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STARBOY

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ Forced to partner for an international figure skating competition, having no choice but to work alongside Park Sunghoon... the one person you can't stand. Between relentless training, nonstop banter, and a trip to France, the rivalry begins to blur into something far more dangerous. Winning gold was always the goal, but neither of you expected to lose your hearts along the way.

𝙨𝙠𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙧! 𝙨𝙪𝙣𝙜𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙣 𝙭 𝙛𝙚𝙢! 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧 Enemies to lovers, forced partnership, forced proximity, slow burn, competitive dynamic, banter, tension, jealousy, mutual pining, late night practices, empty ice rink, accidental encounters, international competition, emotional tension, romance, happy ending, hurt/comfort WARNINGS: Explicit Sexual Content, Rough Sex, Oral Sex, Possessive Behavior, Jealousy, Hate Sex Elements, Mild Angst, Past Injury Mention,Public Kissing, Alcohol Consumption wc: 21,930 🎧: Starboy — The Weeknd, No. 1 Party Anthem — Arctic Monkeys, Bad Omens — 5 Seconds of Summer, One Of The Girls — The Weeknd, JENNIE & Lily-Rose Depp, Cold — Maroon 5 ft. Future, Close To You — Gracie Abrams, Nervous — Shawn Mendes, Teach Me How To Love — Shawn Mendes, blue — yung kai, BIRDS OF A FEATHER — Billie Eilish

CHAPTER 1: ICE AND SOME OTHER COLD THINGS

There are exactly two sounds I love in this world: the sharp noise of a blade cutting fresh ice, and silence. This morning, at 5:40 a.m., the rink gives me both. Nobody else is stupid enough to be here this early except me… and, apparently, him.

I see his bag first. Black, scuffed at the corners, a small skate guard charm Lia would call "aggressively minimalist" clipped to the zipper. Then I hear the blades. Slow, deliberate, carving figures into the ice like he owns the building, like the building was built around him and not the other way around.

Park Sunghoon.

I stop just inside the rink doors and consider, briefly, turning around and going back to bed. But I didn't get up before dawn and drive across half of Toronto in the dark to let Park Sunghoon run me out of my own practice slot.

"You're in my ice," I call out, dropping my bag on the bench with more force than necessary.

He doesn't even turn around. Just glides to a stop in the center of the rink, spins once… unnecessary, showy, infuriating… and looks at me over his shoulder like I'm an inconvenience he's already bored of.

"Funny. I don't see your name on it."

"I booked this slot two weeks ago."

"So did I." He skates backward, unbothered, hands loose at his sides like he's not even trying. "Front desk's mistake, not mine. You're welcome to take it up with them. In the meantime—" he does a lazy toe loop, lands it clean, obviously just to prove he can, "… I was here first."

I hate him. I have hated him, cleanly and completely, since the Nationals two years ago when he skated a program to the exact piece of music I'd told a reporter, in confidence, I was considering for my own free skate. He denied knowing. Everyone believed him because Park Sunghoon has a face made for being believed… sharp jaw, dark hair that never looks anything but deliberately careless, that small mole under his left eye like some cosmic joke about symmetry, and when he smiles… which is rare, and always feels like a trap… you can see the faint points of his fangs, just slightly longer than they should be. Half the internet calls him "vampire boy" in a tone that is not remotely afraid. I've seen the comment sections. I've seen the magazine covers. I know exactly how good looking Park Sunghoon is, and I resent every part of that knowledge like it's a tax I never agreed to pay.

He's twenty three, 5'11", cold as a Canadian February, and… inconveniently… one of the best men's skaters this country has produced in a decade. Which is the only reason Coach Choi hasn't fired him for personality reasons alone.

"Fine," I say, lacing up faster than I need to, fingers clumsy with irritation. "Share the ice. Try not to cry when I land my triple axel and you don't."

Something flickers over his face… not quite amusement, more like mild surprise that I bothered to bite back. "Your triple axel under rotates on the landing," he says, already turning away. "Every time. You balance out with your shoulder instead of fixing your entry."

I skate onto the ice specifically so I can pretend I didn't hear that, because the worst part… the actual worst part… is that he's right, and I know he's right, and I have spent eight months trying to fix exactly that.

We don't speak again for the rest of the session. We just orbit each other, two separate storms sharing the same sky, both of us pretending the other doesn't exist while tracking every single jump, every spin, every flaw and near flawless landing out of the corner of our eyes.

…

Lia is waiting for me at the café down the block after, wrapped in her coat like a burrito, two lattes already on the table.

"You look like you want to commit a crime," she says, sliding one cup toward me.

"He was in my slot."

"Sunghoon?"

"Who else?"

She grins into her coffee. Lia has been my best friend since we were nine years old and got paired up for a synchronized skating exhibition neither of us wanted to do, she's spent the fifteen years since developing a complete, borderline delightful knowledge of my bicker with Park Sunghoon, mostly because her boyfriend happens to be Sunghoon's best friend.

"Keeho says he's been weird lately," she offers.

"Keeho thinks everyone is weird. Keeho once told me a squirrel outside his apartment was 'going through something.'"

"Fair. But he also said Coach Choi and the federation have been in back to back meetings for like a week. Something about Nationals qualifying rules changing." She pauses, dramatically, clearly enjoying this. "You know what that usually means."

I know exactly what that usually means, and I refuse to let myself think about it, because if I think about it, I will spiral, and I have a training block in four hours.

I should have spiraled anyway. It would have prepared me.

…

The email comes that evening. Subject line: Pairs Exhibition - International Qualifier Announcement.

I read it twice. Then a third time, out loud, to make sure I'm not hallucinating out of pure spite induced exhaustion.

The federation is introducing a new pairs style exhibition event for this season's international qualifying circuit… a hybrid program blending elements of ice dance and singles technical content, skated by two athletes from the same national program who don't currently compete as a pair. The stated goal, in painfully corporate language, is to "foster collaborative excellence and audience engagement ahead of the World Championship season." The actual goal, according to the group chat Lia and I have had open for exactly four minutes, is to generate attention, because apparently a made for TV rivalry sells more tickets than either of us skating alone.

I scroll down to the roster.

Confirmed teams for the Canadian qualifying circuit:

Y/N L/N & Sunghoon Park

Lia & Keeho

I read our names three times before the meaning fully lands, the way pain sometimes takes a second to arrive after the injury.

My phone buzzes. Lia.

Y/N: i'm going to be sick

LIA: in a good way???

Y/N: there is no good way to be sick

LIA: ok but think about it. me and Keeho vs you and Sunghoon. finals in FRANCE if we qualify. do you know how bad i've wanted to go to paris

Y/N: i am going to throw my phone into the rink

LIA: you're going to throw yourself at Park Sunghoon is what you're going to do eventually but ok

I put the phone face down on the counter and stare at the ceiling for a long time.

The final qualifying event… should either team make it that far… is set for Paris, France, six weeks from now. Six weeks of forced practice. Forced proximity. Forced choreography, hands on my waist, his in mine, all the things I have spent two years specifically avoiding with Park Sunghoon because I don't trust myself not to either strangle him or…

No. I don't finish that thought. I refuse to finish that thought.

My phone buzzes again. Unknown number, but I know exactly who it is before I even open it, because who else would text me at 9 p.m. with the emotional warmth of a parking ticket.

UNKNOWN: Coach wants us at the rink tomorrow, 6 a.m. Don't be late. I'm not carrying you through this.

I type four different responses. Delete all of them. Send the fifth.

Y/N: I've never once needed carrying, Park. Try to keep up.

The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. It takes him almost two full minutes to respond, which I choose to interpret as a personal victory.

Sunghoon: We'll see.

I put my phone in a drawer, physically, like that will stop my heart from doing the stupid, backstabbing thing it just did.

…

THE MEETING

The federation calls an official meeting two days later… all four of us, plus Coach Choi and a federation collaborator named Ethan who has the bother energy of a man who has been fielding phone calls from sponsors since six a.m., in a conference room that smells like stale coffee and looks like it hasn't been redecorated since the '90s.

"This is a marketing opportunity," Ethan says, sliding a folder across the table toward me and Sunghoon, who are, notably, sitting on opposite ends of it, as far apart as the furniture allows. "The exhibition circuit is new. We need eyes on it. Two athletes with a documented… and I want to stress, widely publicized… rivalry, suddenly required to skate as partners? That's a story. That sells tickets."

"So we're bait," I say.

"I prefer 'narrative anchors,'" Ethan says, entirely unbothered, and I decide immediately that I do not like Ethan.

Sunghoon, beside me… well, not beside me, four empty chairs away from me… hasn't said a word since we sat down, arms crossed, jaw tight, staring at the folder like it personally offended him. Keeho, on the other hand, is delighted, already scrolling through the unconfirmed competition schedule on his phone and narrating highlights out loud to Lia.

"Paris," Keeho says. "Finals are in Paris. We're going to the actual France. Lia, we're going to the Paris."

"I heard you the first time," Lia says, but she's grinning, already looking something up on her own phone… probably restaurants, or gelato rankings, or both.

"Any questions?" Ethan asks, in the tone of someone who has never once actually wanted questions.

"Yes," Sunghoon says, finally speaking, voice flat. "What happens if this doesn't work? If two athletes who, and I want to be clear about this, have a genuinely difficult working relationship, can't actually pull off six minutes of ice dance together?"

"Then you don't qualify, and the federation quietly stops mentioning the exhibition circuit in press releases, and everyone moves on with minimal embarrassment," Ethan says, entirely too breezy for the size of the threat buried in that sentence. "But you won't fail. You're both too competitive to fail on purpose, even to spite each other. Frankly, that's exactly why we picked you."

The meeting ends without much more resolved, and out in the hallway, Sunghoon catches up to me at a near jog, which is, for him, practically sprinting.

"For the record," he says, low, just for me, "I didn't request this. I want that on the table before we start."

"I didn't request it either."

"I know. I'm not accusing you." He runs a hand through his hair, and for a second the practiced coldness slips, just slightly, revealing something almost like exhaustion underneath it. "I just don't want you walking into six a.m. practice tomorrow assuming I created this to torture you personally. I have better things to do with my time than plan out your suffering."

"That's oddly reassuring."

"I have my moments." A pause, and then, almost reluctantly: "We should probably actually try. If we're doing this. Might as well not embarrass ourselves in front of an entire continent."

"Is that you asking for a truce, Park?"

"It's me asking you not to sabotage the choreography out of spite," he says, but there's something almost like humor threaded through it now, the first genuine crack I've seen in his armor in two years of knowing him. "A truce is a bit ambitious for week one."

"Fine. No sabotage. I make no other promises."

"Wouldn't expect you to." He almost smiles… the real one, fangs and all, gone as fast as it appears… and turns down the hallway toward the locker room, leaving me standing there trying to figure out why my heart is doing something complicated and unfamiliar over a conversation that, on paper, was barely even friendly.

CHAPTER 2: HANDS, ICE, AND OTHER HAZARDS

Coach Choi has the look of a woman who has already accepted that this partnership might end in bloodshed and has made peace with it, as long as the bloodshed happens after Nationals qualifying.

"Frame hold," she says, for the fourth time, standing at center ice with her arms crossed. "Sunghoon, your hand goes on her waist, not floating an inch above it like you're afraid she'll bite."

"I'm not afraid of her biting me," Sunghoon says, deadpan, and finally… finally… sets his hand at my waist like it costs him something physical to do it.

"I bite," I say, mostly to make him flinch. He doesn't. Of course he doesn't.

"Noted," he says, and I feel the breath of his exhale against my ear, and I hate… hate… that my whole body responds to it before my brain has a chance to intervene.

This is the problem with Park Sunghoon up close. From a distance he's an idea… cold, insufferable, a name I say with my whole chest full of two years of resentment. Up close he's a temperature. His hand is warm even through my practice jacket. He smells like clean laundry and the particular cold metal smell of the rink, and when he tips my chin up with two fingers to correct my head position for the entrance, his eyes are so dark I can't find the line between iris and pupil, and for one entire, humiliating second, I forget what we're doing.

"Chin up," he says. "Not into my personal space. Up."

"I am up."

"You're leaning."

"I'm not leaning, you're standing weird."

"I'm standing exactly how the choreography says to stand."

"Children," Coach Choi says, without looking up from her tablet. "Again from the top."

We go again. And again. And again, until the six a.m. sun turns into the nine a.m. sun slanting hard through the rink's high windows, until my thighs are shaking and Sunghoon's jaw is tight with the particular controlled rage of a perfectionist forced to share a canvas.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about ice dance holds, they are built for people who like each other. Every position assumes trust… his hand at the small of my back as he sends me into a spin, my palm flat against his sternum as I fall backward into a supported lift, the long unbroken eye contact required for the closing pose. Every single element of this choreography is, structurally, an act of intimacy, and neither of us signed up to be intimate with the other. We signed up, respectively, to win.

