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Felix slept closest to the door, like somehow he’d known that Chan would wake him early.
Hyunjin and Jisung didn’t stir as Felix, pliant as could be, allowed himself to be gently pulled up - first into a sitting position so that Chan could pass him a clean shirt, and then onto his feet, so that he could step out of his briefs and into fresh ones, then slim sweatpants that had to be rolled up at the ankles. He didn’t make a peep, just stood with his eyes almost shut, squinting against the light from the hall.
Neither spoke. They made their way through to the cabin’s kitchen, still cold and pretty dark.
Felix sat at the table and Chan busied himself with the old kettle, pouring Felix a large mug of black tea that was so sweet Chan shuddered as he stirred in the sugar. He didn’t touch the coffee machine. It wasn’t worth Minho’s wrath when Chan inevitably jammed something.
Felix sipped his tea as Chan toed into his sneakers and then wrestled Felix’s small feet into his own shoes, inherited from Jisung and just a smidge too big.
“Why?”
Chan was just tying Felix’s laces when Felix finally spoke, low and gravelly. When Chan looked up, Felix was squinting down at him, expression neutral but still cloudy from sleep.
Chan pressed his thumb to the protruding bone of Felix’s ankle. He kept his own voice low when he said, “We’re going to do some training this morning.”
Felix sipped his tea. After a long pause, so long that Chan almost worried Felix had fallen asleep with his eyes open, he asked, “W’time is it?”
Chan checked his watch. “Just after five thirty.”
Felix immediately scowled. “Too early.”
Chan just nodded, which made Felix scowl harder. It was too early, but he thought it best to get the ugliest parts out of the way before Changbin could swagger downstairs and critique Chan’s form. All in jest, of course, but Chan hadn’t slept. Hadn’t slept at all, really, since Changbin and Hyunjin had left to deal with Namgil and Chan had stumbled downstairs to find Felix curled up like a kicked dog, making noises in his throat he hadn’t seemed to hear.
Chan lifted Felix’s leg and kissed the ankle he’d been rubbing. “I need to do this, Lix.”
Felix drained his mug and nodded. “Let me brush my teeth first. My mouth tastes bad.”
It was difficult to let him go even that far, but Chan forced himself to move out of the way. After a moment of standing, unsure how best to wait without showing how desperate he was to make sure Felix could always get out of a tight hold, he went outside.
The sky was a pale grey, the sun somewhere above but hidden, still too weak to burn away the morning mist. The grass was soft and dewy. His shirt was too tight. Compression was better for training – less material to grab – but he didn’t like the way the side seams lay flush to his skin. He wanted coffee, but he knew his struggle with the machine would wake everyone up, and Jisung’s instant coffee made him want to gag.
“Might rain.”
Chan turned back to face the house and saw Felix sweeping his freshly blonde hair into a high bun. His skin glowed in the light. He looked like an apparition, some ghostly, angelic creature sent to make Chan the worst version of himself, simultaneously the best version. “Yeah,” he croaked. “Rain is due in the late afternoon, I think.”
“Why’re we out here now?”
They hadn’t spoken much since Hyunjin’s return. Whatever was going on with him, it made Felix worry, and they’d spent days wrapped up in each other, talking quietly, always touching. Even Jisung had found it puzzling, but then Jisung was still trying to break the habit of isolating himself when he was struggling. Changbin gave Hyunjin space with what looked like ease on the surface, but Chan knew him better than that. Chan gave Felix space with all the ease of a clingy toddler; it continuously alarmed him, lightning strike after lightning strike, how much he needed Felix after such a short time. How deeply he needed to see Felix, hear him speak, laugh, eat. How deeply he needed to touch him – that was worst of all. He’d never needed the sensation of skin against his skin like this. When Felix moved away from Chan, it felt like losing a limb, an organ.
“Channie?”
Chan cleared his throat. “I need to know you’re safe.”
“Of course I’m safe.”
“No, baby. If anything happens to me, if I can’t… if we’re split up, for some reason, or if I die, I need to know-”
“You’re not going to die.”
Chan had been close to death more than once, more than most people could claim. It was nothing to brag about, but he figured that even lucky people only had so many close calls. “I don’t want to die, but I need to know you can handle yourself if you need to.”
“I can.”
