When Life Calls Out Forty Love, Game, Set, and Match for postboxinheaven [1/2]
For: postboxinheaven
Title: When Life Calls Out Forty Love, Game, Set, and Match
Pairing(s): Chanyeol/D.O, platonic!Chanyeol/Kai, platonic!Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): age gap, non-explicit vomit scene, underage
Length: 11.1k
Summary: Chanyeol wades blindly through his dark past as he struggles to make it for the Wimbledon tournament.
Author's note: big thanks to f, n, s, w, and d for hearing me beat my own head over this fic. a bonus thanks to f for reviewing it for me!
I hope I didn't stray too far from the prompt ahahha…haha…
There’s a fine line between every two things that Park Chanyeol will probably never ever see.
Maybe it’s that line people call the horizon, between the sky and the sea. That line that divides two colors in a rainbow, that line where one starts to feel the cold from the hot. The line that separates happiness from sadness, sanity from madness. The line that defines the hazy past from the definite present, and perforce, the intimidating future.
Chanyeol whips his blade racket in a swift practiced move. Breath rough, sweat dripping, eyes focused on the opposite court.
The white line behind the opponent is probably the only bloody line he’ll ever get to see in his life. Concrete, solid, real. Send out and you’re out. Send in and you’re getting around. Send right on the line, nearing the inner edge, in a consistent streak, and you’re a fucking genius.
There’s not much to remember. There has never been much to remember.
This just takes tactics, just takes practice, just takes focus. At most it will also take some time.
But it’ll never take broken memories in exchange.
* * *
“Hey Yeol,” Baekhyun would say casually, and Chanyeol would reply “Hey Baek” and grab the beer from the other’s hand and down it with a grin.
But they only exchange shy glances, as if they were meeting up for the first time. To Chanyeol, it doesn’t hurt much because he can’t remember, but he knows that to the other, it’s something that’s hard on the heart.
“I-” Chanyeol wants to apologize; the urge is always overwhelming whenever he meets up with people he’s supposed to know since forever. But this time ‘round Baekhyun interrupts him with a smile that Chanyeol decides is rather sincere.
“-We’re not having any of that,” the shorter says. He hands Chanyeol a can of beer, sits at the bench, next to the other, “I’ve thought this through a bit, and I think I know what you need.”
Chanyeol raises an eyebrow as he sips from his can.
“You need to meet new people.”
Chanyeol hesitates because he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say or do. Out of the options he’s been told he usually responds with - bark laughter, snort really hard, roll on the floor laughing - he doesn’t know how to react. He can’t decide; hence he plays his best card for now: keeping extremely quiet.
“It’s not that I’m giving up on you or something,” Baekhyun catches on, “I’m your best friend since diapers. We’re the noisiest duo around town, we’re partners in crime, we’re attached by the hip, soulmates, blablabla. I know the doctors say you might wanna stick with anyone and anything you’re supposed to be familiar with so that they might spark something. But so far, you only know you have a passionate fire for tennis because you’ve read it off your Notes application on your phone.”
Chanyeol doesn’t know where this is all going, but he nods.
“I personally think all of this meeting up with people you know and talking about things you don’t remember is wearing you down. I don’t blame you at all for not remembering, but clearly, you are harsher to yourself about it, and you probably beat yourself about it every time you wake up in the morning, thinking, ‘is this seriously my room?’”
“I-”
“If you meet new people, you wouldn’t have to feel guilty about them. About not knowing anything about them, about not remembering memories of them, etcetera,” Baekhyun continues with his half-assed grin and eloquent flow. Chanyeol relaxes his nerves, sits back.
There’s a comfortable pause that ensues, and they sip their drinks in sync.
“I’ve a distant cousin,” Baekhyun says softly. “He knows nothing about you, and you know nothing about him. And I’ve heard from my aunt he wants to learn tennis, take it professionally. They’re willing to pay lots, of course.”
Chanyeol barks a laughter. He sees where this is going. Baekhyun eases back, leans against the bench.
“What do you say?” the shorter man asks.
Chanyeol shrugs but doesn’t contemplate too long.
“That’s not a shabby idea,” the taller compliments. Baekhyun flings a fist to the other’s shoulder.
“You’re very welcome.”
* * *
The cousin is certainly a novel being to Chanyeol’s life.
It’s a blazing hot summer day and there’s no shadow on the court save for the webbed silhouette of metallic fences. No one in their right mind would choose to wear fully black. No one except perhaps Baekhyun’s cousin.
It’s defiance to basic physics and common sense.
“Jesus,” Chanyeol mutters under his breath as he scans the boy up and down, mostly in disbelief. The shorter lad looks away, down the other courts perhaps, hand gripping on his other arm, possibly Chanyeol’s only hint of the boy’s shyness.
There’s a slight slouch to him too, and his shoulders are narrow, both features - unfortunately - underlining his short build even more. A frown covers the lad’s face, and Chanyeol can’t help but look away from the round eyes and prominent heart-shaped lips, which are definitely not something Chanyeol believes to have ever seen in his life, pre - or post - accident.
“Park Chanyeol,” he introduces himself and holds out a hand carefully, as if wary that the boy might bite it. “You’re Baekhyun’s cousin?”
The shorter boy looks down at the hand and barely acknowledges it before flicking his gaze back up to Chanyeol’s face. Then he looks away, utterly bored if not mildly irritated.
“Um, a name, can’t be that hard-”
“-Kyungsoo.”
Chanyeol takes the low quiet reply as a hint of how soft-spoken the other is, and he decides not to push too much for a “friendly” introductory conversation, lest the other should walk out on him.
“Okay,” Chanyeol manages as he gulps in some sort of sudden nervousness. “Well, nice to meet you.”
The boy doesn’t respond and only picks up a black Wilson blade racket from Chanyeol’s bag without asking. He heads to the other court, faces Chanyeol and waits in a half-hearted starting stance.
“Except… I have no idea about your level-,” Chanyeol deadpans, conceivably nonplussed, voice barely making it to the other side.
But before he knows it, Baekhyun’s rather peculiar cousin throws a ball straight up into the air and spikes it down a few good feet to the left of Chanyeol, the sound of the ball audible as it whistles clean through the air, hits the ground with booming impact before bouncing to a fence.
