Jisung glanced back to the teasing clock ticking down on the other side of the ice rink.

A second passed.

He fished a cold hand from between the warmth of his thighs, moving the freezing digit up to his lips. Instinctually, his teeth wrapped around the nail and bit down. Gnawing, pulling, chewing, lightly, as he tried to remove the abused from the rest of the fingernail. With each tug, the fibers splintered more, dug into his lips more, sliced his skin more, each movement unsteady. Trembling from the cold. At least, he thought it was the cold. He thought it was the winter breeze nipping at his nose which made his stomach uncomfortably churn up what little he had ate that morning and the crystalline flecks clinging to his blades which forced his hand to vibrate against his lips with a feverish sickness. As his teeth ripped apart that thumbnail, he blamed the frost even more on the numbing nerves racking his chest apart.

He curled his shoulders in to his already hunched body sitting on one of the many metal bleachers lined on the outside walkway of the ice rink. His gaze trained firmly on the ground, past the ground, down to the pits of hell, where he would surely spend all of eternity for his careless mistake staring at the hole dug six feet under, where his body would be tossed to rot away with time, his hair would turn to Kentucky blue grass, his fingers would turn to worms, his squishy eyes would turn to maggots, forever forgotten in the eroding casket where he would be returned to his proper home, that's where he would be soon enough, soon, very soon, he'd be there, laying in the soil, where he belonged, because he couldn't bite his tongue, he couldn't hold it for more than a few seconds, he couldn't be more aware of his surroundings, for fucks sake—

His finger errupted with a stinging burn as he spat the crescent-moon nail bit onto the floor.

When was the last time he was this nervous?

His first competition? It must have been then. When his coach had sat next to him, and his mother was watching from the stands, he had been waiting on the sidelines, mindlessly chasing the other skaters with timid glances, they had looked so perfect to him back then, and they still do now. What did his old coach say to him? Take a few deep breaths, imagine everyone in their underwear, what else was there? What else could he do? Find a friend, talk to a friend, watch a friend skate, watch...

Watch Jeongin.

At Jisung's first competition, he had calmed his nerves by watching Jeongin's program. He had been working on those programs for the longest time, and they had remained to be his favorite to date. It was to the variations of Carmen. Everyone skated to those variations; The story, the Opera of the soldier, seduced by the femme fatale, Carmen. At the time, he had skated so skillfully, so beautifully, as if he was the naïve Don José entrapped in the scarlet lacing of a fanged demon thought to be a beautiful angel. Now, it seemed the opposite. Jeongin wasn't naïve, he wasn't the helpless romantic soldier, chasing after the love of a free spirited enchantress, he was Carmen himself. He was the entrancing vixen, somehow ensnaring whoever he wished, somehow convincing them of his naivety, somehow—

Jisung glanced back up to the clock.

Another second passed.

He bit harder on his already torn apart nail.

Where was Minho? It was way past his lunchtime break, did something hold him at work? Was he busy? Maybe he had paperwork to fill out? Maybe he had to talk to his boss? Maybe he's talking to his coworkers? Maybe they went out to get lunch together? Does that mean Minho won't be coming? Does that mean Minho forgot? Does that mean he wouldn't be seeing Minho today? Didn't Minho promise to come? Didn't he say he'd be here? Where was he? Where could he be? Now, that Jisung needed him? Did he forget about Jisung?

Please, Jisung shut his eyes.

He squeezed them together, tight. Until he could see the imprints of the light wrinkling on the blackout of his retinas.

His hands clasped in his lap as folded impossibly over, begging for his thumping heart to steady in his ears.

Please come quickly Minho.

This time, he didn't need to look up at the clock. Even at that distance, from the other end of the arena, the tick resonated louder than the pounding in his veins. He choked back the coagulated lump of sour bile coddling in the base of his throat, threatening to surface onto his taste buds as his senses hijacked with a numb adrenaline flying him far from the loose course he already had been sailing. This time spinning the wheel too far over all at once, steering him rapidly into the rippling rogue waves peaking inside his gut shouting at him to run and hide away before the oncoming conflict reached him. This time, throttling him right into the hands of the clock as it moved another threatening notch to signify his moments of final words chasing dangerously short.

Another second.

He inhaled another breath.

Somewhere in the rink building, a door opened. Barely, he could detect the echo.

Another second.

One more exhale.

