into Customs first and Donghyun makes a bunch of hurried clicks as he rushes to join their party. And even though it’s 10 am, Sanghyuk’s stream reaches its first hundred watchers in no time at all. “Are we playing seriously today or not?” he asks, turning around to look at Dongmin.

“When am I not serious, hyung?”

After double checking their ping and finding no problem with it, they return to the main lobby where they start to deliberate which mode to pick first.

Donghyun, brows furrowing, shifts his weight onto one foot. “If we’re doing comp, we should—”

“Dongmin, what agents are we running?” Sanghyuk interrupts again, dragging his mouse across the screen.

Donghyun huffs under his breath from the far side of the room, clearly catching on now.

Dongmin is, too, apparently. He’s staring at the side of Sanghyuk’s face like he’s digesting the entire situation. “Um. I don’t know, that depends on our team right?”

Donghyun, seemingly as undeterred as ever, speaks up again, fingers twisting the ring on his hand. “Then why not—”

“Dongmin, did you just update your overlays?” Sanghyuk cuts in. 

“Shit, I forgot,” Dongmin groans, running a hand through his hair. “I think my mic settings reset, too. Hyung, what’s your compressor set to?”

Sanghyuk finally looks away from his monitor, only to make direct eye contact with Dongmin, making sure to not let his eyes stray to the area behind Dongmin’s head. “-10 dB. Noise gate at -40.”

Dongmin hums, clicking through his settings as he quickly makes his final adjustments.

“Sanghyuk hyung,” Donghyun tries, tilting his head, “should I just set mine to match yours?”

Sanghyuk adjusts his headset.

Dongmin, trying to keep the peace in the room, spins his chair around to squint at Donghyun’s screen. “Yeah, yeah, just match his. We’ll tweak it later if it sounds weird.”

Sanghyuk starts the queue as the party leader, and as soon as they get matched into Ascent, some rando insta-locks Waylay. Groaning, Sanghyuk slumps back into his seat and relents, “I’ll fill.”

Dongmin ends up picking Clove just for fun, and Donghyun—

“Hyung, should I pick something fun too?” he asks into the room. He’s obviously addressing Sanghyuk—not just because he’d used honorifics, but because he’s turning away from his webcam to directly look in Sanghyuk’s direction. Dongmin, caught between the two, can only chuckle anxiously.

Sanghyuk doesn’t know how long he’s going to keep it going, just knows that there’s some residual annoyance from this morning when Donghyun had mentioned last night so nonchalantly. And some residual something-else from the way Donghyun’s lips had moved against his jaw so expertly. A muscle in his jaw jumps as he grits his teeth and flicks through the agent pool, deliberately ignoring the way Donghyun is still staring. 

The chat isn’t helping.

Sanghyuk considers turning it off as KillJoy gets locked by the other random they’ve gotten queued with. 20 seconds left.

Dongmin has switched up tactics—instead of playing pacifist, he’s actively decided to tune out the tension between his two teammates and is now reading and replying to comments about their new member and the upcoming tournament. Donghyun hovers over Sova. 

Then, so quickly Sanghyuk barely has time to brace himself, he hears the squeak of a chair against the tiles, the sound of footsteps. All of a sudden, a shadow falls over Sanghyuk’s desk as Donghyun finds him.

Sanghyuk doesn’t react fast enough. Donghyun’s hand lands over his, fingers warm and steady as they slot over his own on the mouse. His touch is light, barely there, but the weight of it makes something lock up tight in Sanghyuk’s chest.

Click.

Donghyun’s index finger is leaving chemical burns on his skin with the pressure it applies.

Jett locks in just as the timer runs out, the sharp confirmation sound ringing through the room like a taunt.

Sanghyuk feels the added weight on his chair, and before he can dismiss Donghyun, his chair is swiveled around a full 180 so he’s facing Donghyun. 

He leans in, planting both hands firmly on the armrests, effectively caging Sanghyuk in place. Sanghyuk’s stunned, frozen, and it’s one of those rare moments when your ear blocks every other noise out and he swears the time fucking skids to a slow stop. Donghyun lifts one hand to remove the left cup of Sanghyuk’s headset from his ear, the weight distribution shifting on his chair to lean to the side where Donghyun’s thick forearm is still pressing down.

His voice drops, low and smug, close enough that Sanghyuk swears he can feel the warmth of his breath against his skin.

“If you’re going to ignore me,” Donghyun murmurs, mouth curling at the edges, “at least pretend to be good at it.”

Sanghyuk’s pulse spikes. It’s all in his mouth, the taste of last night, all frantic and heavy and sweet again.

Behind them, Dongmin makes a noise like he just witnessed a jump scare. “Wait—hold on—when the hell did you guys get so close?!”

The chat, predictably, explodes.

[CHAT] WTF DID I JUST WITNESS???

[CHAT] NO ONE TOUCH ME RN

[CHAT] what does he MEAN by that

[CHAT] SANGHYUK OPPA ANSWER US

[CHAT] sanghyuk is so cooked actually this is our team for the next year bruh

Donghyun returns to his seat instantly after he’s said what he’s needed to, satisfied by the looks of the smile on his face like he’d accomplished the intended effect.

Sanghyuk reluctantly turns himself back to his monitor, but his eyes remain downcast as he violently picks at the piece of loose dead skin on his left thumb. His screen is a blur right now, the comments flooding in so quickly, he can’t even read any one of them properly. He doesn’t have to, anyway—he can already tell this is being clipped and reuploaded to all the fucking platforms. 

Meanwhile, Donghyun is already back at his chair and replying to non-Sanghyuk related comments like nothing happened. He readjusts his headset, laughs his light, airy, PR-laugh into the mic and says, “Yeah, I’m settling into the team just fine, don’t worry! I’m really excited about the off-season tourneys too… mhm!”

Sanghyuk can’t look up. His entire face is fucking sizzling, his jaw still tight. 

Donghyun is laughing again in the background as Sanghyuk desperately prays he’ll load into a red Cheater-Detector screen instantly so he doesn’t have to play this whole game out.

Unfortunately, no such luck.

Sanghyuk spends the entire game tilting and ends up going negative, the laughs in the chat flooding in as he stays stagnant at the very bottom of the scoreboard.

★

They have about a week to get their shit together again before the first off-season tournament—which will be international considering it’s open to Asia Pacific—and Jaehyun is not happy with the state of them when he returns. He keeps opening the VOD of the Ascent game (and the Lotus game after that. And the Icebox game after Lotus) and emphasizing that it’s a really bad sign for their star fragger to have swept the floor with his KDA on all three games (Sanghyuk wants to make it known it is to no fault of his own and is entirely Donghyun’s, but also has not figured out how to do this without implicating himself).

Woonhak, on the other hand, is purely interested in talking about the clips that their fans have spread like wildfire on Twitter and Reddit and Instagram and literally every ass crack on earth. He can’t go online without it being rubbed in his face 10 thousand times, can’t check his messages without one of his friends forwarding it to him to get the story straight (again, haha…).

Thankfully, Sungho only appears to sustain his mild curiosity and amusement before he’s locked back into his assistant coach role. He’s the only one Sanghyuk can count on to not contribute to the decline of his mental stability at present. He even seems to find the murderous intent on Sanghyuk to be cute.

Coach Autumn and Sungho have apparently been working overtime over the break (which certainly augments the feeling of guilt that’s been weighing heavily on his mind about spending those 10 days watching movies and feeding Donghyun and fucking making out with him) , and they’re going straight into an analysis of the some of the 5-man scrims and matches they’d played.

As he flips through the slides of the scrim footage with a clicker, Coach Autumn only has disappointment written all over his face. Sanghyuk can only find some gratitude in the fact that they’re not poised to discuss the three games they’d streamed yesterday.

“Look, I know I said to expect some downtime period as we adjust to Donghyun entering the team, and on record, you guys are winning quite a few scrims, but those are ascension teams.” He presses a button on the clicker that allows him to point out an early 5-stack hit they’d done on the A site in Lotus. “Do you guys see the problem here?” 

Sanghyuk stares at the screenshot, trying to jog his memory. He’d been on Neon in that game, Jaehyun on Omen, and Dongmin had gone with Cypher as he usually does on neutral maps for sentinels. Because Neon had her wall and Omen was already on main smokes, they’d opted for a double Initiator line up with Woonhak on Fade and Donghyun ended up opting for Skye.

When everyone stays quiet for a little too long, Jaehyun clicks his tongue and says, “Timing’s off.”

“Exactly. Thank you, Jaehyun,” Coach Autumn says, lacking all the enthusiasm as he pinches his nose bridge. 

The rest of them turn to Sungho for an explanation, who only sighs deeply as he steps closer to the board, pointing at sections of the picture. “Stair’s smoked off, your Neon wall is up, Sanghyuk, but do you see where Donghyun’s Skye is?” Without waiting for an answer. Sanghyuk taps the end of his pen impatiently on the board. “Behind you. And you’re on your sprint too, you know? What’s the use of the flash he’s going to pop if you’re not waiting for him to catch up to you first?”