"You're gripping too hard," he mutters, low, during a break in the lift sequence, his hands bracketing my ribs as he lowers me down from the air.

"You're going too fast on the entry, I'm balancing."

"I'm going exactly the speed the tempo requires."

"Then the tempo's wrong."

"The tempo isn't wrong, you're just—" He stops himself. Exhales through his nose. When he looks at me again there's something almost like respect buried under the irritation, the way you might respect a wall you keep running into. "You're stubborn."

"You're arrogant."

"At least I'm consistent."

"At least I don't insult my partner during a lift."

"I'm not insulting you. I'm observing you." A pause. The corner of his mouth twitches… not quite a smile, more like the memory of one. "Observation… you dig your nails into my shoulder when you're scared."

I yank my hand back like it's been burned. "I am not scared of you, Park."

"Didn't say you were scared of me." His eyes hold mine, unreadable, cold in that specific way that isn't actually cold at all, just guarded, like a door shut so hard it looks welded. "Said you were scared. There's a difference."

I don't have a comeback for that. Which is, in itself, infuriating.

…

Practice ends in a draw of silence, both of us toweling off sweat on opposite ends of the bench, close enough to share air, far enough that neither of us has to acknowledge it. Lia and Keeho are still on the ice, and unlike us, they are laughing… actually laughing, easy, Keeho spinning her in slow circles just for the joy of it, no choreography required.

"They make it look disgustingly simple," I say, before I can stop myself.

Sunghoon follows my gaze. For a second his whole face changes… softens, in a way I've genuinely never seen before, watching his best friend goof around with my best friend like they've been doing this their whole lives, which, according to Lia, they basically have. Keeho and Sunghoon have known each other since juniors. There's a photo somewhere, Lia showed me once, of the two of them at maybe fifteen, skinny and grinning, arms slung around each other's necks after some regional podium. I remember being surprised, looking at it, that Park Sunghoon had ever been a person who smiled like that.

"They've had six years of practice being easy with each other," Sunghoon says. "We've had two years of practice hating each other. It's not the same math."

"So what, we just need six years?"

"God, I hope not." But there's no real venom in it. He stands, slings his bag over one shoulder, and for a moment… just a moment… he looks at me like he's deciding whether to say something else. He doesn't. "Same time tomorrow. Don't be late."

"I'm never late."

"You were four minutes late today."

"I was not—" But he's already walking away, and the worst part, the actual worst part, is that I watch him go, and some small traitor part of my chest notes the set of his shoulders, the low brutal grace of how he moves even just walking off the ice, and I hate that I noticed, and I hate that some other part of me… smaller, quieter, the part I keep in a locked room… didn't hate it at all.

Lia catches up to me at the lobby doors, cheeks pink from cold and laughing. "You two looked very normal out there," she says. "Very calm. Very not about to combust."

"Shut up."

"I'm just saying. Keeho says Sunghoon doesn't talk about anyone the way he talks about you."

"He talks about me like I'm a disease."

"Sure," Lia says, grinning, looping her arm through mine as we walk out into the cold. "That's exactly what I meant."

…

STUDYING IN SPITE

The next two weeks settle into a rhythm that I refuse, on principle, to call comfortable, even though it is. Six a.m. ice. Choreography breakdowns with Coach Choi that run until our legs shake. Lunch, usually separate, except for the days it isn't, when Sunghoon shows up at the same café I go to with Lia and orders the same terrible black coffee he always orders and sits at the counter close enough to hear everything we say, which he absolutely does on purpose.

"You're eavesdropping," I tell him, on one such afternoon, when Lia's gone to the bathroom and it's just the two of us and the barista pretending not to watch us like we're the best entertainment she's had all week.

"I'm sitting in a public café. You're the one who's loud."

"I am not loud."

"You laugh like you're trying to set off a car alarm."

"That's a horrible thing to say to someone."

"It's not an insult. It's an observation." He sips his coffee, unbothered, the corner of his mouth doing that thing it does now… not quite a smile, but close, closer every week. "I like it. For the record."

I don't have a response for that, which seems to be happening more and more often lately, this specific breed of speechlessness that only Park Sunghoon manages to induce, and I hate… I think I hate… how much I've started looking forward to it.

We spend an entire Tuesday practice arguing about the lift sequence in the second half of the program… he wants it faster, sharper, I want an extra beat of hold before the release, and Coach Choi eventually just lets us fight it out because, in her words, "the choreography that survives you two arguing about it is usually the choreography that actually works."

She's right, infuriatingly. The version we land on by Thursday… a full beat slower into the lift than Sunghoon wanted, half a beat faster out of it than I wanted… is better than either of our original ideas, cleaner, more dramatic, the kind of moment that's going to look incredible on camera. Neither of us says so out loud. We just skate it, again and again, until it's muscle memory, until his hands know exactly where mine will be before I move them, until the fighting starts to feel less like fighting and more like two people building something neither of them could build alone.

"We're good at this," Keeho observes one afternoon, watching from the boards with the particular satisfaction of someone whose prediction is coming true faster than expected. "Like, genuinely good. Federation's going to owe you both a raise."

"Don't jinx it," I say, but I'm smiling when I say it, and across the ice, so is Sunghoon, and neither of us bothers hiding it from the other anymore, not really, not the way we used to.

…

THE FEDERATION GALA

Three weeks in, the federation throws its annual fundraising gala, and attendance, according to Ethan, is "extremely encouraged" for anyone hoping to keep their funding intact, which is how I end up in a dress I don't entirely trust myself to move in, standing in a hotel ballroom full of donors and officials and the specific breed of small talk that makes my skin itch.

Sunghoon, when he arrives, looks… I hate this, I genuinely hate how much I notice this… infuriatingly good in a black suit, hair pushed back instead of its usual careless part, and when he catches my eye across the room something flickers over his face that I can't quite name before he goes back into his usual composed neutrality.

"You clean up well," he says, appearing at my elbow with two glasses of champagne, handing me one without asking if I wanted it, which I do, so I let it slide.

"Careful, Park. That almost sounded like a compliment."

"I'm capable of compliments. I just ration them." He glances the room with the flat, assessing look he usually reserves for competitors' technical scores. "This is excruciating."

"Agreed."

"Keeho's already found the open bar and is explaining figure skating scoring to someone's grandmother."

I follow his gaze and, sure enough, there's Keeho, gesturing enthusiastically at an elderly woman in pearls who looks either delighted or deeply confused, and beside him Lia is laughing so hard she has to hold onto his arm for balance.

"They're disgustingly cute," I say.

"They're disgustingly loud," Sunghoon corrects, but there's no real bite in it, just fondness, the specific fondness of someone who's watched his best friend fall in love up close and found himself unexpectedly moved by it. "Six years and he still looks at her like that."

"Like what?"

"Like she's the only interesting thing in a crowded room." He says it simply, no weight behind it that I can detect, and goes back to his champagne, and it takes me an embarrassingly long moment to realize I'm still staring at him, and an even more embarrassing moment after that to realize he's noticed.

"What," he says.

"Nothing."

"You're doing the thing where you decide you understand me because you saw one soft moment."

"I wasn't."

"You were." But it's gentle this time, almost teasing, nothing like the sharp warning from weeks ago, and something about the shift… the way his voice has learned to hold my name and my attention without any of its old venom… makes my chest go warm and unsteady.

A photographer catches us mid conversation and asks, with the overeager energy of someone hoping for exactly the story Ethan wants, if the newly announced exhibition partners would pose together for the press wall. Sunghoon's jaw tightens, and for a second I brace for him to refuse on principle, the way the old Sunghoon… the Nationals Sunghoon, the one who skated my music out from under me… absolutely would have.

Instead he offers his arm.

"For the sponsors," he says, deadpan, though something in his eyes says it isn't only that.

"For the sponsors," I agree, and take it, and the flash of the camera catches us mid laugh at some private joke I can't even remember making, and the photo runs in three different outlets by the next morning captioned, with a confidence neither publication has any right to, "Ice rivals or something more?"

Coach Choi texts both of us the article link with no commentary except a single raised eyebrow emoji, which is, somehow, more damning than anything she could have said out loud.

CHAPTER 3: THE RINK AT MIDNIGHT

I go back to the rink at eleven p.m. because I can't sleep and because there's a landing on my triple axel that's been haunting me for a week, and because… if I'm honest, which I try very hard not to be about this… an empty rink at night is the only place I've ever felt like myself without an audience.

I use my keycard. The lights are half dimmed, emergency lighting only, and the ice is glass smooth, freshly resurfaced, nobody's blade having touched it since close. I love it like this. Quiet enough to hear my own blood.

Except I'm not the only one who had this idea.

He's already out there when I push through the doors, a lone figure carving slow loops under the low light, headphones in, completely unaware of me standing in the doorway. He's not doing choreography. He's not doing anything technical at all… just skating, long unhurried strokes, arms loose, head tipped back slightly like he's somewhere else entirely. I've genuinely never seen him move like this. Every version of Park Sunghoon I know is armored… jaw set, spine straight, competition ready even in casual practice. This version looks like he forgot anyone could see him.

I should leave. I know I should leave.

I don't leave.

I set my bag down as quietly as I can, but the rink is a terrible place for secrets… sound carries over ice like it's been created to… and he hears the zipper of my bag from thirty feet away. He stops mid glide, headphones coming out in one smooth motion, and for a second, just a second, before the walls go back up, I catch something unguarded in his face. Surprise. Maybe something softer than surprise.

"You too, huh," he says.

"Couldn't sleep."

"Same." He skates closer, slow, hands in his jacket pockets. "The axel?"

"How did you—"

"You've been landing it two footed all week. It's not a mystery." He stops a few feet away, studying me with an expression I can't place… not the usual sharp attitude, something quieter. "You're over rotating in the air to balance out for under rotating on takeoff. It's a fear thing, not a technique thing."

"I'm not afraid of the axel."

"Didn't say you were afraid of the axel." A ghost of that almost smile. "You do this thing where you brace before you even leave the ice. Like you're already preparing to fall."

I want to argue. I open my mouth to argue. But the truth arrives instead, unwanted and unwelcome, "I broke my wrist on that jump when I was sixteen. Missed Junior Nationals."

I don't know why I tell him that. I have told almost no one that, not because it's some deep secret but because it's mine, small and private, a scar under a sleeve. Sunghoon goes very still.

"I didn't know that," he says.

"Why would you."

"Fair." He looks out at the ice for a second, then back at me, and something in his posture shifts… less armored, more like a person deciding to risk something. "Show me the entry."

"What?"

"Your entry into the axel. Show me. Not to compete. Just—" he exhales, and it sounds almost like it costs him to say it, "… I actually want to help. For once."

I don't trust it. I don't trust him. But it's midnight, and the rink is ours, and there's no one here to perform hatred for, so I skate out, run the entry, and let him watch.

"There," he says, when I finish, breathing hard. "You drop your shoulder half a second before takeoff. You're not scared of the jump. You're scared of what happens if it goes wrong in front of people. So you're flinching from an audience that isn't even here."

It's uncomfortably, precisely accurate, and I hate him a little for how easily he saw it, and I hate myself a little more for how much I needed someone to say it out loud.

"Since when do you psychoanalyze people's jumps," I say, mostly to have something to say.

"Since I've spent two years studying you so I could beat you." He says it plainly, no cruelty in it, just fact, and somehow that's worse… more intimate… than if he'd meant it as an insult. "I know your skating better than anyone except maybe your coach."

"That's deeply unsettling."

"Probably." He skates a slow circle around me, close enough that I can feel the displaced air. "Try it again. Don't flinch. I'll catch you if it goes wrong."

"You will not."

"I will. I've got fast hands." A flash of teeth on that last word… the fang points catching the low light… and something in my stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with fear of falling.

I try the jump. I don't flinch. I land it… actually land it, clean, both blades solid under me, no balance out shoulder… and the sound that comes out of me is somewhere between a laugh and a sob of relief.

Sunghoon's face, when I turn to him, has cracked open into something I've never seen on him in two years of hating each other, pure, unguarded pride. Not smugness. Not victory. Just… pride, for me, like it's a thing he's allowed to feel.

"There she is," he says, quiet.

Neither of us moves for a second. The rink hums around us, empty and glowing and ours. I don't know what would have happened next if his phone hadn't buzzed in his pocket, shattering it… some group chat notification, Keeho probably, and the moment folds itself back up like it never happened.

"I should go," he says, suddenly formal again, skating backward toward the boards. "Early practice."

"Right. Yeah."

He pauses at the gate, looking back at me with an expression I can't read in the dim light. "Good axel, Y/N." My actual name, not L/N, not the clipped surname he's used for two years. It lands somewhere under my ribs and stays there long after he's gone.

…

TWICE IS A PATTERN

It happens again four nights later, though this time I almost don't go… I'm exhausted, my legs ache from a double practice day, and every rational part of my brain is telling me that whatever happened between us at midnight last week was a fluke, a strange, private exception to two years of established hostility, not something to go chasing a second time.