The locker room door shoved open next.

Another second.

The last inhale, sucked sharply into his lungs as he pressed his palms tighter together and mentally prepared himself for the bull that was coming charging through the doors. He firmly squashed any, and all, hopes that maybe that raging storm coming at him was Minho.

That way, he wasn't disappointed, or surprised, when the threshold to the rink was finally breached by the sharpened horns of the beast coming for his throat. When those daggers turned toward him, and that contorted expression twisted with a seething desperation; Some displeased mix of wrathful anger and vain splashed envy, swirled into a combination of gritted teeth dripping with boiling saliva and clawed hands threatening to tear through any defenses his friend may have prepared for himself beforehand, not a beast of sadness. Not one of heartbreak. Not even of anguish. That expression was enraged, the rise and fall of his shoulders frantic as if he had ran the full distance to the skating rink, his eyes sharpened with the fumes, the flames, which licked Jisung's safety apart. The fire which shoved ash into his lungs were ignited in those narrowed eyes.

He was just, angry.

He was so, so angry.

And that anger was directed at Jisung.

His hands went numb.

"Ji, you told him?!" Jeongin didn't wait for a passing beat to begin accosting his supposed friends with bellowing shouts. His fingers raked, clawing through the air as he accented his words with the gestures, clutching his chest, holding his hair, lips twisting, snarling back, seething huffs tumbling from his lungs, each step he took matched, heavy, slamming against the ground, mashing the cheaply carpeted turf to a fine paste as he raged toward the frozen Jisung too statued at the aggressive sight of his friend to respond with any of the sentences he prepared to deescalate the situation. Jeongin's eyes narrowed into his scowl even farther as he belted, "You told Chan about Hyunjin and I? I was fooling around with the streamer! Hyunjin and I are, and have always been, just friends. Friends! What about that word can you not understand, huh?!"

Jisung sighed between his puffed cheeks and pressed lips, an attempt to control the earthquake of tremors abusing his nerves into fine dust. He pressed his sweaty palms further together to remain calm, to keep his tone steady, as he attempted to struggle underneath the branding eyes of his friend, "Innie, I— Look, I saw you and Hyunjin together. The way you were interacting, that's not... that's not what we, what friends, do. That's not, it isn't what... That's not what you would do with me."

Jeongin snapped, "I could, do you want me to?"

"No—."

"Is that what this is? Are you jealous?"

"No, Innie, I'm not!"

"Then, why?! You screwed it up for me," The younger continued to blare, loud, louder, his voice growing higher, faster, desperate, as his hands came to rake into the enclosing cage of his chest. His foot slammed down behind him, the floor echoing against the weight in protest, as a hand gestured to somewhere far beyond the door, far beyond the ice skating rink, far beyond their sleepy town, no doubt listening in to the shouted argument strung like a newspaper headline in the afternoon sky. Jeongin  roared, "How do you think you would feel if I told your coach about you and Minho? Huh?! When you promised to be practicing, you two are screwing off together in the locker room, they'd make you resign!"

"There's a difference. This is going to be my job. Minho is helping me with my career," Jisung defended himself. He allowed his own features to narrow into a glare as he accused back, "And you were cheating."

"I wasn't, Ji. I didn't," Jeongin argued, his words growing growled deep in his throat as he netted his hands into his hair, the fingers pulling lightly on his scalp as he turned away from his friend sitting on the bleacher. He shook his head, the strands loosening and tugging beneath his grip as the fingers realised and found his eye sockets. As if to rub himself clean of the impurities, of the accusations, he dug his palms into his skin as he groaned a frustrated, "It didn't mean anything."

"Are you hearing yourself? No, the way you're rationalizing this is mental," Jisung stood up from the bleachers as he spoke.

Although he tried to stay calm, although he tried to bring the other down from what seemed like an unstoppable anger, tried to be the "mature one" in this irrational situation they both bred and festered beneath the surface of their exchanged, he couldn't stop the grating nerves from stabbing into his heart. Into his mind. It was searing him alive, grinding, and gritting into the adrenaline pumping rapidly through every inch of his body, squaring him up for a proper fight with the younger. Truthfully, how many times had he done this before? How many times had the younger played with people? Too many times, one too many times, and this, this time Jisung managed to involve himself in it. This time, the nerves cut him free. This time, he wasn't about to bite his tongue and watch it all play out again. This time, it all was enough. It was all too much.