“I—” Sanghyuk catches the look Jaehyun sends his way and lowers his voice into a mumble, “I thought he’d be closer.”

“And did you… check before sprinting in?”

Sanghyuk stares at the board like it holds the answer to life itself.

“Entry and taking initiative is important. But you’re also pushing as 5 while your enemy is on a half-buy round. You know they’re going to hedge their bets and camp close corners to get a burst shot on you. Or, well, you should.”

Coach Autumn exhales sharply. “And that’s the issue,” he says. “Donghyun isn’t blameless either, but when you’re the entry, you have to work with your initiator, not despite him.”

He clicks forward to the next frame, which shows Sanghyuk dashing into site alone, getting immediately deleted by an enemy playing off-angle behind the box. Donghyun’s Skye, meanwhile, is still a full step behind, just now winding up his flash.

Woonhak winces. “Yeah, that’s kinda tragic.”

Donghyun frowns. “Okay, but my routing wasn’t bad —”

“Your routing was fine,” Sungho interjects. “But the problem is awareness. You’re not tracking where your duelist is, and Sanghyuk isn’t tracking where you are.”

Coach Autumn flips to a new slide, this time a breakdown of key engagements they lost throughout the match. “Point is, your spacing is all over the place. Sanghyuk, your aggro is good, but you have to pull it in until at least one of your initiator’s in place. Preferably the one who can flash and check close corners for you. And Donghyun, you need to learn how to communicate. You can’t just assume he’s going to slow down for you. If you need your teammate to do something, you learn to make the call for that. Whether that be controlling their pace or asking for smokes, you can’t just assume you’re working individually anymore. This isn’t ranked. You’re a pro player now, and I expect you to drop some of those habits.”

Both of them nod, albeit reluctantly.

Jaehyun leans forward, fingers tapping against the table. “We have a week before the off-season tournament starts,” he reminds them. “The rest of us can adapt, but you two need to sort out your timing now .”

Coach Autumn shuts off the screen, crossing his arms. “Which is why, for the next few days, we’re running extra drills for initiator-duelist coordination.”

Sanghyuk throws his head back into his chair and groans at the ceiling.

Coach Autumn claps his hands together, effectively shutting down any further nonsense. “Save the attitude. First session starts in thirty. I want you two warmed up and in the server by then.”

Sanghyuk lets out a heavy sigh, rubbing his temple. “So much for an easy day.”

“You thought today would be easy?” Sungho snorts, gathering up the papers he’d been holding. “That’s on you, man.”

Dongmin, who has been mercifully quiet this whole time, finally speaks up, looking between Sanghyuk and Donghyun. “For real, though, if you guys figure this out, we’ll be so much cleaner in actual matches. We kind of need to make sure we don’t embarrass ourselves in the tournament.” Because taking Donghyun in was a gamble, and we don’t need to take the heat from the fans before the season starts, goes unsaid, but Sanghyuk hears it anyway.

★

Thirty minutes later, Sanghyuk and Donghyun are standing side by side in a custom server, their screens showing the familiar layout of Lotus. Coach Autumn and Sungho are in spectator mode, watching from an overhead view, while the rest of the team lounges nearby, pretending not to be entertained as they abandon their own practice in the name of entertainment.

Sanghyuk flexes his fingers against his keyboard, rolling his shoulders as he takes a deep breath. He hates drills. Not because he doesn’t see the value in them, but because they force him to slow down, to think about every movement in a way that feels unnatural when he’d fallen in love with tactical FPS games for the exact opposite reason. He lived for the rush, the thrill, the pleasure in knowing that he was keeping his team afloat on individual star power alone. So perhaps he understands how Donghyun feels being forced into a team for the first time, but he also doesn’t want to.

“Alright,” Coach Autumn’s voice crackles through the headset. “Same setup as before. Donghyun, you’re on Skye, Sanghyuk, you’re running Neon. Your goal is to clear and take A site together. Donghyun, you call the timing for the entry. Sanghyuk, you wait for the flash this time.”

The round starts.

Sanghyuk sprints toward A Main, but forces himself to stop just short of the entrance instead of dashing in immediately. Donghyun moves up beside him, lining up his flash.

“Throwing it now,” Donghyun calls. Sanghyuk ignores the tension in his hand when he hears Donghyun in his ear.

A bright burst of light explodes into the site.

Sanghyuk bolts forward, clearing the first corner. He swings right, tucks himself behind the box, then Donghyun turns another flash around the corner to check drop for him. 

“So far, so good,” Sungho comments. “Let’s try again.”

They repeat the drill. Again. And again.

At first, it’s awkward. Donghyun’s calls are a half-second too late, or Sanghyuk moves too early. But slowly, the rhythm starts to fall into place. Donghyun’s flashes become more precise, Sanghyuk’s timing sharpens, and the gap between them closes bit by bit.

After what feels like a million repetitions, Coach Autumn finally speaks. “Not bad.”

Which, from him, might as well be high praise.

“Holy shit,” Woonhak mutters from the side. “They’re actually working together.”

Jaehyun snorts. “Miracles do happen.”

Sanghyuk glares at them through his peripherals but says nothing. He doesn’t want to admit it, but things do feel a lot more natural now. There might be some value to be found in repetition after all, and it’s not his favorite thing to do, but looking at the smiles on his teammate’s faces, he thinks that it might be worth the effort.

Over the next 5 torturous hours, the other 3 get ushered back into their seats to play while Sungho oversees their entry tactics on the remaining sites in Lotus, then on Haven and Pearl.

When they figure out a way for Donghyun’s KAY/O to flash for Sanghyuk in B link while he’s at C, Sanghyuk, despite himself, turns to smile at Donghyun and say, “Nice one.”

Instead of his usual confident demeanor, Donghyun looks briefly startled, almost like a deer in headlights. Then, just as quickly, the shock gives way for something more Donghyun-like as his expression softens, growing pleased in a way that makes Sanghyuk’s toes curl in his shoes.

★

With Jaehyun back in the dorm, they don’t talk about it—doesn’t mean they don’t kiss about it.

Sanghyuk sometimes wonders if Coach Autumn would be proud that his duelist and initiator are building chemistry and synergy till ungodly hours of the night. He didn’t always know it was going to happen again—for 3 days after the stream incident, they didn't talk, not even when it was just the two of them in the room. But then one night, Donghyun had climbed into his bed while he knew Sanghyuk was still awake, his knees on either side of Sanghyuk’s waist. Then he leaned down and told Sanghyuk he could stop this if he wanted to.

Sanghyuk, very adamantly, rejected this suggestion.

And that was that.

It’d started slow at first, and Donghyun’s lips had been cold, but they were still soft and pillowy as he mouthed at Sanghyuk’s jaw, and then they didn’t stay cold for long.

Tonight, with Jaehyun across the hall in his own room, probably re-watching their VODs with the earphones plugged in, they can afford to be a little more careless with the noises they choose to not bite back when the other sinks their teeth into flesh and skin, careful to avoid the places of easy detection. They’re lucky it’s winter, because yesterday when Sanghyuk took a shower in the morning, he’d been surprised by how much of his abdomen is covered with fading bite marks and red spots where Donghyun had sucked.

Now, pressed chest-to-chest beneath the covers, Donghyun is half on top of him, weight pleasantly heavy. His lips drag lazily over Sanghyuk’s collarbone, lingering at the edge of his shirt as if debating whether to push the fabric aside.

Sanghyuk, growing impatient, tugs at the hem himself. “Are you gonna keep teasing, or—”

Donghyun cuts him off with a bite just above his collarbone. Not hard, but firm enough that Sanghyuk's breath stutters and he catches the memo to stop. 

“Don’t rush me,” Donghyun murmurs, voice still thick with sleep (Sanghyuk’d woken him up for this). “I’m savoring.”

Sanghyuk rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t push any further. He just lets his head tip back against the pillow, lets Donghyun do whatever it is he needs to do.

There’s something annoyingly self-satisfied about the way Donghyun’s lips move against his skin—like he knows he’s getting under Sanghyuk’s skin, like he enjoys it. His fingers trace light, fleeting patterns along Sanghyuk’s ribs, dipping under the hem of his shirt but never quite moving further. Testing. It’s always testing with him.

It’s not like Donghyun isn’t in a rush either. He somehow gets himself half-hard from looking at Sanghyuk change in the room alone, and has some fucking god-blessed refractory period he enjoys putting to good use. He just… enjoys playing with his food. They haven’t actually fucked yet—Sanghyuk drew his boundary early with this one (he’s still trying to convince himself that he doesn’t like younger guys) (also does not want to be Donghyun’s first time) (does not want to be anyone’s first time, in fact)—but they’ve pretty much done everything else the average religious couple thinks they won’t be condemned to hell for, minus the butt sex.

