A/N: for this prompt at exopromptmeme. i just can't with kris and jongin asdfghjkl my top two biases in exo together will ALWAYS be a good idea hehe.

 

The youngest ice hockey player in Korean history is also the most diligent of all, which is why he is always the first to appear for their biweekly trainings.

 

This time though, when he reaches at 3.39PM, instead of a glistening block of ice waiting for him, he is faced with a group of what he assumes to be ballerinas.

 

“Chanyeol-ah, why is there a group of ballerinas using our hockey rink?” It makes sense, actually. The first thing Kris had done upon seeing the group of people had been to slide down the glass separating him and the rink, and hurriedly call his best friend team mate.

 

“Ballerinas? Really? Oh man I gotta see it for myself. Will be there in a sec, wait for me, cute girls wearing tutus, papa’ll be there soon!” Chanyeol hung up the phone before Kris can ask his second question: Why are they all guys?

 

“Ballerinas? Really?” Chanyeol gives Kris a massive pout as he jabs a finger at the glass accusingly. “You would tell me that they are ballerinas?”

 

“Uhhhh, are they not?” Kris is honestly confused at this point, gaze fluctuating between his best friend and the people still dancing on the rink.

 

“Have you never heard of the term figure skater? I can’t believe you dragged me out of bed for this!” Chanyeol wails, ignoring Kris’ explanation that he didn’t actually per-se drag him out of bed.

 

Chanyeol goes on to moan about how he had a late night yesterday and oh god are they really best friends because best friends wouldn’t do such things to each other and… this is the point where Kris tunes him out, staring at the figure skaters in fascination.

 

His gaze fixates on this one guy who seems to be floating on the ice. Blinking rapidly, he rubs his eyes to make sure that he is seeing correctly. Alas, the guy is not actually floating, but maneuvering around the ice so well that he appears to be floating above it. The guy stops for a fleeting moment, only letting out a small pant before twirling with practiced ease.

 

He knows he’s good at ice hockey; tons of people have told him that he, to quote their words, ‘looked really hot while zipping around on his skates’. Even more have tried to express their love for him through various creepy methods which he would rather not think about. But, Kris thinks what he’s seeing now far surpasses his own prowess. A perfect rendition of a piece of art, he muses. It’s not that he knows a lot about art, heck, he probably won’t be able to draw to save his life. But it’s just something in the guy’s movements, and his intense gaze that captivates the youngest ice hockey player in Korea.

 

Leaning closer to take a look, he inadvertently bumps his forehead against the glass panel, causing a loud thwack.

 

“Ouch, what the heck?” Kris rubs against his forehead and raises his gaze to look back at the guy…. Only to find the whole group staring at him as if he were some sort of alien species. The guy he had been admiring earlier seemed to be mildly amused, giving a small smile to Kris.

 

“Kris! Have you been listening to me?” Chanyeol tugs at his shirt, forcing Kris to look at him.

 

“Uh, yeah, I know I know,” Kris starts to wave the boy off when he is pulled towards the entrance of the hockey rink.

 

“Come on, let’s go change, their practice should end soon because we’ve booked it from 4.30PM onwards,” Chanyeol drags Kris along, oblivious to the other’s discomfort and the figure skaters’ attention.

 

Kris is sitting alone outside the changing room waiting for Chanyeol when a gaggle of voices are heard. He looks up and hurriedly looks back down just in time to avoid the gaze of the figure skaters’ who had seen him embarrass himself earlier.

 

“Hey,” a voice emanates from above his head. “You were watching us earlier, right?”

 

Kris looks up reluctantly, and oh god if it isn’t the figure skater who had been floating on the ice earlier. Up close, Kris can see his long eyelashes fluttering against his face, along with a pair of expressive chocolate brown eyes. His skin, which looked flawless earlier, is definitely not perfect up close. In fact, Kris can spot some freckles which in his opinion makes the boy look even more gorgeous.

 

“Hey, earth to you,” the boy waves a hand in front of Kris’ face, which causes Kris to snap out of his face-appreciation session and mumble a few words incoherently.

