Regional semifinals. Score: 60 to 58. Down to the last quarter. Ten minutes on the clock.

Taekwoon closes his eyes, blocks out the stadium lights, the flash of cameras, and the thundering roar of the crowd. He takes a deep breath, listens to the squeak of shoes on the waxed, hardwood court. Sweat beads down his brow, bangs cold against his forehead but he is burning up with the adrenaline thundering through his chest. Just the thought of the tied up game, the ticking clock, the pressure, was making his heart swell against his ribs with the adrenaline and the excitement.

That was the thrill of basketball, and Taekwoon figured it was just about time to lay on the heat.

His eyes shoot open as the referee blows the whistle next to his ear. He's passed the ball and he's staring face to face with a white Incheon Elephant jersey, #28. He's forgotten the man's name, he was a new addition to the team, but the man's fierce gaze doesn't phase him. He's gritting his teeth- maybe he's smiling- and with the weight of the basketball in his hands he's meeting the gaze of his teammate and passing the ball into court.

Jinwoon takes the ball and starts pressing the court, a flash of black making a break for the half court line. Two white jerseys are looking to box him in, and Taekwoon is making a mad dash to break away from his defender. He manages to breakaway and, like a well oiled machine, Jinwoon passes the ball back to him. He's running again, pushing the ball down far enough and pulling back as soon as he sees another white jersey coming up to the three point line to take him on.

He takes it slow, taking stock of his team, catching his breath. His lungs hurt, but the burn fires his adrenaline through his veins like fire on oil. Thirty seconds have gone by and the other team is starting to get antsy- his defenders are starting to press him.

But he catches it- a flash of black out of the corner of his eye. Without even thinking he passes the ball off just around one of the defenders to Taehyung who'd made himself open for the split second Taekwoon had needed.

Taehyung starts dribbling in, faking out #13, pulling in and drawing just enough out to create a gap between them. He doesn't have to look at Taekwoon to know- and Taekwoon doesn't have to hear the screaming of his coach to seize the opportunity. He's up by the defender in seconds, blocking him like a wall, and Taehyung deftly dribbles around him.

Thirteen is furious, and in his attempt to follow his charge he elbows Taekwoon in the chest. Taekwoon doesn't even flinch. He feels the frustrated huff of the player breathing on his neck before he pulls away and makes a mad dash for Taehyung.

It's too late. Taehyung's up and sinks the ball with a perfect swish. The crowd is cheering and everyone's around Taehyung, clapping his back and ruffling his head. Taekwoon finds himself smiling, garnering a pat on the head from Jinwoon and their team captain Eli for the assist. He tugs on the front of his black jersey, trying to gather air against his skin from the sweat making the fabric stick to him as he jogs back to his forward defense position. Eli is yelling behind him, "Defense! Get back into defense now! Taehyung, cover #66!"

Six minutes down on the clock.

Taekwoon is watching keenly, but his target is #28. He keeps a hand on his own target, arms out to keep him back, feeling him fidget around him and trying to break free of his guard. The rest of their team are on each member of the Elephants, a mesh of white and black and sweaty bodies pressed too close together but they're holding up. Taehyung is up on the other forward and is pressuring them, getting in their face, gritting his teeth and intimidating them and trying to make his target slip up.

He only needs a second, and as soon as #28 pauses in a moment of panic, he swipes the ball and immediately makes a break back down the court. Taekwoon had predicted it- Taehyung's specialty was steals, a skill honed deftly in practice- and he was running as hard as he could down court as soon as Taehyung has the ball in his hands. They're pushing down the court together, running with every last bit of energy they've got despite the fire in their muscles and throats feeling like claws raking on their insides.

"I'm open!" Taekwoon yells, opening himself up just in time for a pass. Taehyung grins wide and passes him the ball, and Taekwoon lays it up easily into the goal.

