Ball Boy || Taekook

17

Jeongguk stands at the side-lines of the court, heart rattling his chest loudly. He feels sick.

I knew I shouldn’t have eaten ice-cream for breakfast. He thinks regretfully to himself. The match is due to start in a few minutes; most of the crowd is seated and the cameras are up and running, broadcasting live. The only people they’re waiting for his Taehyung and his opponent, some random 30-year-old pro that Jeongguk has never heard of in his entire life. Though, he seems to be very successful with the way that the crowd is already screaming his name and holding up banners in support of him.

Jeongguk fiddles with the brooch on his shirt.

He sees Taehyung walk onto the court from the opposite end, and he smiles to himself, waiting to catch his eye and wave. Taehyung seems different today – he seems more on edge than usual, like he’s just had an argument or perhaps preparing for a fight. Jeongguk supposes it’s the stress of the match; it’s an important one after all.

He never bothers to keep up with all the important tennis lore and technical jargon; he just shows up at whatever address they give him and collects the balls whenever they tell him to. All in all, it’s truly not a bad job, and he’s a little thankful towards Namjoon for setting him up with it.

Taehyung walks up to him and dumps his bag down next to him.

“Taehyung!” Jeongguk smiles, “H-Hey!”

Taehyung looks up at him sharply and startled, like he hadn’t even noticed that Jeongguk was there. He nods at him once, lips pulled into a tight, forced smile as he turns around and walks away without greeting Jeongguk back or surprisingly without insulting him at all.

Jeongguk stares in confusion as he watches Taehyung get ready on the other side of the court.

What was that? He thinks to himself. Did I do something wrong? He already feels sick from the nerves of the game and the scary amount of chocolate ice cream he’d wolfed down this morning in place of a balanced breakfast, so Taehyung airing him is totally not helping him feel any better. Again, he chalks it down to pre-game nerves.

This is an important match for him, so he’s probably really tense and in his own head. He'll speak to me after the match is done. Guk tries to rationalise to himself.

Taehyung bounces the ball on the ground a few times as he gets ready to start the match; he has the starting serve thankfully. The ball bounces once, twice, three times, as Taehyung takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, before throwing it up in the air and sending it flying through the sky with a powerful hit from his racket.

The fate of Jeongguk’s love life rests on this game.

●

The match is a success.

Taehyung is winning, albeit not in straight sets, and if he keeps it up, it means he can advance on into the thing and do other things at different places with different people – Jeongguk's not really sure, but he knows it’s good!

His heart is in his throat, knowing that he’s going to have to confess to Taehyung soon and keep up his end of the deal with Namjoon. Jeongguk unfortunately, is a man of his word, and is sincerely starting to regret not planning out what he’s going to say to Tae in a matter of minutes.

Should he be cool? Sexy? Mysterious? Confident? Truly he has no idea, and the worry is starting to eat at him ever so slightly.

Taehyung hasn’t so much as spared him a glance throughout the whole game.

Usually, they catch each other’s eyes and smile, or Jeongguk will give him a thumbs up as he’s serving and Taehyung will roll his eyes. Even sometimes, during one of the breaks, Taehyung will share part of his banana with Jeongguk (and make him hold the peel afterwards) and indulge him in a singular game of rock-paper-scissors if he’s feeling charitable. But today, Taehyung isn’t focused on anything other than his ball and racket, and his dethatched mood is seriously confusing Jeongguk.