 

“I’m sorry, what was that?” the boy looks genuinely confused now, maybe wondering why the guy who’d seemed pretty hot before was such a bumbling mess now.

 

“I said, yeah, you guys were great,” Kris repeats in a softer tone, as if unsure of how to phrase his words.

 

“Thanks!” the boy looks genuinely elated and Kris feels bad for a moment because he wasn’t actually looking at them per se but only him. “You must be from the ice hockey team that’s playing later, right?”

 

“Actually, yeah. We’re having a friendly match later.” Kris explains. “Do you wanna stay and watch?” He offers impulsively, regretting the words as soon as they come out of his mouth.

 

It is at that precise moment that Chanyeol decides to walk out of the changing room and holler to Kris without a thought.

 

“Kreaaaaase my man, let’s go! We can do some drills before the rest actually get here!” He strides away in the other direction without sparing a look at the ice hockey player.

 

This causes Kris to awkwardly stand up and mutter a whispered, ‘I gotta go now but see you around?’ before hurriedly scrambling after Chanyeol.

 

“Kris!” A voice causes him to turn back, and lo and behold, figure skating guy is the one who just shouted his name. “I’ll stay! And my name is Jongin, by the way.”

 

Kris gives an awkward wave, the type of wave you do when you’re not too sure how to respond, before heading to the rink. He’s going to whip Chanyeol’s so hard the guy won’t know what happened to him.

 

The rest of the practice passes by smoothly, if anyone notices Kris smiling to Jongin, who is seated with another boy, every two seconds, they don’t mention it. So when he finally finishes training, he gestures to the stands, using his fingers to illustrate a person running and mimicking himself taking off the clothes, finally holding up his index finger to show that he’d be out in a sec.

 

What he didn’t expect to see was an empty stand, a stand devoid of Jongin. He sags his shoulders and turns around when he hears a shout come from behind him.

 

“Hey, what’s this piece of paper doing here?” Kris turns around to see another of his team members, Luhan, pick up a piece of paper with blue words inked on it and straighten up. In the midst of doing so, he loses his grip on the paper, which then floats toward the rink and flutters downward.

 

Striding as nonchalantly as he can towards the paper, Kris bends down and sees a smudged ‘Jongin’ which is all he needs to stuff the paper down his back pocket and turn to Luhan, shrugging.

 

“No idea, must have been left behind by someone. I’ll throw it away.” Luhan looks at him weirdly, but chooses not to say whatever is on his mind, which is namely: Since when do you care so much about the environment? Aren’t you the person who would leave your rubbish lying around and wait for others to pick it up?

 

Once home, he dumps his bag on his bed and carefully takes out the piece of paper from his back pocket.

 

Hey Kris. Sehux and I had to leave earlier. But you guys were awexxme! Here’s my nuxber, call me ok! – Jongin

31X-34XX

 

Kris’ face crumples as he stares at the smudged numbers. And this is why he spends the rest of the night not sleeping, but looking at the note to decipher the numbers.

Ultimately, he reasons with himself that since there are three numbers missing, the chances of Jongin’s number being the one would be 1 in 1000. Therefore, it would be stupid of him to try dialing because it would be fruitless.

 

He only gets up to the 56th attempt before he concedes defeat, having been chewed out by an ahjumma using satoori.

 

It is only when their coach announces a team excursion to Sochi that he remembers Jongin.

 

“… so I’ll expect all of you to be on your best behavior and seeing as you guys will be able to attend the gymnastic and figure skating events, some of you might want to buck up, who knows, you might be the one up there in the future.” Their coach says sternly, looking straight at Kris as he utters the last sentence.

 

“Oh god this is so coooool! We’re definitely bunking together right, Kris! We can have a video game marathon, I’ll bring all my games over!” Chanyeol squeals excitedly as he slings an arm over the other player.

 

“Uh, yeah sure! It’ll be like an overseas sleepover!” Kris chuckles, as he ruminates on what his coach just told them. Figure skating huh, what a weird coincidence, he thinks.

