“Do your parents never wonder where you go after school?”

He startles, but not at the question - it seemed innocuous enough. But even after all this time, Wonwoo’s voice still feels like a gentle peal of thunder, a baritone rumble piercing through the silence of the stolid night. It captures him.

“They assume I'm at football practice or somewhere with my teammates. They don't really bother as long as they see me on the team and playing.” 

“I'm sure they care for you.”

“Would you like to meet them then and see for yourself?” He snaps. 

Because his tenacious truth is that what he is to his father was never a son but the messiah of his unsought dreams, a second chance he's fortunate enough to be given in this same lifetime. It's sick but Mingyu knows it for a fact. And it had made him sick when it hit him as a twelve-year old boy, dry heaving, mind a fog. It was so clear then, suddenly so clear - why he spent all those weekend afternoons in the yard despite the sweltering heat; the deranged, almost feral, glint in his father's eyes when he placed the ball back in Mingyu’s small, calloused hands, like it were something so precious that he dropped, when all he saw was a ball of air and leather slipping through his fingers; how his father had only smiled at him when he caught the ball from across their lawn as he hurled it at such an ungodly force and angle for a twelve-year old boy to reach. 

And then there were the nights when his father watched, practically devoured, matches on TV, like there were nothing or no one else in the room - not his mother washing the dishes and silently climbing upstairs because she knew not to disturb him; not Mingyu, certainly not him. He knew after being slapped away from in front of the screen that his father didn't care for his grades, or his artwork, or his homeroom teacher’s comment about how he never talked in class and didn't have any friends. He didn't exist in the night - only with a football in his hands, like he was invisible and the ball was some spotlight only with which his father could see him.

“I'm not their son without a football in my hands.”

He doesn't realize he's stopped walking and Wonwoo came to a halt beside him, doesn't realize a tear is falling and Wonwoo has his hand on the small of his back, doesn't realize how warm it makes him feel because goddamn he's thinking about his father again and he wants to both beat him until he asks for forgiveness and beg him to love his son.

“We're almost there,” whispers Wonwoo, as if scared he'll trigger another nerve. “I'm sorry for anything I said.”

Don't apologize is what he wants to - what he should say; he should tell him that, assure him that it's not his fault and Mingyu is just all kinds of messed up. But he doesn't. He continues walking in the silence. No one ever did teach him what to say.
The rest of the walk home is quiet and without farewell.

---

He sees him the morning after on his way to first period. Wonwoo is standing at the end of the hallway, quietly retrieving textbooks from his locker. He hates that he looks around, confirms that the corridors are devoid of warm bodies save the two of them, before walking up to the older and tapping him, one, two, on the shoulder. There's an instant of shock manifested in the retraction of his body away from the foreign touch, but Wonwoo is quick to recover and knows to look up. Mingyu wonders why that is. Is the action so predictably him or does Wonwoo not have anyone else to coyly sneak up on him at seven in the morning as he's preparing to go to class? There's a lingering thought in the back of his mind, in between reason and hope, that maybe he'd expected him...or maybe Wonwoo was just hoping it'd be him.

He looks around too, Wonwoo, and Mingyu hates himself for that. Because people here know him, because he's popular, and one fleeting glance from a pair of eyes cast on the silhouette of their two figures hunched together is really no different than being spotlit on the football field with an arena full of spectators. A single pair of eyes and a few hours before people start asking questions, pursuing the identity of that anonymous boy and the matter of their acquaintance, like there's nothing more unnatural than two boys sharing a private conversation in an otherwise public hallway before the school bell rings and their peers walk through. Because, Mingyu guesses, it is - it is here. Because no, they're not just two boys in the sick, judging eyes of teenagers who know nothing outside the conformist setup that high school has erected around them (the image of lab rats born and bred and brainless inside a cage briefly flickers in the forefront of his mind). No, here they are a quarterback and a no-name, and by virtue of a stylized caste that is the status quo, their proximity is news.

“I'm sorry for last night. It was...a sensitive topic.”

“I figured as much.” 

It'd be easier if you talked, sentimentality supplies, but Wonwoo knows he's an enigma, and learning about him is nothing but a game of chess - his feelings are collateral damage as he tries to break the other's fortress. Maybe someday I'll tell you that my father is no better, or maybe you'll beat me to it. Maybe he'll beat me and that will tell you all you need to know.

And “I'll see you later?” is at the tip of both their tongues but it remains there, and not for once, not anymore, because they're too conscious of revealing any hint of expectation. 
Because the answer to their mutual question is unsaid in the tug of their lips and wave of their hands as they go their separate ways from Wonwoo’s locker. And taking one last look from behind their shoulder as they're yards across each other is really just a way of saying yes.

---

A/N: Waaaaah! I've realized I'm like the Martin of fics, taking ages to update. So sorry again for the torturous wait; I really am a very slow writer. I don't like jinxing stuff but I think I can commit to one update a month. I know that's pretty y but thanks anyway for holding on!