The crowd goes wild and Taekwoon feels a feral kind of excitement exploding from within himself. Taehyung is hugging him as they're pushing back court. His whole team is yelling his name from the bench and he can't shake the feeling that they're going to ing win this thing.

He knows Hongbin is watching at home, and a lasting burst of energy floods through his chest.

He stares up at the clock. Seoul Knights to Incheon Elephants: 64 to 58. Five minutes on the clock.

The other team is getting desperate. Taekwoon can read it in their moves, in their faces, as they start up their offense. The guy Taekwoon had covered keeps shifting his glance, looking around as he slowly passes half court. They need to get in close to the goal but the Seoul Knights aren't giving them an inch of space- no room to mess up. They pass the ball around the outside of the three point line, killing time, trying to drive in and being beat back up, and their frustration is almost palpable.

Taekwoon catches their passing pattern. Three minutes down on the clock. He makes a jump for the ball and intercepts the pass. There's a stream of curses behind him, screaming in his ears from the crowd, burning in his lungs as he runs and runs and pushes himself with all of his energy and the opposing team on his heels and the path to the goal is clear.

This is his shot. He jumps up for a layup but feels a heavy shove in his ribs-  that hurt- and he's falling too far away from the goal, the ball falls wide. He tries to catch himself before he hits the ground but the energy is entirely zapped from his bones; he puts his right foot down wrong and feels his ankle twist as the rest of his weight comes down on his leg.

He yells as he hits the ground, the wood burning against his bare skin as he slides a few inches along the floor. Suddenly he feels every ache in his body- the bruises from being elbowed in his chest and his ribs, the fire in his muscles from the strain, and the echoing, awful, fiery pain in his ankle from the fall. The stadium lights are blinding as he looks up, the sound of the referee's whistle is deafening in his ears, and it feels like he's struggling for air as his teammates' faces are swarming his vision.

And suddenly again he's reminded of Hongbin and he's sorry that his soulmate is suffering through this pain too.

The referees call it a foul. Two minutes down on the clock. Eli and Yonghwa, their other defender, take his hands and pull him up. He makes the mistake of stepping down on his foot and he gasps for breath. He bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, but under the prying eyes of his teammates he doesn't let his gaze waver. This is the semi-finals and all of the stupid pride in his chest isn't going to let himself worry his teammates.

He's lined up for two foul shots and he takes his time calming himself down. Jinwoon and Eli are at the line with him, looking at him for reassurance. He's done this hundreds of thousands of times by now. He pulls the ball up, aims, shoots, and it's a clean swish that echoes in a roar from the crowd and drowns out the boos from the fans of the Elephants. He calms himself for his second shot, biting down hard to mask the pain in his ankle- and he's so sorry that Hongbin is feeling this too-

And he misses the shot. The basketball angles off to the left and Eli is making a mad dive for it. The crowd is screaming as Eli grabs it, the clock has started again and they just need to hold out for two minutes. Eli passes it out to Taekwoon who passes it along to Taehyung who dribbles it back out to half court.

They're stalling. They're trying to run down the clock. It's 65 to 58 and they only need to hold out for 89, 88, 87 more seconds. Taehyung lazily dribbles the ball, weaves around the other team, pulls it back and passes it off to Jinwoon. Jinwoon looks around, dribbles around the other team who seem close to losing their minds since they can't get a hold of the ball.

60, 59, 58 more seconds.

Time's ticking and the other coach is screaming, red in the face, at the Elephants to steal the ball. They start getting antsy, panicked, and they start shoving. Taekwoon plants his good foot down harder as someone shoves their elbow into his side and runs past him and makes a mad dash for the ball. They're fast, they've gotten just enough energy, and they steal the ball.

30, 29, 28 seconds tick by.