“Dude, my boner’s about to grow a beard from waiting.”

Donghyun laughs into his skin, and it’s so squeaky—exactly like a windshield wiper, he thinks—that Sanghyuk starts smiling so hard, his cheeks ache a little, too. “But you like it when I talk.”

Sanghyuk does not like it when Donghyun talks. Not like this. He likes it when Donghyun is talking filth into his ear, and that’s in a completely different ballpark. 

So instead of answering, he flips them over, pressing Donghyun back against the mattress. Donghyun makes a pleased noise, a quiet laugh slipping past his lips as he watches Sanghyuk settle between his legs.

“Oh?” he muses. “Taking charge tonight?”

Sanghyuk pulls Donghyun’s pants down as Donghyun lifts his hips up obligingly in a way that feels almost second nature to him now. This is dangerous, and Sanghyuk knows it too. But the things about having sex or semi-sex or whatever the fuck this is in silence is that it forces you to pick up on each other’s habits a lot quicker. When Sanghyuk stuffs his shirt into his mouth, Donghyun will deduce that he’s near, and he’ll slide their cocks together a little faster, a little rougher, and wrap his fingers around them a little tighter. And now, when Sanghyuk moves to the top and fingers Donghyun’s waistband, Donghyun will lift his hips like so and fix Sanghyuk with a lazy, easy smile of a man who knows he’s about to get blown.

“This isn’t a thing,” Sanghyuk reminds him, voice barely above a whisper, even as the pad of his thumb lightly traces the vein he knows he can find on the underside of Donghyun’s dick.

“Sure,” Donghyun agrees easily, almost like he’s humoring Sanghyuk (and Sanghyuk find that the easiest way to get Donghyun to become the world’s most agreeable person is to deny him of an orgasm while holding his cock in his hand.)

He keeps smiling and talking to Sanghyuk like that these days. Like he knows something Sanghyuk doesn’t. 

Sanghyuk should care more about that. Should care that Donghyun never actually argues with him about it, just lets him have the last word and keeps coming back anyway.

But right now, it’s easier to ignore it. To let Donghyun tug him back down and swallow whatever half-formed thought was about to leave his mouth. When he spits onto the tip of Donghyun’s dick, he watches Donghyun lick his lips like he can’t decide if he wants Sanghyuk kissing him or blowing him more. And—

As long as they’re just experimenting, then it doesn’t matter.

At least, that’s what Sanghyuk keeps telling himself.

★

Debuting a new member is always a whole ordeal. They have to do new team photoshoots, solo photoshoots, sit through interviews consecutively that end up lasting the whole day… find 10 different ways of saying the same thing. 

But on the morning that they arrive on set for Media, Donghyun is looking more sprightly, his laugh just a few decibels louder, his smile just a few premolars wider. It’s disturbing, but mainly because Sanghyuk doesn’t need to start keeping up with Donghyun’s teeth.

“Piss off,” he says when Donghyun sidles up next to him as they cross the huge parking lot to the building where everything is happening.

“You’re always a lot more unpleasant in the mornings than at nig—”

The later half of his sentence is effectively suspended with a quick jab of Sanghyuk’s elbow into his ribs, right into a spot Sanghyuk knows all too well because he’d been nibbling at the skin there just last night. Just because he’s somewhat agreeable to their mutual jerking off arrangement doesn’t mean he’s fine with Donghyun broadcasting it to the entire team. And Dongmin is hovering a little too closely the moment, just a few paces ahead, and if Sanghyuk were to let Dongmin, of all people, find out that he’s getting wrecked by Twitch-streamer-turned-Cinderalla, he was never going to be able to survive the embarrassment. Or the interrogation that would follow.

“Can you shut up?” he hisses, hiking his backup up a little further on his shoulders.

“I don’t know, hyung, can you be nicer?”

Sanghyuk mumbles a curse word and Donghyun barely tries to suppress his giggle with pressed lips. Still, with halfway left to go, Donghyun curls his fingers around the grab handle of Sanghyuk’s bag and lifts it up for the remainder of the walk, eliminating some of the weight from his back. He also shortens his strides, takes Sanghyuk’s into account, so they can walk side-by-side comfortably.

It should sting his pride a little, being cared for by a hoobae he’s been nothing but inhospitable and brusque to since his arrival, but Sanghyuk thinks he can indulge in this from time to time.

Being looked after, he thinks, is really not bad at all.

★

“Riwoo-ssi,” the interviewer calls, and Sanghyuk straightens his spine and his fingers freeze where they were toying with the plastic label of his water bottle. Coach Autumn and Sungho are standing behind the camera, anticipation pushing their eyebrows further up toward their hairline. Well. He glances up and tries not to squint. The set is too, too bright today—the kind of artificial lightning that’s tinged purple and makes him look way too pale on camera but will probably translate well in post-production. Their interviewer for the current slot, Yinsu, is flashing him a kind smile that reminds him he can afford to be a little nicer to these analysts who will be roasting his plays to hundreds of thousands of spectators a few months from now. “You’re what a lot of people would call a veteran in the Pro Valorant scene—” (Woonhak stifles a laugh when she says this, hears the ‘unc’ without Woonhak even having to open his mouth) “—so you’re obviously not a stranger to roster changes, or even org changes. Tell me, how has Donghyun’s arrival to T1 been like for you?”

Sanghyuk takes a second to appear like he’s thinking, even though Sungho’s already drilled all the answers into him on the car ride here this morning. “Well, Donghyun is a really valuable asset to the team, and we’re excited to see how all of our practices and effort translates on the real stage. I think… with roster changes, you can definitely expect the team’s macro play to change in style quite a lot, because it’s important to factor in what your members are good at. Donghyun’s presence has definitely helped us up a notch in our aggression.”

Donghyun is sitting in the chair behind him on a slightly more elevated platform, which means Sanghyuk can’t really gauge his reaction to the answer, but Donghyun, as usual, always finds a way to remind Sanghyuk he’s there.

He feels a feather-light touch graze the back of his neck first, then something a little more solid as Donghyun picks some lint from his hair and flicks it away.

Sanghyuk barely resists the urge to turn around and shoot him a look. Donghyun’s hand lingers for half a second too long before withdrawing, and it’s a good thing the camera isn’t catching his expression right now because he knows it’s bordering on exasperated.

Yinsu, perceptive as ever, doesn’t miss a beat. “Wow, it looks like you guys have already built up on some solid chemistry!”

Sanghyuk holds his mic up to his mouth to say, “We’re working on it,” at the same time Donghyun says, “I’d like to think so.”

Woonhak explodes into laughter and Jaehyun smiles awkwardly as he tries to smooth things over with some damage control. “Well, I wish they weren’t getting along so well. Sometimes I hear them still talking late into the hours of the morning—I can barely get any sleep in anymore.”

Yinsu’s eyes light up like she’s just been handed premium-grade gossip on a silver platter. “Oh?” she prompts, leaning in slightly. “Late-night strategy meetings?”

Sanghyuk tightens his grip on the mic. “Something like that,” he says, tone carefully neutral.

Donghyun places a warm hand on Sanghyuk’s shoulder, squeezing, testing. Sanghyuk emits a long, audible exhale through his nose that he prays his mic isn’t picking up too much on. 

“Sorry, Jaehyun hyung,” he apologizes with a voice that carries some kind of an easy confidence, the kind that makes audiences eat out of his hand. “Sanghyuk hyung’s kinda a legend in Valorant. I do think I spend too many nights keeping him up asking about his old matches.”

“Seems like you’ve been learning a lot from your more experienced teammates, then” Yinsu says good-naturedly, and Donghyun squeezes at his shoulder. Again. “And what about you, Riwoo-ssi? Anything you’ve learned from your new teammate so far?”

“Besides the fact that he doesn’t shut up?”

Dongmin coughs into his fist and Sungho not-so-subtly makes a slicing motion at his neck, eyes wide with warning.

He considers ignoring the threat of Sungho’s wrath for a moment. But he also doesn’t think he can deal with another 5-hour penalty of streaming this month so he decides to be a little sincere with his answer. “Donghyun’s a good player. From what I know, he also used to have a huge agent pool but he’s maintaining his focus on the Initiator role for the team, so I can only feel grateful that he’s as focused on the whole team’s success as the rest of us are.”

“Well, I’m sure we’re all looking forward to seeing that synergy on pro play soon,” Yinsu wraps up neatly, and moves on to questioning Jaehyun, who has to navigate the tricky questions on strategy without revealing too much about what they’ve prepared so far.

Sanghyuk lowers his mic with a quiet sigh at the same time Donghyun removes the hand on his shoulder.

For a second, it almost feels like losing something essential that was keeping him balanced the whole time.

★

They have an hour and a half for lunch while the rest of the team gets the space set up for the group introduction video shoot. Sanghyuk doesn’t really feel all that hungry so he sneaks out for a quick smoke, putting out the last third of it against the wall of the building because it’s so fucking cold outside.

