[ tangled ] nomin

hercules

Jeno's eyes were locked on the scoreboard. It was the final quarter of the game, with less than a minute to spare, and the opposing team was winning by two points. He needed the ball, and he needed it quick, but Cameron was being a hog at the other end of the court. When he finally noticed Jeno nervously toeing the centerline, the clock was ticking down from ten seconds. 

At seven seconds, Jeno wrapped his hands around the familiar ball, feeling the bumps and ridges beneath his fingertips for the last time in high school. Jeno had to score. No matter how much he despised basketball and his obnoxious teammates, it was this sport that would pay his college tuition, that would ease the burden from his single father's shoulders. He could see the scouts in the crowd, waiting for him to mess up. Their beady eyes followed him across the court and up the centerline. The entire crowd held their breath as Jeno Lee, basketball ace, tossed the ball towards the hoop from the 3-point line. 

And then the lights turned off. The entire gym faded to blackness, except for the stupid battery-powered scoreboard. The numbers hadn't changed. 

Jeno missed the shot.

They lost. 

The opposing team burst into triumphant applause, sneakers squeaking on the freshly waxed hardwood. Parents tripped their way down the bleachers to hug their kids, and a few minutes later, the lights flickered back on.

Jeno saw Coach's face first. Coach Bailey was Jeno's freshmen history teacher and part of the reason that Jeno stayed on the team after his first year of hell. The bigger kids liked to pick on him, call him names that sounded eerily similar to a particular Jaemin Na, but Coach convinced him to stay. She was the only female in the sports department, and everyone respected her, but nobody respected her quite as much as Jeno. She was the closest thing to a mother he ever had, and even that day, she was smiling at him. 

While his teammates screamed at him, and the scouts retracted their scholarship offers (Jeno learned they were passed on to ball-hogging Cameron of all people, and almost flipped his shit), Coach smiled. When the last defeated players filed silently into the bathrooms, she opened her arms to him, and Jeno ran to her. He cried on her blue jersey until his lungs begged for relief, and he couldn't see through his blurry eyes. 

"Jeno, I'm so proud of you," she said, ruffling his hair and wiping the stray tears. Jeno didn't realize how much he needed to hear those words from someone. He was so, so tired of carrying around the expectations of everybody without any praise. But why would they? He was Jeno Lee. Perfect grades and perfect games were normal of him. Nobody praised someone for being normal. 

"Now, get outta here," she teased, gently shoving him towards the locker room. He gave her a cheesy finger heart and she subtly flicked him off, making them both laugh. Basketball sucked, and his knees had bruises to prove it, but he would miss laughing with Coach. 

The locker room was empty minus a few freshies who spent the game warming the bench, and Jeno politely nodded as a way of greeting. He just wanted to change out of his smelly clothes and wash the lumps of deodorant stuck under his armpits. Slowly, everybody filtered out, leaving Jeno and the steamy shower alone. His adrenaline rush drained from his body as he scrubbed his salty hair and relaxed beneath the water. The shower pressure was shitty, but it got the job done, and Jeno was ready to step out before he heard a door open. He shut off the tap and wrapped a towel around his waist, waiting quietly for the person to leave. 

"Mark, I fucking did it!" The person cheered, and Jeno instantly recognized the voice of Jaemin. That was the moment he should have stepped out of the shower, collected his belongings, and left, but Jeno was still human, and his curiosity got the best of him. He stepped further back into the stall and tried to stop his hair from dripping onto the tiles. 

"Did what, exactly?" Marks' voice crackled from Jaemin's phone speakers. 

"Dude, seriously? We talked about this already. The lights, man! They lost." 

Mark and Jeno gasped at the same time.

"Jaemin, what the fuck! That was you? Are you insane?"  

Jaemin scoffed, and Jeno heard a locker slam shut. "The proper term is vigilante, but whatever floats your boat. Look, they deserved it. You should have seen them today, coming into the theater to harass my poor babies." 

"I know you don't like him, but that's not fair, Jaem," Mark tried to reason, but Jaemin ignored him.

"Is it true that Jeno lost the winning shot?" He asked instead, and Jeno's blood boiled. Jaemin could tease him, steal his work, curse him out, but Jeno would never allow Jaemin to destroy his team, too. He knew Cameron, Zachary, and Kayden were assholes. He hated them more than Jaemin did, maybe more than they hated themselves, but they didn't deserve to lose that way. 

So, Jeno did what Jeno's never done before: stick up for himself.

"Yeah, I did," he said calmly, pushing the curtain aside and grabbing his sweatpants from his duffle bag. Jaemin's phone tumbled to the floor, and he had the decency to look apologetic. 

"Jaemin? Jaemin, you alright?" Mark asked, and Jaemin hesitantly picked up the cracked device. 

"Mark, I'll call you back," he said and hung up before Mark could respond. The end call beeping was the only sound penetrating the uncomfortable silence between them. Jaemin's cheeks were flushed the same pink as his hair from embarrassment, but Jeno could tell he didn't regret it. When Jaemin ripped Jeno's favorite bookmark in the sixth grade and made Jeno cry, he regretted it, and that face looked nothing like the Jaemin he saw now. 

"Are you happy now?" Jeno prompted, pulling his shirt over his torso. Jaemin carefully sat down on the end of the bench closest to Jeno and picked at the hair tie on his wrist. 

"How bad of a person will it make me if I say yes?" He countered, raising a brow in a silent challenge. 

Jeno shook his head in disbelief at the gall of him. For all his nervous ticking, Jaemin was a gutsy motherfucker, but Jeno should have known that from the way he approached Zachary earlier.

"Bad." They stood in silence for a moment before Jeno slammed his bag down and grabbed Jaemin's wrist, pulling him closer. "But why? Why do you hate me so much when we've barely spoken?" 

"Why? You wanna know why?" Jaemin yanked his arm from Jeno's hold with surprising strength. "It's not fair, okay! That's why. The basketball team gets everything, and I'm the bad guy for telling a group of kids that we can't put on a show. How do you tell people who have worked so hard that it was pointless? That no matter what they do, we'll never be better than the fucking basketball team and precious Jeno Lee." Jaemin shoved him, and Jeno's knees hit the benches, forcing him to sit down.

"I'm sorry for how I treated you in middle school, Jeno. I was an angsty pre-teen who wanted to move back to Korea where I wasn't different. I treated you like shit because I was treated like shit, but that's not an excuse, and I'm sorry. But I'll never be sorry for this." Jaemin laughed humourlessly and sat next to Jeno, anger fading from his actions. 

"Your friends are racist dicks, and they made my life a living hell. You're Korean-American, Jeno, and I hate to say it, but that makes us completely different. You were never made fun of for your accent in school, nobody questioned your immigration status because they've known you forever. So don't tell me I'm a bad person." Jaemin stood up, and Jeno swore he saw him wiping his eyes. "You don't know me. Let's keep it that way." And then he was gone, leaving Jeno with more questions than answers. 

For Jeno, that's where their rivalry ended. It felt like a truce of sorts, and Jeno was content to leave it at that and never see Jaemin Na again. But, of course, Walt Disney had different plans for them. 

How un-fucking-magical was that?