 

-

 

“Aaaaaaand now, let us welcome Kim Jongin! The youngest figure skater to compete in the Olympics this year!”

 

Kris claps enthusiastically along with the audience, only noticing the name that was called out a minute later.

 

Kim Jongin? What kind of freaky coincidence is this? He thinks to himself.

 

Then he sees the figure skater that glides out smoothly from the side of the rink.

 

His heart stops beating for a second.

 

No.

 

This isn’t possible.

 

Kim Jongin?

 

He’s an international figure skater?

 

Then his mind goes blank as Jongin starts his routine. He executes a few basic moves but still manages to make it look different from what the other figure skaters had done. Then he stops for a split second, smirking knowingly at the crowd before he twirled and did a pirouette, his moves fluidly blending into one another. It was as if he was born for this moment.

 

Jongin had barely finished his routine and bowed before the applause rang out, more thunderous than it had been for any other contestant. Kris, however, was frozen as he looked at the boy who was now leaving the rink.

 

“Did you see that! That was so amazing I can’t believe a fellow Korean actually did us proud!” Chanyeol turned to Kris excitedly.

 

The rest of the performances did not register in Kris’ head as he replayed Jongin’s performance over and over again in his mind. Before he knew it, the team had gotten up, Chanyeol dragging Kris along as they chatted about the breath taking performances they had been treated to.

 

“Wait, where are we going?” Kris finally registered that he was being brought somewhere through Chanyeol’s constant tugging.

 

“We’re gonna meet the figure skaters! Oh boy I shall take lots of pictures with them and flaunt them to the boys in school!” Chanyeol rubbed his hands in glee, unaware of the inner turmoil his friend was currently facing.

 

Being tall does have its perks, Kris mused as he spotted Jongin long before everyone did. He made sure to hide in the back so that the figure skater would not notice him. What he did not count on was the team crowding their fellow Korean as everyone jostled each other to take a picture of him.

 

“Kris, it’s your turn now!” Chanyeol yelled and shoved Kris, who had gone rigid, next to Jongin.

 

“Say cheese!”
*click*

 

Recognition flashed in Jongin’s face as he turned around to acknowledge the ice hockey player.

 

Much much later, when the members dispersed in search of other figure skaters, Jongin turned to Kris, his face much colder.

 

“Hey, long time no see,” The words only bore a hint of familiarity as Jongin fought to not let his embarrassment at being stood up by Kris show.

 

“Hey, yourself,” Kris gave a small smile and nudged Jongin gently.

“You should be getting out there, mingling with the others,” the figure skater said not curtly, but as a subtle prod for the other to leave.

 

“But I wanna talk to you,” Kris almost pouted. “I’m really sorry about not calling you, you know. The damned piece of paper got wet and I couldn’t figure out your number and I tried calling random numbers but I got scolded by an ahjumma instead.”

 

Understanding dawned on Jongin.

 

“I thought.. I thought you hated me for being so forward or something. I cuddled my phone to sleep for three nights straight and there was nothing! Nothing!” Jongin gave a wistful sigh as he looked up at the ice hockey player.

 

“So… you’re an international figure skater then?” Kris asked the question that had been nagging at him for ages.

 

“I’ve been skating ever since I learnt how to walk,” Jongin shrugs. “The Olympics seemed as good a way to flaunt it as any other.”

 

Kris gaped.

 

“It’s, it’s the Olympics man! How can you be so blasé about it?” He asked, mock hitting the other on the shoulder.

 

“Just kidding, hah.” Jongin said, amused at Kris’ overreaction. “I’ve been training for it since last year, actually. I was at the rink that day because the ice on my usual rink cracked while it was being resurfaced.”

 

Kris merely continued gaping, unsure of how else to react, when Jongin leant over.

 

“Close your mouth, a bee’s gonna fly into it. Or, would you like me to help you close it?” The figure skater grinned mischievously as he dragged the other to an unused room nearby and shut the door firmly after it.