When he ducks back into their holding room, most of the members are knocked out, lying in various spots around the room—Dongmin and Jaehyun are curled up on the couch and Woonhak is passed out on a yoga mat at the center of the room. Unfortunately for him, Donghyun seems to be the only person still awake.

Sanghyuk ignores the way Donghyun’s eyes perk up when he walks in, and makes for the small line of tables with refreshments set up.

As he studies his options on the table, Donghyun comes up to him and says, “You smell of smoke.”

“Stop sniffing me.” Sanghyuk grabs a paper cup and heads towards the two plastic coffee dispensers with Donghyun trailing closely behind like a puppy following its owner. 

“I already checked the freezer to see if they have red bull. They don’t,” Donghyun informs him like he already knows what Sanghyuk’s next move is.

It annoys Sanghyuk a little that he’s actively being perceived by people.

It annoys Sanghyuk even more that Donghyun goes around every venue they get dropped at like a sniffer dog, looking for Sanghyuk’s favorite drink.

Everything is getting on his nerves lately, but for the sake of the group, Sanghyuk decides to just ignore him. To anyone else, this would be a passive-aggressive social eviction from any situation. To Donghyun, apparently, it’s just another invitation for him to be a little shit—because the learning about each other goes both ways, and Donghyun has recently devised a foolproof plan to get Sanghyuk to stop ignoring him each time.

“Hyung,” he calls loudly, making Jaehyun stir in his sleep, “I saw this position on a video that I wanted to try with you. Do you wanna watch it  with me no—”

He spins around, the coffee sloshing in its cup as Sanghyuk hurriedly cups his hand to Donghyun’s mouth. 

“What is wrong with you,” he hisses. 

Donghyun wraps his fingers around Sanghyuk’s wrist, the tip of his middle finger and his thumb touching easily, and pulls it away from his mouth. “Why, hyung? Just wanted to show you a new off-angle on Bind, that’s all…”

Sanghyuk narrows his eyes. The innocent act is paper-thin, and they both know it. Donghyun's fingers are still wrapped around his wrist, grip loose but purposeful.

"Bind," Sanghyuk repeats flatly as he wrenches his wrist back with a lot more force than necessary. "Right."

Donghyun's smile is pure mischief. "What? Can't a teammate be interested in strategizing?"

“What do you want, Donghyun?” he asks, exasperated. He actually has to steady himself with a hand on the buffet table behind him as he sags in relief that everyone else is still either asleep or completely tuned out.

Donghyun shrugs, and Sanghyuk tries to not think about how well the team’s new jersey looks on his frame. He looks straight out of a fashion magazine catalog, and not some shoddy photoshoot they’ve booked to put up on the team’s website so they can milk their fans for merch money. Well, maybe fashion catalog is an exaggeration, but they’ve trimmed Donghyun’s eyebrows and put on a thin layer of makeup over his face today, drawing his features out even more, and you’ve gotta be a special kind of gorgeous to look this good in a fucking jersey.

“Do I need a reason to talk to you, hyung?”

Sanghyuk collapses into a couch that they’ve pushed up into a corner. The upholstery on this one is a dirty beige—the couches in this room are all mismatched in style and colors. Sanghyuk’s gotta give it to them. Whoever it is must’ve really not given a fuck about their job. As expected, Donghyun sits down next to him, but he’s perched on the edge like a bird about to take flight. He’s leaning forward, hands on either side of his thighs, as he turns around to look at Sanghyuk. It takes a moment for Sanghyuk to remember that he hasn’t replied yet.

“Yeah, well, small talk’s not my thing. You know that.” He takes a sip of his coffee and it’s lukewarm but at least not disgustingly room-temperature yet. The taste is thin and diluted, but it gives Sanghyuk’s brain a rest from overheating thinking about Donghyun to critique coffee at least.

“You’re never this mean around the rest…”

Sanghyuk’s grip tightens marginally around the paper cup, and when he looks down, it’s already starting to crumple, forming tiny spider webs on the paper. He wants to tell Donghyun it’s not true, that he’s equally as testy with the rest of the team even on a good day, but even Sanghyuk has a guilty conscience when it comes to lying. He sits back against the lumpy couch and looks away, sighing. “How do you want me to treat you, then?”

“Praise me more. Tell me I’m doing well,” Donghyun says, earnestly. God, he’s all up in Sanghyuk’s space now—it’s impossible to not look at him. But when Sanghyuk turns to face him, he’s caught off guard by just how close Donghyun is. Close enough to realize, with fleeting disappointment, that the makeup artist has decided to cover up the mole on Donghyun’s nose bridge with concealer. It’s gotta be one of Sanghyuk’s favorite things about Donghyun physically. And while Donghyun has Sanghyuk’s attention, however brief, he adds as an afterthought after releasing his bottom lip from his teeth, “Tell me I’m good enough for you. You don’t have to tell me that all the time—I wouldn’t want you to lie to me either… I just wanna feel like I’m doing something right.”

Sanghyuk waits for a long moment. Waits for the cutting remarks to come to his tongue, waits for his mind to come up with some kind of joking retort. But everything comes up short in the end.

He brushes his thumb across the crumpled part of his paper cup and nods.

“You’re… doing great, Donghyun-ah. You really are. Thanks for being on the team with us,” he says finally, and is not surprised that he means the words, but more so by how easily they come out after he’s made every effort to suppress them this whole time.

Donghyun goes still for a second, a little speechless, before he sits up slowly like a plant being brought back to life in the sun. He’s smiling, beaming, his cheeks flush against his pale skin and dark hair.

“Thanks, hyung. I really like it when you’re nice to me,” he confesses sheepishly, and Sanghyuk doesn’t know why, but it makes his heart go all wobbly and cramped.

★

Game day hits Sanghyuk hard. It shouldn’t feel as nerve-wracking as it does, waiting backstage for their walk-ins to happen. But wedged between Donghyun, who’s a lot more settled and quiet than he usually is, and Jaehyun, who can’t stop spouting off nonsense to himself as he tries his hardest to remember all the reminders Sungho gave him right before they got ushered here, Sanghyuk can only channel all of his energy into not breaking down and melting into a puddle of nerves on the floor.

It’s just an off-season tourney , he reminds himself. It is officially part of Riot’s postseason circuit, but it’s basically a show-match more than it is anything else. And besides, only 4 teams have been invited to join, including T1. Aside from them, there’s GenG, the only other South Korean team, and the last two spots are occupied by the Chinese teams, EDG and Trace. And Trace is the only org who’s sent their Team A. EDG has 3 staple members on the roster, but the other two are newbies from their academy team and GenG, much like them, is participating to allow their new members to get a better feel of playing with each other in a competitive environment.

Sanghyuk knows all this. Logically, he understands that the stakes aren’t nearly as high as they feel. But standing here, hearing the muffled roar of the crowd just beyond the curtain, feeling the weight of his jersey like armor and chains all at once—his body refuses to believe it.

Donghyun shifts beside him, bumping his shoulders with Sanghyuk. “Breathe, hyung,” he says, low enough that only Sanghyuk can hear. It’s the second time that he’s said it today, and Sanghyuk wants to be annoyed, but mostly he just exhales, long and slow, as he wrings out his sweaty palms and hopes the air gets rid of the sweat.

Across from them, Woonhak is stretching, rolling his wrists, bouncing slightly on his heels. Sungho is talking quietly to their coach, nodding along to last-minute instructions. Jaehyun has finally stopped muttering to himself, now just standing there with his eyes closed, probably meditating or visualizing a win.

Dongmin catches his eye in the dark from the very end of the line and flashes a thumbs up to ask if Sanghyuk’s all good. He nods so Dongmin doesn’t worry too much, but he is very much shaking his head internally.

A staff emerges from the side door and gives them a two minute warning.

Donghyun brushes his knuckles against Sanghyuk’s hand, drawing his attention back. “Nervous?”

“No,” Sanghyuk says immediately, so quickly that it fishes a laugh from himself at the blatant lie, too.

“You’re such a liar.”

“It’s just a show match,” Sanghyuk swallows, flexing his fingers, attempting to summon even a fraction of the confidence Donghyun is wearing now.

“Still,” Donghyun insists, “it’s the first time I’m playing together with you in an official setting. Feels kinda like a big deal, doesn’t it? It is to me.”

He knows Donghyun means well, but fuck, does it make his knees wobble when he hears that. He sucks in a shallow breath and leans against the plywood wall they’ve set up backstage to separate the space into different areas, careful not to fully lean into it. It hits him like a bag of rocks to the head that that’s exactly why he’s being run through with anxiety. It’s not just the match or the uncertainty that Donghyun brings to the table by being here—it’s everything it represents.

It’s been a long time since Sanghyuk had to prove himself. He’s T1’s Sanghyuk, perhaps one of the actual veterans who’s been around since the dawn of the game. It’s a name that has been synonymous with success for many years, and despite how the titles evade him, he’s always been known to be his team’s saving grace.