“Lix, please.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Felix was wily. Skinny enough to wriggle into spaces most men couldn’t, charming enough to talk himself out of things that would leave most men coughing up teeth. He was fast, smart, and he could be stealthy. But he was still small. He was too skinny, recovering from the lack of food as he travelled alone, almost malnourished. He was too quick to anger, too fast to act.
If someone bigger and stronger than Chan could put him on the ground and keep him there, he didn’t want to imagine what could be done to Felix. He didn’t want to imagine any of it at all, but he’d lost Felix once, and now he couldn’t sleep because of the nightmares of it happening again. Not his baby.
“I believe you can do what is needed to survive,” Chan said, trying not to let the writhing mass out of his chest, “But there are people out there much worse than me, Lix. Worse than anyone you know. I want you to be prepared if you ever come across them.”
“I was a child when I was kidnapped, Chan. It won't happen again.”
“Baby, it did happen.”
A muscle in Felix’s jaw jumped. “Fuck you.”
Every time Chan closed his eyes he saw a man looming over Felix, a bat in his hand or a gun or a knife or nothing , just fists, anger, and horrifying violence aimed at someone that didn’t deserve it, shouldn’t ever have to face that kind of onslaught. Chan would die before he let someone else hurt Felix, but if he did die, what then?
“I can’t bear the thought of anyone hurting you. It’s torture, Felix.”
“What do I get?”
Chan shook his head like the action would make Felix’s question make sense. “What?”
“If we spar and I win, what do I get? What’s my prize?”
Chan was lost. “What do you want?”
After a brief moment of deliberation, Felix declared, “I want to go into a city with you. Go for dinner, go to a club. I want us to have a real date, have some fun.”
It wasn’t what Chan had expected. Maybe it was the exhaustion or the sleepy dawn, but Felix looked lovely and cold, and Chan would have said yes to whatever demand was thrust at him. “Okay. Yeah, fine, okay. We’ll go on a real date in a real city.”
“And if you win?”
Chan didn’t give a shit. “We’ll still go on a date.”
“No. You have to pick something else.” Felix lifted his chin. “It has to matter.”
“Your happiness matters.”
“Pick something else or I’m going back to bed.”
Chan forced himself to think. What did he want? Everything felt insignificant in comparison to Felix and Chan’s friends, his family.
What did Chan want?
He’d spent two years on the run for the sake of Minho’s happiness and the boy he’d decided to love. He’d bled for them. He’d do it again in a heartbeat, but he didn’t want to.
What did Chan want?
“I want to get married.”
Felix’s annoyance drained away with all of the colour in his face.
“Not- fuck!” Chan dragged his hands through his hair. “Fuck, fuck, I didn’t mean it like that, I was just-”
“We can get married.”
“We don’t know each other.”
Felix shrugged. For the first time that morning, for the first time in days, a small smile tugged at his mouth. “It’s not like we’ve never done anything reckless before.”
Chan didn’t know Felix. He didn’t know him, had met him less than three months ago. He wanted to marry him. He was a fucking idiot. “We can’t get married, baby.”
“If you win, you get to decide.”
There was no decision to make. If Felix ever decided he wanted to get married, really wanted it, then Chan would make it happen. He knew that. Forged documents and a church somewhere small, but it would happen. Less than three months in Felix’s company and there wasn’t anything Chan wouldn’t do for him.
For now, self-defence.
“Let’s stretch, yeah?” Chan murmured, reaching a hand out. “I’ve done some research; I have a couple of warm-ups in mind that won’t put any unnecessary stress on your back.
Felix’s face scrunched up in a way that said he was still unhappy Chan knew about the break, but he took Chan’s outstretched hand, pressing a soft kiss to Chan’s cheek as they walked further into the grass together.
-
Felix had a history with dance, Chan could see that without any verbal confirmation. The way he stretched, leaning into lunges and twisting his arms above his head, hands interlocking – there was a poise in his movement that didn’t come naturally, not to anyone. It had been trained into him.
Chan ignored the way his knees, elbows, and wrists clicked and ground together as he warmed his own body.
Felix didn’t. “You sound older than ever.”
What a bad influence Seungmin had been. “I’m double jointed.”
“You’re arthritic.”
Chan stared at him. “You’re mean this morning.”
Felix glared with all the intimidation of a kitten. “You woke me up at five thirty to exercise.”