I go anyway.

He's not skating when I get there. He's sitting on the boards, headphones around his neck instead of in his ears, staring at nothing in particular, and something about the stillness of him… none of his usual coiled, ready to move energy… makes me hesitate at the doors longer than I mean to.

"You can come in," he says, without turning around. "I can hear you breathing from here."

"That's not creepy at all."

"It's an empty rink. Sound carries." He glances over as I drop my bag, and there's something tired around his eyes tonight, something heavier than the usual guardedness. "Bad practice today?"

"Bad everything today. Coach thinks my entry edges are getting sloppy under pressure. She's not wrong." I sit down on the boards a careful distance from him, close enough to talk, far enough to pretend it's casual. "You?"

"My sister called. Reminded me it's been three years since I've made it home for her birthday because of competition schedules." He says it flatly, like a fact rather than a wound, but I've spent enough weeks studying him now… on the ice and off it… to hear the wound underneath the flatness anyway. "I used to think missing things like that was just the cost of being good at this. Lately I'm not so sure it's a cost I want to keep paying."

"That's a big thing to realize a month before a huge competition."

"Tell me about it." He almost laughs, humorless, and rubs a hand over his face. "I used to think winning was the only thing that would ever actually satisfy me. Lately winning feels less like the whole point and more like… I don't know. A means to something else. I haven't figured out what yet."

I don't have a clever response for that, so I don't try to find one. I just sit with him, quiet, the rink humming faintly around us, until he glances over, surprised, like he expected me to fill the silence with something sharp and didn't quite know what to do with the fact that I hadn't.

"You're not going to make a joke," he says.

"Not everything needs one."

"That's new, coming from you."

"I can have my moments too," I say, echoing his own line from weeks ago, and it startles a real laugh out of him, quiet and unguarded, the kind that crinkles the corners of his eyes and shows the edge of his teeth.

"Skate with me," he says, standing, offering a hand. "Not choreography. Just… skate. I need to remember why I like this before I have to go be good at it again tomorrow."

I take his hand.

We skate slow loops around the empty rink for the better part of an hour, no music, no counting, no judges' eyes to perform for, just the two of us and the sound of blades on fresh ice, and somewhere in that hour, without either of us quite naming it, whatever fragile thing gets a little sturdier, a little more real, built not on heat or argument but on this… quiet, unhurried, entirely undramatic trust.

"Thank you," he says, when we finally stop, breathless, cheeks flushed from cold and sweat. "For not asking me to explain myself tonight."

"You don't owe me explanations, Sunghoon."

"Maybe not." He studies me for a long moment, something warm and uncertain moving behind his eyes. "I think I want to give you some anyway. Eventually. When I've figured out how."

"I'll be here," I say, and mean it more than I expect to, and the walk back to our cars afterward is quiet and easy in a way two years of hating him never once let me imagine it could be.

CHAPTER 4: SOMETHING LIKE A TRUCE

Something shifts after that night, though neither of us says so out loud. The banter doesn't stop… if anything, it gets sharper, faster, more like a rally than a fight… but there's a different current underneath it now, something warmer running just below the ice.

Three weeks out from the qualifier, our free dance is finally coming together. Coach Choi has us running full run throughs twice a day, and by the second week I know the choreography in my body the way I know my own name… every hold, every transition, the exact half second before he lifts me where I have to trust my whole weight to his hands and nothing else.

"You're not falling," Keeho says one afternoon, watching from the boards with Lia tucked under his arm. "Like, genuinely. A month ago you two looked like you wanted to throw each other into the boards. Now you look like you're—" he squints, considering, "… dangerously competent. It's honestly a little unsettling."

"We're professionals," Sunghoon says, not even looking up from retying his laces.

"Sure," Keeho says, grinning at Lia, who grins back, and I decide not to examine that exchange too closely.

The trouble is that ability and closeness have started to feel like the same thing, and I don't know how to want one without the other anymore.

It comes to a head on a Thursday, ten days before we're set to fly out for the French qualifier. We're both invited… separately, in that way friend groups plan out things… to Keeho's place for what's billed as a "team dinner," except it's really just the four of us, and by ten p.m. Lia and Keeho have very obviously and very deliberately vanished to "get more wine" and simply never come back, leaving me and Sunghoon alone on the couch with an unfinished bottle of red and absolutely no plausible reason to leave.

"They're not subtle," Sunghoon says, staring at the door Keeho and Lia disappeared through twenty minutes ago.

"They've never been subtle."

"Keeho thinks he's a matchmaker. He's not. He introduced his cousin to a guy who turned out to be his cousin's ex's brother. It was a whole thing."

I laugh… actually laugh, surprised by it… and Sunghoon looks at me like the sound did something to him he wasn't prepared for.

We end up walking back to his place because it's closer than mine and because it's started to snow, hard, the kind of early season storm that makes the streets go silent and white, and because… if I'm being honest… neither of us wants the night to end yet, though I'd rather choke than say that out loud.

His apartment is exactly what I'd have guessed and nothing like it at all. Sparse, clean lines, but there's a shelf of actual books, worn spines, and a single framed photo of him as a kid on the ice, fang teeth out, ecstatic, nothing like the guarded man he grew into. I find myself looking at it too long.

"Don't," he says, appearing behind me with two glasses of water, setting them on the counter.

"Don't what?"

"Don't do the thing where you decide you understand me because you saw one photo."

"I wasn't."

"You were." But he says it without heat, almost fond, and something about that almost fond undoes a knot in my chest I didn't know was tied.

We end up on his couch, close, the storm outside turning the windows into static, and the conversation does the thing conversations do at midnight after wine… it goes honest, and then it goes reckless, and then, predictably, catastrophically, it goes right back to the same old argument, except this time it's got teeth.

"You still haven't apologized for Nationals," I say, not sure why I bring it up now, except that his knee is six inches from mine and it's making me stupid.

"For what, exactly."

"You know what. The music. You knew I was considering that piece and you took it anyway."

"I didn't take anything." His jaw tightens, and just like that we're back on familiar ground, the old fight going into place like a key into a lock. "I chose a piece of music my choreographer suggested in June. I didn't know what you were considering because you never told me, you told a reporter, which… forgive me… is not the same as telling me."

"You knew. Everyone knew you knew."

"Everyone believed a story because it's a better story than the truth, which is that I've spent two years getting blamed for things I didn't do because it's easier for people to hate the guy with the resting bitch face than admit the world is more complicated than that."

"Oh, is that the tragic backstory? Poor misunderstood Park Sunghoon?"

"Don't do that." His voice drops, low and sharp. "Don't turn this into a joke because you don't want to actually hear it."

"Maybe I don't want to hear it because for two years you've let me hate you and never once said a word to stop it."

"Maybe I let you hate me because it was easier than the alternative!" It comes out louder than either of us expects, and the silence after is enormous, ringing, and I watch something crack open across his face… frustration, yes, but under it something rawer, something that looks almost like fear.

"What alternative," I say, quieter now.

He doesn't answer with words. He looks at me… really looks, the kind of look that strips away every insult we've ever traded… and the air between us goes thin and electric, and I realize, with a slip, that we are both leaning in, that this fight has somehow become something else entirely, that his hand has found my jaw and mine has fisted in his shirt and neither of us is pulling away.

"This is a terrible idea," I breathe.

"Historically terrible," he agrees, and doesn't stop. His voice low and rough, but he doesn't pull away. His hand is still cupped around my jaw, thumb pressing just under my lower lip. "You're still the most stubborn person I know."

"And you're still an arrogant prick who thinks the world orbits around your triple axels," I fire back, fingers twisting tighter into his shirt, yanking him closer.

He kisses me first… hard, demanding, like he's been waiting two years to shut me up this way. It's all teeth and heat and frustration, tongues sliding hotly as the last threads of our argument snap. My hands fist in his hair, his grip tightens on my jaw, tilting my head exactly how he wants. We kiss like we're still fighting… nipping, chasing, devouring… until the air between us feels too thin to breathe.

When we finally break apart, gasping, I glare up at him. "This doesn't change anything. You're still the guy with small dick energy who stole my music."

Sunghoon's eyes flash with dark amusement, a dangerous smirk tugging at his lips. "Small dick energy? Bold claim from someone who's about to find out exactly how wrong she is." He kisses me again, deeper this time, swallowing my response as his hands shove my sweater up and off. My tank top follows, bra unhooked with impatient fingers. The way he stares at my bare chest… hungry, almost angry with how much he wants it… makes my skin burn.

"Still running your mouth?" he murmurs, bending to close his lips around one nipple. He sucks hard, tongue flicking, while his hand palms the other breast, rolling the peak between fingers. I arch into him with a sharp gasp, nails scraping down his back.

"Still an asshole," I manage, but my voice cracks when he bites down gently, sending sparks straight between my legs.

Clothes come off in a frantic blur… his shirt, my leggings, his pants… until we're skin to skin on the couch. His cock is hard and heavy against my thigh, definitely disproving my taunt, but I won't give him the satisfaction yet. He kisses down my body like he's mapping territory he's secretly claimed for years, collarbones, ribs, the dip of my stomach. When he settles between my thighs, pushing them wide, he looks up at me with that infuriating, fang tipped smirk.

"Let's see how much you hate me when I'm tasting you."

He drags his tongue slowly up my slit, groaning at the taste. "Already dripping for me. Pathetic."

"Shut up and… fuck—" My insult dies as he sucks my clit into his mouth, tongue working it in firm, relentless circles. Two fingers push inside me, curling perfectly against that spot that makes my toes curl. He eats me out like it's a competition… messy, devoted, alternating between long licks and focused suction that has me grinding against his face, thighs clamped around his head.

"Sunghoon… oh god—" I tug his hair harder, hips rolling. He hums in response, the vibration pushing me closer. His fingers pump faster, tongue flicking rapidly over my clit until I shatter, coming hard with a cry that echoes in the quiet apartment. He licks me through every pulse, gentler but still greedy, until I'm shaking and oversensitive.

He finally lifts his head, lips shiny, eyes dark with victory. "Still think it's small dick energy?"

I don't answer with words. I push him back onto the couch and slide down between his legs. His cock stands thick and flushed, curving up, pre come beading at the tip. I wrap my hand around the base and lean in, licking a slow stripe from balls to head before swirling my tongue around the sensitive tip.

"Shit, Y/N—" His hand fists in my hair as I take him deeper, hollowing my cheeks, bobbing with wet, filthy sounds. I relax my throat and sink down until my nose brushes his stomach, holding there as he curses. I pull back, gasping, then do it again… faster, messier… using my hand in rhythm while I suck and lick and moan around him. His hips twitch, fighting not to thrust too hard, eyes locked on me like I'm the only thing in the world.

"You're too good at that," he groans, voice wrecked. "Going to make me come if you don't stop."

I pull off with a wet pop, lips swollen. "Good. Maybe that'll shut you up for once."

He pulls me up before I can tease more, kissing me fiercely so I taste myself on his tongue. We stumble to the bedroom, barely making it to the bed. He lays me down, spreading my legs again, and this time he takes his time… licking me slow and deep, fucking me with his tongue while his thumb circles my clit. Another orgasm builds fast; I come on his face with a sob, thighs trembling.

Only then does he crawl over me, lining up. "Tell me you want this."

"I want you," I admit, legs wrapping around him. "Even if you're still annoying."

He pushes in slowly, stretching me open inch by inch until he's buried deep. We both groan at the perfect fit. He starts moving… deep, rolling thrusts that hit every spot. The pace turns desperate quickly: harder, faster, skin slapping, my nails raking down his back as he drives into me.

"Look at me," he demands. I do… meeting those dark eyes as pleasure coils tight again. He shifts, grinding against my clit with every stroke. "Come on, baby. Let me feel you."

I come hard around him, clenching, crying out his name. He follows right after, hips stuttering as he spills deep inside me with a low, broken moan.

We stay locked together, breathing hard. Eventually he pulls out carefully and collapses beside me, tugging me against his chest. Sweat cools on our skin, hearts still racing.

I trace the line of his collarbone, voice soft but still edged with our usual banter. "This doesn't mean I like you."

He huffs a quiet laugh, pressing a lingering kiss to my temple, then my forehead, then my lips…slow and surprisingly tender. "Wouldn't dream of it." His arms tighten around me, one hand stroking lazily down my spine. "But for the record... you definitely don't hate me anymore."

I don't argue. Instead, I curl closer, listening to his heartbeat slow, the fight draining out of both of us into something warmer, heavier. The apartment is quiet except for our breathing and the distant sound of snow against the window. For the first time in two years, the silence between Park Sunghoon and me doesn't feel like a battlefield.

We fall asleep like that… tangled, satisfied, the argument finally spent… neither of us ready to name what just shifted between us.