“Oh okay,” Chanyeol scratches the back of his neck, biting his lower lip. “That… definitely gives me a general idea.”
* * *
Chanyeol groans as he swipes his racket, hits the ball back to the left corner of the opposite court. It hits slightly out. He grabs another tennis ball from the basket and throws it into the air but lets it fall to the ground, watches it bounce once, twice before rolling to the net. He walks to his water bottle and dumps half the water on his head. He shakes off the excess, relaxes into its temporary coolness and listens to the sounds of the nightlights flickering and crickets stridulating.
He hasn’t been able to shake off his thoughts about Baekhyun’s Cousin.
“He can be… rude,” Baekhyun had explained in whispers after the first session when he had come to pick up Kyungsoo. “He’s just seventeen. And he doesn’t know what you’ve gone through.”
“It’s cool, I don’t mind,” Chanyeol had replied with a light frown. “I mean, I have no idea about what he’s gone through either. Is he like, being tortured or mistreated at home or something because the kid is like a sadist and masochist at the same time? It’s awfully frightening. Are you sure you’re related? Should I be worried about his mental state? He looks like he just came straight out of a horror movie,” Chanyeol pauses but then adds, “At times,” for good measure.
“It’s nice to know you’re starting to relax enough to babble like you used to.”
“That’s not the point, Baekhyun.”
“You’ll thank me and kiss my feet later.”
“Byun Baekhyun.”
“Getting familiar now, aren’t we?”
Chanyeol wipes away the sweat from his forehead with his lanky arm as he studies, absentmindedly, the lines of the green tennis court.
In all honesty, Baekhyun is just as much a mystery as Kyungsoo is to him. But then again, everything should be a mystery to a person suddenly deprived of their past memories.
He’s been relaxing a bit more, there’s truth to that, but that’s probably because he’s getting used to Baekhyun’s omnipresence.
In fact, his being everywhere in Chanyeol’s so-to-say “new” life does make the taller feel a bit warm in the chest because then it would mean that Baekhyun is really proving to be the best friend from his pre-accident life. Constantly checking up on him, always replying to his texts within a few seconds, calling back on missed calls in less than two minutes - even if he were in a meeting - or never failing to show up when he most needs him, to talk about nonsense or to talk about his headache and how he wants to drown into the darkness of his non-existent memories.
Chanyeol bends down and picks up a ball and examines it idly while digesting and re-digesting whatever he had been told had happened that day, but he finds himself remembering, more vividly, the session he had with the enigmatic Kyungsoo.
Maybe because it’s more real to him. Maybe because it’s a memory that’s definitely his.
* * *
Kyungsoo has not said a thing ever since his own name. It makes Chanyeol feel like he’s been talking to himself during the whole session. He’s not entirely sure this is what Baekhyun’s clever idea was supposed to be like, but he guesses that this way, he’ll get used to hearing his own voice.
“Right, so, um, could you show me your forehand and backhand strokes? Let’s just … work on some basics, yeah?”
It’s uncomfortable when a sentence like that is just left hanging in the air without a reply or sign of acknowledgement. After all, even if one were training their dog, the dog would actually bark or whine or roll on the floor begging for a cookie.
Kyungsoo on the other hand, would basically - almost ninety-nine percent of the time - just stare up with his big black eyes, and Chanyeol is not entirely sure why he is reminded of dormice each and every time.
The teen swings the racket once, arm half-extended, elbow too close to his body. The swing is heavy and could put a lasting spin to the ball, but there is too much effort in the movement that Chanyeol can tell it would burden the younger’s wrist if practiced too much.
“Use your weight, shift it with the swing of your whole body. Don’t use the snap of your wrist. This isn’t badminton,” the elder explains, as briefly as he can, into the silence of the tennis court park.
Kyungsoo makes another rough and abrupt swing, and it almost hits the front of Chanyeol’s thigh. The taller man backs away in time as the edge of the other’s racket grazes his shorts.
“You could at least try to be the friendly kind of quiet,” Chanyeol wails rather loudly, and to his surprise Kyungsoo looks slightly disorientated, with his shoulders tensed up.
“Yeah, okay, that was probabl- most likely not on purpose,” Chanyeol amends with a clear of the throat. “I forgive you from almost raking off my house jewels.”
The attempted humor doesn’t exactly make Kyungsoo comfortable, Chanyeol notes mentally, but he can see the younger teen feel a bit more at ease to prepare for another swing.
“Easy,” Chanyeol suggests when Kyungsoo gives another full blast of a swing, racket roaring against dead air. The elbow is still too close to the ribs.
“Your elbow,” Chanyeol starts but decides to continue with actual demonstration and mimes, so he swings his black racket with ease and grace and uses his other hand to point at the distance between the elbow and his body.
Kyungsoo’s heart-shaped lips almost quiver into what seems to be the penumbra of a smile, for only an infinitesimal moment. Chanyeol barely catches it that he wonders if he had not imagined it instead.
The smaller boy swings again as a gust of wind lifts the sands up into the open sky, and somehow the swifter movement reminds Chanyeol of something.
Something he can’t exactly grasp.
At least, not for the time being.
* * *
“Hey.”
Chanyeol recognizes the voice out of elimination process. He squeezes his eyes shut so he can relax the rest of his face more thoroughly when he releases the tension. He stretches casually before turning to the newcomer, his supposed weekend practice partner, Kai.
It’s a weekday though, and the cars honking madly at the outskirts of the park can attest to it as the rush hour rumbles on.
“Hey,” Chanyeol grins. “You’re off work?”
Kai passes a hand lazily through his wavy coral-red hair, picks up his racket from its bag. “Yeah. Boss is off on a trip. When the cat is away the mice play. You’re up for a set?”
Chanyeol cocks his head, smiles wider. “It’s just half past six. I’m not out yet. We could do several full Wimbledon matches.”
Kai smirks slightly, eyes unblinking, focused on Chanyeol’s face, and it’s unsettling. Chanyeol always has a feeling he’s being read, every word from his jumbled thoughts. The other turns away and walks towards the furthest line.
