fic: Punch Drunk -4/?-
They could be friends; or something like that. Definitely nowhere near ride-or-die, and far from “snug” since Jonghyun’s skinship is already atrocious with no clear intention of easing up.
And besides the whole “I’m like your militant step-dad” thing, Taemin can’t exactly get used to, or picture being perfect pals with a guy who’s tight, sweaty abs and cologne (or is it aftershave?) inadvertently made his mouth water and dehydrate all at the same time.
Cordial like office mates. Friends at best.
As long as Taemin can fight the habit of taking the littlest things to heart.
Like the fleeting smirk that crosses Jonghyun’s lips the moment the boy finishes stripping down for his first weigh-in the following afternoon, his blushing scowl vaporizing into slight panic as some of the aerobics noonas walk by on cue.
“Right, because being half-naked is totally necessary,” he hisses at his coach, tuning out the effeminate giggling. “Couldn’t we at least have done this somewhere else?”
“It is necessary. Clothes have mass too, you know.” Jonghyun folds his arms, gazing back over his shoulder at the disappearing girls and winking a heartbreaking wink at some of the more curious gigglers-though from the way his ogling eyes seesaw, the teen doubts he feeds those winks just for pretty faces. “Hey Tae,” he says smoothly, “You know where they’re-oh, nope, Nevermind, I see. They’re taking the stairs. The ground floor is for boxers so the other floors must-
“Uh hello!”
Jonghyun swings his navy blue inspectors back to his trainee, wriggling his brows. “My bad.”
“Let me put my clothes back on!”
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, kid, not feeling the competition?” Snorting at his own joke, he takes his time approaching the raw-looking boy.
Then just like that, Taemin’s young coach switches back to professional mode, assessing his gangly stature; weighing the younger with a taut jawline and speaking in a timbre twice as strident as Taemin’s ever heard thus far.
The darkened attention to him in this…compromising exposure revving that sizzle in his privates and giving a temperamental Taemin another “Jonghyun attribute” he will never get used to.
“I also need to check out what I’m working with. So I know-okay off the scale-so I know which parts of your body need the most emphasis and what calisthenics to assign you.”
“Calis what now?”
“Exercises. Now relax. Arms out. Legs together.” Jonghyun’s cutting eyes never leave Taemin as he circles behind him, spanking Taemin’s upper arms up straighter.
He licks his lips anxiously, squinting. “Coa
“No talking.”
“Ugh.”
There’s more circling, poking, popping (a dangerous smack near his ass Taemin wants to be ignorant to) and all this ridiculous nodding until Jonghyun stops in front of him, hands latching to his hips and head shaking to himself.
“Ahh. Girl look at that body,” is his English monotone.
Against his better nature, Taemin’s smirk is instantaneous. “I work ou-
“No. You don’t. But you will now.” He synonymously pulls out his iPod and snatches a jump rope from a hook behind him. Taemin catches it with one hand, scowling.
“Hey! I do exercise!” All that cardio I get from running from fuckface and friends. “I’m in good shape! And look-I’m heavy enough to be a featherweight already!”
“Just because you’re a twig doesn’t mean you’re in shape, nor that your training will be any easier,” Jonghyun argues as he unravels his headphones. His infamous grin is back and insufferable when he unmistakably walks around Taemin to smack the crap out of his ass.
Swirling with an angry cry, the boy is greeted with a wicked addition of, “Shake that!”, a blur of neon blue muscle shirt passing him and a salute. “I want one hundred of those, bunny! And I’ve got eyes everywhere so don’t even think about slacking!”
“Where the hell are you going!” Taemin calls after him earnestly, fists closing. “Hy-Jon-Coach!”
But its no use. Jonghyun jogs away into the chaos of Everlast equipment and rigorous bodies, leaving the threadbare boy to pout up at the giant country flag hanging on the wall. Thinking about what kind of lousy coach leaves his trainee alone.
Rubbing his throbbing ass…feeling something “lifting”…looking down.
And ripening enough for the picking as he stumbles, hand cupping over his crotch while he waddles to gather his clothes-snarling, “What you looking at?” at every tittering dude that strides by.