Today, a thought creeps in, insidious and sharp: what if I’m not as good as I used to be?

When you’re up against other established teams, you’ve met them in scrims so many times before that it hardly feels any different on stage after you’ve gotten into the flowstate and rhythm of the competition. For the tournament today, a quick one held over a single weekend, he’ll be going up against rookies and newbies, all of whom have made their seats because of one reason alone: their org believes them to be the future of their teams.

The thought twists something deep in Sanghyuk’s chest.

It’s not like he hasn’t been here before—watching younger players rise up, getting touted as the next big thing, the next prodigy, the future of the game. But something about today makes it feel different. Maybe it’s because he’s playing alongside someone new, someone whose career is only just beginning while his own is weighed down by the years behind him.

Or maybe it’s because, for the first time, he wonders if he’s the one that people are watching, not as a dominant force but as a question mark. As if they’re waiting to see whether he still belongs here at all.

A cold sweat breaks out at the back of his neck. He swallows past it, watching as a staff member gestures for them to line up. Their walk-in is happening now.

Donghyun nudges him one last time, voice light. “Don’t overthink it, hyung. Let’s just play our game.”

He says it so easily. Like he doesn’t understand the pressure, like he doesn’t feel it in the way Sanghyuk does. But maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe Sanghyuk needs someone who isn’t tangled up in their own head the way he is.

Just play our game.

He exhales, long and steady. And then, as the announcer calls their names and the lights flash bright, he steps forward into the arena on his homeground.

The first map against EDG is Lotus, and they’re starting on the attacker side. The spike is with Woonhak, who’s playing Breach and will want to get an orb advantage for his ultimate early on.

“3 in C long, 2 lurk in B, got that?” Jaehyun reminds them. “We’ll play end game in B, but draw noise in C first—if they find Dongmin and Woonhak, we rotate through the B door and catch them in a choke.”

Sanghyuk tightens his grip on his mouse, trying to shake off the foreign feeling in his guts. He flicks his eyes over to the minimap as the buy phase ticks down, committing their plan to memory.

Make noise, rotate, collapse.

Jaehyun’s voice comes through the comms, steady as ever. “Sanghyuk, you lead the charge in C, okay? I need Donghyun to short flash around the corner. I’ll smoke off their platform so you can count on them hiding around the bend.”

Sanghyuk nervously hovers around the pulsing blue barrier, pressing his fingers against the movement keys, his heart picking up in pace.

The last three seconds trickle away and Sanghyuk sprints out of their spawn, sliding into C with a crackle of electricity at his heels. Once Sanghyuk’s collected his orb with no problem, Donghyun runs ahead with a Guiding Light in his hand. The second they near the first choke, Donghyun pops it. The flash goes off with a burst of sound that tells them there are enemies blinded in C. When Sanghyuk takes a second to check the minimap, he sees that Woonhak and Dongmin are already sneaking their way into B with no trouble so far.

Donghyun’s dog runs in and spots the enemy Omen hugging the back wall of the site. 

“They’re rotating!” Woonhak calls into their ears, and Dongmin draws first blood on the last enemy fleeing to C from B.

“Fall back,” Jaehyun calls. They cut through the B door like a knife, Sanghyuk dashing ahead of his teammates. Dongmin has already taken control in heaven so Sanghyuk heads towards C link to watch the rotations instead. Woonhak makes for quick plant as the rest of them spread out and arrange themselves into crossfires. 

When EDG starts to scramble and rotate back into B for their retake, two of them attempt to overwhelm Dongmin in heaven—who claims one life but is traded immediately. 4v3 is still a number advantage in their favor, so he really can’t complain.

Sanghyuk exhales, fingers steadying over his keys. The jitters are gone now, replaced by something sharper.

A split second after Dongmin goes down, Sanghyuk hears the sound of footsteps rushing in from C link. He flicks his crosshair toward the entrance and fires a burst of bullets, catching their Jett mid-dash. The kill feed lights up with his name, and a surge of adrenaline pushes back any lingering doubt.

"Two left," Jaehyun reminds them, his voice calm. "Play time."

The spike timer ticks down. Woonhak lets out a stun toward CT, catching their Sova before he can send a recon dart. Sanghyuk dashes in to capitalize, landing a clean shot before sliding out to avoid the trade.

"Last guy's stuck in main," Donghyun reports.

Jaehyun swings wide, his phantom spitting bullets, but the enemy Omen catches him in a prefire.

3v1. No need to force anything.

"Don't peek," Woonhak warns. "We win off time."

Sanghyuk smirks. "Nah, I got this."

The moment he sees a shadow shift past the pillar, he snaps his aim and fires. A clean headshot. Round won.

From there, the rest of Lotus is theirs.

Their early momentum carries them through the attack half, securing an 8-4 lead before the side switch. Jaehyun’s Omen calls are as sharp as ever, and Donghyun’s flashes catch EDG off guard more often than not. The synergy between them builds with every round—Sanghyuk finds himself instinctively playing off Donghyun’s initiations, zipping through the gaps he creates like a well-oiled machine.

On defense, Dongmin’s Cypher locks down the flanks, feeding them crucial information while Woonhak’s stuns and aftershocks make retakes a nightmare for a weakened EDG without their two main star players. Dongmin pulls off a clutch 1v4 in round 17, much to raucous celebration from Woonhak, breaking their opponents’ morale, and by round 20, they seal the map with a decisive 13-7 victory.

As the final scoreboard flashes on their screens, confirming their first map win, Sanghyuk exhales.

The moment they pull off their headsets, Woonhak launches himself at Dongmin, throwing his hands up with a victorious yell. “Dongmin hyung, you’re fucking crazy! A 1v4 on a guardian?”

Dongmin, ever composed, just brings his shoulders up in a shrug but Sanghyuk can tell from the smirk tugging at his lips that he’s proud of it, too. As Sanghyuk falls into step next to Dongmin, standing on his tiptoes to run his fingers through Dongmin’s hair, leaving it messier than before.

“You did well, Dongmin-ah.”

“Don’t overheat guys, don’t overheat. There’s two maps left, okay?” Jaehyun keeps reminding them as they head to the holding room for a breather before the next map—Haven, known to be one of EDG’s best maps.

Sanghyuk rolls his shoulders, stretching out the tension. His heartbeat is still coming down from the high of the match, but the feeling of that clean first win settles comfortably in his chest. They played well.

As they sip on water and review their plays, Donghyun sits quietly beside him, brows slightly furrowed. He’s spinning his ring around his finger—a nervous habit Sanghyuk has started picking up on.

“You good?” Sanghyuk nudges him lightly.

Donghyun startles slightly, then forces a smile. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

Sanghyuk doesn’t push, but something about the way Donghyun’s fingers keep twitching makes him take mental note.

Haven is a different beast completely.

EDG fights back with a vengeance, their new duelist punishing every mistimed peek and hesitation. Their attack half is rough—Sanghyuk finds himself trading blows constantly, but they still end up trailing a pathetic 4-8 by halftime.

Then, on defense, the pressure mounts.

Donghyun hesitates on an early flash in round 15, second-guessing himself, and they get ambushed for it. Then, in round 18, he whiffs a crucial play in garage, and EDG snowballs into site control, pouring into C site with Woonhak left isolated and pushed back into CT.

Sanghyuk hears the sharp breath Donghyun takes after the round loss. He doesn’t say anything, but the way his shoulders tense says enough.

Jaehyun, ever steady, speaks up over comms. “We’re still in this. Just take it one round at a time.”

And they do.

Woonhak pulls off a heroic retake with a perfectly timed Rolling Thunder, breaking EDG’s rhythm. Dongmin’s Killjoy locks down A, denying any attempts at a site take. Sanghyuk finds himself pushing forward, taking more initiative, covering for Donghyun when needed—but never overstepping. Just enough to remind him he’s not alone. Whenever they take their positions before the round starts, Sanghyuk will voice his willingness to defend with Donghyun. 

It’s grueling, but by round 26, they clutch out a 13-11 win.

“Nice one, boys!” Jaehyun yells into their ears as Sanghyuk lets the exhaustion hit him all at once. 

As the victory screen flashes across their monitors, Sanghyuk lets out a long breath, feeling the weight of the match settle into his limbs, his over-tense wrist. His fingers tremble slightly, adrenaline still coursing through him, but it’s nothing compared to the relief flooding his chest. They pulled through.

Beside him, Donghyun slumps back in his chair, letting out a breathy chuckle—somewhere between tired and overwhelmed. His hands hover over his keyboard for a second before he lifts one, hesitating.

Sanghyuk feels the movement before he sees it. Donghyun’s fingers ghost over his hair, uncertain at first, then firm with intent. He rakes his hand through Sanghyuk’s hand in a careless, affectionate gesture, leaving it sticking up in odd directions before he retrieves it quickly, like he’s second-guessing himself again.