Kai serves. It’s a lazy throw and not a spiking serve, but it still proves to be an idiosyncratic serve that Chanyeol cannot really get used to. Though, in his defense, Chanyeol’s technically only been out on the court for two weeks ever since the accident.
He hits back as per usual, adds force to the ball, right hand extended, shifting his weight in his stance, watching it land in the middle of the stringbed and bounce off with a loud thud. The ball flies straight, almost screeching in the air. Kai replies it with a backhand like he usually does and sends the ball back: indolent, slow, without much of a spin.
Chanyeol grits his teeth. After a bit of a va-et-vient, he lounges forward and volleys it to force Kai up to the net. The other does and adds little to no force in the return. Chanyeol swings his racket rougher and sends it to the backline, finishing off with the ball diving to the edge, bouncing into the fence that rattles softly in the small breeze.
“Nice play,” Kai comments, smirking. Chanyeol makes a peace sign and beams with the sunniest grin he can muster before announcing, “Fifteen love!”
The first and second sets end with six to zero for Chanyeol. The third set with six to one, still for Chanyeol.
After the second game of the fourth set, they decide to take a break and lounge below the referee’s seat.
“How’s your, um,” Kai starts.
“Memories? Uh, well, nothing much for now.”
“Ah.”
Chanyeol cocks his head after he downs some water and wipes the sweat from his neck with a clean towel.
“Do I usually… talk about … stuff with you?” Chanyeol asks judiciously, a bit out of the blue.
The thing with amnesia is that it’s hard to say whom you could or should trust since there’s so little evidence to base off on. And, being stuck between a rock and a hard place, it proves to be conceivably difficult to have the other understand that he needs to be skeptical about everyone and everything.
When Chanyeol had met Kai, last weekend, it had been curt, and there was very little hint to whether they had really been friends before the accident. For all he knew, Kai could just be an acquaintance, just a practice partner, just someone at the periphery of Chanyeol’s previous life.
“We met here, really,” Kai explains as he motions vaguely at the court they are standing on. “We played doubles against another team we didn’t know. It was a spontaneous thing, really. I don’t remember how it went anymore, to be real honest. We might have won the set.”
“And then after that, I came around every Sats and Suns, and we’d meet ‘cause you practiced here every single evening.”
“We went out for a drink once, after a match or two. We talked about the Wimbledon tournament. It was midsummer.”
“Back then our matches weren’t so one-sided. The scores were usually… six to four, seven to five. Lots of deuces. Lots of rallies.”
“You used to talk about so much stuff it was hard for me to shut you up,” Kai responds languidly before taking a gulp of water.
He turns his gaze to Chanyeol and holds it there for a split second before turning it towards the net. “It’s odd that I’m doing all the talking right now, but I guess that’s alright. I wouldn’t push you. We really don’t know each other anyways.”
Chanyeol lets the sentences sit.
He starts wondering where the line between acquaintanceship and friendship lies, and tries to find something familiar about Kai to categorize him into the latter.
“You did shock me though,” Kai continues quietly. Chanyeol turns his gaze back at the other. “When you had been gone for months and then come back, and you didn’t wave at me like you used to.
The sky darkens a trifle as Chanyeol holds his breath, his mind vacillating between broken and misty trains of thoughts.
“You have this… peculiar sort of way of waving. It’s like your arm is so long it gets dislocated from your shoulder.”
“But I’m glad we’re sort of back to normal,” Kai smirks unceremoniously, and that catches Chanyeol off guard. “Like I said. We weren’t really anything.”
“Except, well, I guess your play style isn’t quite the same,” the redhead appends.
It piques Chanyeol’s interest enough for his large ears to perk up. “How so?”
Kai keeps quiet for a bit, pensive. But after the longest minutes Chanyeol has probably ever waited, the response comes in a sad whisper he almost misses.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Kyungsoo collapses onto the pavement before Chanyeol can even shout “Second lap!”
Endurance is definitely not the raven-haired teen’s forte, and in a sense that’s also probably why Kyungsoo hasn’t sustained any injuries despite using his joints all wrong.
Chanyeol squats down next to the boy and pats his back gently. “This is sort of pathetic, if you’d allow me to say.”
Not that Kyungsoo ever says much.
“You’re going to have to do some cardio three days a week if you don’t want to waste your sessions doing laps and passing out each time,” Chanyeol babbles comfortably.
Kyungsoo grunts and sighs before sitting up, chest still heaving, sweat making his black shirt stick to it firmly.
“You should also opt for white shirts. It’ll be, you know. Less … hot,” the coach suggests tentatively.
Kyungsoo snickers briefly before tossing his head back to stretch his neck from one side to the other.
So far, snickers are the best Chanyeol can get out of the boy, so he pats himself - mentally - on the shoulder and feels a bit more accomplished and proud, before getting awfully distracted by how white the skin of the other’s neck looks, exposed under the hardhearted sunbeams.
Chanyeol breaks into cold sweat and dries it quickly before it gets the chance to work up his nerves. The sunrays are mercilessly burning invisible fires across his skin, he reasons quickly: he isn’t entirely sure why the younger boy’s wouldn’t tan as much as his did.
Chanyeol gets to his feet and walks to get a water bottle out of his bag and tosses it towards Kyungsoo, who catches it clumsily in his lap.
“Drink up,” Chanyeol urges a tad belligerently. “You’re not off for today, yet.”
* * *
“Kai?”
“Yeah, have I ever talked about him before?”
Baekhyun ponders for a couple of seconds before shrugging and replying. “Not to my memory? You did talk about practice partners, but you never really mentioned their names. Was it the one you had a fling with?”
“I had a fling with one of them…?”
“Well, not that I know of par-ti-cu-lar-ly,” Baekhyun wiggles his eyebrows. “I just remember you saying you had one hell of a night, once.”
Chanyeol knots his eyebrows, but before he can say anything more, Baekhyun interrupts him with a playful chirrup.
“Words of the wise: if Kai asks you to follow him home, don’t do it. Especially if he’s a creep. If he’s good-looking be sure to take care not to fall for meager superficial temptations.”
Chanyeol opens his mouth just to close it, but then he opens it again for a round of slightly exasperated laughter.
Baekhyun grins, looking down at his feet.
