Chapter Text
As long as they knew each other, Jisung Han could catch any baseball Seungmin Kim threw his way—save for the pitches the hitters managed to swing at, of course. Call it intuition, maybe a weird party trick. Jisung liked to tease him that it was because they were soulmates, the ball merely following the red string, as it were.
But Seungmin was always much more pragmatic than that. His natural talent for throwing the ball where he intended it to go, combined with Jisung’s natural reflexes, made for a deadly combination. And with that explanation, Seungmin could ignore the possible real reason: that Jisung knew him so well he could anticipate anything Seungmin may throw at him. Literally and figuratively.
Their combined skills took their tiny high school of about one hundred and twenty students all the way to State, all four years. But the single most significant moment for both of them thus far, even beating out Disneyland and graduation, had been finally taking the State Championship title from that asshole catholic high school: the top team for the last ten years, who had a reputation for recruiting top players from around the state. Seungmin would never forget Jisung’s expression through his catcher’s mask, the pure joy as he realized they would win, the relishing in the combined shocked and pissed-off faces of the opposing team in the dugout. It was the happiest he’d ever seen Jisung, his heart-shaped smile refusing to disappear from his face for days. Seungmin was, of course, also the happiest he’d ever been. His emotions were not as easily displayed as his best friend’s, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel them. That was okay—as long as Jisung could tell. And he did.
The two were still riding that high a week later, late at night, under the bright stadium lights of their home field. Graduation had not even been two days ago, and they had nothing except their joint lawn-mowing business as a responsibility for the entire summer—that, and packing up for college in August. The only living things around were Seungmin, Jisung, and the wheat field next to them, emitting a symphony of cricket chirping.
Thud . The sound of Seungmin’s four-seamer hitting Jisung’s glove for the five-millionth time. He saw Jisung stifle a yawn across the field.
“Call it a night?” Seungmin shouted over to him, already peeling off his glove.
Jisung nodded and called back. “Yeah, okay! Want to sleep at my house tonight?”
“Sure!”
“Oh, and follow-up question…do you want to help clean our garage tomorrow?” Jisung approached him. “My mom wanted me to ask you. She said you’d get lunch and dinner out of it.” Seungmin felt betrayed, his free day suddenly ruined…but of course he would agree, and Jisung already knew that, the smug asshole. Between the two of them, it was as if they had two moms and a dad to split. And…his mom did make good food. That was why he agreed, definitely, and not because Jisung looked at him with his pleading face, and certainly not because he never told Jisung no when it came down to it.
“Fine,” he answered in an exasperated tone. “But that means you can’t sleep in until three tomorrow,” Seungmin teased as they met up at the gate, reaching over and passing Jisung’s belongings to him wordlessly, then grabbing his own.
“Hey! It’s a simple fact that I require more sleep on average than everyone else,” Jisung protested on the way to their bikes. “I’m basically a cat or a sloth.”
He automatically combined the words in his head. “Coth?”
“Slat.”
“I don’t like either of those words,” Seungmin decided immediately as he pulled his bike up from the ground. “But if you sleep in and leave me to clean with your mom, then they’ll never find your body.”
“You always say that, yet I’m still here! And MJ’s finally going to be around tomorrow to help.”
Seungmin swung his leg over his bike, pushing off to pedal towards Jisung’s house. The dirt from the lot kicked up around his tires as he rode towards the paved street lit by streetlights. “Then I’ll have no choice but to make MJ my new best friend,” he deadpanned.
He heard a loud giggle as Jisung pulled up next to him. “Good luck with that. Ever since he got a girlfriend, it’s like nobody else exists. My texts? Always unanswered. Mom said she called him eight times in a row a couple of days ago before he’d pick up, and he told her it was because he had been too busy playing karaoke with his girl.”
Jisung had a weird on again, off again relationship with his older brother. Seungmin could infer that at this moment they were currently ‘off,’ but that could change after meeting with him tomorrow. He would never verbally comment on their relationship, only offer support. And right now, he figured his friend needed a terrible joke to play it off. “‘ Playing karaoke. ’ Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Seungmin muttered, and he could see Jisung’s disgusted reaction in the dark.
“Dude, I do not need that visual of my brother.”
“You started it,” he teased.
Jisung spluttered. “I did not! You’re literally the one who went there!” He veered his bike dangerously close to Seungmin’s, causing him to move off-road and directly into a sticker burr patch.
“Ji, what the fuck .” He corrected himself back on the road, aiming to shove at the catcher’s bike with his foot for some fully deserved revenge. But he had been pulled from lining up the kill shot when his bicycle suddenly slowed down and became much harder to pedal.
With a groan, he pulled onto a residential street and climbed off to examine his bike. Sure enough, his front tire was properly embedded with about a dozen stickers.
Jisung pulled up behind him. “Shit,” he said to fill the silence. Seungmin turned around, and they made eye contact for a split second before his friend ran off to grab some tree branches. Seungmin guided his fallen soldier towards a space in between two fences. A minute and some careful branch placement later, the bicycle looked like it had been there for years. Perfect for returning and retrieving it in the morning. Not that anyone in their small town would be actively searching for a bicycle with a deflated tire, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.