…

I wake up to gray morning light and the specific, dizzying dread of realizing exactly whose apartment I'm in, exactly whose arm is slung over my waist, exactly how thoroughly last night has rearranged something I was very deliberately keeping in order.

Sunghoon is already awake, watching the ceiling with an unreadable expression, and when he feels me stir he goes very still, like a man bracing for impact.

"We fly out in nine days," he says finally, not looking at me.

"I know."

"We should—" he stops, exhales, tries again, "… we should figure out what this is. Or wasn't. Whatever it was."

"Can we not figure it out right now? I have practice in three hours, and I genuinely cannot process feelings before caffeine."

That gets the ghost of a smile out of him, small and real. "Deal." A pause. "For the record. I don't regret it."

"I didn't say I regretted it either."

"No," he agrees, watching me with something new in his eyes, something I don't have a name for yet. "You didn't."

We don't talk about it again. Not really. We go back to practice the next morning like nothing happened, snapping at each other over entry timing and shoulder alignment with the exact same edge as before… except now there's a whole unspoken conversation underneath every insult, a live wire neither of us touches, both of us hyper aware of exactly how close we came to something neither of us knows how to name.

…

EMPTY ICE, AGAIN

I go back to the rink alone three nights later, telling myself it's about the axel again, about a shoulder rotation I want to drill without an audience, and not at all about the fact that I've replayed the sound of my own name in Sunghoon's mouth roughly four hundred times since his apartment and I need somewhere quiet to think about literally anything else.

He's there again. Of course he's there again.

This time neither of us pretends surprise. He just glances up when the doors open, gives me a small nod, and goes back to his slow, unhurried loops around the rink, and I lace up and join him without a word, the two of us skating parallel circuits in comfortable, charged silence for a long while before either of us speaks.

"We should talk about it," he says eventually, coasting to a stop near center ice.

"About the apartment?"

"About the apartment. About what it means for the next four weeks. About whether we can actually pull off six minutes of intimate choreography in front of judges without one of us combusting."

"I don't combust."

"You absolutely combust. You went bright red during the hold sequence yesterday and told Coach Choi it was the heating."

"It might have been the heating."

"It's an ice rink." The almost smile again, softer now, less armored than it used to be. He skates a slow circle around me, close, and stops directly in front of me, near enough that I have to tip my head back. "I don't regret it. I told you that already. But I don't want it to be a thing we did once and then spend six weeks awkwardly not talking about while we're supposed to be trusting each other with lifts that could genuinely break bones if we get it wrong."

"So what do you want it to be?"

"I don't know yet." He says it honestly, no performance in it, which is somehow more disarming than any of his usual sharp certainty. "I know I don't want to go back to before. I know I like this… whatever this is, skating with you, arguing with you, being near you without it feeling like a war. I just don't know what to call it yet, and I'd rather tell you that honestly than pretend I've got it figured out."

It's the most vulnerable thing I've ever heard him say, and something in my chest loosens at the plainness of it, the lack of armor. "I don't know what to call it either," I admit. "But I don't want to stop finding out."

He reaches for my hand… not for choreography, not for a lift, just to hold it, his fingers lacing through mine on the empty ice at midnight… and for a long moment neither of us says anything else, because for once, we don't need to.

"Same time tomorrow," he says eventually, echoing that very first, very hostile text message from weeks ago, except now it sounds like an invitation instead of a demand.

"Same time tomorrow," I agree, and mean it in every possible way.

…

WHAT LIA KNOWS

Lia corners me two days before the Canadian qualifier, in the locker room, with the specific look on her face that means she has been waiting for the right moment to say something for a while and has decided this is it.

"You've been weird," she says, sitting cross legged on the bench beside me while I tape my ankle. "Good weird. But weird."

"I don't know what you mean."

"You hummed on the drive over. You never hum. You've been actively, aggressively not hating a man you've spent two years actively, aggressively hating, and you keep getting this specific soft look on your face whenever his name comes up, which… for the record… is a look I have literally never seen you make about another human being. Ever."

I focus very hard on the tape. "It's complicated."

"It's really not, though. That's kind of the point." She bumps my shoulder gently with hers. "I'm not trying to push. I just want you to know I see it, and I'm happy for you, whatever it turns out to be. Keeho says the same thing's happening on his end… Sunghoon apparently hasn't talked this much about anyone since juniors, and even then it was mostly complaining about how I was going to 'ruin his best friend's training schedule,' which, rude, but also, he's never once talked about a person the way Keeho says he talks about you now."

"What does he say?"

"I'm not telling you that. That's between best friends. Some things are sacred." She grins, unashamed, and softens again. "I just don't want you to go into finals scared of what this is. You've spent two years being scared of him for the wrong reasons. Don't spend the next six weeks being scared of him for a new one."

It's good advice, and I know it's good advice, and it still takes me most of the walk home to actually believe it. The qualifier itself passes in a blur of adrenaline and near mistakes and one truly spectacular under rotated landing on my part that Sunghoon covers for so smoothly the judges barely notice… a small, unglamorous act of trust that means more to me than any of the technical scores that follow. We win our slot to France by a comfortable margin. Lia and Keeho secure theirs by a narrower one, which doesn't stop Keeho from celebrating like they'd won gold at the Olympics, spinning Lia in circles at center ice until Coach Choi threatens to bench them both for excessive enthusiasm.

That night, packing for a flight I still can't quite believe is happening, I find a text waiting from Sunghoon, sent an hour after the results were posted.

Sunghoon: We're going to France.

Sunghoon: Together.

Y/N: Was there any doubt

Sunghoon: Not about the skating. No.

I read that last line four times before I set the phone down, and I don't sleep much that night, not from nerves about the competition, but from the specific, terrifying, wonderful feeling of speeding toward something I can't quite name yet, with someone I spent two years insisting I couldn't stand.

CHAPTER 5: DEPARTURE

We qualify.

It's not close, in the end… our free dance at the Canadian qualifier is, according to every commentator and half the internet, "electric," "undeniable," "the best thing either skater has ever put on ice," and I want to feel victory about it, and I do, but underneath the victory is a low hint of terror, because the scoreboard doesn't know what happened on Sunghoon's couch nine days before this competition, and I do, and pretending otherwise for six minute programs at a time is starting to cost me more than it should.

Lia and Keeho qualify too, second place behind us by a narrow enough margin that Keeho spends a full week insisting the judges "clearly have a favorite team" in a tone that suggests he's only forty percent joking.

So now we're all four of us on a plane to Paris, France, for the international final, and I am sitting in economy between Lia, who has already fallen asleep on my shoulder somewhere over the Atlantic, and a window, watching the ocean turn to a dark unbroken sheet below us, while three rows up I can see the back of Sunghoon's head, tilted toward Keeho, the two of them laughing quietly about something I can't hear.

"You're staring," Lia mumbles, not even opening her eyes.

"I'm looking out the window."

"You're staring at the back of Park Sunghoon's head like it personally wronged you."

"It did. For two years."

"Mm." She yawns, settles deeper into my shoulder. "Keeho says he's been different lately. Softer. Says he hasn't seen Sunghoon smile this much since juniors."

I don't have an answer for that, so I say nothing, and watch the ocean, and try very hard not to think about the specific weight of Sunghoon's hand on my jaw or the specific sound of my own name in his mouth at midnight, and fail completely.

…

Paris in early spring is somehow both exactly and nothing like I pictured… pale stone buildings the color of old paper, the Seine glimmering beneath stone bridges, the air smelling like fresh pastries, coffee, and the faint scent of spring rain and, faintly, like someone's cigarette three balconies over. Our hotel sits three blocks from the rink where finals will be held, and the federation has, in a decision I suspect Coach Choi fought and lost, booked us two to a room by pairing… meaning Lia and Keeho share, and I share with Sunghoon.

"This is a disaster waiting to happen," I tell Coach Choi in the lobby, keeping my voice low.

"You're both adults. You're both professionals. You'll survive two nights." She doesn't look up from her clipboard, which means either she genuinely doesn't care or she cares so much she's decided not to engage, and I honestly can't tell which is worse.

The room has two beds, thankfully, separated by a narrow strip of carpet and roughly four thousand years of unresolved tension. Sunghoon claims the bed by the window without asking, which… fine, whatever, I don't care about the view… and unpacks with the same sharp efficiency he brings to everything, folding his shirts into a drawer like the hotel might grade him on it.

"You're very tidy for someone whose entire personality is barely controlled chaos," I say, dropping my bag on the other bed.

"My skating has controlled chaos. My sock drawer does not." He doesn't look up. "Some of us learned to be organized."

"Is that an insult?"

"It's an observation." But there's warmth in it now, the sharp edges sanded down since France, since the plane, since… I suspect… neither of us can quite figure out how to go back to hating each other properly after that night at his apartment. We've settled into something new and unexplored, still bickering, still competitive, but softer at the center, like a fruit gone ripe.

We have two days before finals. Two days to walk along the Seine with Lia and Keeho, to eat gelato that Keeho insists on rating out loud on a ten point scale, to run through choreography on borrowed ice at the practice rink until our legs shake, to lie awake at night four feet apart in a hotel room in France, both of us silent, both of us absolutely not asleep, the space between the beds thick with everything we haven't said since that night.

On our first free afternoon, the four of us wander the old town together, Keeho narrating every gelato flavor like he went wine tasting, Lia buying a ridiculous sunhat she insists she "needs," and at some point, without either of us quite planning it, Sunghoon and I fall a little behind the other two, drifting down a narrow side street lined with shuttered pastel buildings and drying laundry strung overhead like flags.

"You've gone quiet," he says, glancing at me sideways.

"Just thinking."

"About?"

"How weird it is that six weeks ago I would've rather eaten glass than spend an afternoon walking around a foreign city with you, and now I'm—" I gesture vaguely at the space between us, at the whole absurd, warm, unresolved shape of it, "… doing this. Whatever this is."

"Whatever this is," he repeats, like he's testing the phrase, turning it over. He stops walking, right there in the narrow street, close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his gaze. "For what it's worth, I don't want to go back to hating you. Even if I don't fully know what the alternative looks like yet."

"That's the least cold thing you've ever said to me."

"Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation." But he's smiling… really smiling, easy, unguarded, the kind of smile I only ever used to see in that one framed photo on his shelf… and for a second, standing on a quiet Parisian street, I let myself imagine what it might look like if this thing between us stopped being something we were both quietly, carefully not naming.

We catch up to Lia and Keeho at a viewpoint over the water, the whole bay spread out gold and blue below us, and Lia takes one look at the two of us… closer together than we were an hour ago, some new ease settled over both our shoulders… and raises an eyebrow so pointed I nearly trip over the curb.

"Don't," I warn her.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was going to say the view is lovely," she says, entirely too innocent, looping her arm through Keeho's, and behind her, Sunghoon laughs… a real laugh, low and warm, the kind I've only heard a handful of times… and something in my chest settles into place like a blade finding a clean edge.

…

On the second evening, Coach Choi declares a mandatory rest night… "no ice, no choreography talk, go be human beings for six hours"… and Keeho, predictably, interprets this as license to find the nearest bar with a decent playlist and drag all four of us there under protest.

I should have known that's where the trouble would start.

…

BORROWED ICE

The practice rink in Paris is smaller than we're used to, tucked behind a sports complex a short walk from the hotel, and the ice itself has a different texture entirely… softer somehow, or maybe that's just nerves talking, the particular disorientation of running choreography you know in your bones on a surface that doesn't quite feel like home.

"It's not the same," I say, after botching an entry I could do in my sleep back in Toronto, landing hard enough to jar my teeth.

"It's not supposed to be the same." Sunghoon skates over, steadying me with a hand at my elbow before I even ask for it, which has become such a natural reflex between us now that neither of us comments on it anymore. "Every rink's a little different. Ice density, boards, lighting. You adjust. That's the job."

"Easy for you to say. You've been perfect all morning."

"I have not been perfect. I've been working on my toe loops because the ice here has less give than I expected, and if you'd been watching me instead of yourself you'd have noticed." He says it without heat, an observation rather than an accusation, and when I actually look… really look… I catch it, the almost unnoticeable shortness in his landings, the tightness in his shoulders he's usually too controlled to show.

"You're nervous," I say, surprised.

"I'm always nervous before finals. I'm just better at hiding it than most people." He exhales, glancing toward the rink's high windows, sunlight slanting gold across the ice. "You get used to it. Or you don't, and you just get better at performing calm anyway."

"That's a little sad, honestly."

"It's efficient." But there's something almost regretful in the way he says it, and it strikes me… not for the first time, but harder than before… how much of the last two years I spent hating a version of Park Sunghoon that was mostly armor, mostly performance, built to survive a sport that demands you look invincible or get eaten alive by the people who used to be you.

We run the free dance twice more before Coach Choi calls a stop, satisfied, and as we're toweling off at the boards, she pulls us both aside with the particular seriousness she usually reserves for competition strategy.