*****
Seven weeks in, Taemin’s “friend theory” starts to wear thin.
They were friends alright.
If Taemin considers a dictating dick to be a friend…
Ok, so Jonghyun isn’t that bad…
Training is just…way more than what he’d bargained for. Worse than getting the brakes beaten off of him by the dope heads.
With him and Hwang’s Will Smith talk randomly popping up in his head, based on Jayden and the jacket cruelty in the last Karate Kid, Taemin shouldn’t have expected anything less. Underestimating Jonghyun just because he wasn’t a mysterious, bearded ahjussi? Yeah, that too. He shouldn’t have done that either.
For the rest of the fall semester, he’s practically sold his soul over to the pushy “celebrity” he, as often as he can when he’s on the brink of passing out from exhaustion, rethinks officially meeting-exhaustion or boiling blood pressure for the tiny metal instrument of torture hanging from Jonghyun’s thick neck.
Configuring their schedules, they agree upon three sessions on week days plus Saturdays. Grueling days that blend in with each other because Taemin is supposed to go for a three-mile jog every afternoon after school and a two mile jog every morning that they don’t have sessions.
“This is the part where trust becomes mutual, kid,” he reiterates all the fucking time, white noise to Taemin’s bludgeoned ears. “Counting on you to take the initiative when I’m not around.
“It’s gonna hurt you more than it hurts me,” he seals it out with too, the puffing teen rolling his eyes and choosing to ventriloquize that particular line to expose his age just as much as his vendetta.
He was more than ready to jump in the ring already.
But Taemin can’t deny that Jonghyun’s regiment has been infallible; with every jog out in the gradually dropping temperatures-weather that turns his insides into jerky-he’s a little faster, a little more enduring, a little less focused on his negative thoughts about preferring to train in spring and more about channeling that negativity into self-accomplishment, pride.
As suicide-provoking as it is, Jonghyun’s stat quotes of his favorite boxers as he holds Taemin’s feet down with sit-ups…and encouraging barks during push-ups …they don’t bother the teen as much anymore. True to his word, he obeys every order. He adapts to an array of liabilities life shoves at him, from successfully incorporating his academic life into new, physically demanding schematics- to shopping independently for his own diet food, the food Jonghyun practically Indian-called down his throat because junk was on Taemin’s menu seemingly for good. He gets used to the occasional “rebel snare” Minho sets for him; head enlarging with the gang’s suspicion and surprise that he’s hitting back harder and has more wind than the last encounter. He gets used to the guilt coagulating in his gut for embezzling money from his father.
Even the tricky speed bag Jonghyun engages him to.
“Like this Tae,” the coach had muttered once; positioning himself behind the taller boy, taking thin wrists that are attached to fists wrapped in black and slowly demonstrating how Taemin should hit it more accurately. “You don’t want it beating you. Tame yourself,” he breathes hotly into Taemin’s bare upper back, “Don’t get frustrated with it-be natural with it.”
The brushing words, the mellow aura of them-they had put Taemin in a predicament. Goosebumps budding over goosebumps. He tried not to shift too much with the elder boy’s body pressed to his or lapse into an anemic daze from his coach’s grasp. The context of the words are what fucked him over the most, though; since at the very feathery utter of Jonghyun’s last suggestion, Taemin is thinking about his relationship with the elder, the fantasia of erotic (and a bit more innocent) sensations he continuously fought against...or for…he didn’t know.
He thought about his blurred vision of envy the times Jonghyun left the gym after their sessions to hang with friends, particularly girls.
One of the few things he couldn’t adapt to, no matter how hard he tried to suppress his ‘weakness’. Like a speed bag he couldn’t control.
“The others are watching,” he’d ended up whispering back, sucking in his sweat-sheened abdomen. “Hwang too.”
Jonghyun tightens his grip emphatically. “Fuck that-do you understand what I’m telling you? You’re retaining a lot of anger Taemin and I need you to release some of it so your hits are cleaner. You want your aim to be fluid.” The disembodied voice vibrates through the younger’s skin, through to his chest, sending a clammy shiver down from his shoulders to the balls of his feet.
“I can’t,” he sputters, closing his eyes.
“You can.”