“I need you to be safe.”
Felix sighed. “I know. I get it… I do. I really do get it. But Chan, it’s early.” He slumped, shoulders rounding.
“I’m sorry,” Chan said quietly. “It didn’t feel so bad to me, I just assumed – I should have let you sleep longer. Sorry, Lix.”
Felix looked up at him, impassive for a moment. “Did you sleep at all?”
“A little.”
The look turned sharper. “Did you sleep last night?”
That was not as easy to hedge around. “No.”
Felix shook his head and muttered something under his breath. “We need to move the sleeping arrangements again. I want to make sure you’re getting at least six hours.”
Chan hadn’t had six continuous hours of sleep in over two years. It sounded like bliss. “That’d be nice.”
“And I know Jisung misses sleeping with Minho, I can, like, feel it. In the morning, especially, he gets kinda funky until he sees Minho. Hyunjin needs to…” Felix trailed off, nervous. “Ah, maybe not, maybe it’s too early. I don’t think Hyunjin is ready yet.”
He said it like Chan would argue, like Hyunjin didn’t deserve longer than a couple of weeks to feel comfortable around strangers that happily committed acts of bodily harm. Ever since that first moment Chan had seen Hyunjin in the motel with Changbin, the shadowy, haunted look had yet to leave Hyunjin’s pretty face. He was skittish, snappy, and somehow clingier than Chan. He looked, at times, like he’d been at war, like in his head he was still there.
“However long he needs, Lix. All of us agree; it doesn’t matter how long it takes. You can share a room forever if you need to.”
Felix softened. It wasn’t in his nature to stay all closed up, and even in the jarring early morning he was melting. “Thank you.”
“Don’t. Don’t thank me for something like that.”
“Let’s get this over with, Channie. I wanna shower with you afterwards.”
Chan felt himself smile. “’Kay.”
Felix allowed Chan to manipulate his arms and legs. Chan demonstrated the safest way to position his body if someone were to attack from the front, the back, the side. The best way to shift weight, the safest way to cover the face, to dodge a quick grab.
Malleable, Felix followed every example and allowed Chan to shift him in miniscule movements. When Chan told Felix to aim a fist at him, Felix punched at Chan’s head with all the force of an old lady.
Chan batted his fist aside. “Lix.”
“I don’t want to punch my handsome boyfriend.”
Chan felt a blush spread from the back of his neck up to his ears. “Take this seriously.”
“I am!” Felix looked petulant suddenly, seconds from pouting.
Chan’s entire chest melted. “You’re not. Come on, try again.”
“Can’t we try the other way? You can aim at me.”
He'd rather gouge his eyes out than punch Felix. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe Minho should have been the one teaching self-defence. “Baby-”
“Come on, please. You’ll know when to stop. I trust you not to hit me.” Felix raised his little fists, shifting his feet. “Give me your best shot.”
I want to get married.
Chan shook his head. He pulled the seam of his shirt away from his body for a moment of relief from the scratch of it. He trusted his body. He could do it. “If I hurt you-”
“I’ll scream and probably cry, and you’ll kiss it better,” Felix said. “Come on, Channie.”
Chan took a deep breath and released it slowly. After a long, agonising moment, he aimed a weak punch at Felix’s abdomen.
Felix sidestepped it easily. “Am I meant to learn from this?”
Chan aimed another.
Felix dodged it again. Chan forgot just how light on his feet he could be.
The next one was faster, aimed slightly lower. If it made contact, it would have hit him in the oesophagus, hard enough to choke him.
Felix stepped back, expression flat. “You’re not even trying to look convincing. You told me to take this seriously, so why aren’t you?”
Chan winced. “I don’t want to punch my handsome boyfriend?”
“No one is going to hit me like that, Chan, they’re going to grab my hair and smack me until I can’t see. I’m not going to learn anything from this.”
That sobered Chan.
Felix knew what it felt like to be hit. Of course he did. Of course he knew just how someone could make it hurt.
Chan took a moment to dart into the house and bring out two bottles of water. By the time he was back outside, he’d mostly calmed his fury.
Felix took one of the bottles, eyes wide and curious. “That made you angry?”
“I don’t like thinking about you suffering.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
Perhaps the most blatant lie he’d ever told Chan.
They stared at each other for a moment before Felix cracked and smiled, beautiful and chagrined. “Hit me baby one more time?”