The crowd is roaring. The Elephants score another goal but now they've lost their ball. Eli gives him a stern look, and without another word gives him a very silent and very worried nod. Taekwoon hangs back at at their goal and switches places with Eli. He's not so much scared of the pain that he can't move, but he's scared that Hongbin can feel it and he's too scared to put his soulmate in pain. He's still on adrenaline and he's not sure how much Hongbin can feel but it's gotta be bad if Taekwoon can still feel even a little bit of the searing pain in his ankle.

Taehyung has the ball and passes it Jinwoon who, in a power burst, runs down the court to shake off his defenders. He fakes each one of them out, pretending to drive left before spinning and going right. He looks for open members and Taekwoon does his best to make himself available but his defender is greedy and aggressive and won't let him past.

But the clock has ticked down and time's up.

Three. Two. One.

The buzzer goes off and the crowd goes wild. Taekwoon walks towards his teammates and joins them in a group hung, sweaty bodies and a mass of black jerseys yelling and cheering because they're going to finals. It's the first year they're going to finals and Taekwoon is riding high on the energy after the game is over, after the trophy passes through his hands, after he douses himself in cold water from the shower and sloppily and secretly wraps up his ankle. He's still smiling as he hobbles out with Jinwoon and takes a ride back to his apartment and Jinwoon is blasting music and singing badly the whole way back to their complex.

He's halfway home, stuck at a traffic light, when the adrenaline wears off. He tries to wiggle his ankle in his shoe and had that been a stupid idea because that hurt like hell and-

Oh. He frantically searches for his phone in his gym bag. Somewhere in his mind he registers Jinwoon laughing at him, teasing him about his soulmate. His heart is palpitating as he waits for his phone to turn on, register his service provider, pull up his notifications.

His heart drops to the pit of his stomach. Twenty messages from Hongbin in the last hour.

you're getting really beat up out there

how can you stand this?? lmao

taekwoon

jung taekwoon i can't believe you

ur a ing idiot

u,

honestly ur a ing sadist

i hate you

please please come home soon

He feels sick to his stomach. Jinwoon pulls into the parking garage and all he wants to do is run out of the car park and right into Hongbin's arms. His chest aches, his heart clenches, and he's going to be in so much trouble when he opens his apartment door.

Jinwoon helps him out of the car and bears most of his weight to the elevators. He's nice about it, smiling even when Taekwoon stumbles getting out of the elevator, steps out on his bad foot, and almost cries out. He props Taekwoon up as he punches in the door code, even after Taekwoon insists he can take care of it from here. And once Taekwoon firmly and softly insists he can do it, Jinwoon gets the hint and takes off for the apartment a floor above, promising that he'll tell coach tomorrow and cover for him.

Above everything, Taekwoon is just glad his friend is so understanding.

He isn't surprised when he opens the door and finds Hongbin glaring at him, eyes wide and red rimmed, framed behind his usual thick glasses. He's in one of Taekwoon's sweaters, the sleeves going past the palms of his hands. He looks almost unsteady as he stands there and faces Taekwoon with a brutal frown.

He dumps his bag just in the doorway and hobbles in enough to close the door. Hongbin instantly rushes to him, hugs him, clutches him incredibly tight, face pushed into his chest and sandwiches him against the door.

"You're a ing idiot," he gasps out, hands winding up in his jacket. He's shaking, and Taekwoon can't think of anything else but to hug him back just as fiercely. He breathes in the scent of their shampoo and feels the tension draining from his body.

"I am. I'm sorry," he whispers.

Hongbin pulls away just enough to look up at him. From here, Taekwoon can see the fading distress in Hongbin's eyes. He's shaking, but there's no real heat to his words. He'd been so worried, so scared when Taekwoon had gotten hurt, and Taekwoon couldn't shove his damn pride away to sit on the bench for the last three minutes of the game.

"I can't believe you," he says, mouth muffled against Taekwoon's sweatshirt. His hands are searching for Taekwoon's, looking for a way to ground himself, and Taekwoon is there to hold his cold hands in his and reassure him that he's alright. "What the were you thinking?!"