“Thanks, hyung,” Donghyun says softly, voice barely carrying over the noise of their team celebrating in the background.

Sanghyuk blinks, caught off guard. He tilts his head, eyes flicking to Donghyun’s face—he’s looking down, fiddling with his ring again, but there’s a small, genuine smile tugging at his lips.

Oh no.

Time stops. The crowds suddenly quiet, drowned in the chaos of blood rushing into Sanghyuk’s ears

Donghyun’s smile isn’t big, isn’t loud—it’s small, barely there, but it changes everything. It makes his dimples appear, deepening in a way that softens the sharp lines of his face, smoothing out the tension that’s been sitting in his expression all night. His eyes smile, too, crinkling just slightly at the corners, like he’s not used to holding onto happiness for too long but lets himself have this moment anyway. He’s still young, they both are, but like this, with the weight of the match momentarily lifted from his shoulders, he looks younger. Lighter. Like something about him has unraveled, even if just for this one second that seems to have been paused for the two of them.

Sanghyuk wants to say something. Something easy, something sharp-edged and familiar. Maybe a joke about how Donghyun’s attempt at ruffling his hair was downright pathetic—half-hearted at best, like he was afraid of committing to the motion. Maybe he should tell him to try again, properly this time.

But the words don’t come.

Instead, there’s a slow, creeping feeling winding itself around his ribs, tightening until his breath feels just a little too shallow.

Donghyun isn’t even looking at him anymore, eyes still cast downward, spinning his ring around his finger in that nervous little habit Sanghyuk has grown used to noticing. But the warmth of his hand lingers, the weight of the gesture sinking in belatedly, because he still feels the phantom touch of Donghyun’s hand in his hair.

Sanghyuk’s throat bobs violently as he tries swallowing, only to have his throat well up and get choked up with even more spit. He looks away, but the feeling doesn’t leave. He clenches his fists, but they do no damage.

Everything else around them comes to a stop, secondary to the quiet realization creeping up on him like an inevitability.

He tries smoothing his hair down, but all it does is remind him of the way Donghyun’s fingers had been there just moments before. He drops it back into his lap.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Touching your hair.” Donghyun plays with the cord of his headset. “You looked like you wanted me to apologize.”

Their team starts moving, Sungho coming in to take the group photo with the rest of them, the staff giving them pats on the back, already talking about post-match rundowns. Jaehyun taps Sanghyuk’s chair and jerks a thumb towards the exit. “Let’s go.”

They waved and bowed to the fans who’d come to cheer on them as they were practically escorted from the stage. Just like that, the moment they’d worked so hard for was over in minutes.

★

They get let off the hook after a debrief with the coaching team. Donghyun is pointed out in particular because of how passive he’d been with his play today, though that was to be expected with his debut performance so Coach Autumn doesn’t stay on the topic for too long.

The schedule starts at the crack ass of dawn tomorrow, so they get sent home early after a quick team dinner at a family-owned Chinese place that kept refilling Donghyun’s bowl of jiaozi on the house. Sanghyuk would never play up his cuteness in exchange for more food he can just pay for, but it’s definitely amusing to watch Donghyun pout and put his hands together for “just 1 more!” between bites of his jjajangmyeon.

At night, Sanghyuk walks into the room after his shower, pausing at the doorway while he rubs a towel over his damp hair. Donghyun is already curled up on top of the covers, limbs slack in the heavy sprawl of his deep sleep. His headset is still around his neck, being pressed into the mattress, one cup smushed into his shoulder. 

Sanghyuk sighs. Guess this is his problem to deal with now.

He steps forward, setting his towel aside before crouching next to the bed. He eases the phone out of Donghyun’s grip first, careful not to wake him, and places it on the nightstand to charge. He moves onto the headset next, carefully turning it around Donghyun’s neck to lift it off and keep in his top drawer.

Donghyun stirs slightly, mumbling something incoherent.

The next part is a little tricky. For maybe 6 or 7 minutes, Sanghyuk painstakingly eases the covers out from under Donghyun, who’s practically dead weight as he sleeps through it all unperturbed, but eventually he manages to awkwardly manoeuvre Donghyun enough to tug the blanket up over his shoulders. Sanghyuk doesn’t know what’s changed today, but he suddenly finds enough tenderness for Donghyun to tuck the covers neatly around his body so he won’t suffer from any soreness tomorrow.

As he smooths it out, Donghyun shifts again. His eyebrows pinch together, his lips part, his voice already hoarse. “...Hyung?”

His pulse is jumping in his throat. There’s still a hand in his hair, scratching against his scalp just so, a voice in his ear thanking him. 

He stays where he is on the edge of the bed, fingers still curled into the blankets, watching the slow rise and fall of Donghyun’s chest so he has something to look at.

“Go to sleep, Donghyun-ah.”

Donghyun hums something in response, soft and barely there. His lashes flutter once, twice, but he doesn’t open his eyes again.

Sanghyuk waits a few more seconds just to be sure, watching as Donghyun’s eyebrows unknit themselves as he slips back into a dream. He wants to make a move for his own bed, catch some sleep himself, but for whatever reason, his limbs don’t feel like being cooperative today.

Instead, he stays. Just for a little longer.

Donghyun’s breaths are deep and slow in the way that only comes when someone has truly, completely, fallen asleep. Before Sanghyuk can stop himself, he reaches a hand out to push Donghyun’s hair back from his face.

“You did well today, Donghyun-ah,” he says into the quiet of the room, thinking that one day, he’ll actually be able to say it just as easily when daylight shines over them. “Sweet dreams.”

He moves carefully, turning off the bedside lamp before making his way to his own bed. As soon as his head hits the pillow, he forces himself to shut his eyes, to will his mind into blankness.

But long after he’s turned over, back facing Donghyun, sleep doesn’t come as easily as he thought it would.

★

They meet GenG in the finals because Trace Esports predictably gets eliminated 2-0 in yesterday’s matches.

Sanghyuk skillfully dodges all his teammates in the morning on account that he’s not feeling well (he really isn’t—his wrist is still feeling a little too strained and tight and weird but he doesn’t think it’s worth getting checked out until after the match) and when they arrive at the venue, Sanghyuk just drops his bags off in the holding room and immediately goes out to smoke. Donghyun doesn’t follow him today. No one seems all that interested in holding a conversation when there’s still so much on the line.

Even Sungho accosts him briefly with nothing but a disappointed stare at the pack of cigs in his hands before letting him go without a word.

T3xture and Karon are smoking outside, too, and they chat about everything except for their upcoming match.

Sanghyuk’s squatting as he exhales a slow drag, watching the faint white plume curl in the morning air. It’s more of a ritual than a habit. Something he does to clear his head and keep his hands occupied with something when they feel too restless.

“So,” Karon begins. It’s after a pause in the stream of conversation and judging by how shark-like his smile looks, Sanghyuk already knows where this is going. “How’s the new teammate?”

“Champions material,” he answers easily, just because he knows it’s going to piss them off.

T3xture lets out a low whistle and laughs. “Shit, guess someone’s finally going to give us a run for our money in the coming season.”

“Don’t people already say your Masters win was a fluke anyway?” Sanghyuk asks lazily. T3xture blows the smoke from his next drag right into Sanghyuk’s face. Sanghyuk weaves a hand through it, unimpressed, but it definitely gives him something to smile about, too. Karon barks out a laugh and jabs T3xture in the arm.

It’s nice to see that they’re getting along. Karon got plundered from DRX just 2 months ago right after he’d announced his free agent status so just slightly earlier than Donghyun’s arrival to T1. Though, if he gives it a second thought, people might just think him and Donghyun have a better relationship if they knew about the late night blowing and handjobs they get up to.

He holds in the next drag for an even long moment, letting the smoke sit heavy in his lungs. Not for the first time, Sanghyuk gets to thinking about whether any of this is helping with his nerves at all. He turns the cigarette in his hand, watching the embers glow and flicker. It’s not exactly normal for him to get this shaken up with nerves before a match—at least, not since years ago.

Karon inches closer and squats beside him, too. “So you two get along really well?”

Sanghyuk flicks the ash off his end of the cigarette. “Is our team bonding really that interesting of a topic to you guys?”

“Yeah. Always fun watching T1 eat itself inside out. Didn’t the last guy only last a week or something like that?”

Sanghyuk smirks to himself as he remembers the day that poor excuse of a sentinel got fired. “Less than.”

“So if this twenty-one guy—”

“Leehan.”

“—Okay, Leehan. If this Leehan guy has survived this long, does that mean he's got some kind of dirt on you guys, or is he just unreasonably good at dealing with your bullshit?" Karon asks, tilting his head.

Sanghyuk hums. “I think both.”

T3xture snorts, taking one last inhale before chucking his cigarette into a nearby trash can. "Man, I almost feel bad for him. Almost."