Chan groaned. He chugged a third of his water then pulled Felix over and kissed him once, hard. “Tell me if it’s too much, yeah?”
“Always. I trust you, I do.”
“I know,” Chan murmured. He stepped back again and cracked his knuckles, more of a habit than anything else. “Okay. Okay, let’s do this.”
He aimed a punch at Felix’s head, almost full speed.
Felix ducked.
Chan aimed another, faster.
Felix sidestepped the movement, smiling faintly. There was real focus in his gaze now, like he’d decided the early morning didn’t matter so much.
The next punch grazed his ear and his eyes widened, sparkly and excited. His lips parted.
Chan pulled back, chewing the inside of his cheek. That had been too close.
“Again,” Felix said.
“Maybe we should-”
“Again. You’re taking me seriously, do it again.”
Chan aimed another punch, this time directly at Felix’s face.
Felix grabbed his wrist and twisted his right leg around Chan’s left, hooking behind his knee. One minute Chan was hurtling into the throes of self-hatred for trying to punch the love of his life, and the next he was staring at the sky, flat on his back.
Winded.
Felix peered over him, his grin like sunshine. “Much better!”
Chan tried to breathe. “What the fuck was that?”
“I’m pretty rusty, but the reflex is still there.” Felix held out a hand and hauled Chan to his feet. “That felt good!”
“What… Lix?”
“Again.”
If Felix weren’t so obviously happy, Chan would have pushed harder for answers. Instead, he aimed again, lower.
He blinked and he was back on his back.
Felix held a hand out.
Chan got back up. This time he focused on the areas Felix left open: his lower body, his left leg. Chan attacked as if to grab, not hit, and Felix darted out of the way, circling Chan with a speed he shouldn’t have had, wrapping one arm around Chan’s neck and dropping a swift kiss to his cheek before kicking his knees out from under him and dropping him back into the grass, this time face down.
Chan lay there for a moment.
“I think I should practice with Minho. He won’t hold back.”
Chan pushed himself off the grass. “What the hell are you trained in?”
Felix shrugged. “Tap?”
They moved in tandem after that. Felix didn’t doge or redirect everything, but Chan managed to catch himself before he made any contact, and those moments were rare. Felix wasn’t just fast, he was skilled. Rusty like he’d said, sure, but it was nothing a couple of hours wouldn’t bring back. He lacked strength, but he made up for it in muscle memory, instinct.
They both laughed when he tried to tackle Chan. He’d have had more luck trying to knock a tree down.
Neither laughed when Chan finally caught him around the waist. It was a struggle, then, total instinct: Felix didn’t want to be trapped. Chan didn’t want to let him go.
Felix wrapped his legs around Chan, making him hold both of their weights, then lifted one leg over Chan’s head to spin himself around and kick out.
Chan jerked his head at the last moment to avoid a heel to the eye socket, then felt Felix’s teeth close around his arm. “Don’t you dare-“
Felix bit down gently, shoulders shaking with glee. Chan set him on the ground, but Felix didn't release Chan’s arm. He nibbled when Chan didn’t move, then ran his tongue over the skin.
When Chan finally pulled his arm away, he had a hickey.
On his forearm.
“You’re a little devil.” Chan said, frowned at the purpling mark. Changbin would laugh at it. Minho would laugh at it. Even Jisung would find it funny.
Felix was breathing fast and light, his face red, unable to truly control his smile. “Can we do this tomorrow too?”
“Depends,” Chan said, like he’d deny Felix anything. “Will you tell me what you’re trained in?”
“I already told you.”
“Other than tap dance, Lix. What else?”
“Taekwondo.”
“What belt?”
“Third-degree black belt.”
Minho was second-degree. Chan sat down on the grass and stared. It made him happy to see Felix so light on his feet, so evidently enjoying himself, but it also created more questions he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. “When did you start training?”
Felix joined him on the grass, curling his legs underneath him. The others would be waking soon; it was mutually, silently agreed that the sparring was over for the day. “I was… hm… seven? Maybe eight? I can’t remember exactly. I only started to take it seriously after the first – yeah. You know.”
Chan nodded woodenly. “And the second time you were-”
“Scared,” Felix said. He looked away, out into the trees. “I was scared. I thought that if I behaved well they’d be nice to me.”