"I've watched a lot of teams," she says. "A lot of good ones. Technically flawless, medal worthy, all the right elements in all the right places. You know what most of them are missing?"

"What," I ask.

"This." She gestures between us… not unkindly, almost fondly, in her own clipped way. "Whatever's happening here, this thing where you actually see each other on the ice instead of just executing choreography next to a body that happens to also be skating. Don't lose that before Saturday. It's the difference between a technically clean program and the kind that actually wins."

She walks off before either of us can respond, leaving us standing at the boards in the gold afternoon light, and Sunghoon glances at me sideways, something unguarded and a little disbelieving crossing his face.

"Did Coach Choi just give us relationship advice disguised as competition strategy?"

"I think she did."

"That's either the nicest or the most terrifying thing that's happened to me in France so far," he says, and I laugh… really laugh… and the sound of it seems to loosen something in his shoulders that's been sitting there since we landed.

…

WHAT THE PAPER SAYS

The gala photo follows us to France. Of course it does…, "Ice rivals or something more?" has spawned a dozen imitators, a French sports outlet has run a piece speculating, with a confidence that would be funny if it weren't so invasive, about "the real story behind Canada's most talked-about exhibition pair."

Sunghoon finds the article before I do, scrolling through it on his phone in the hotel lobby with an expression I haven't seen on him since Nationals… jaw tight, shoulders squared, every inch of him gone back to armor.

"They're speculating about us dating," he says, flat, handing me the phone. "Based on nothing. Based on one photo and a lot of imagination."

"It's not exactly wrong, though. Is it?"

"That's not the point." He takes the phone back, sets it face down on the lobby table like it's contaminated. "The point is I don't want the first time either of us says something real out loud to be because some stranger with a line from a newspaper forced our hand. I don't want this—" he gestures between us, frustrated, searching for the word, "… to become content before it's even become anything we've actually named to each other."

"So don't read the article."

"It's not that simple and you know it." His voice sharpens, and for a second I catch a glimpse of the old Sunghoon, the defensive one, the one who'd rather push someone away than risk being seen wanting something. "Everyone's going to have an opinion about this now. Fans who've spent two years invested in us hating each other and don't know what to do with anything else. I've spent my whole career being careful about what I let people see, and I don't know how to do this—" another gesture, wider this time, encompassing me, the hotel, all of it, "… carefully."

"Maybe it doesn't need to be careful. Maybe it just needs to be honest."

"Easy for you to say."

"It is not easy for me to say," I snap, more heat in it than I mean, old reflexes flaring at the accusation. "I have spent two years building a reputation as someone who doesn't get distracted, who doesn't let anything… or anyone… get in the way of the work. You think it's easy for me to have my name in headlines next to yours implying I've thrown all of that away for a crush?"

The word lands between us, heavier than I meant it to, and Sunghoon goes very still.

"Is that what this is," he says, quiet now, all the sharpness drained out of his voice. "A crush?"

"I don't know what it is. That's the problem." I sit down heavily on the lobby couch, suddenly exhausted by the whole conversation, by the article, by two years of practiced armor neither of us seems to know how to put down gracefully. "I just know I don't want to define it because a stranger on the internet forced the question before either of us was ready to answer it honestly."

He sits beside me, quiet for a long moment, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders. "Okay," he says finally. "Then we don't answer it for them. We answer it for us, whenever we're ready, and not a second before."

"You promise?"

"I don't make promises I don't intend to keep." He looks at me, steady now, some of the old coldness burned away entirely, replaced by something that looks almost like determination. "That's one thing about me that's never changed, even when everything else has."

It isn't a resolution, not really… the article's still out there, still generating comment threads neither of us will admit to reading… but something about saying the fear out loud, about naming the pressure instead of letting it sit unspoken between us, loosens a knot I didn't fully realize I'd been carrying since we landed in France.

CHAPTER 6: SPARKS OFF THE ICE

The bar Keeho finds is small and dim and tucked into a side street off the Seine, string lights strung across the ceiling, a live guitarist playing something low and unbothered in the corner. It's the kind of place that feels made for a night you're not supposed to remember clearly, and for the first hour, it is exactly that… easy, warm, Lia and Keeho bickering happily about gelato rankings, Sunghoon's knee pressed against mine under the table in a way that feels deliberate and unclaimed at once.

Then the French skater from the Belgian group… tall, effortlessly charming, the kind of handsome that comes with its own soundtrack… recognizes me from the qualifier broadcast and comes over to introduce himself with the confidence of a man who has never once been told no.

His name is Leo. He's competing in men's singles at finals, ranked second going in, and he is, objectively, extremely good at flirting… leaning in close to hear me over the music, laughing generously at things that aren't especially funny, finding excuses to touch my arm when he talks. Under any other circumstances I might even enjoy it.

I am aware, the entire time, of Sunghoon going very quiet across the table.

"You skate the exhibition event, yes? With—" Leo glances at Sunghoon, dismissive, barely a flicker, "… your partner."

"That's right."

"It looked good, from what I saw. Very—" he searches for the word, smiling, "… chemistry. On the ice."

"We're very professional," I say, and hear how thin it sounds even as I say it.

Leo laughs like I've said something charming rather than defensive, and leans in a fraction closer, and asks if I'd like to dance to whatever the guitarist is playing, and I open my mouth to answer… I genuinely don't even know what I was going to say… when Sunghoon's voice cuts across the table, flat and cold in a way I haven't heard from him in weeks.

"She's competing in forty hours. She doesn't need to be dancing with strangers tonight."

Leo blinks, taken aback. "I only asked—"

"I heard what you asked." Sunghoon doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to, there's something in the stillness of him that's worse than shouting, a coiled, controlled fury I've genuinely never seen directed at anyone but me. "She can answer for herself, obviously. I'm just telling you what tomorrow looks like for both of us."

"Sunghoon." I say his name low, a warning, and he looks at me… and something in his face, underneath the anger, is so raw and unguarded that the warning dies in my throat.

Leo, sensing the temperature of the room, makes a graceful exit with a small bow and a "another time, perhaps," directed at me, and the second he's gone, the table goes silent. Lia and Keeho exchange a look that says, with perfect clarity, we are leaving now, and within thirty seconds they've vanished toward the bar under the flimsy act of getting another round, leaving me and Sunghoon alone at the table, the guitarist's song filling the space where words should be.

"What was that," I say.

"Nothing." He's staring at the table, jaw tight.

"That wasn't nothing, Sunghoon. You basically growled at a guy for asking me to dance."

"I didn't growl."

"You did—"

"Fine." He looks up, and whatever wall he's been holding up all night finally, visibly, cracks. "Fine. I didn't like it. I didn't like watching him touch your arm like he had any right to. I didn't like the way he looked at you like you were something he could just—" he stops himself, breathing hard, and when he speaks again his voice has dropped, rough and low and stripped of every ounce of his usual control. "I don't know what to do with how much I didn't like it."

The bar noise fades into background static. "Sunghoon—"

"Two months ago I would've told you I hated you and meant it," he says, quiet, urgent, like the words have been building pressure for weeks and finally found a crack to escape through. "I don't hate you. I haven't hated you in a long time, and I think some part of me knew that even when I was pretending otherwise, and watching some guy put his hands on you tonight made every single thing I've been trying not to feel about you completely impossible to ignore."

I don't have a comeback. For once, genuinely, I don't have a single word of banter left in me.

"Come back to the hotel," I say instead, and it isn't a question.

He doesn't ask twice.

CHAPTER 7: PARIS, AT NIGHT

The walk back to the hotel takes eleven minutes and neither of us says a single word for all eleven of them, and it is the loudest silence of my entire life… every inch of space between our hands on the walk feeling like its own argument, every glance he throws my way igniting something low and insistent in my chest that has nothing to do with adrenaline from competition and everything to do with him.

The elevator ride up is worse. Four floors, mirrored walls, both of us watching the numbers climb instead of each other, both of us achingly aware that whatever happens next isn't going to be an accident this time… no wine, no ambush by well meaning friends, no plausible deniability. Just the two of us, choosing this, wide awake and clear eyed.

The door barely clicks shut behind us before he says my name… just my name, nothing else, like it's the only word he trusts himself with… and I close the distance between us before he can finish deciding whether he's allowed to.

"I need you to know," he says against my temple, voice rough, "that this isn't just about tonight. About him. This has been—"

"I know," I say, because I do, because it's been building since a midnight rink and a broken wrist confession and a hand on my jaw in a snowstorm. "I know, Sunghoon."

His mouth crashes into mine, all teeth and hunger. The kiss is bruising, possessive, flavored with the jealousy that had been burning in his eyes back at the bar. Leo’s hand on my arm, that easy French accent, the way he’d leaned in too close… Sunghoon had recorded every second. Now he was pouring it all into this.

“You let him touch you,” he growled against my lips, nipping hard enough to sting. “Let him flirt. Let him think for even one second he could have what’s mine.”

“I didn’t—”

He silenced me with another deep kiss, tongue claiming every corner of my mouth while his hands yanked my dress up and over my head in one rough motion. The fabric hit the floor. My bra followed seconds later, his fingers deft and impatient.

“Doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do,” he said, voice low and dark as he walked me backward until my knees hit the bed. “Tonight you’re going to scream my name until you forget he existed.”

He pushed me onto the mattress and followed, settling between my thighs. His hands gripped my knees and spread them wide, exposing me completely. The cool air on my soaked center made me shiver. Sunghoon’s gaze dropped, dark eyes devouring the sight of me already dripping for him.

“Look at you,” he murmured, voice thick with lust and lingering jealousy. “Already so wet. This pussy getting soaked while some other man was talking to you? Naughty girl.”

Before I could respond, he dove in.

His tongue dragged a slow, broad stripe from my entrance all the way up to my clit, savoring. Then he did it again, faster, hungrier. He sealed his lips around my swollen clit and sucked hard, tongue flicking rapidly over the sensitive bundle of nerves. I cried out, back arching sharply.

“Fuck—Sunghoon!”

He groaned against me, the vibration shooting pleasure through my core. “Taste so fucking good. Sweet and dripping just for me.” His words were muffled but clear enough to make my thighs tremble. He licked lower, thrusting his tongue inside me, fucking me with it in shallow, wet strokes while his nose rubbed against my clit.

Two long fingers joined his mouth, pushing deep and curling instantly against that perfect spot. He pumped them roughly, curling again and again as his tongue returned to my clit, sucking and licking in a devastating rhythm.

“Tell me who this pussy belongs to,” he demanded between filthy licks, fingers never slowing. “Say it while I eat you.”

“You… it’s yours, Sunghoon. Only yours,” I gasped, fingers tangling in his dark hair, tugging hard.

“Good girl.” He rewarded me by adding a third finger, stretching me wider, scissoring them while his mouth worked my clit with relentless suction. The wet, obscene sounds of him devouring me filled the room. He hummed praises right against my folds: “So tight on my fingers. Can’t wait to feel you squeezing my cock like this. But first you’re going to come on my tongue like the greedy girl you are.”

The combination of his dirty words, the rough thrust of his fingers, and the way his tongue lashed my clit sent me crashing over the edge. I came hard, thighs clamping around his head, a broken moan of his name echoing off the walls. He didn’t stop. He licked me through every pulse, gentling his tongue only slightly before building me right back up.

“Again,” he growled, voice rough. “Give me another one. I want to taste how much you need me after watching that asshole try to take what’s mine.”

He sucked my clit between his lips, humming loudly while his fingers curled and stroked that spot without mercy. His free hand reached up, pinching and rolling my nipple roughly. The sharp mix of pleasure and pain had me writhing. I came a second time, even harder, soaking his chin and the sheets beneath me.

Sunghoon finally lifted his head, lips and chin glistening with my arousal. His eyes were blown black with lust. He crawled up my body, kissing me deeply so I could taste myself on his tongue.

“See how good you taste?” he whispered against my mouth. “That’s what I get to enjoy every night from now on. Not him. Never him.”

He kissed down my body again, taking his time to suck marks into my breasts, biting at my nipples until they were swollen and sensitive. Then he flipped me onto my stomach, yanking my hips up so I was on my knees, face pressed into the pillow.

“Arch your back for me, baby.”

I did. He spread my cheeks and buried his face between them again, even more shameless this time. His tongue licked from my clit all the way up, teasing over my other hole for a filthy, teasing moment before focusing back on my dripping pussy. He ate me out from behind like a man possessed… long, hungry licks, sucking my folds, tongue fucking deep inside me while two fingers rubbed tight circles on my clit.

“Fuck, I could do this for hours,” he groaned, the words vibrating through me. “Love how you push back against my tongue. So desperate. So fucking wet. You love when I eat this pretty pussy, don’t you?”

“Yes… god, yes,” I sobbed into the pillow, pushing back against his face.

