Deuce! Part 2 - Jinyoung
Title: Deuce! Part 2 - Jinyoung
Pairing: Jinyoung/Sandeul
Rating: G (for now)
Summary: Junghwan's job is to call the shots in tennis matches. But can he still do the same in front of love?
Previous: Part 1 - Junghwan
“So how do you want to apologize to that chair umpire?” Jinyoung’s manager asked on their way to grab dinner.
“Apologize?” Jinyoung said with wide eyes, pretending to be oblivious.
His manager scoffed as he scrolled through a selection of gifts on his tablet. “You’re not getting away with that look. Shinwoo saw you.” He clicked around for a minute and passed the tablet to Jinyoung. “Here, type a message.”
Giving up on his second attempt to get away with his on-court attitude, he took the tablet and typed in the first thing that entered his mind:
To: Tennis official Lee,
Sorry. I didn’t mean to say what I said in the last game. Sometimes, I get too focused on winning. I hope you understand.
From: Jung Jinyoung
He was dropped off in front of the café where he was set to have dinner as his manager had to check on another player.
“Coach!” Jinyoung said with a bright smile as he headed to the table at the café where his coach and a fellow athlete sat. The latter guy, who plays in the junior division turned around and looked at him with a mischievous smile as he sipped on strawberry shake, while the former didn’t move even an eyelash to his direction.
“Coach, I’m here! I want breakfast for dinner.” He looked at Chanshik, a hopeful smile on his face, asking for help. The younger one gave an exaggerated look of disappointment and shook his head. He turned back to his coach.
“Hyung!”
“Don’t you call me hyung.” Shinwoo, only a few months older, finally spoke. “It’s never going to be easy putting up with your antics huh? I heard the things you told him. He could have thrown you off the court!”
Antics. Jinyoung isn’t really so hungry to win that he’ll resort to cheating. No, his case was more complicated than that. Once he offered Chanshik some homemade strawberry shake.
“Why is it so red hyung?” Chanshik raised his glass up, examining its contents.
“I put real strawberries in it! I won’t just give you melted ice cream.”
Chanshik wouldn’t finish the whole glass despite his guarantees that there wasn’t any ramyun powder in the recipe.
Another notable prank was one during his junior years, when a fellow player mentioned having a best friend who would like an autographed picture. Jinyoung said he’ll send one through the mail. Not only did he forge a “Juan Carlos Ferrero” on a picture of Serena Williams, he also failed to resist the temptation of sending it with a printout of the match statistics from a recent head-to-head with the same player. And he sent one every time they he had a match against that guy. He wonders if the signed pictures ever reached the best friend the other was talking about.
It could have been okay if he stopped the jokes. He has a driver’s license and bought a car using some of his earnings as a junior player. But more than just a few incidents of trying to argue his way out of parking and speeding tickets made his parents decide to either drive him around or hire someone whenever he needs a car. He’s bad with directions though (sometimes they wonder if it’s on purpose), so they trust the GPS system more. As long as he thinks he can get away with something, he’ll do it without thinking twice.
“Too bad I got him pretty angry back there.” he thought while reconstructing the cold look he was given earlier during the game. “He’s pretty cute.”
“Who’s pretty cute?” Chanshik asked from the bed near the window.
Now how can he get out of this one? “That rapper guy who used to be a tennis player; who would have known he wanted to be in an idol group?”
The next morning on the courts would give Jinyoung a measure of how his actions impact the people he’s done them to. On an early jog around the arena, he spotted some bright-colored flowers on a plant box, only to realize that the flowers weren’t sitting on a plant box, but on a garbage cart. Curious, he went up closer the arrangement of dahlias and got nervous when he saw a card attached, partially open to reveal Korean writing. Biting his lip while shakily pulling out the card, he opened it to confirm his worst nightmare. The recipient didn’t even bother tearing the paper into pieces.
“Do you want that?” One of the maintenance personnel approached the cart with a plastic bag full of paper cups, soda cans and various food wrappers.
“No.” He said, smiling at the flowers when he returned the card.
Jinyoung’s third round match for the men’s doubles event was 3-set win which could have been avoided. A disputed point in the second set which was ruled out in favor of his team had him distracted; an image of yesterday’s chair umpire with a cold look on his face saying “The ball is in. That’s final.” playing on his mind.
“Something wrong Jinyoung?” asked his team mate, Kei Nishikori during the break between sets.
“It’s nothing. Just a bit more dehydrated than usual.” Jinyoung finished his bottle of energy drink before taking out another two from the cooler, handing one of them over to his team mate.
Chewing his takeout at the hotel, he turned his coach’s laptop on and did his own research on tennis official Lee. Checking out the match statistics of his latest singles match, he found “Junghwan Lee” written on the space for chair umpire. Now that he’s thought of it, this guy he’s looking up could actually be the first bronze badge Korean he’s known for a while. ‘He’s probably American-born’ Jinyoung thought. He decided to do a bit more in-depth research (Facebook).
Scanning through what he assumed are conveniently open-to-public albums, one particular photo taken when the tennis official was much younger caught his eye. It was a scanned Polaroid of two boys sitting on a viewing box at a tennis court. The other boy was him. It was taken during one of those trips with his museum curator father and photographer mother to France. His parents both had to go to work, and did not know where to leave their son. Luckily, another Korean couple that they met at the airport had the strangest idea to leave their children at the care of a sporting event organizer. He wasn’t fund of the idea of sitting all day on a court watching a sport that seemed nothing like repetitive passing of a yellow-green ball until someone tires out. But seeing his seatmate jump for joy and watch with a certain glee that can’t wait until the ball is flying up in the air again made him notice something new. It was a smile that to Jinyoung was certainly something more than just. And each time he saw it, his heartbeat rose, wanting to see more. It was a moment that he could to see repeat itself over and over again without having to tire. This type of newfound happiness within him leads to a resolve that would shape the following years of his life.
“I’ll be a tennis player someday.” Jinyoung said as he looked at the old picture.
That day, the little boy sitting by a tennis court discovered excitement.
Thanks to his intuition which was working so well at that time, he clicked through Junghwan Lee’s friend list and typed in “Sunwoo Cha”. He already half-expected it but the appearance of a photo of his ex-fellow tennis player with the chair umpire at the backstage of an event with the caption “my best friend who travels too much” gave him quite a shock. How the hell did his childhood crush, the chair umpire, and the guy who he sent bad fake signatures to be one and the same?
He suddenly had the feeling that he wanted to offer something bigger than an apology. Clicking the back button, he was surprised to see a message telling him that the page he was looking for was no longer available. He hopes he hasn’t spoiled all his chances.
Having no games to play on the next two days, Jinyoung went to one of the courts to watch Chanshik compete on the first round of the juniors division. It was a quick two-set win and the man of the one hour and twenty-five minutes was craving for something more than a baguette sandwich.
“Hyung! I want some bulgogi!” Chanshik was repeatedly tapping Jinyoung’s shoulder, desperate for Korean barbecue.
“Can you wait a little longer? If you don’t want the baguette, I’ll give you money for a waffle.” Jinyoung said, his eyes fixated on the second juniors match on the court, or rather, on the chair umpire who happens to have more of a connection to him than just their nationality.
“Are you watching this game just because of the umpire? Where’s coach hyung anyway?” Chanshik usually catches on situations fast.
“Yes. And coach is at the center court.” He didn’t even bother trying to hide the obvious.
On the other side of the court, Junghwan was feeling uncomfortable for the longest time in his life as the athlete that broke his heart stood out in the crowd a little too easily while he was working.
Author's note: I hope you liked it!!