“He’ll be fine,” Sanghyuk says, closing his eyes as he thinks about not thinking about it.

“Damn, you’re really vouching for this kid, huh?” Karon asks him, sounding amused.

“You’ll see for yourself in a few hours.”

"Right, right. Guess we’ll have to," Karon says, standing up and stretching his arms above his head. "Try not to choke, alright?"

T3xture grins, already stepping back toward the entrance. "Or do. Makes our job easier. Break a wrist!” he calls over his shoulder as the GenG members walk back into the building.

“Already have,” he mutters, and it’s really more for himself than anyone else. There’s still a dull ache in his wrist—not sharp or anything, but it spikes and pulses at the weirdest times. He can’t find a pattern in the sudden, uncomfortable tightening of the muscles there at all, not can he get rid of it no matter how much he rolls and flexes his wrist. He’s lucky it’s in his left hand and not his right, or it’d make clicking heads in game a lot harder than it should be, considering his aim relies so heavily on his ability to flick. 

He puts out the butt of the cigarette, throws it away, and just lingers by the trash can for a few more seconds, just to delay whatever is waiting for him inside.

“You okay, hyung?”

Sanghyuk holds Donghyun’s stare for a few seconds before collapsing into the dirty beige couch (he’s grown some kind of affection for the way it’s all lumpy—has its own kind of charm). “You worried about me?”

Donghyun doesn’t blink, doesn’t budge. “Yeah.”

Sanghyuk can’t bring himself to meet Donghyun’s eyes, but when he plops himself down on the sofa next to Sanghyuk, silently, not asking for anything more than his company in that moment, Sanghyuk thinks that maybe he finds it all a little precious and meaningful to him, too.

★

It’s not a major event by any means, so the finals is still a BO3, or best-of-three, format. The stage is set for them, lights cutting through the dimmed arena as the teams make their entrances to a crowd’s worth of home-ground fans cheering their names, their blinking lightsticks and banners in the air,

Sanghyuk doesn’t think he remembers how he walked onto the stage, how he took his place, how he managed to lock in his agent for the first fight on Lotus. GenG had won their Lotus game against Trace, too, so clearly they were feeling confident enough to take T1 on.

The pistol round is bloodbath and Jaehyun goes down almost immediately, which means they lose smokes for the rest of the round. It’s not just Sanghyuk who’s feeling jittery—Woonhak is less talkative today, and Donghyun is forgetting to make calls for the team on the timings of his flashes. Sanghyuk tries to keep it together for the sake of the team, getting aggressive and isolating his fights. He gets clean double kill in A, shutting down GenG’s initial push into rubble, but T3xture trades him immediately, and the round slips through his fingers in the post-plant.

From then on, it’s a slugfest. Every round is fought tooth and nail, trades coming in quick succession, no one willing to give an inch. The commentators have always noted that South Korean teams have a very distinctive pattern and favored tactics to their plays, and Sanghyuk is seeing how true it is today. When Sanghyuk makes aggressive movement plays to take a good position early game, T3xture answers with his own aggression. 

It’s 12-11, match point for GenG, when T1 finally manages to claw back in with some control. A risky force-buy pays off, and Dongmin, their miracle player at this point, pulls off a ridiculous 1v3 clutch on half shields and secures overtime for them, losing GenG whatever economical advantage they were holding over T1 for the past 4 rounds. The crowd erupts as Sanghyuk exhales, realizing he’s been holding his breath.

They scrape by in OT, but just barely. 14-12, first map to T1.

Ascent is a much sadder story for T1 fans. Sanghyuk only manages to get himself an operator 1 time in the game, because the rest of it was spent in an economy slug because they kept losing rounds they shouldn’t.

They’d chosen to go with a weird comp today, to throw Geng off a little, and perhaps that was their first mistake, because Dongmin’s on Deadlock like he’s playing with only one hand. Sanghyuk manages to run out of a few dicey situations with his Yoru teleports, but it’s not enough to stop GenG’s blade from coming down on their necks, slicing clean through with a methodological and fast shut down.

GenG takes Ascent in an easy 13-5 and the whole team retreats to their holding room in a weighted silence.

When they come back onto stage, it’s time to end the decider on Icebox. Sanghyuk doesn’t think the ache was that unbearable on the first map, but he was also riding on the adrenaline of winning rounds and individual fights. The doubts started creeping into the edge of his mind on Ascent, and they’re only amplifying now, in his head, as they start the first attacking half with his wrist feeling like lead.

He rolls his wrists, flexes his fingers, but the pain doesn’t get better—only worse.

Pistol round sees a frantic, desperate brawl on B site where he dies almost immediately at yellow and is almost relieved to lean back into his chair for a moment’s rest. 

The momentum of winning pistol round takes them to 3-0 on the scoreboard before GenG starts fighting back on the rifle rounds. And Sanghyuk keeps missing. He’s missing the timings on his own Yoru flashes, missing shots he’s never missed, missing the split-second calculations and instincts that he can usually count on on getting him out of fights unscathed. He teleports into fights and whiffs the first shots, and the next thing he knows, he’s watching his own body fall to the ground before he’s stuck watching another member’s POV.

He isn’t putting anything on the board, and Sanghyuk doesn’t even know what he should be worried more about—the soul-eating realization that their team is playing with one less member, or the fact that there is something severely wrong with his wrist.

They get pulled into an early timeout when the scoreline hits 3-5 where Autumn and Sungho take turns speaking into the mic, telling Sanghyuk everything he’s doing wrong that he’s already catalogued in his mind. He know s he’s not performing, but what use is there in bringing his wrist up now? He can’t send the rest of the team into a frenzied panic state when they should be focusing on their own plays right now. 

“Sanghyuk, just camp in off-angles, I’ll smoke for you in A,” Jaehyun tells him right before Round 9 kicks off, and Sanghyuk doesn’t mention how he can hear the strain in their IGL’s voice.

They run default for the next few rounds, trying to play for picks instead of brute-forcing site control. Jaehyun’s smokes let Sanghyuk hold an off-angle on A pipes, just like he said, and for a brief moment, he thinks he might be useful this way—until T3xture wide swings him on timing and deletes him before he even gets a shot off. 3-6. He squeezes his eyes shut and holds his wrist with his other hand, rubbing at the muscles there, desperately wishing that he’d somehow find the spot that’s at the root of his discomfort.

Woonhak keeps them alive with his Chamber. He takes space with Dongmin, fragging where Sanghyuk fails to do the same. 

When they go into halftime 4 to 8, Sanghyuk finds some comfort in the fact that swapping to defense will at least offer Sanghyuk a break from forcing plays, from the pressure of entering with a body that isn’t responding fast enough.

But when they get pulled into their last timeout and Sungho asks into the mic, “What’s wrong, Sanghyuk?” and he didn’t have an answer for them, he genuinely feels like breaking down on the stage.

There’s silence on the line as everyone either waits for his reply or just don’t know what to say to rectify the situation. Then, Donghyun just exhales and says, “It’s okay, I’ll hold crossfires with hyung so we can play off of each other.”

The minimap actually blurs for a second as his eyes well up with tears. He’s staring at the familiar layout of Icebox that he knows like the back of his hand, the spots he would normally push, the timings he knows by heart. But his body isn’t cooperating today and no amount of caffeine he chugs will fix the consistent ache in his wrist now that throbs in time with his heartbeat. There’s no crawling his way out of whatever hell he’s woken up in today. He can’t be the playmaker if he can’t even play. All he can do is listen.

5-8 turns into 6-8 when Woonhak shuts down a mid push with the cleanest operator shots Sanghyuk has seen all game. 6-8 becomes 7-8 when Donghyun gets an aggressive pop flash onto three members of GenG trying to break onto B from mid tubes. They’re still in this, as long as Sanghyuk tucks himself away in back sites where he can still support with his flashes where necessary. 

He breathes through the pain, clears flank with his dimensional drift, tries his hardest to stay alive. When the pain spreads to a point at his elbow, Sanghyuk can only force himself to move , if only to get the game over as quickly as they can.

When GenG puts them all in a timeout at 11-10, they spend the whole of the 45 seconds shouting encouragements to one another. Coach Autumn is telling them they just have to keep things up, but the white noise of the arena, the weight of the stage lights, the low humming of the uncertainties in his own head all blurs together as he tries to breathe through it. 

It’s a frantic last round, bodies dropping left and right, trades coming in fast, the kill feed flashing red and yellow in the corner of his screen. Sanghyuk’s whole world narrows to the crosshair, to the sound of footsteps, to the sting in his wrist as his fingers move over the keybinds that should be second nature to him by this point.

And then it’s over.

T1 takes the decider 13-10.

There’s a second of complete, stunned silence before the stage erupts. Woonhak throws his headset onto the table as he makes a gesture at the crowd to amp up their screaming. Sanghyuk lets his head drop forward, breath rushing out of him all at once, his hand falling limply from his keyboard. The pain is unbearable now, but it doesn’t matter. They did it.