“It’s good to hear you’re meeting up with people though,” Baekhyun says. “I would have been worried if it were just me and Kyungsoo.”
Chanyeol cocks his head left and right, not entirely sure what to say.
“So, how’re things with Kyungsoo?”
“He’s, well. He doesn’t talk much, does he?” Chanyeol replies. “Sometimes I wonder how you two can be this fundamentally different.”
Baekhyun raises an eyebrow. “Well, we’re pretty distant cousins. I also don’t talk that much.”
“There’s… room for debate,” Chanyeol comments.
Baekhyun jabs at the taller man’s ribs. “And we’re not going to debate. Not when you’ve cut down so much on talking.”
Chanyeol grins solemnly. He sits back on the park bench and it creaks a bit under his weight. The birch trees sway their branches very lightly and the leaves’ shadows dance on his lap gently. He wishes he could touch them.
“Baek, did I… ever… was I… was I going out with someone?” the taller man gulps uneasily.
The silence that follows turns into a complete mystery to Chanyeol. He starts counting the seconds that pass. He can’t decide if he would believe whatever Baekhyun would answer.
“I think you … were.”
Chanyeol flushes up.
“And that … person…?” he prompts when the shorter man falls uncharacteristically quiet.
Baekhyun looks up apologetically into Chanyeol’s eyes.
“Well. They never showed up.”
* * *
Chanyeol is standing on a grass court. There’s no one on the other side and there’s no one in the crowd stands. He looks around, left and right, and the eerie blue sky just reflects from his eyes in an uncanny way.
Slowly, a sinuous chatter fills the air, and he can’t make out a word, the whispers were too mingled with hoarseness, as if a person was left with barely the back of their throats to mutter ominous curses.
He starts to tremble.
He calls out, “Baekhyun? Kai? … Kyungsoo?”
“Somebody?”
Something dark flashes in front of him, and he recoils a bit.
The noise fills the hot air and he doesn’t know why they sound so familiar yet so alien at the same time. He covers his ears in distress, but instead of blocking out the noise, it filters the cacophony and leaves out in clear loud words, one sentenc-
He wakes up in a pool of cold sweat. Feeling disgusted, nauseous, senses oversensitive, he sits up and holds his head, presses two fingers to his temple where he feels like a vein or two may burst any moment.
His breathing doesn’t even out, and that makes him panic. He reaches out and grabs his covers and fists his hands into them to push down the waves of inexplicable fear in him.
Next thing he knows, he’s hurling across the floor.
* * *
“I’ll be there, I’m heading there right now. I’ll call Kyungsoo, will let him know it’s off for today. Don’t move, Yeol. Don’t do anything rash. It’s okay, just wipe off the sweat. I’ll deal with the vomit. Don’t lie on your back. Think happy things. Think about tennis. Think about me? Think about Kai being super hot? Think about Kyungsoo being a cute snoring dormouse?”
Chanyeol can still feel his heart beat loud in his ears, but that’s more soothing than the words he had heard in his dream. Baekhyun’s panicked but controlled voice also helps considerably, but he finds himself wishing for more voices to comfort the darkness that’s spreading at the back of his mind, where a broken chest lies without its memories.
He waits for Baekhyun at his desk. He fiddles with the drawers indolently. He picks up his racket from his bag and unwinds the taping so he can rewind it again.
He knows deep down that he’s not going to make it. He’s not going to make the championships. He might not even make the Roehampton qualifiers, for all he knows. He’s not going to keep the only bloody promise to his previous self. And it is not because no one around him believes in him.
But because he can’t believe in himself.
The last bits of confidence have deserted him, and he swings his racket at the wall in a fit of anger.
* * *
“You’re not focused.”
“Says the guy who just lost a point. Forty love,” Chanyeol pronounces and he serves a ball, but Kai does not budge from his spot, letting the ball fly past.
Chanyeol throws another ball up even though he catches Kai raising a hand - a sign for timeout - at the corner of his eye. He serves hard, and it goes across but lands out of the line, and Chanyeol feels abruptly nauseated and upset.
“Yeol,” Jongin approaches the net, “I appreciate the passion you’re putting while playing with an amateur like me, but you’re not bloody focused, so take a breather.”
There’s silence and even the wind tries to tiptoe into stillness.
“Yeah, okay,” Chanyeol admits and he throws his racket to the side and pushes up the wet bangs that cover his forehead.
Kai walks to his bench and grabs a water bottle and passes it to Chanyeol without a word. The taller smiles briefly.
“I’m sorry I’m a bit-”
“- Don’t worry about it,” Kai cuts in. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
Chanyeol tries to shake off the tension in his shoulders, but the weight only becomes heavier and heavier as he takes deep but short breaths.
Kai pats the other’s back.
“You can do it, Yeol. It’s okay.”
* * *
He knows the championships are just around the corner.
Chanyeol hits the ball hard and the sound reverberates and rockets to the wall and comes back and Chanyeol swings it back, and back, and back, and there’s almost no end to it.
He knows he can’t afford to be emotionally broken. He knows he doesn’t want to end up feeling like he’s living a lie, a fake world, a world where he can’t find someone to trust, something to hold onto, a solid raison d’être.
Tennis is the only thing that feels solid to him, he knows it. It’s the only thing that’s keeping him from straying too far into his messy thoughts about who Baekhyun really is, who Kai is, or how the fuck does one get to know Kyungsoo because the boy just won’t talk.
Tennis is the only thing he knows is clearly his, and it can’t betray him. Not that he ever wondered why it’s the only thing explicitly written down in his Notes application.
Not that he doesn’t know he’s probably just using tennis as an excuse, as some kind of scapegoat, as some kind of distraction.
The ball finally falls out of his range and he presses his hands to his knees and takes some time to breathe in some fresh air.
Timing out alone is the most frightening thing to him though, so he picks up a ball before his mind starts asking him the questions he doesn’t want to think about, such as “Who are you? Who on fucking earth are you?”
He makes a side-serve to kickstart the rally. The wall’s covered with sand, and the dust rises from the come-and-go of the tennis ball.
He just needs to concentrate, he tells himself.
This just takes tactics, just takes practice, just takes focus. At most it will also take some time.