Taekwoon knocks his head back against the door. "You know me," he exhales, running the pad of his thumb against the back of Hongbin's palm. "I don't ever think straight in a game."

"I'm starting to believe you don't think at all."

Taekwoon can't help but laugh. The sound is shaky and airy and void of any emotion. Hongbin is right, but if only he knew just how much Taekwoon thinks about him during a game. It would probably be enough to bench him, but he's done well enough at hiding distractions.

He squeezes around Hongbin's hand. "Help me inside?"

Hongbin exhales, slings Taekwoon's bag over his shoulder, and acts as Taekwoon's crutch. He helps Taekwoon into their bedroom, trying to hide how hard he's gritting his teeth. Taekwoon can still feel the persistent ache from his ankle, and making Hongbin walk on that pain was bad enough. The guilt felt like a lead weight on his heart by the time he sat down on their bed.

Science had never figured out why soulmates shared pain. It was a mystery that had evaded all. Some never received a mark if their soulmate never reciprocated and so they never shared pain, and there was no explanation for why this change could happen. The philosophy behind it seemed straightforward: if those bound by the string of fate shared their pain, they could overcome their struggles together. However, in practice, it was never so black and white.

There were hurt feelings along the way, tears and all. And Taekwoon was pretty at dealing with it.

Hongbin kneels by his side without a word and slips the first shoe off with relative ease. Taekwoon notices the hesitation in his hands as he thinks. Frankly, he'd rather Hongbin just rip his shoe off and get it over with- why he even put his shoe back on was beyond stupid of him.

But Hongbin, kind and sweet as ever, looks up at him and says, "Don't look, okay? I'm gonna take it off slowly."

Taekwoon nods and instead flops back on their bed and throws an arm over his eyes. Hongbin undoes every lace, stretches his shoe out as far as possible, and slowly works his shoe off. He can hear Hongbin gasp, and he knows he'll be sick if he looked.

"You did a real job of wrapping it up," he says, a hint of mirth on the edge of his tone.

Taekwoon simply smiles despite himself. "Guess I'm not good at that either."

Hongbin's frown deepens. "Shut up," he mumbles, leaving for the bathroom and coming back with a first aid kit and the box of braces they keep under the bathroom sink.

Taekwoon sits up just as Hongbin has taken off all the gauze from his first poor attempt at holding himself together. His ankle is swollen badly; he's surprised he even managed to get it into his shoe. His skin is tinged with purple and yellow, much like the bruises covering the rest of his body. Being unable to look at it for too long, he sighs and focuses on Hongbin instead who sets to work on pulling the gauze tight around his ankle and wrapping it up.

They sit in relative silence only for a couple of minutes. "You're staring," Hongbin quips, eyes never leaving his work.

Taekwoon hums, "I am."

They'd met in university as most soulmates do. Taekwoon had always been running in between basketball practice and class, never getting a moment's rest. Hongbin was always cooped up in the library or in the art department, working on story plots or drawing up little comics in between the little amount of sleep he got. Both of them were practically ghosts on their feet in university, and so running head first into each other hadn't even stirred their attention that they'd both landed on sprained wrists.

It was only after three "coincidental" visits to the student health clinic that they had finally realized what was going on. Hongbin had walked right into the waiting room and saw him seated in an office with the door open, knees bleeding through holes in his jeans and head tipped back to stop the flow of a bloody nose.

"Do you just walk into poles for fun or something?!" he yelled, holding the own bridge of his nose and having a panicked look to his eyes.

Taekwoon had smiled, feeling elated somehow despite all the blood having ruined his shirt. "I got hit in the face with a basketball in a little scrimmage," he said. "And what was your excuse for that broken pinky finger two weeks ago?"

Hongbin flushed red to his ears, shoved his face in his hands and moaned. "Oh, . That was, uh, I was celebrating my best friend's 21st birthday? And we all sort of got real drunk at a karaoke place and my friend slammed the door on my finger."