Chan ground his teeth together. “And when I… when we met, I mean…”
Felix looked back to Chan, serious. “I thought I’d die. I kind of wanted it, I think, even if I’d never paid much attention to the thought. Of dying, I mean. It felt inevitable, it felt really close. I thought, like, better it be you, the hot guy with the kind hands. You bought me food, you listened to me. Why not you?”
Chan rubbed his eyes. He fought back the need to sob like a child, because Felix didn’t need that.
“Channie. Channie, hey, come on.” Felix climbed into Chan’s space, moving his hands away from his eyes. His expression was wide open, vulnerable, so fucking understanding. So sweet, talking about his contemplation of suicide like it didn’t matter, like Chan was being silly getting upset about it.
“I’m so glad I snatched you up,” Chan said roughly, pulling Felix right into his lap. “I won’t let anyone else hurt you, baby. I won't let anyone make you feel like that again.”
Felix smiled. “I know. I feel the same way about you.”
Chan shoved his face into the groove between Felix’s shoulder and neck, breathing in his mild scent: chamomile tea and something spiced.
Felix slipped his hand into Chan’s hair and scratched at his scalp. “Who won?”
“I’m pretty sure it was you.”
“Maybe we can call it a draw. Married life doesn’t sound so bad.”
Chan tried to smile for Felix’s sake, but he couldn’t manage it. He kept his face pressed to Felix’s neck, arms around Felix’s waist. He wasn’t sure he could have let go if someone pointed a gun at him.
“You already knew, Channie.”
“Knowing is one thing,” he mumbled. “Listening to you talk about it like that… it’s necessary for us, I think, but it’s not easy.”
His deep knowledge of Felix was incredibly limited. He knew Felix’s heartbreak, his sadness, his bad habits, his smile – he didn’t know how old Felix’s sisters were. He didn’t know Felix’s favourite colour, his favourite type of cake. He didn’t know Felix had a black belt. He didn’t know Felix was trained in tap.
“We have time,” Felix whispered, reading Chan’s mind. “There’s no rush, right?”
“Right,” Chan agreed. Then, somewhat awkwardly, “But I do want you to know that I was almost engaged. Before.”
Felix reared back. “Huh?”
Chan felt the blush return, but this vulnerability, the knowing of each other… it couldn't be one sided. “I was in a relationship for three years with a woman, and… yeah. I was kind of, I guess, gearing up to propose.”
“What happened?” Felix’s face was still slack with shock, eyes wide and unseeing.
Minho had happened. Or more accurately, Changbin had called, close to pulling his hair out because Minho had happened, was happening. He’d lost his placement and was going crazy, that was all Chan knew. Changbin’s voice was all it had taken to make Chan move.
“Chan?”
“I didn’t know at the time, but Minho had just been kicked out of Jisung’s house. Changbin just said that something had happened, and for me that was enough. I was selfish. They were always going to come first for me, and that wasn’t fair in a committed relationship.”
“She didn’t like it?”
“We were two days away from our third anniversary and she knew I was planning to propose.” Chan played with the stray hairs escaping Felix’s bun. He’d had years to come to terms with his mistakes. “I wasn’t fair to her. I was going to leave, ruin our plans, and for what? Friends she’d never met? An emergency I couldn’t talk about? I was working as security on a power plant at the time, and I knew I’d lose my job, because whatever was going on wouldn’t be covered in a week’s worth of sick leave. She worked in administration on the same plant. She couldn’t even explain to our colleagues why I was gone because she wouldn’t know.”
Felix hummed. “Then what?”
“She broke up with me,” Chan said simply. “She changed her mind, but by then I’d realised how terrible it would be for us to stay together knowing I couldn’t put her first. It wasn’t right. I left her and went home to the apartment Changbin was in, the one she didn’t know I owned, hundreds of miles away.”
Felix was silent for a while. “What was she like?”
“Smart. Quick-witted, funny, headstrong. She was five years older than me.”
“Was she beautiful?”
Chan nodded. He hadn’t thought about Imogen in a long time. “She was taller.”
Felix smiled faintly. “Doesn’t take much.”
“Hey.”
Felix just laughed a little.
Chan waited for more, for some kind of fallout. “You don’t mind?”
Felix didn’t pretend to be cool with it. He pulled back to meet Chan’s gaze. “Was she prettier than me?”