But it’ll never take broken memories in exchange.
►
Title: When Life Calls Out Forty Love, Game, Set, and Match
Pairing(s): Chanyeol/D.O, platonic!Chanyeol/Kai, platonic!Chanyeol/Baekhyun
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): age gap, non-explicit vomit scene, underage
Length: 11.1k
Summary: Chanyeol wades blindly through his dark past as he struggles to make it for the Wimbledon tournament.
Author's note: big thanks to f, n, s, w, and d for hearing me beat my own head over this fic. a bonus thanks to f for reviewing it for me!
I hope I didn't stray too far from the prompt ahahha…haha…
There’s a fine line between every two things that Park Chanyeol will probably never ever see.
Maybe it’s that line people call the horizon, between the sky and the sea. That line that divides two colors in a rainbow, that line where one starts to feel the cold from the hot. The line that separates happiness from sadness, sanity from madness. The line that defines the hazy past from the definite present, and perforce, the intimidating future.
Chanyeol whips his blade racket in a swift practiced move. Breath rough, sweat dripping, eyes focused on the opposite court.
The white line behind the opponent is probably the only bloody line he’ll ever get to see in his life. Concrete, solid, real. Send out and you’re out. Send in and you’re getting around. Send right on the line, nearing the inner edge, in a consistent streak, and you’re a fucking genius.
There’s not much to remember. There has never been much to remember.
This just takes tactics, just takes practice, just takes focus. At most it will also take some time.
But it’ll never take broken memories in exchange.
* * *
“Hey Yeol,” Baekhyun would say casually, and Chanyeol would reply “Hey Baek” and grab the beer from the other’s hand and down it with a grin.
But they only exchange shy glances, as if they were meeting up for the first time. To Chanyeol, it doesn’t hurt much because he can’t remember, but he knows that to the other, it’s something that’s hard on the heart.
“I-” Chanyeol wants to apologize; the urge is always overwhelming whenever he meets up with people he’s supposed to know since forever. But this time ‘round Baekhyun interrupts him with a smile that Chanyeol decides is rather sincere.
“-We’re not having any of that,” the shorter says. He hands Chanyeol a can of beer, sits at the bench, next to the other, “I’ve thought this through a bit, and I think I know what you need.”
Chanyeol raises an eyebrow as he sips from his can.
“You need to meet new people.”
Chanyeol hesitates because he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say or do. Out of the options he’s been told he usually responds with - bark laughter, snort really hard, roll on the floor laughing - he doesn’t know how to react. He can’t decide; hence he plays his best card for now: keeping extremely quiet.
“It’s not that I’m giving up on you or something,” Baekhyun catches on, “I’m your best friend since diapers. We’re the noisiest duo around town, we’re partners in crime, we’re attached by the hip, soulmates, blablabla. I know the doctors say you might wanna stick with anyone and anything you’re supposed to be familiar with so that they might spark something. But so far, you only know you have a passionate fire for tennis because you’ve read it off your Notes application on your phone.”
Chanyeol doesn’t know where this is all going, but he nods.
“I personally think all of this meeting up with people you know and talking about things you don’t remember is wearing you down. I don’t blame you at all for not remembering, but clearly, you are harsher to yourself about it, and you probably beat yourself about it every time you wake up in the morning, thinking, ‘is this seriously my room?’”
“I-”
“If you meet new people, you wouldn’t have to feel guilty about them. About not knowing anything about them, about not remembering memories of them, etcetera,” Baekhyun continues with his half-assed grin and eloquent flow. Chanyeol relaxes his nerves, sits back.
There’s a comfortable pause that ensues, and they sip their drinks in sync.
“I’ve a distant cousin,” Baekhyun says softly. “He knows nothing about you, and you know nothing about him. And I’ve heard from my aunt he wants to learn tennis, take it professionally. They’re willing to pay lots, of course.”
Chanyeol barks a laughter. He sees where this is going. Baekhyun eases back, leans against the bench.
“What do you say?” the shorter man asks.
Chanyeol shrugs but doesn’t contemplate too long.
“That’s not a shabby idea,” the taller compliments. Baekhyun flings a fist to the other’s shoulder.
“You’re very welcome.”
* * *
The cousin is certainly a novel being to Chanyeol’s life.
It’s a blazing hot summer day and there’s no shadow on the court save for the webbed silhouette of metallic fences. No one in their right mind would choose to wear fully black. No one except perhaps Baekhyun’s cousin.
It’s defiance to basic physics and common sense.
“Jesus,” Chanyeol mutters under his breath as he scans the boy up and down, mostly in disbelief. The shorter lad looks away, down the other courts perhaps, hand gripping on his other arm, possibly Chanyeol’s only hint of the boy’s shyness.
There’s a slight slouch to him too, and his shoulders are narrow, both features - unfortunately - underlining his short build even more. A frown covers the lad’s face, and Chanyeol can’t help but look away from the round eyes and prominent heart-shaped lips, which are definitely not something Chanyeol believes to have ever seen in his life, pre - or post - accident.
“Park Chanyeol,” he introduces himself and holds out a hand carefully, as if wary that the boy might bite it. “You’re Baekhyun’s cousin?”
The shorter boy looks down at the hand and barely acknowledges it before flicking his gaze back up to Chanyeol’s face. Then he looks away, utterly bored if not mildly irritated.
“Um, a name, can’t be that hard-”
“-Kyungsoo.”
Chanyeol takes the low quiet reply as a hint of how soft-spoken the other is, and he decides not to push too much for a “friendly” introductory conversation, lest the other should walk out on him.
“Okay,” Chanyeol manages as he gulps in some sort of sudden nervousness. “Well, nice to meet you.”
The boy doesn’t respond and only picks up a black Wilson blade racket from Chanyeol’s bag without asking. He heads to the other court, faces Chanyeol and waits in a half-hearted starting stance.
“Except… I have no idea about your level-,” Chanyeol deadpans, conceivably nonplussed, voice barely making it to the other side.
But before he knows it, Baekhyun’s rather peculiar cousin throws a ball straight up into the air and spikes it down a few good feet to the left of Chanyeol, the sound of the ball audible as it whistles clean through the air, hits the ground with booming impact before bouncing to a fence.