In his peripheral vision, he briefly registers Dongmin getting reluctantly pulled into a group hug as Woonhak crashes into him and Jaehyun. Sungho is laughing into their ears, telling them they did well, but Sanghyuk still can’t move, still caught in the relief that his performance today didn’t cost them their first win since the roster changes.

And then Donghyun is in front of him, crouching down, reaching out, his round eyes wide with concern. His fingers brush lightly over Sanghyuk’s hair before they fall onto his shoulder.

Donghyun doesn’t say anything, just watches Sanghyuk for a beat before his grip tightens, firm and grounding and real. And then he’s pulling Sanghyuk up, straight into a hug that’s warmer than Sanghyuk thinks he deserves after nearly ruining Donghyun’s debut game.

Sanghyuk allows himself to lean into it, his nose buried in the crook of Donghyun’s neck where he picks up on a hint of the cologne that takes him back to just this morning when Donghyun’d put it on in their room. He wants to be anywhere but here, and Donghyun lets him.

When they finally pull apart, there’s confetti in the air, gold and silver catching in their hair. Donghyun looks at him, eyes searching, and asks, softly, “Why are you crying?”

Sanghyuk blinks rapidly, and realizes belatedly that there are indeed tears caught in his lashes. His cheeks are damp, this throat squeezing the way it does whenever Sanghyuk is caught in a panic, and he doesn’t know if it’s from the pain in his wrist or the relief that Donghyun is still here, regarding him with a kind of tenderness that almost feels vindictive.

★

They don’t talk about it until they’re back in their rooms, getting ready to sleep.

When Donghyun turns off the lights and instead of going back to his bed, heads towards Sanghyuk’s, he can only sigh and say, “Not today, Donghyun-ah. I’m tired.”

Donghyun forces Sanghyuk onto his side as he barges in under the covers stubbornly. “I should report you to HR, you know. All the thoughts you have about me are alarmingly dirty.”

Sanghyuk scoffs, weakly shoving at Donghyun’s shoulder with his good hand, but the other doesn’t budge. He’s warm, radiating heat like a space heater under the covers, and despite himself, Sanghyuk lets his hand linger where it rests against Donghyun’s arm.

“You’re the one crawling into my bed in the middle of the night,” he mutters, voice muffled by the pillow. “What does that say about you?”

“That I’m a great teammate. And an even better friend.” Donghyun shifts, tucking himself in closer, their legs brushing beneath the sheets. “Also, I figured if I left you alone, you’d just stay up thinking about the game and stress yourself into a coma.”

Sanghyuk stills.

“That was exactly what you were going to do, wasn’t it?”

“Shut up.”

“Stop thinking about it, hyung,” Donghyun says. Sanghyuk can’t see his face now, not with his back turned to Donghyun, but he doesn’t have to. “We all have bad days.”

“Exactly, so you don’t have to do this.”

“Someone needs to take care of you.”

He turns around to face Donghyun, feeling a familiar feeling brew in his chest that he can’t shake, and it’s not love. Well, maybe not completely. He looks at Donghyun, who never seems to falter under Sanghyuk’s glares, who stays if he has something to say, who never has to trip over his words, who always knows the right things to say. He’s friendlier, he’s taller, he’s easier with the cameras. And why not admit it? Sanghyuk feels jealousy pricking at his heart as he knows, deep down, that his career is coming to an end right when Donghyun’s seems to be blooming. They might’ve both ended on a win today, but the victory wasn’t something Sanghyuk could share, deserves to share.

“And you think that someone should be you?” he asks.

Donghyun’s head isn’t on the pillow—he’s resting it against his forearm, tucked under his cheek. “I would rather it be me than anyone else.”

“What if I don’t want it to be you?”

Donghyun purses his lips, the corners of his eyes hardening for a second. “Why not?” When Sanghyuk doesn’t reply, struggling to breathe against the pain in his chest, Donghyun wriggles forward. Just a little closer. “What’s wrong?”

It might be easier to start a list of everything that isn’t wrong. It might be easier to push Donghyun away, draw his boundaries, yell at him to get back into his own bed, if he were less pretty. Less magnetic. If his charm only worked with the media team, their team members, their coaching staff, and simply stopped there, right before it touched Sanghyuk the way it affected him. 

Right now, the only thing that can bring him comfort is the same thing that sits at the very center of Sanghyuk’s doubts about his own competence and future.

“Donghyun, I like you,” he confesses.

He sees the moment the words hit Donghyun fully, sees the way his pupils widen and his eyebrows twitch and his mouth parts. Then Donghyun’s face lights up with relief, more certain now that he hadn’t heard wrongly. “That’s a coincidence then, I also—”

He interrupts Donghyun. He has to. “But I can’t.”

Even as Donghyun’s eyebrows meet in the middle, his smile remains, though it’s been tamped down a notch and it’s more confused than happy. “Why? Because I’m a gamer and I’m younger than you and you’re the first guy I’ve liked?” he asks lightly, jokingly, even with a voice that sounds tight with tears, recounting all the reasons Sanghyuk had rejected him for that one day on the balcony. 

It earns Donghyun a small smile, and even that appears to cheer him up a little. He drills his attention onto a small bit of dust on his pillowcase, even as he feels Donghyun’s expectant gaze on him, waiting for an answer to come.

“It’s not that,” he says into the fabric. The sigh that comes out of him, long and low, pushes the dust mote out the way.

“Then what is it?”

He knows what he has to say, knows it will break Donghyun’s heart, but in a last act of selfishness, Sanghyuk’s hand searches for Donghyuns’s under the covers. Donghyun slots their fingers together immediately without question. This man does not have a single bone of self-preservation in his body, and that’s all you’ll find under Sanghyuk’s skin. That’s all he’s made up of.

Finally, Sanghyuk wraps everything he’s been trying to keep at bay—his inadequacies, the gnawing sense that he’s been stuck into the backseat of some car, watching his career from the rearview mirror disappearing down a road that stretches farther and farther behind him—and forces the words out. “Because I don’t think I can be happy for you.”

Even as he says all this, his body contradicts his words by shifting even closer into the heat radiating off of Donghyun’s body. They’re close enough that Sanghyuk’s forehead is touching Donghyun’s. Eye to eye nose to nose, with only a small gap separating their lips. Donghyun’s gaze drops downwards like it’s taking all of his self control to stop himself from pressing forward into a kiss.

“You don’t have to be. I’m not asking that of you.”

“You’re an even bigger idiot than I thought you were, Donghyun.” He tugs his hand away from Donghyun’s grip (but not without a fight and a little resistance and a pout). He pushes Donghyun’s bangs away from his face, only for his hair to fall back stubbornly again. “You’re only getting better, Donghyun. You’re fitting in perfectly, and there’s only up from here. And I don’t know if I can watch that happen without resenting you for it.”

For what feels like forever, Donghyun doesn’t speak. His eyes remain trained on Sanghyuk’s lips, his entire body still as stone save for his chest, where the only sign of life brings his chest up and down, where the air between them fills his lungs and escapes it. 

Sanghyuk breathes it in. Breathes all of it in. Because he needs to take as much as he can from Donghyun while he still can. While he’s still within reach and not too far away on a pedestal Sanghyuk can no longer see himself climbing.

“Okay,” he finally says.

Sanghyuk blinks, surprised. “...Okay?”

Donghyun nods once, like he’s made some kind of decision. “Okay.”

And then, to Sanghyuk’s complete and utter disbelief, Donghyun smiles. Not bright, not teasing, not victorious. Just something soft, something sad, something unbearably understanding.

“And what the hell does ‘okay’ mean?”

Donghyun exhales a laugh, quiet and tired, before reaching up and cupping the back of Sanghyuk’s neck. It’s not fair how easily he does that—how naturally he makes it seem like he has every right to touch him, like Sanghyuk doesn’t have to actively fight back every instinct, every nerve end in his body that burns and aches for Donghyun’s care and touch.

“‘Okay’ means I get it.” Donghyun moves in closer, closing the last inch between them, brushing the tips of their noses together. “It means that I know what you mean. I means that I know when you say you can’t be happy for me, it means you’re scared of being left behind.” Donghyun hums, and they’re so, so, so close—Sanghyuk’s either going insane or he can actually feel the vibration that causes in the air. “Am I right?”

Sanghyuk doesn’t answer, so Donghyun snakes one arm around his waist, the other under his body. Sanghyuk doesn’t answer, so Donghyun pulls him into a hug so their knees are touching, too. Sanghyuk can’t find enough love in his body to give, so Donghyun shares a little bit with him with every decision he makes to stay.

“I don’t need you to be anything except for here, hyung.”

Lee Sanghyuk learns one more thing about his new teammate that night—that trusting Kim Donghyun is a wonderful thing. That he doesn’t have to be able to tell like from love to receive it, and most importantly:

That love isn’t something to be owed, but to be felt.