Taekwoon had laughed, hard enough that his nose started bleeding all over again and Hongbin fretted over him long after they left the health clinic.

"Earth to Taekwoon! You're still staring."

Taekwoon snaps out of it, eyes glassy and still staring intently at Hongbin. Really, they haven't changed much since they met. Both of them are running in circles in the daytime, tiring themselves out like a stalemate match until they make it home and crash. They're up late into the night: Hongbin working on animation projects for his graduate degree and Taekwoon just generally unable to sleep well. They're still just as clumsy as ever, but now they laugh about it whenever Taekwoon slips on the floor in socked feet or Hongbin walks into the door after forgetting his glasses.

But it's better now that they're together, he thinks. He gently cups Hongbin's cheek and smiles softly, not saying a word. Hongbin blushes furiously, the tips of his ears turning red. He huffs out of frustration and drops Taekwoon's well-wrapped ankle.

"Quit it," he mumbles, turning his gaze away. He shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose and shoves the spare bandages back into the first aid kit. Taekwoon is still staring as he stomps off in a huff into the bathroom.

"You're so gross!"

Taekwoon chuckles, smiling softly as Hongbin disappears from sight. He checks his phone briefly for messages and is thankful to find one from his coach giving him the day off tomorrow and promising to take him to the clinic the day after. There's another few from Eli and his teammates checking up on him, so he shoots a quick reply into the group chat just as Hongbin steps back into the room. Taekwoon tosses his phone to the side and holds out his hand for Hongbin to take. He intertwines their fingers and tugs Hongbin gently, leading him into his lap.

Hongbin sighs gently, eyes glimmering in the soft light. He'd been working so hard on an animation project recently, and Taekwoon could see the signs of it lingering in the puffiness of Hongbin's eyes and the hollowness of his cheeks. Taekwoon runs his thumb over the inside of Hongbin's wrist; if he turned over Hongbin's palm he'd find ink still stained on his knuckles and the wrinkles of his wrist brace still creasing his skin. He'd always liked how Hongbin's art always hung onto him somehow because Hongbin always put so much work into it.

"If you're going to stare that much, why not just kiss me," Hongbin whispers, breath hot on Taekwoon's neck. And Taekwoon could certainly never resist, eyes fluttering shut and feeling a thrill of energy like the countdown clock ticking.

Three. Two. One.

Sparks seem to fly behind his eyes as their lips meet, Hongbin eagerly shifting closer, gripping his hand tighter, trying to enclose him in the same bubble of space. Taekwoon feels his heart stutter, and it's like he's on the basketball court all over again. Full of too much energy and adrenaline he whines under his breath as Hongbin takes his lips between his teeth, teases him. Taekwoon's free hand is barely supporting him, shaking beneath it all, and Hongbin is leaning into him further, tongue in as if slipping by all defenses. Taekwoon feels himself crumbling, overwhelmed as Hongbin's hand clutches the back of his head, fingers winding desperately in the long strands of his hair, holding them both together by the barest of seams as he kisses deeper and loves with his whole heart.

Taekwoon had known this game was over as soon as it started.

Hongbin pulls back, panting slightly, lips just becoming pinkish and swelling beneath his fingertips. His face is flushed and his smile is gentle. He leans forward, pressing his forehead to Taekwoon's and eyes fluttering shut. His fingers drag along Taekwoon's neck, dropping to his collarbone where a long scar resides, one they discovered they both had.

Taekwoon shivers, finding the words to express anything lost to the air.

"I love you," Hongbin murmurs, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of Taekwoon's mouth.

"Even my dumb, one track mind?"

Hongbin smiles even wider, eyes crinkling at the corners and a small little laugh passing through his lips. "That too. You wouldn't be you if what you were thinking wasn't so plainly written on your face."

Taekwoon smiles and closes the distance between them again, because there was only ever one thing on his mind.

The buzzer goes off. It's game over.