“Oh okay,” Chanyeol scratches the back of his neck, biting his lower lip. “That… definitely gives me a general idea.”
* * *
Chanyeol groans as he swipes his racket, hits the ball back to the left corner of the opposite court. It hits slightly out. He grabs another tennis ball from the basket and throws it into the air but lets it fall to the ground, watches it bounce once, twice before rolling to the net. He walks to his water bottle and dumps half the water on his head. He shakes off the excess, relaxes into its temporary coolness and listens to the sounds of the nightlights flickering and crickets stridulating.
He hasn’t been able to shake off his thoughts about Baekhyun’s Cousin.
“He can be… rude,” Baekhyun had explained in whispers after the first session when he had come to pick up Kyungsoo. “He’s just seventeen. And he doesn’t know what you’ve gone through.”
“It’s cool, I don’t mind,” Chanyeol had replied with a light frown. “I mean, I have no idea about what he’s gone through either. Is he like, being tortured or mistreated at home or something because the kid is like a sadist and masochist at the same time? It’s awfully frightening. Are you sure you’re related? Should I be worried about his mental state? He looks like he just came straight out of a horror movie,” Chanyeol pauses but then adds, “At times,” for good measure.
“It’s nice to know you’re starting to relax enough to babble like you used to.”
“That’s not the point, Baekhyun.”
“You’ll thank me and kiss my feet later.”
“Byun Baekhyun.”
“Getting familiar now, aren’t we?”
Chanyeol wipes away the sweat from his forehead with his lanky arm as he studies, absentmindedly, the lines of the green tennis court.
In all honesty, Baekhyun is just as much a mystery as Kyungsoo is to him. But then again, everything should be a mystery to a person suddenly deprived of their past memories.
He’s been relaxing a bit more, there’s truth to that, but that’s probably because he’s getting used to Baekhyun’s omnipresence.
In fact, his being everywhere in Chanyeol’s so-to-say “new” life does make the taller feel a bit warm in the chest because then it would mean that Baekhyun is really proving to be the best friend from his pre-accident life. Constantly checking up on him, always replying to his texts within a few seconds, calling back on missed calls in less than two minutes - even if he were in a meeting - or never failing to show up when he most needs him, to talk about nonsense or to talk about his headache and how he wants to drown into the darkness of his non-existent memories.
Chanyeol bends down and picks up a ball and examines it idly while digesting and re-digesting whatever he had been told had happened that day, but he finds himself remembering, more vividly, the session he had with the enigmatic Kyungsoo.
Maybe because it’s more real to him. Maybe because it’s a memory that’s definitely his.
* * *
Kyungsoo has not said a thing ever since his own name. It makes Chanyeol feel like he’s been talking to himself during the whole session. He’s not entirely sure this is what Baekhyun’s clever idea was supposed to be like, but he guesses that this way, he’ll get used to hearing his own voice.
“Right, so, um, could you show me your forehand and backhand strokes? Let’s just … work on some basics, yeah?”
It’s uncomfortable when a sentence like that is just left hanging in the air without a reply or sign of acknowledgement. After all, even if one were training their dog, the dog would actually bark or whine or roll on the floor begging for a cookie.
Kyungsoo on the other hand, would basically - almost ninety-nine percent of the time - just stare up with his big black eyes, and Chanyeol is not entirely sure why he is reminded of dormice each and every time.
The teen swings the racket once, arm half-extended, elbow too close to his body. The swing is heavy and could put a lasting spin to the ball, but there is too much effort in the movement that Chanyeol can tell it would burden the younger’s wrist if practiced too much.
“Use your weight, shift it with the swing of your whole body. Don’t use the snap of your wrist. This isn’t badminton,” the elder explains, as briefly as he can, into the silence of the tennis court park.
Kyungsoo makes another rough and abrupt swing, and it almost hits the front of Chanyeol’s thigh. The taller man backs away in time as the edge of the other’s racket grazes his shorts.
“You could at least try to be the friendly kind of quiet,” Chanyeol wails rather loudly, and to his surprise Kyungsoo looks slightly disorientated, with his shoulders tensed up.
“Yeah, okay, that was probabl- most likely not on purpose,” Chanyeol amends with a clear of the throat. “I forgive you from almost raking off my house jewels.”
The attempted humor doesn’t exactly make Kyungsoo comfortable, Chanyeol notes mentally, but he can see the younger teen feel a bit more at ease to prepare for another swing.
“Easy,” Chanyeol suggests when Kyungsoo gives another full blast of a swing, racket roaring against dead air. The elbow is still too close to the ribs.
“Your elbow,” Chanyeol starts but decides to continue with actual demonstration and mimes, so he swings his black racket with ease and grace and uses his other hand to point at the distance between the elbow and his body.
Kyungsoo’s heart-shaped lips almost quiver into what seems to be the penumbra of a smile, for only an infinitesimal moment. Chanyeol barely catches it that he wonders if he had not imagined it instead.
The smaller boy swings again as a gust of wind lifts the sands up into the open sky, and somehow the swifter movement reminds Chanyeol of something.
Something he can’t exactly grasp.
At least, not for the time being.
* * *
“Hey.”
Chanyeol recognizes the voice out of elimination process. He squeezes his eyes shut so he can relax the rest of his face more thoroughly when he releases the tension. He stretches casually before turning to the newcomer, his supposed weekend practice partner, Kai.
It’s a weekday though, and the cars honking madly at the outskirts of the park can attest to it as the rush hour rumbles on.
“Hey,” Chanyeol grins. “You’re off work?”
Kai passes a hand lazily through his wavy coral-red hair, picks up his racket from its bag. “Yeah. Boss is off on a trip. When the cat is away the mice play. You’re up for a set?”
Chanyeol cocks his head, smiles wider. “It’s just half past six. I’m not out yet. We could do several full Wimbledon matches.”
Kai smirks slightly, eyes unblinking, focused on Chanyeol’s face, and it’s unsettling. Chanyeol always has a feeling he’s being read, every word from his jumbled thoughts. The other turns away and walks towards the furthest line.