“No, Jonghyun.”
Hands dropping from his trainee’s wrists, the shorter man steps back furtively, waiting for the boy to turn around on his own accord. “Why are you angry Taemin…”
“How do you know I won’t lie to you?”
“I trust you,” is the quick reply.
Yet when Taemin finally ducks his head from those dark voids, sticky black fringe shadowing his eyes, he rumbles, “It’s none of your business.”
“I’m not asking you as your coach, I’m asking as…just tell me, Tae.” Jonghyun rubs his temple, dropping to sit on an overturned crate. He gestures toward the one nearest Taemin. “Break.”
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” the younger declines, chewing on the insides of his cheeks.
“Ugh, God, I’ve eaten mollusks less difficult to open.”
“That helps.”
Every head in the vicinity suddenly jerks to the origin of ruckus in the speed bag sector. Some guys speak up in concern, rushing over to separate the two, or at least calm them down, but Jonghyun holds up a stiff palm, stopping them. Hwang shoulders his way to the front of the small gathering. “Boys!”
Taemin squirms between the concrete wall and the heavier body that has bulldozed him to it in a matter of seconds, hallowing his cheeks and twitching his jaw to keep the rapid well of tears in his eyes from falling.
“Get off me Jonghyun,” he grits, shaking.
“Does this help? Now I’m angry Taemin. I’m angry because of you. I’m angry because we made a pact a few months ago pertaining to trust, and it seems that after all this time you still don’t trust me, if you ever did.” Wet lips actually clip Taemin’s as the older man speaks too fast, too gutturally, “Trusting each other wasn’t a suggestion. When you’re undertaking one of the most physically demanding sports in the world, it damn sure isn’t. And it-look at me, don’t look away-and it is dangerous for both your body and your mind if you’re in that ring and you’re emotionally unstable so tell me Taemin, why are you angry?”
“I’m angry because you’re embarrassing me!”
“It’s just me and you, Tae.”
“They’re-
“-not the ones who need this pistol whip!” Jonghyun roughly waves his hand behind him, and Hwang understands, ushering the other guys away with his full attention drawing back to his contenders in the practice ring.
Temper flaring, Taemin tries to surge forward, to throw Jonghyun off with the very strength the older man helped him acquire. His fuller biceps bulge, toned thighs bucking. It’s an A for effort, it truly is-but he’s just no match for a mountain.
“You can’t keep me here, what the fuck?”
There’s a long, heavy sigh: “Taemin…”
And thereupon…all resistance is obliterated.
His legs turn to rubber; he’s back tracking to the balmy, melodic breath caressing his back minutes before. Jonghyun sounds the exact same now…yet its different, having Jonghyun speak like this to his face, those words washing over him like someone tipping a cooler of warm soda over his head, the liquid buzzing and un-harming his skin. Different in that Taemin can’t make heads or tails of the pair of rich, blue tsunamis boring into his own stinging eyes, doesn’t understand the indescribable…disturbance there is peeking behind Jonghyun’s initial rage.
“Mom. Minho,” the teen says softly after a while, wondering-caring too much about his coach’s unexplained warfare to continue embodying a safe with a unsolvable combination.
He waits for the command to elaborate, features falling lax in his internal exam to figuring out the older.
One that is, shockingly, traded in for a wordless Jonghyun who surrenders. Postponing the exam.
Managing to throw Taemin again, reminding him of how the Duke had dismissed Taemin’s sour mention of getting bullied twice as much for not being stupid for a living.
Jonghyun only issued him back to the speed bag, solemnly taking his position behind the boy once more. Resumed giving Taemin his money’s worth like…well, not like anything hadn’t just happened but…
That was all he needed…
Stellar yet, the awkward turtle Taemin thought would be swimming among them after their “heart-to-heart” never banks on shore.
Deep down in the recesses of his youthful being, he acknowledges it was what he needed as well-what he, of all people, needed most of all.
Thanks to that day, he never forgets how to box a speed bag.
He’s just burdened with yet another reason to be pissed. The smitten third party-with a greedy, growing affinity for a certain undefeated middleweight- he’d bitten his tongue for when his back was literally against the wall.