He slapped my ass lightly, the sting blooming into heat, then dove back in. His mouth was everywhere… sucking my clit from this new angle, fingers plunging deep. I came a third time, shaking violently, but he kept licking, gentling me through it with slow, soothing strokes of his tongue until I was a trembling, oversensitive mess.

Only then did he pull back. I heard him stroking his cock, the wet sound making me clench around nothing.

He rubbed the thick, leaking head of his cock through my folds, teasing my clit with it, tapping it against my entrance. “Feel how hard I am for you? Been like this since the bar. Watching him touch you made me want to drag you out and fuck you right there.”

“Sunghoon, please,” I begged, trying to push back onto him. “Stop teasing. I need you inside me.”

He pushed just the head in, stretching me open, then pulled out again. Over and over. Shallow thrusts that never gave me what I craved.

“Beg nicer,” he said, voice strained with his own need. “Tell me exactly what you want while I tease this greedy little cunt.”

“I want your cock,” I whimpered. “Want you to slam it deep and fuck me hard. Please, Sunghoon… fill me up. Make me forget anyone else exists.”

With a guttural groan he slammed in to the hilt in one powerful thrust.

The sudden fullness tore a scream from my throat. He was so thick, so deep. He gave me only a moment before he started moving… long, brutal strokes that had the bed slamming against the wall. His hips snapped against my ass with wet, filthy sounds. One hand fisted in my hair, pulling my head back while the other gripped my hip hard enough to leave marks.

“Fuck, you feel perfect,” he panted. “So tight and hot around me. This pussy was made for my cock.”

He fucked me relentlessly, the roughness exactly what I needed after all the teasing. But between the punishing thrusts came sweet murmurs that made my chest ache.

“You’re doing so good, baby. Taking me so well. Love how you squeeze me when I go deep like this.” He angled his hips, hitting that spot inside me with every stroke. “Come on my cock. Let me feel you.”

I shattered again, walls pulsing around him. He groaned loudly but didn’t slow down. He pulled out suddenly, flipped me onto my back, and hooked my legs over his shoulders, folding me in half as he slammed back in.

This angle was devastating. He fucked me even deeper, eyes locked on mine the entire time. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto my chest. His hand reached between us, thumb circling my oversensitive clit.

“Eyes on me,” he ordered. “Want to watch you fall apart while I’m buried inside you.”

The eye contact, the deep thrusts, the relentless pressure on my clit… it was too much. I came again with a broken sob, clenching hard around him. Sunghoon’s rhythm faltered.

“Fuck… I’m close. Where do you want me, baby?”

“Inside,” I gasped. “Come inside me, Sunghoon. Please.”

He buried himself deep and came with a low, guttural moan, hips stuttering as he spilled hot and thick inside me. He kept shallowly thrusting through his orgasm, milking every drop, whispering sweet praises against my neck: “So perfect. My girl. All mine.”

We collapsed in a sweaty, tangled heap. Sunghoon stayed inside me for a long moment, softening slowly as he held me close. His fingers traced gentle patterns along my spine, the earlier roughness melting into pure tenderness. He pressed soft kisses to my forehead, my cheeks, my lips.

“You okay?” he whispered, voice hoarse. “I got carried away with the jealousy… but god, I meant every word. This isn’t just tonight. It’s you. It’s been you for longer than I knew how to admit.”

“I’m more than okay,” I murmured, curling into his chest. “I loved all of it… the roughness, the way you ate me out like you were starving, the dirty talk, the teasing. Especially knowing it’s because you want me this much.”

He chuckled softly, the sound warm and content. “Good. Because I plan on doing that again. Many times.” His hand stroked my hair. “No more pretending. No more watching other men think they have a chance. You’re mine now, and I’m yours.”

We stayed like that for a while, hearts slowing together, the distant hum of Paris filtering through the windows. The jealousy had burned itself out, leaving only heat and something deeper, something real taking its place.

…

Afterward, the room is quiet except for the distant hum of the city and the too fast rhythm of both our heartbeats slowing down. I'm curled against his chest, his fingers tracing absent patterns along my spine, and for the first time in two years… maybe longer… the silence between us doesn't feel like a standoff. It feels like rest.

"We compete in thirty six hours," he says eventually, into my hair.

"I'm aware."

"I should probably regret the timing of all this."

"Do you?"

He's quiet for a moment, long enough that I lift my head to look at him, and his expression, in the low light spilling through the curtains, is something I've never once seen on Sunghoon Park's face in two years of knowing him: unguarded, entirely open, no walls left standing.

"No," he says simply. "Not even a little."

I settle back against him, listening to his heartbeat find its normal rhythm again, and think, with something between terror and relief, that whatever this is now, there's no version of finals… win or lose… that lets us go back to how things were before.

CHAPTER 8: THE NIGHT BEFORE

We don't talk about labels. We don't talk about what happens after France, or what the federation would say, or what two years of very public bitterness looks like when it quietly, privately, becomes something else entirely. We have thirty some hours until we skate for a gold medal, and both of us… competitive to the bone, always… silently agree to let everything else wait.

Which doesn't mean the next day is easy.

Morning practice is a mess, honestly, both of us too aware of each other's hands, too aware of the new charge running under every old habit… his palm at my waist during the hold sequence lingers half a second longer than choreography requires, my fingers curl into his shoulder during the lift with something closer to want than technique, and Coach Choi, watching from the boards with narrowed eyes, finally calls a stop to the whole thing.

"Whatever this is," she says, gesturing vaguely between us, not unkindly, "save it for tomorrow night. Right now I need technicians, not—" she waves a hand, "… whatever this soft, distracted nonsense is."

"Yes, Coach," we say, in unison, and then immediately avoid looking at each other, which is somehow worse.

Lia finds me in the locker room afterward, practically vibrating. "So," she says, dragging the word out to at least four syllables, "you and Park Sunghoon. Officially."

"Nothing's official."

"You walked back into the hotel together at one a.m. looking like—" she makes a vague, scandalized gesture, "… that, and you're telling me nothing's official?"

"We haven't talked about it."

"Y/N." She sits down beside me, all teasing gone from her voice for a second, replaced by something gentler. "For what it's worth… and I say this as someone who has watched you hate that boy with your whole entire chest for two straight years… I've never seen you look at anyone the way you looked at him on that ice this morning. Not even close."

I don't have an answer for that either. I'm starting to realize I don't have answers for a lot of things anymore, not where Park Sunghoon is concerned, and the not knowing used to terrify me and now, somehow, mostly just feels like standing at the top of a jump I finally trust myself to land.

…

That night, in the hotel room, neither of us sleeps much. We lie facing each other across the narrow gap between our beds… his idea, not mine, some strange middle ground between separate and together… and talk, quiet and slow, about things that have nothing to do with skating. His mom's garden back in Vancouver. The dog I had as a kid that used to try to skate on the backyard pond and fall through every single time. The way he started skating because his older sister did and he refused to let a girl three years older beat him at anything, which, he admits, explains embarrassingly much about his whole personality.

"You're different than I thought you were," I tell him, somewhere around two a.m., when the conversation has gone soft and slow with exhaustion.

"Colder, or warmer?"

"Warmer. Obviously warmer. I didn't think you had it in you."

"I didn't either," he admits, quiet, his eyes finding mine in the dark. "Two years of hating you was a lot easier than whatever this is."

"Is that a complaint?"

"No." A small, real smile… the kind that shows just the edge of his teeth, sharp and familiar and no longer something I flinch from. "It's the opposite of a complaint."

I fall asleep somewhere in the middle of a sentence, and when I wake, it's competition day, and Sunghoon is already awake, watching me with an expression so quietly, thoroughly fond that it takes my breath away worse than any jump ever has.

"Big day," he says.

"Big day," I agree, and for the first time in this entire process, I'm not afraid.

…

FOUR OF US

We meet Lia and Keeho for breakfast a few hours before we're due at the arena, all four of us gloomy in the specific way athletes get on competition mornings… quiet, focused, running mental checklists instead of making conversation, plates mostly untouched except for the careful, deliberate fuel neither team can afford to skip.

"You two look terrifyingly calm," Keeho observes, watching Sunghoon carefully eat eggs like it's a technical requirement rather than breakfast. "It's unsettling. I remember when you two used to look like you wanted to set each other on fire before every practice."

"We're professionals," Sunghoon says, echoing his own line from weeks ago, and this time it lands as a joke instead of a deflection, and Lia laughs into her coffee.

"For what it's worth," Lia says, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand, "whatever happens today, on the ice… I'm proud of both of you. Watching you two figure this out has honestly been the best entertainment of my entire competitive career, which feels like it should embarrass me to admit, but doesn't."

"High praise," I say.

"I mean it, though." Her voice softens, drops the teasing edge. "A year ago I genuinely thought you two might actually end each other's careers out of pure spite. Watching you become… this—" she gestures at the two of us, at the quiet, easy way Sunghoon's hand has found mine on the table without either of us thinking about it, "… has been one of my favorite things to witness. Ever. And I've witnessed a lot of things, dating Keeho."

"Rude," Keeho says, entirely unbothered, stealing a piece of toast off Sunghoon's plate.

"You'll skate great today," Sunghoon tells them both, and means it, the old rivalry between the two teams having long since softened into something more like mutual respect, four people who've spent six weeks pushing each other to be better rather than simply trying to win at each other's expense. "Don't let the nerves get into your shoulders on the twirls. That's where you usually lose points."

"Thanks, Coach," Keeho says, saluting with his stolen toast, and Lia rolls her eyes fondly, and for a moment the four of us just sit there in the quiet hum of the hotel restaurant, soaking in the last calm minutes before the day turns into noise and adrenaline and everything that's been building toward this single afternoon for six entire weeks.

"Whatever happens," Sunghoon says, quieter now, just to me, as we're gathering our things to head to the arena, "I need you to know this was already worth it. The whole thing. Even if we walk away with nothing."

"We're not walking away with nothing."

"I know. I believe that too." He laces his fingers through mine, steady, certain, nothing left of the guarded stranger who told me two months ago he wasn't carrying me through this. "I'm just saying it anyway. In case today gets loud and I don't get another quiet second to say it before we're out there."

I kiss him then, soft, unhurried, right there in the hotel lobby with Lia and Keeho pretending very obviously not to watch, and it feels like exactly the right way to walk into the biggest competition of both our careers… not as rivals bracing for a fight, but as two people who've already, quietly, privately, won the thing that actually mattered.

CHAPTER 9: GOLD

Warmup ice is chaos, the way it always is before a final… a dozen skaters from a dozen countries carving the same sheet of ice at once, coaches shouting corrections in many different languages, the air thick with the specific electric nausea of a competition that actually matters. I spot Leo across the rink, running through a jump combination with sharp, focused intensity, and when he catches my eye he gives a small, genuinely gracious nod, no hard feelings, and I nod back, grateful, before Sunghoon's hand finds the small of my back and steers my attention exactly where it belongs.

"Ignore everyone else," he says, close to my ear, low enough that only I can hear it over the noise. "It's just us and the ice. Same as every night at midnight. Nothing's different."

"Everything's different. There's a scoreboard."

"The scoreboard doesn't skate the program. We do." He tips my chin up, the same gesture from that very first aggressive practice, transformed now into something entirely tender. "You've landed that axel forty times this week without a single flinch. You don't need luck. You need to trust what you already know how to do."

"That's annoyingly good advice."

"I have my moments too." The almost smile, softened into something fuller, freer… teeth and all, unguarded, the kind of smile that used to feel like a trap and now just feels like home. "Ready?"

I look at him… really look, the whole six weeks of it folded into this one held breath, the hatred and the midnight rink and the snowstorm and everything after… and something settles into place, clean and certain as a landed jump.

"Ready," I say, and I mean it completely.

The arena in Paris is packed, every seat filled, flags from a dozen countries waving somewhere up in the stands, and underneath the noise there's the particular hush that settles over a rink right before a program starts… that held breath, that single delayed second before the music begins and everything either falls apart or comes together.

We're skating last. Lia and Keeho went two groups before us and skated clean, genuinely clean, Keeho lifting Lia through the final combination with a grin so wide you could see it from the cheap seats, and when their scores come up… high, competitive, a real threat for the podium… Sunghoon squeezes my hand once, hard, backstage, and says, low, "They earned that. Now we earn ours."

I nod. I can't speak. My whole body has gone electric with adrenaline, the specific fear joy cocktail that only ever shows up before a program that matters, and when Sunghoon tips my chin up… the same gesture from that very first practice, except entirely different now, warm instead of clinical… and says, "Hey. Look at me. We've got this," I believe him completely.

We skate onto the ice to a wall of applause, and then it's just us, just the music, just two years of bitterness and six weeks of forced proximity and one impossible, terrifying, wonderful thing neither of us planned for, all of it processed into the choreography we know in our bodies better than we know almost anything else.