Kai serves. It’s a lazy throw and not a spiking serve, but it still proves to be an idiosyncratic serve that Chanyeol cannot really get used to. Though, in his defense, Chanyeol’s technically only been out on the court for two weeks ever since the accident.
He hits back as per usual, adds force to the ball, right hand extended, shifting his weight in his stance, watching it land in the middle of the stringbed and bounce off with a loud thud. The ball flies straight, almost screeching in the air. Kai replies it with a backhand like he usually does and sends the ball back: indolent, slow, without much of a spin.
Chanyeol grits his teeth. After a bit of a va-et-vient, he lounges forward and volleys it to force Kai up to the net. The other does and adds little to no force in the return. Chanyeol swings his racket rougher and sends it to the backline, finishing off with the ball diving to the edge, bouncing into the fence that rattles softly in the small breeze.
“Nice play,” Kai comments, smirking. Chanyeol makes a peace sign and beams with the sunniest grin he can muster before announcing, “Fifteen love!”
The first and second sets end with six to zero for Chanyeol. The third set with six to one, still for Chanyeol.
After the second game of the fourth set, they decide to take a break and lounge below the referee’s seat.
“How’s your, um,” Kai starts.
“Memories? Uh, well, nothing much for now.”
“Ah.”
Chanyeol cocks his head after he downs some water and wipes the sweat from his neck with a clean towel.
“Do I usually… talk about … stuff with you?” Chanyeol asks judiciously, a bit out of the blue.
The thing with amnesia is that it’s hard to say whom you could or should trust since there’s so little evidence to base off on. And, being stuck between a rock and a hard place, it proves to be conceivably difficult to have the other understand that he needs to be skeptical about everyone and everything.
When Chanyeol had met Kai, last weekend, it had been curt, and there was very little hint to whether they had really been friends before the accident. For all he knew, Kai could just be an acquaintance, just a practice partner, just someone at the periphery of Chanyeol’s previous life.
“We met here, really,” Kai explains as he motions vaguely at the court they are standing on. “We played doubles against another team we didn’t know. It was a spontaneous thing, really. I don’t remember how it went anymore, to be real honest. We might have won the set.”
“And then after that, I came around every Sats and Suns, and we’d meet ‘cause you practiced here every single evening.”
“We went out for a drink once, after a match or two. We talked about the Wimbledon tournament. It was midsummer.”
“Back then our matches weren’t so one-sided. The scores were usually… six to four, seven to five. Lots of deuces. Lots of rallies.”
“You used to talk about so much stuff it was hard for me to shut you up,” Kai responds languidly before taking a gulp of water.
He turns his gaze to Chanyeol and holds it there for a split second before turning it towards the net. “It’s odd that I’m doing all the talking right now, but I guess that’s alright. I wouldn’t push you. We really don’t know each other anyways.”
Chanyeol lets the sentences sit.
He starts wondering where the line between acquaintanceship and friendship lies, and tries to find something familiar about Kai to categorize him into the latter.
“You did shock me though,” Kai continues quietly. Chanyeol turns his gaze back at the other. “When you had been gone for months and then come back, and you didn’t wave at me like you used to.
The sky darkens a trifle as Chanyeol holds his breath, his mind vacillating between broken and misty trains of thoughts.
“You have this… peculiar sort of way of waving. It’s like your arm is so long it gets dislocated from your shoulder.”
“But I’m glad we’re sort of back to normal,” Kai smirks unceremoniously, and that catches Chanyeol off guard. “Like I said. We weren’t really anything.”
“Except, well, I guess your play style isn’t quite the same,” the redhead appends.
It piques Chanyeol’s interest enough for his large ears to perk up. “How so?”
Kai keeps quiet for a bit, pensive. But after the longest minutes Chanyeol has probably ever waited, the response comes in a sad whisper he almost misses.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Kyungsoo collapses onto the pavement before Chanyeol can even shout “Second lap!”
Endurance is definitely not the raven-haired teen’s forte, and in a sense that’s also probably why Kyungsoo hasn’t sustained any injuries despite using his joints all wrong.
Chanyeol squats down next to the boy and pats his back gently. “This is sort of pathetic, if you’d allow me to say.”
Not that Kyungsoo ever says much.
“You’re going to have to do some cardio three days a week if you don’t want to waste your sessions doing laps and passing out each time,” Chanyeol babbles comfortably.
Kyungsoo grunts and sighs before sitting up, chest still heaving, sweat making his black shirt stick to it firmly.
“You should also opt for white shirts. It’ll be, you know. Less … hot,” the coach suggests tentatively.
Kyungsoo snickers briefly before tossing his head back to stretch his neck from one side to the other.
So far, snickers are the best Chanyeol can get out of the boy, so he pats himself - mentally - on the shoulder and feels a bit more accomplished and proud, before getting awfully distracted by how white the skin of the other’s neck looks, exposed under the hardhearted sunbeams.
Chanyeol breaks into cold sweat and dries it quickly before it gets the chance to work up his nerves. The sunrays are mercilessly burning invisible fires across his skin, he reasons quickly: he isn’t entirely sure why the younger boy’s wouldn’t tan as much as his did.
Chanyeol gets to his feet and walks to get a water bottle out of his bag and tosses it towards Kyungsoo, who catches it clumsily in his lap.
“Drink up,” Chanyeol urges a tad belligerently. “You’re not off for today, yet.”
* * *
“Kai?”
“Yeah, have I ever talked about him before?”
Baekhyun ponders for a couple of seconds before shrugging and replying. “Not to my memory? You did talk about practice partners, but you never really mentioned their names. Was it the one you had a fling with?”
“I had a fling with one of them…?”
“Well, not that I know of par-ti-cu-lar-ly,” Baekhyun wiggles his eyebrows. “I just remember you saying you had one hell of a night, once.”
Chanyeol knots his eyebrows, but before he can say anything more, Baekhyun interrupts him with a playful chirrup.
“Words of the wise: if Kai asks you to follow him home, don’t do it. Especially if he’s a creep. If he’s good-looking be sure to take care not to fall for meager superficial temptations.”
Chanyeol opens his mouth just to close it, but then he opens it again for a round of slightly exasperated laughter.
Baekhyun grins, looking down at his feet.
