THESE DAYS | jeongchan

deux

It was never Jeongin's intention to walk in on something he wasn't supposed to. He wasn't good with confrontation and always preferred to stay in his own lane, but for some reason the words that caught his attention today were particularly interesting.

The school day went relatively smoothly, he had actually been quite excited for the day. He had met up with Felix and Seungmin at lunch and even made a few friends in class. He attributes the wonderful start of his day to the fact that he hadn't even had to see Chan that morning. He was already gone by the time he woke up, so there were no unfortunate run ins.

Jeongin told himself that he just couldn't help listening in, that he had just walked in at the wrong time, however if he really was concerned with hearing something he shouldn't, he could have just walked back out.

He had never seen the locker rooms before, but there was a noticeable size difference between the scale of this locker room in comparison to his old one. The lockers were an ugly faded blue and a row of them stuck out into the middle of the room making a W-shape with benches in the space between.

"What are you doing here, Chan?"

A mirror opposite the lockers revealed the situation to Jeongin, a burly man he recognized as the coach he had met a few months ago and a scowling (even more than usual) Chan sat on the bench looking up at him.

Chan shifts in his place as if he was uncomfortable under the man's disapproving gaze, he refused to meet the older man's eyes. He seemed to loose his confidence around the coach, as if he held too much respect for him to be outright rude.

Silence filled the locker room, it made Jeongin nervous, if he moved too much his cover behind the set of lockers would be blown and he would be scolded for eavesdropping.

"I thought we talked about this."

Coach didn't seem to be angry, he sounded more disappointed, sad maybe. His voice was quiet and not at all like he'd ever heard him sound before, although his interaction with Coach Do was limited.

Chan looked decidedly defiant, finally looking up to meet the older man's eyes.

"And I told you what I thought."

The soccer player didn't want to watch the Coach's reaction, letting his eyes wander away from the authority figure.

Jeongin's eyes noticeably widened, almost cartoon like, when his gaze was met with Chan's through the mirror.

The captain's expression transformed from something of passiveness to shock and to pure anger. He was very clearly upset with Jeongin's nose poked in his business yet again, the same anger he had seen the first day they met sparking through their locked gaze. His eyes seemed to linger there before he spoke again eyes rolling back to look at the coach, not wanting to hear his response, "Look, can we talk about this later?"

It was obvious that Chan was avoiding a circumstance where Jeongin could hear any more than he already had, his frustrated sigh gave away his inner rage that always seemed to simmer.

Coach Do hesitated, eyeing Chan with disappointment and hidden feelings and words. He claps a hand down on Chan's shoulder with finality, "Alright, Chan, but we're not going to ignore this."

The captain looks up at the older through his eyelashes, exasperated tone, "I know."

With one last pat on Chan's shoulder he moves away, "See you at practice."

As the coach goes to round the corner of the lockers Jeongin finds himself momentarily out of his body trying to figure out how he will play off having just walked in.