The opening hold. My hand in his, his palm warm and steady at my waist, exactly where it's supposed to be, exactly where it's felt right for weeks now. The first lift… clean, soaring, the crowd's gasp audible even over the music. The footwork sequence where our blades cut identical lines into the ice, perfectly matched, two people who spent two years fighting to be the best now fighting, finally, for the same thing at the same time.

The final combination arrives like a held breath released… the triple axel, the one that broke my wrist at sixteen, the one Sunghoon watched me relearn to trust at midnight under dim rink lights, and I don't flinch, I don't brace for a fall that isn't coming, I just jump, clean, full rotation, land it solid and sure, and the roar from the crowd nearly knocks me off my feet.

Somewhere in the blur of the last minute, I catch fragments of the arena around us… a banner in the crowd with both our names on it, someone's flag waving in Canadian red and white, the announcer's voice climbing with excitement as he calls out the elements. None of it fully registers in the moment, the way nothing ever quite does mid program, it's only afterward, watching the broadcast replay days later, that I understand how much was happening around us while we were entirely inside the music, inside each other, inside six minutes that felt, in the living of them, like no time had passed at all.

The final lift. His hands find my waist, and I go up, weightless, arms extended, the whole arena a blur of light and color below me, and when he sets me down we're both breathing hard, both grinning… actually grinning, no walls, no armor… and the music ends on the exact held note we practiced a hundred times, and the arena erupts.

We don't have to wait long for the scores. When they flash up on the board… a new personal best, high enough that Coach Choi, watching from the boards, actually claps both hands over her mouth… I understand, in the space of half a second, that we've won. Not just placed. Won. Gold.

And Sunghoon… cold, controlled, firm Park Sunghoon, who I have watched maintain perfect composure through broken records and bad calls and a hundred other moments that would've cracked anyone else… Sunghoon lets out a sound I've never heard from him before, something between a laugh and a shout, and grabs me by the waist and lifts me clean off the ice like I weigh nothing at all, spinning once, twice, the whole arena roaring around us, and when he sets me down he doesn't let go… he kisses me instead, right there, in front of the judges and the cameras and forty thousand people watching the broadcast at home, kisses me like it's the only thing he's been waiting his whole career to do.

The arena goes absolutely wild. Somewhere in my peripheral vision I register Keeho's face, utterly delighted, filming the whole thing on his phone with the enthusiasm of a man who has waited two years for exactly this. I register Lia's shriek of pure joy from the boards. I register, distantly, that this is now unquestionably, permanently, publicly not a secret anymore, and I find that I don't care even slightly.

When Sunghoon finally pulls back, breathless, forehead resting against mine, he's grinning… that rare, real grin, teeth and all… and the whole rink is a blur of gold light and noise around us.

"We won," he says, like he can barely believe it.

"We won," I agree.

"I've wanted to do that for weeks," he admits, laughing, still holding me like he's not ready to let go. "I just needed an excuse that wasn't 'I've fallen for my rival and I don't know what to do about it.'"

"Gold medal seemed easier?"

"Considerably." He kisses me again, softer this time, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world now instead of six frantic weeks. "Worth the wait."

Lia and Keeho finish second, and when we all four collapse into a tangled group hug at the boards a few minutes later, Keeho already narrating the whole thing for what I suspect will become a deeply embarrassing highlight reel, Lia just looks at me over his shoulder, eyes wet and delighted, and mouths, silently, I told you so.

She did. She really, really did.

CHAPTER 10: THE MORNING AFTER GOLD

The medal ceremony photos are, according to Keeho, "already the most liked skating content in the history of the sport," which is almost certainly an exaggeration, except that by the time we get back to the hotel that night my phone has more notifications than I've ever seen at once, and half of them are variations on the same theme: did Park Sunghoon just kiss his rival on live television.

"We're trending," Lia announces gleefully, scrolling through her phone from the other hotel bed, the four of us having ended up crammed into one room to celebrate with terrible champagne from the mini bar and even worse room service fries. "Like, actually trending. There's already a compilation. Someone set it to a Weeknd song."

"Which one," Sunghoon asks, deadpan, arm slung around my shoulders, and Keeho nearly falls off the bed laughing.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters enormously."

"Starboy."

There's a press conference the next morning… mandatory, federation run, a long table with too many microphones and a room full of reporters who are, it becomes rapidly clear, far less interested in our technical scores than in the kiss. Sunghoon answers most of it with his usual controlled composure, giving nothing away except when a reporter asks, half joking, how long the "secret romance" has been going on, and he glances at me, something soft and unguarded crossing his face before he can stop it, and says, simply, "Longer than I let myself admit. Not as long as I wish it had been."

I don't have a rehearsed answer for that. I don't need one. The room goes very quiet for a second, and then someone in the back row actually says "aw" out loud, and Coach Choi, sitting just off to the side, buries her face in her hands in a way that could be embarrassment or could be, I suspect, quiet relief that the tension she's been managing for six weeks has finally, publicly, resolved itself.

Afterward, walking back to the hotel along the Seine, the river shimmering beneath the city lights gold under the morning sun, Sunghoon laces his fingers through mine like it's the easiest, most natural thing in the world… like we've been doing this for years instead of days.

"Regrets?" he asks.

"About the kiss, or the four thousand headlines?"

"Either. Both."

"None," I say, and mean it completely. "You?"

"The only regret I have," he says, pulling me to a stop, turning me to face him right there on the Seine with strangers walking past and gulls wheeling overhead, "is two wasted years pretending I didn't want exactly this."

He kisses me again, slower this time, unhurried by cameras or competition or anything except the two of us, and somewhere behind us I hear Keeho's exaggerated groan and Lia's delighted laugh, and I think, distantly, that I have never in my life been less bothered by an audience.

…

CALLING HOME

My mom picks up on the second ring, which means she's been sitting by the phone, which means she absolutely already knows.

"So," she says, no hello or anything, and I can hear the grin in her voice from across an ocean, "when were you going to tell me about Park Sunghoon?"

"Mom—"

"I raised you to communicate, Y/N. I found out from your aunt, who found out from a video with four million views, in which a young man I have heard you complain about for two straight years picks you up off an ice rink and kisses you in front of the entire world."

"It happened kind of suddenly."

"Two years of 'I hate him, Mom, he's the worst person alive' doesn't happen suddenly, sweetheart. That's called a slow burn. I watch television. I know what a slow burn looks like." She laughs, warm and delighted, and asks a dozen questions I don't fully have answers to yet… is it serious, is he kind to me, does he make me laugh, does he deserve me… and I answer as honestly as I can, and by the end of the call she's crying a little, happy tears, and telling me she can't wait to meet him properly, and I hang up feeling lighter than I have in weeks.

Sunghoon's call with his own family, I learn later, goes considerably less smoothly, mostly because his older sister… the one who got him into skating in the first place… spends the first ten minutes simply laughing at him, unable to form words, before finally managing, "You hated her. You told me at Christmas you'd rather retire than skate with her. I have text messages, Sunghoon."

"People change," he tells her, with as much dignity as he can muster, which apparently isn't much, because Keeho… interrupts into the call somehow, because of course he is… chimes in to helpfully read several of the previously rementioned texts aloud.

"This is betrayal," Sunghoon informs me later, recounting the whole thing with the specific long suffering exhaustion of a man who loves his found family desperately and would also, on some days, like to trade them all in. "Total betrayal. From everyone I've ever trusted."

"You did say those things, though."

"I was wrong. People are allowed to be wrong."

"I'm just saying, receipts are receipts."

"I hate that you and my sister are going to get along," he grumbles, but he's smiling when he says it, pulling me in against his side on the narrow hotel bed we've stopped pretending to keep separate, and outside the window, the Eiffel Tower sparkles in the distance, indifferent and beautiful, entirely unbothered by the fact that two people who spent two years perfecting the art of despising each other have just spent an entire evening on the phone convincing their families of exactly the opposite.

CHAPTER 11: COMING HOME

The flight home feels different than the flight out… lighter, somehow, despite the gold medal weighing down my carry on and the exhaustion sitting heavy behind my eyes. Sunghoon takes the window seat this time, and I fall asleep somewhere over the Atlantic with my head on his shoulder, and when I wake he's still awake, watching me with an expression so quietly content it makes my chest ache in the best possible way.

"You're staring," I mumble, echoing Lia from what feels like a lifetime ago.

"I'm allowed now," he says. "New rule."

"Since when?"

"Since somewhere around a snowstorm and a hotel room in Paris." He brushes a strand of hair off my face, gentle, unhurried. "I'm making up for two years of not being allowed to."

Toronto in April is grey and wet and nothing at all like Paris, and it is, somehow, exactly what I want to see when we land… home, familiar, ordinary, the specific relief of a city that doesn't know yet what to make of us, that will let us figure this out without forty thousand people watching.

Coach Choi meets us at the rink two days later for a debrief that is mostly just her staring at the two of us over her clipboard with an expression of long suffering satisfaction.

"I want it on record," she says, "that I called this in week two."

"You did not call this," I say.

"I absolutely called this. I told the federation rep in week two that putting you two on the same ice was either going to end in a restraining order or a wedding, and I said I genuinely couldn't predict which." She taps her clipboard, unbothered. "I'm choosing to consider this a professional win."

Sunghoon, beside me, doesn't even bother hiding his smile.

CHAPTER 12: EDGE OF EVERYTHING

It's a Tuesday, ten days after we land, the first genuinely quiet evening either of us has had since France… no press, no federation meetings, no group chat exploding with new compilation videos… and I'm at Sunghoon's apartment again, except this time there's no snowstorm forcing the issue, no traps by well meaning friends, no fight simmering under the surface waiting to boil over. Just the two of us, a bottle of wine we're actually drinking slowly this time, and the same framed photo of a fang toothed, ecstatic kid on the ice, still sitting on the shelf where I first saw it.

"You keep looking at that picture," Sunghoon says, settling onto the couch beside me, close enough that our knees touch, easy now in a way that still occasionally catches me off guard with how much it doesn't feel like an accident anymore.

"I like it. You looked happy."

"I was happy. Before I figured out how to be good at this instead of just loving it." He takes my hand, turns it over, traces a slow line across my palm like he's mapping something. "You reminded me what that felt like, a little. Loving it instead of just needing to win at it."

"That's dangerously sincere for you."

"I can have my moments remember." The almost smile again, fangs catching the lamplight, and something in my chest goes warm and slow and entirely undefended.

"For the record," I say, "I don't think I ever actually hated you. Not really. I think I just didn't know what to do with how much you got under my skin, so I called it hate because it was simpler."

"I know." He says it gently, without smugness, which is somehow more devastating than if he'd gloated. "I did the same thing. Two years of very expensive, very thorough emotional avoidance."

"We're both idiots."

"Extremely competitive idiots," he agrees, and pulls me closer, and the space between us… which used to feel like a whole ocean, like the entire length of a rink, like two years of carefully maintained distance… collapses into something warm and certain and entirely without argument for the first time since I've known him.

"I'm glad the federation made us do this," I admit, quiet, against his collarbone.

"Don't tell Keeho. He'll never let either of us live it down."

"Tell me what?" comes Keeho's voice, muffled, from somewhere on Sunghoon's phone screen where a video call neither of us noticed connecting is now very much live, Keeho's grinning face filling half the frame, Lia visible over his shoulder dying laughing.

"Nothing," Sunghoon says, lunging for the phone, and I'm laughing too hard to help him, and it takes both of us a full minute to actually hang up, and by the time we do, whatever tension either of us walked in with has dissolved completely into something lighter, easier, entirely unguarded.

"Where were we," Sunghoon says, setting the phone face down, very deliberately, on the far side of the room this time.

"You were being sincere. It was very unlike you."

"I can stop."

"Don't you dare."

He doesn't stop. Not the sincerity, and not what comes after it, slow and certain and nothing at all like the desperate collision of France or the reckless heat of that first night in his apartment… this time unhurried, deliberate, both of us finally, fully choosing each other with nothing left to prove, no armor left standing between us, no reason left to hold anything back.

Sunghoon leans in first, cupping my jaw with that familiar gentleness that still manages to feel possessive. His thumb brushes my lower lip, dark eyes searching mine like he’s memorizing every detail in the low lamplight. “No more pretending,” he murmurs, voice low and rough around the edges. “No more midnight rinks where we act like we’re not dying to touch each other.”

I smile against his thumb, nipping it lightly. “You’re getting sentimental on me, Park. Careful, I might start thinking you like me.”

His laugh is soft, warm, the kind that vibrates through his chest as he pulls me onto his lap. “I more than like you.” His hands slide under my shirt, palms warm against my bare skin, mapping my waist, my ribs, the line of my spine with slow reverence. “I’m gone for you. Have been for longer than I knew how to say.”

Clothes come off gradually, between kisses that deepen and linger. My shirt, then his. His fingers trace the faint scars and bruises every skater carries like badges, kissing each one like an apology for all the years we wasted fighting instead of this. When my bra falls away, he leans in, mouth hot and open on my breast, tongue circling my nipple with lazy, deliberate strokes until I’m arching into him with a quiet moan.