Then, Jisung climbed onto his bike and held it steady so Seungmin could climb onto the back spokes. The two of them had done this about a half-million times as kids, so Seungmin knew exactly what to do. And even though he was smaller, he knew Jisung had their weights handled. His friend’s toned arms locked into place as he gripped the handlebars, and he pushed off with about as much strength as he could muster in his legs as they moved back onto the road.
Seungmin gripped his shoulders from behind with steady hands, inadvertently feeling the small muscles that were underneath his friend’s shirt. Now that Jisung had built momentum on the smooth pavement, they were picking up speed. “You’d better fix my tire this weekend,” he spoke sternly to the driver, the wind making the hair under his baseball cap fly in all directions. He meant business, after all; it was Jisung’s fault he’d had to discard his only mode of transportation.
“Yeah…fair,” Jisung answered after a second. His tone was suddenly off as if his mind were miles away. Maybe he could be focused on keeping the both of them on the road, or maybe he felt some remorse, but Seungmin knew better than that.
“What.” Seungmin returned in a monotone.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’”
“I mean, what’s suddenly wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he heard Jisung scoff. Then there was a sudden silence. So, he really wasn’t going to spit it out. Breathing quickly out his nose, Seungmin lifted his hand to flick the back of the catcher’s head, just under his hat.
“Ow, shit! Quit bullying me, or you can walk home.”
“What’s wrong?” Seungmin repeated, ignoring him.
“You’re what’s wrong, loser,” Jisung retorted.
“I’m the light of your life, so try again.”
“I would trade you for a single stick of gum.” Jisung looked out at the wheat field next to them, at the miles-long expanse of identical crop rows. Harvest wasn’t planned for another month, so the wheat grew in taller, leafy bunches. There was a short silence again, and then he heard Jisung sigh. “I guess…maybe I’m just worried.”
Seungmin hummed in a more patient tone now, rather than sounding smug that he was correct that something was wrong. He was a little smug, but Jisung didn’t need to know that. “Why are you worried?”
“It’s just…” from his angle, he could see Jisung squint out in front of him, carefully turning onto their street. “Things are going to change, like, a lot in a few months, you know? I’m going from living under my mom’s roof and doing whatever she tells me to do to living on my own, making every decision for myself…and maybe I’m afraid of the unknown,” he explained, his voice small. “What if I fuck everything up? What if I’m not ready?”
Seungmin felt a pit in his stomach as Jisung answered. He’d more or less been feeling the same thing since they graduated a couple of days ago. One moment, they’d gone from being on the top, everyone paying attention to them, his parents crying as he walked across the stage with his diploma. And the next moment, all that had vanished. Once graduation was over, it felt like his high school told him, “That’s it! You’re on your own now! Goodbye forever!” And he didn’t know how to process that feeling. Did everyone else feel it when they graduated? He wasn’t sure.
Jisung probably felt something like that, though, if his doubts were a window into his inner thoughts. And more often than not, their thoughts were on the same page. He slowed to a snail’s pace in front of his house so Seungmin could hop off. He did so with relative ease, and he watched Jisung brake and climb off the bike as well. Walking next to the shorter man up to the house, he did his best to collect his thoughts before answering.
“If you fuck everything up—” Seungmin heard his friend snort at that, but he continued. “—Then I’ll be right there, fucking everything up with you. Don’t forget, we’ll room together for the first time, right? And we’re going to be on the same team? So it won’t be entirely unknown…unless you get sick of me,” he joked.
Recruiters knew as well as they did that Jisung and Seungmin worked better as a matching set. So it was no surprise when they both accepted a scholarship offer to the same D1 University to play under their baseball team in the spring. From there, they could go onto the minor leagues, get picked up quickly into the major leagues, then make seven figures, live in mansions side by side, and live happily ever after with their respective partners. That was how they’d jointly envisioned their futures, anyway.
“I’m pretty sick of you now, Minnie,” Jisung teased. He dug his keys out of his backpack and opened the garage door to prop his bicycle inside. Seungmin followed behind.
“Damn, what a coincidence; I’m pretty sick of you, too,” he muttered. “But what I’m trying to say is that…I’m right here, where I’ll always be.”
Jisung stopped before they headed into the house and turned to look up at him. The harsh fluorescent lights in the garage were hardly flattering to anyone, but his deep brown eyes were round, his hair underneath his hat seemingly soft to the touch despite the sweat now drying on him. Seungmin tried to ignore what he always did, that his best friend was beautiful beyond reason, but he couldn’t stop his heartbeat from increasing anyway. He fiercely hoped that Jisung didn’t notice as he wrapped his arms around him in a hug that Seungmin couldn’t help himself from quickly returning.
“Thanks, man. I’m right here, too.” When he pulled back, his eyes were lit up, seemingly unaware. That was a relief. “I’m gonna shower…and then I think we could pop in a movie? I’m in the mood for Age of Ultron again.”
Seungmin couldn’t stop himself from groaning, but a hint of amusement rose to the surface while they made their way inside. “ Please . Any other Marvel movie, I’m begging you.”