This time, it had to be the last. It had to end here. It has to.

Jeongin opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Jisung swiftly cut him off with a bark, "You've done this before. You date someone, then you go off with another person, and they both end up hurt, and you get off on them fighting."

The younger's hands clenched by his sides. His nostrils flared.

"That's how it went, that's how it goes now. Chan deserved to know the truth," Jisung continued. He allowed himself to ignite along with the crumbling walls, the falling ashes, allowed himself to turn to the blazing embers as his words tumbled from his lips like the tunneling soot raining down on their arena. Among those shattering pieces, he had lost himself far enough within the rubble to not catch his words or his thoughts as he proceeded to rave through the thundering heart blasting out the supple head of his eardrums, the trembling palms pressed flush against his joggers sweating waterfalls into the thin material, the numbness in his toes turning his ankles to ice, his lungs constricting around the inhalant of ashes, it was all too much to handle, too much to bring to a satisfying stop as he finalized,

"I tell him, or you tell him, it doesn't matter, he deserved to know the truth. He deserved to know that you're a lying, cheating, manipulating, whore."

A light gasp chased the word as it left Jisung's mouth.

Jeongin recoiled back.

That earlier aggression from him was gone in an instant.

Pain flashed across his features. Sticking firmly to his expression.

His hands slotted down, curling in like cat paws to his chest to protect himself. Meager fists, barely ready to sling a punch.

He didn't say anything.

Simply, stood there.

Waiting for something, anything else to be said.

I fucked up, Jisung statued in his spot.

Holy shit I fucked up again.

He tried to move slowly, as if addressing a wild animal. With a gentle voice and hands unfurling from his own body to reach out to the younger, Jisung attempted to fill the crystalline ice building between them. The words escaped him as he stammered, "Innie, that's not... I'm not saying that, that's— that's not what I meant to say."

Jeongin shifted away from him. Gradually, he could see those sparks of anger beginning to reignite once again. Those pinches of irritation wrinkling his nose, pulling his lips back, squinting his eyes back into a glare, sharpening his tone. He scoffed underneath his breath, "Fine. You want to talk about truths, Ji? I'll tell you one that's pretty obvious to me;

"You don't deserve to be a figure skater."

Jisung straightened out. His breath hitched in his throat.

Something in his heart fractured.

He chuckled, nervously. By his sides, his hands flexed, "Come on, Innie, that's—"

"You don't," Jeongin cut him off. His arms folded tightly over his chest and his scowled expression grew unreadable, "There are plenty of talented figure skaters out there who should be competing on an international scale, and instead someone like you took their place."

Jisung dropped his gaze to the floor.

For some reason, he could let out the breath he had been caging in. He tried to choke an inhale around the barrier, only for the air in his lungs to bumble and hiccup again, Why was it so hard to breathe all of a sudden? 

Jeongin hummed, "Minho agrees with me."

His hands fastened to the ends of his oversized hoodie. He fumbled with the hems as he asked quietly, "He does?"

"Of course he does. He told me when we were waiting for you," The younger affirmed before continuing, "I mean, gold medal? At nationals? What a joke! That's an absolute joke. Who did you suck off to make that happen because you're not that good? Was it the judges? How do you think Minho would feel? What about Seungmin? Your fans? If anyone knew that's what you did? They'd think you're the worst kind of person."

Jisung stayed quiet.

"And if that wasn't why, then, well, let's see, huh..." Jeongin trailed his words off as his head tipped up, gaze following the beams if the ice rink as if he was seriously pondering all the possible solutions that could be hiding high with the rafters. His narrowed eyes dropped back to the older, his 'friend' if he could even be considered that anymore, as he started to tell. With each word his tone built up one redstone brick at a time, "The only other reason you earned that medal was because they pitied you. You can't do jumps, you can't do spirals, you can't do spins, you're stiff, you're boring to watch, you're incompetent, and you're useless, Ji. So, just—"

Jeongin cut himself off.

While Jisung was attempting to manage his onslaught of tears building in the corners of his eyes, he refused to look anywhere besides the thick hem of his pastel yellow hoodie Minho had complimented the day before.

Well, not that it would matter anymore if Minho liked it or not.

In the top of his vision, the younger started to back up, "Just quit, would you? Quit, and give your spot to someone who deserves it."

"Because you don't."

❆❅❆