“Sunghoon…” I thread my fingers through his dark hair, tugging just enough to make him groan against my skin.

He lifts me effortlessly, carrying me to the bedroom without breaking the kiss. The bed is cool against my back when he lays me down, but his body is all heat as he settles over me. He takes his time undressing the rest of me… leggings peeled down my legs, panties dragged off with his teeth, fangs grazing my hip in a way that sends shivers straight to my core.

“Look at you,” he whispers, settling between my thighs. His hands spread me open, thumbs stroking the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. “So wet already, and I’ve barely touched you.” He leans in, pressing a soft, open mouthed kiss right over my clit before dragging his tongue slowly through my folds. “Taste even better when you’re mine.”

I gasp, hips rolling toward his mouth. He doesn’t rush. He savors… long, slow licks that explore every inch of me, circling my clit with the flat of his tongue before dipping lower to push inside. Two fingers join soon after, sliding deep and curling gently, stroking that spot inside me while his mouth works my clit in unhurried pulses. The pleasure builds like a long glide across perfect ice… smooth, inevitable, overwhelming.

“Fuck… right there,” I moan, thighs trembling around his head. He hums in response, the vibration pulling me closer. One hand reaches up to palm my breast, pinching my nipple lightly in time with his tongue.

When I come, it’s with his name on my lips, a slow, rolling wave that leaves me breathless and shaking. He licks me through it, gentling his movements until I’m oversensitive and tugging at his hair.

He crawls up my body, kissing a trail up my stomach, between my breasts, along my throat, until his mouth finds mine. I taste myself on his tongue as he settles between my legs, cock hard and heavy against my thigh.

“Need you,” I whisper, wrapping my legs around his waist. “All of you.”

Sunghoon kisses me deeply as he pushes in… slow, inch by inch, stretching me open until he’s buried to the hilt. We both groan at the perfect fit. He stays there for a long moment, forehead pressed to mine, breathing the same air.

“Love this,” he murmurs, starting to move in long, rolling thrusts. “Love feeling you around me. Love how you take every inch like you were made for it.” His pace is steady, deep, each stroke grinding against my clit and hitting that spot inside that makes stars burst behind my eyes. His hands roam… cupping my ass to tilt my hips, stroking my thigh, lacing our fingers together above my head.

I meet every thrust, nails digging into his back, whispering his name like a prayer. The banter slips in between moans: “Still think I have small dick energy?” he teases breathlessly, remembering the first time, then snapping his hips a little harder on the next thrust.

I laugh, the sound breaking into a moan. “Shut up and fuck me harder, you arrogant—”

He does, shifting the angle until I’m seeing white, but it’s still laced with that tenderness…kisses on my temple, praises murmured against my skin,“So good for me… my perfect girl… come on, baby, let me feel you.”

I shatter again, clenching tight around him, pulling him over the edge with me. He buries himself deep, groaning my name as he pulses inside me, hips stuttering through the aftershocks.

We stay locked together afterward, sweat cooling on our skin, his weight a comforting blanket as he rolls us to the side. He stays inside me for a while, softening slowly while his fingers trace lazy patterns on my back.

“No more hating you,” I whisper against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow.

“No more,” he agrees, pressing a kiss to my hair. “Just this. Just us.” His arms tighten around me. “Forever, if you’ll have me.”

I smile, already drifting toward sleep in the safety of his embrace. “I’ll have you, Park Sunghoon. Fangs and all.”

The silence between us is finally, perfectly, home.

EPILOGUE: TWO GOLDS

Worlds comes four months later, held that year in Montreal, close enough to home that half our families make the trip, and the week leading up to it is a blur of press obligations, back to back practices, and Keeho behaving so strangely… jumpy, distracted, checking his jacket pocket every twenty minutes like he's afraid something might fall out of it… that even Lia, usually the sharpest read in any room, doesn't clock what's coming.

I do, because Sunghoon told me weeks ago, sworn to secrecy under threat of "actual bodily harm, I mean it, Y/N," and I have spent the entire lead up to Worlds nearly vibrating out of my skin trying not to give it away.

Lia and Keeho skate their free dance the night before finals, a program built around a slow, aching arrangement that has half the arena in tears by the final note, and when the scores come up… high, career best, good enough for a podium finish that finally, deservedly, isn't second… Keeho doesn't wait for the official results ceremony. He drops to one knee right there on the ice, in front of the judges and the cameras and an entire arena that goes from roaring applause to a single collective gasp in the space of a heartbeat, and by the time Lia manages to say yes… through tears, through her hands pressed over her mouth, through Keeho's own hands shaking so badly he nearly drops the ring twice getting it out of his pocket… the whole building is on its feet.

"He stole the moment," I tell Sunghoon later, only half joking, watching Lia show off her ring to a small, delighted crowd backstage while Keeho narrates the entire proposal for what must be the fourth time. "We got engaged on ice first. Metaphorically."

"We're not engaged," Sunghoon points out, amused.

"Not the point."

"I'll keep that in mind," he says, and there's something in the way he says it… quiet, private, tucked into the corner of a smile… that makes my whole chest go warm and unsteady in a way I choose not to examine too closely, not yet, not with an entire arena still buzzing around us.

We skate our own free dance the following night and land, cleanly, a silver behind a Japanese team who deserve it completely, and it doesn't sting the way it might have a year ago, back when losing to anyone felt like a public vote on my entire worth as a person. Sunghoon squeezes my hand at the boards after our scores post, and says, low, just for me, "We've got next season," and I believe him, the way I've come to believe most things he says now, easily, without the old reflexive suspicion.

…

Six months after that, there's a new photo on Sunghoon's shelf, right next to the fang toothed kid and the one from the Paris podium, the two of us at Worlds, silver medals catching the light, both of us grinning despite the placement, Keeho and Lia crowded in behind us, her ring visible in the corner of the frame. Lia framed that one herself too, because apparently curating our shared history has become her unofficial second job, alongside actual competitive ice dancing.

We're still competing separately most of the season… Sunghoon in men's singles, me in women's… but the pairs exhibition circuit has been extended for a third season now, popular enough that the federation stopped calling it an experiment sometime around our second gold, and neither of us pretends to be anything but thrilled every time a new season gets confirmed.

"Think we can beat our own scores this year," Sunghoon asks one morning, lacing up at the rink before dawn, the way we did that very first practice, except now there's no space between us to defend, no armor left to keep up, nothing hidden under the surface waiting to fight its way out.

"We're going to have to. Lia and Keeho have been training like they mean it."

"Keeho told me last week he wants to retire from competitive skating after next season. Says he wants to actually plan a wedding instead of squeezing it in between qualifiers." Sunghoon ties his other skate, unhurried, easy in a way that still occasionally catches me off guard with how far we've come from six a.m. arguments over whose ice it was. "Don't tell Lia I told you. He's planning some big announcement."

"You're terrible at keeping secrets, you know that?"

"Only from you." He looks up, that rare unguarded grin breaking across his face, teeth and all, and holds a hand out to help me up onto the ice, a gesture that used to feel like a transaction two years ago and now just feels like coming home. "Ready?"

I take his hand, the same way I've taken it on a hundred mornings since France, on the ice and off it, through every practice and every fight that doesn't feel like a real fight anymore, more like a rhythm we've learned to keep together.

"Always," I say, and we skate out together into the cold morning light, two rivals who ran out of reasons to keep pretending, medals behind us and years, hopefully, still ahead… and for the first time in either of our careers, absolutely no need to skate alone.

…

ONE MORE JUMP

Sunghoon texts me at nine p.m., which is unusual enough on its own… he never texts, he just shows up, has for years now, but tonight there's an actual message waiting when I get out of the shower.

Sunghoon: Rink. Now if you can. It's important.

Not come skate. Not a stray heart emoji, which he's taken to sending unironically since Worlds, to my great and constant amusement. It's important. Three words that manage to put a small cold stone in my stomach for the entire drive over.

I run through the possibilities on the way, the way I always do when I'm nervous, many possibilities… worst cases like it'll shield me against them. Federation pulled funding for the exhibition circuit. His knee, the one he's been quietly icing after practice and not mentioning. Something about his sister. Something about us… six years in and some part of me still keeps a small locked room where the old fear lives, the one that says nothing this good stays uncomplicated forever.

He's not on the ice when I get there. He's sitting on the boards, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing, and it's such an exact mirror of a night years ago… my sister called, reminded me it's been three years… that my stomach drops another inch.

"Hey." I drop my bag slower than usual, hovering instead of lacing up. "You're freaking me out a little."

"Sorry." He doesn't look up right away. "I've been trying to figure out how to say this for about a week and I keep chickening out, which… for the record… is not a thing I do. I don't chicken out of things."

"You once refused to admit you were wrong about a tempo for three straight practices."

"That's different. That was correct stubbornness." A ghost of the old almost smile, gone as fast as it comes. "This is different."

"Sunghoon. You're scaring me."

He finally looks at me, and whatever's on his face isn't dread, exactly, but it's not nothing either… something wound tight, something he's clearly been carrying around all week deciding how to put down. "I got a call from the federation Monday," he says. "About the exhibition circuit. About next season."

My whole chest goes cold. This is it, I think. They're cutting it. Six years and they're cutting it, and he's been sitting on this for a week trying to figure out how to tell me.

"Okay," I say carefully. "Tell me."

"They want to expand it. Bigger circuit, more countries, a proper world championship tier instead of just the qualifier structure." He says it fast, like he's reading it off a card he memorized under pressure. "Which means more travel. Longer season. They asked if we'd commit through the next two Olympic cycles."

The relief hits so hard I actually laugh, short and startled. "That's… Sunghoon, that's good news. Why do you look like someone died?"

"Because that's not actually the thing I've been trying to say." He stands, closes the distance between us, and takes both my hands, and it's such a specific, deliberate gesture… nothing like his usual easy way of just finding my hand without thinking about it… that the laugh dies in my throat.

"Then what is?"

"I told them yes. Two more cycles, at least. Which means at least six more years of exactly this… early mornings, borrowed ice in cities we don't live in, federation galas, Keeho filming things he shouldn't." He exhales. "And I realized, saying yes to that, that I wasn't actually agreeing to a schedule. I was agreeing to six more years of you. Which isn't a hard yes. It's the easiest yes I've ever given anyone about anything. But it made me want to ask you something I've been putting off asking because I kept telling myself the timing wasn't right, and I don't actually think there's ever going to be a right time, so."

"So?"

He doesn't reach into a jacket pocket like I'd have staged it. He reaches into his skate bag… the beat up one, guard charm still clipped to the zipper, the one that's been sitting on that same bench since the very first morning I ever saw it… and pulls out a small box that's clearly been living there, tucked in with his tape and spare laces, for longer than a week.

"I've been carrying this around for two months," he admits, and for the first time all night he actually laughs, disbelieving, like even he can't quite believe he's doing this. "I chickened out at Worlds. I chickened out on your birthday. I told myself I'd know the right moment and then never trusted any moment enough to be it. So I'm done waiting for the right one. This is just… it's Tuesday. It's an empty rink. It's every other Tuesday we've ever had, and I didn't want to wait for a better one."

"Sunghoon—"

"Marry me," he says, and it comes out steadier than anything else he's said all night, like it's the one part of this he was never actually unsure about. "I know I made it sound like bad news for five straight minutes. I'm sorry. I panic and I overexplain. Marry me anyway."

I don't say anything for a second, too busy catching up to the fact that the cold stone in my stomach has turned into something entirely different, something with no name I've ever needed until right now.

"You let me think the federation cut our funding," I say, which is not a yes, not yet, mostly because I need one more second before I can trust my voice with anything bigger.

"In my defense, I was extremely nervous."

"I nearly cried in the car."

"I'll spend the rest of my life making that up to you," he says, "starting now, if that's a yes."

"That's a yes," I say, and the sound he makes… half laugh, half something rawer… is the same sound from a gold medal night in Paris, except there's no arena this time, no cameras, just the two of us and the hum of an empty rink that's been ours since before either of us knew what it was becoming.

He lifts me the way he did that night, spinning once under the dim lights, and somewhere in the middle of it I realize I never actually asked what he told the federation… whether it was six years or eight, whether Paris comes back into rotation, whether any of it matters at all compared to the small, ordinary, completely unstaged fact of a Tuesday, an empty rink, and a box that's been living in his skate bag for two months, waiting for him to stop being afraid of asking.

THE END

Hope you guys enjoyed this fic!! I'm lowkey sick, but I pushed through it! It was fun writing this, and I hope I didn't make any errors 😭 Anyways, drop who you want to see next, or should I do some sort of series?

wonluvzu taglist ;)

@royallycraftyimp @iiunique @nishimoona @yfyftd @iriskisser @aeinthe-void @jazz7gnab @en-muse @yangw0ni3

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