“It’s good to hear you’re meeting up with people though,” Baekhyun says. “I would have been worried if it were just me and Kyungsoo.”
Chanyeol cocks his head left and right, not entirely sure what to say.
“So, how’re things with Kyungsoo?”
“He’s, well. He doesn’t talk much, does he?” Chanyeol replies. “Sometimes I wonder how you two can be this fundamentally different.”
Baekhyun raises an eyebrow. “Well, we’re pretty distant cousins. I also don’t talk that much.”
“There’s… room for debate,” Chanyeol comments.
Baekhyun jabs at the taller man’s ribs. “And we’re not going to debate. Not when you’ve cut down so much on talking.”
Chanyeol grins solemnly. He sits back on the park bench and it creaks a bit under his weight. The birch trees sway their branches very lightly and the leaves’ shadows dance on his lap gently. He wishes he could touch them.
“Baek, did I… ever… was I… was I going out with someone?” the taller man gulps uneasily.
The silence that follows turns into a complete mystery to Chanyeol. He starts counting the seconds that pass. He can’t decide if he would believe whatever Baekhyun would answer.
“I think you … were.”
Chanyeol flushes up.
“And that … person…?” he prompts when the shorter man falls uncharacteristically quiet.
Baekhyun looks up apologetically into Chanyeol’s eyes.
“Well. They never showed up.”
* * *
Chanyeol is standing on a grass court. There’s no one on the other side and there’s no one in the crowd stands. He looks around, left and right, and the eerie blue sky just reflects from his eyes in an uncanny way.
Slowly, a sinuous chatter fills the air, and he can’t make out a word, the whispers were too mingled with hoarseness, as if a person was left with barely the back of their throats to mutter ominous curses.
He starts to tremble.
He calls out, “Baekhyun? Kai? … Kyungsoo?”
“Somebody?”
Something dark flashes in front of him, and he recoils a bit.
The noise fills the hot air and he doesn’t know why they sound so familiar yet so alien at the same time. He covers his ears in distress, but instead of blocking out the noise, it filters the cacophony and leaves out in clear loud words, one sentenc-
He wakes up in a pool of cold sweat. Feeling disgusted, nauseous, senses oversensitive, he sits up and holds his head, presses two fingers to his temple where he feels like a vein or two may burst any moment.
His breathing doesn’t even out, and that makes him panic. He reaches out and grabs his covers and fists his hands into them to push down the waves of inexplicable fear in him.
Next thing he knows, he’s hurling across the floor.
* * *
“I’ll be there, I’m heading there right now. I’ll call Kyungsoo, will let him know it’s off for today. Don’t move, Yeol. Don’t do anything rash. It’s okay, just wipe off the sweat. I’ll deal with the vomit. Don’t lie on your back. Think happy things. Think about tennis. Think about me? Think about Kai being super hot? Think about Kyungsoo being a cute snoring dormouse?”
Chanyeol can still feel his heart beat loud in his ears, but that’s more soothing than the words he had heard in his dream. Baekhyun’s panicked but controlled voice also helps considerably, but he finds himself wishing for more voices to comfort the darkness that’s spreading at the back of his mind, where a broken chest lies without its memories.
He waits for Baekhyun at his desk. He fiddles with the drawers indolently. He picks up his racket from his bag and unwinds the taping so he can rewind it again.
He knows deep down that he’s not going to make it. He’s not going to make the championships. He might not even make the Roehampton qualifiers, for all he knows. He’s not going to keep the only bloody promise to his previous self. And it is not because no one around him believes in him.
But because he can’t believe in himself.
The last bits of confidence have deserted him, and he swings his racket at the wall in a fit of anger.
* * *
“You’re not focused.”
“Says the guy who just lost a point. Forty love,” Chanyeol pronounces and he serves a ball, but Kai does not budge from his spot, letting the ball fly past.
Chanyeol throws another ball up even though he catches Kai raising a hand - a sign for timeout - at the corner of his eye. He serves hard, and it goes across but lands out of the line, and Chanyeol feels abruptly nauseated and upset.
“Yeol,” Jongin approaches the net, “I appreciate the passion you’re putting while playing with an amateur like me, but you’re not bloody focused, so take a breather.”
There’s silence and even the wind tries to tiptoe into stillness.
“Yeah, okay,” Chanyeol admits and he throws his racket to the side and pushes up the wet bangs that cover his forehead.
Kai walks to his bench and grabs a water bottle and passes it to Chanyeol without a word. The taller smiles briefly.
“I’m sorry I’m a bit-”
“- Don’t worry about it,” Kai cuts in. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
Chanyeol tries to shake off the tension in his shoulders, but the weight only becomes heavier and heavier as he takes deep but short breaths.
Kai pats the other’s back.
“You can do it, Yeol. It’s okay.”
* * *
He knows the championships are just around the corner.
Chanyeol hits the ball hard and the sound reverberates and rockets to the wall and comes back and Chanyeol swings it back, and back, and back, and there’s almost no end to it.
He knows he can’t afford to be emotionally broken. He knows he doesn’t want to end up feeling like he’s living a lie, a fake world, a world where he can’t find someone to trust, something to hold onto, a solid raison d’être.
Tennis is the only thing that feels solid to him, he knows it. It’s the only thing that’s keeping him from straying too far into his messy thoughts about who Baekhyun really is, who Kai is, or how the fuck does one get to know Kyungsoo because the boy just won’t talk.
Tennis is the only thing he knows is clearly his, and it can’t betray him. Not that he ever wondered why it’s the only thing explicitly written down in his Notes application.
Not that he doesn’t know he’s probably just using tennis as an excuse, as some kind of scapegoat, as some kind of distraction.
The ball finally falls out of his range and he presses his hands to his knees and takes some time to breathe in some fresh air.
Timing out alone is the most frightening thing to him though, so he picks up a ball before his mind starts asking him the questions he doesn’t want to think about, such as “Who are you? Who on fucking earth are you?”
He makes a side-serve to kickstart the rally. The wall’s covered with sand, and the dust rises from the come-and-go of the tennis ball.
He just needs to concentrate, he tells himself.
This just takes tactics, just takes practice, just takes focus. At most it will also take some time.
But it’ll never take broken memories in exchange.
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