Chan snorted back laughter. “No. No one is.”
Felix’s faint smile returned. “You left her.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t leave me.” Felix pressed close, reversing their positions so that his face was tucked against Chan’s neck. “You didn’t leave me. I have nothing to be jealous about.”
Chan wrapped his arms around Felix’s shoulders. “That’s right, baby.”
They didn’t move until Hyunjin stumbled outside an indefinite amount of time later, half wearing a sweatshirt and confused by Felix’s absence in bed.
-
Around midday, Chan made up an excuse for visiting the nearby town – he had to go to the bank, pick up a new compression shirt, buy a new bulb for his car’s headlight – it was all lame and unconvincing, and he almost begged Minho to come with him.
Minho looked at Chan, expressionless, before his eyes drifted over to where Jisung was sat bobbing his head to something playing in his big earphones. They cut into the poof of his hair, giving his silhouette a sweetheart shape.
“You can go,” Changbin said easily. “I’ll take care of him.”
Minho blinked slowly then focused back on Chan. “I know you will.”
It was a surprise. Not that Minho trusted Changbin, but that he’d openly admit to it. Chan and Changbin shared a somewhat startled look, but Chan couldn’t wait around for Minho’s impulse to change, so they bundled into his car and drove away from the cabin with minimal fuss.
Felix had taken some offence at the lack of invitation, but he’d still kissed Chan goodbye.
The weather hadn’t really cleared as the day progressed, the clouds lingering low and pale, not heavy enough to rain, but too dense for any real glimpse of sunshine. It was too hot; the forecast had updated, and rain wasn’t due until the evening. There could be a storm. It could last for a day or so, locking everyone inside.
“Lix knows taekwondo.”
Minho just hummed, his head against the side window. It wasn’t often he let anyone else drive.
Chan swallowed whatever garbled mass was trying to escape his mouth, then took a moment to try again. “You knew?”
“I could recognise it, yes.”
“How?”
“The way he gets out of a seat.”
Minho was more observant than Chan. It was something Chan’s ego would never let him admit to.
Minho smiled faintly. “I’m not a machine, Chan, I didn’t know it was taekwondo. I just recognised he’d had some kind of training that was similar to my own.”
“Why do you dislike him?”
“I don’t dislike him.”
They’d never addressed the way Minho had so thoroughly severed Chan’s trust by driving Felix to the nearest train station and letting him travel back to the home he hated. After that first hysterical confrontation, Chan had locked his fury away somewhere deep. “You do.”
“I don’t. He puts me on edge, sometimes. That’s the extent of it.”
“You don’t trust him?”
Minho took a minute to answer. “Not entirely, but almost. He kept his word; he did what he could to ensure Jisung’s safety. For that alone I’d die for Felix. You know that.”
Chan could recognise it in the way he knew he’d die for Jisung. “With Hyunjin, though, you’re so much more…”
“Gentle? He needs it. He has PTSD.”
Chan frowned. “I’m not sure I’d say-”
“He has PTSD, Chan.”
Maybe so. Chan was no therapist, no psychologist. He barely knew anxiety from IBS, and he had both. “But with Felix, you’re not so gentle.”
“He would hate it.”
“He loves being babied.”
“By you. Felix has spent a majority of his life being infantilised by people he didn’t trust. I won’t contribute to that.”
It hadn’t truly occurred to Chan that the distrust went both ways.
“You shouldn’t hate yourself for not knowing everything about him.”
They pulled out onto the highway and Chan pressed the pedal to the floor. “How’d you get Jisung to open up?”
Minho’s hand twitched in his lap. He seemed to deliberate over his words before he said, neutral, “He had no friends, no real history of any meaningful relationships. Once he realised I was a safe person, a lot of it poured out of him. He had nowhere else to put it.”
How the fuck did they end up here? Changbin, too, seemed to be hurtling into whatever had taken possession of Minho and Chan, yet to release them. All three, doomed.
“There are things he wouldn’t talk about,” Minho said quietly. “Things he still won’t tell me, even if I beg. I heard a lot from his mother when he wasn’t around – on the phone with her friends, via email, texts – it made me sick. She really thought she was a good mother. She thought they were close. She spoke highly of Jisung when he wasn’t around to hear; she was proud of him, she just didn’t want him to know. If he had any self-esteem, he would have been difficult to control.”
Chan chewed the inside of his cheek again, wondering faintly if the flesh would split. He hated the taste of blood. It had become so familiar.
“Things will get worse before they get better.”
“In what way?” he asked.
“You know exactly which way,” Minho replied. “As soon as Jisung was out of active danger he shut down entirely. There were weeks at a time when I’d have to force him to eat, bathe, brush his teeth. His body didn’t know what to do, and his mind was somewhere else entirely. Hyunjin, Felix too – they’ve spent so long with their guards up, hackles raised, ready for the worst to happen. Letting go of that is difficult, but worse is the realisation afterwards that you’re too exhausted to raise your guard again even if you want to.”
He spoke from experience. Chan had become so afraid of Minho’s reaction that he never once brought up the fallout after Star’s death, but it was there. It would always be there. Minho had barely moved for three months. He hadn’t said a single word for weeks, and when he did speak, voice thick and tremulous from disuse, all he’d managed was, I should have been there. It should have been me.
Chan pressed his lips together and forced himself not to react to the memory. “Felix isn’t like Jisung.”
“You’re right. Jisung has some self-preservation, while Felix finds danger like a heat-seeking missile. You’ll have your hands full.”
“He’s worth it.”
Minho smiled. “I know.”
-
Chan did go to the bank, pick up a new compression shirt, and buy a new bulb for his car’s headlights. Minho meandered around outside, picking up snacks whenever he saw something he thought one of their friends would like. He waited by the car as Chan changed the bulb right there, murmuring on the phone to Jeongin, who called out a cheery hello when Minho put his phone on speaker and offered up Chan’s presence like a gift.
“They need to come home,” Minho said after ending the call.
Chan nodded, but still said, “Not until we’re sure it’s safe.”
Minho nodded in kind. “It’s strange, isn’t it? To have ended up at the cabin, all of us together.”
For a long time Chan was sure it’d never happen. Before he picked up Felix, during the endless days of travelling alone, eyes on the wing mirror, he’d assumed one of them would die before they could all meet again. “We’re lucky.”
“We’re not lucky, we’re the most cursed people in the fucking country,” Minho said. “We’re just stubborn. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we? Might as well fight until the last breath.”
Chan could agree with that.
Minho drove them home, faster even than Chan, the windows rolled down.
When it started to rain, Chan stuck one hand out of the window and let the downpour soak his hand. “The rain is early.”
“You can't control everything,” Minho said above the wind. His hair whipped furiously around his face, obscuring his rare, genuine grin. “Just enjoy being my passenger princess, babe.”
Chan turned his smile to the window.
-
In the cabin, Felix was cooking something in a large pot.
Jisung was annihilating Changbin at Connect 4.
Hyunjin’s hair was black.
“Wow,” Chan said faintly. “You guys really like dying your hair, huh?”
Hyunjin went pink, eyes moving around Chan’s head but never settling. “We’re used to dying each other’s hair. It’s fun.”
Felix had bleached his only days ago. He said the dark hair brought back bad memories, that blond felt more comfortable. Chan thought he’d be lovely no matter what, so he’d remained quiet. It wasn’t his hair anyway.
“I’ve never dyed my hair,” Jisung murmured. He added another token to the board and won.
“Do you want to?” Minho asked, passing by to squeeze Jisung’s shoulder. “You’d suit blue.”
“You’d suit a perm,” Hyunjin said.
Jisung turned to look at him, eyes wide. “Really? I used to really want curly hair.”
Minho didn’t take offence at being ignored, instead, checking on Felix. He sniffed the pot and nodded approvingly. “Good weather for soup.”
“Come here, Channie,” Felix called. “Let me cut the label out of the collar of your new shirt.”
Chan walked through to the kitchen and passed over his small bag. “I bought more hot chocolate for you.”
Felix cocked his head, eyes big. “Marshmallows?”
“Obviously.”
Felix smiled, still so fucking breathtaking that Chan struggled to function. When Felix kissed him, Chan lost special awareness, forgetting their company entirely. He pressed Felix against the counter and licked into his honeyed mouth, this boy that he’d do unspeakable cruelty for, this boy he’d live and die for, this boy that knew to cut the fucking labels out of his shirt, this boy that had lived a thousand hurts before Chan had found him.
No more. Never again.