Chapter Text
“Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home.”
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
—
“You’re heading out already?”
Chan looks up, his hand already around his bag. The worn leather of it fits neatly in his sweaty palm, laptop already packed up, wires folded together and placed inside, the desk cleared off.
Jinwoo frowns at him from the doorway, hip cocked against the frame. Chan hadn’t noticed he was back, hardly noticed it when he left. He tilts his head to the side, and Chan blinks at him. He gives him a smile, idol quick, the same smile he would give to cameras at the airport and reporters yelling questions in his face. Jinwoo doesn’t look upset. Just confused, which is fine. Chan can explain himself.
“Yeah. Yeah, just— I’m not getting anything else done on this tonight.” It’s only partially true. He could probably get more done, if he tried. If he really locked in, refocused and pushed past exhaustion like he used to in order to come out the other side with perfection. Last year, even, he would have. But the exhaustion is weighing on him, he’s almost two years ahead and there’s no deadlines coming up. It’s harder to push himself knowing that. Especially right now, with the ache in his chest.
“Okay,” Jinwoo crosses his arms in front of his chest, “You’re sure you’re good? Everything’s fine?”
Chan nods, avoiding his eyes. “Sure, of course. Uh, Tuesday, right?”
“I’ll be here.”
Their shoulders brush as Chan walks past.
He clicks his tongue as he shuts the door behind him, walks through the hallway, keeping his head down until he’s out on the street. The weather is balmy, mediocre in a way that sits uncomfortably on his skin. He pushes his cap down a little more on his head, breathing through his teeth. His hands slip into his pockets, worrying at his lower lip. The half-baked bridge in his head wasn’t going to come out tonight anyways. It’s late, the lights of Seoul bright against the pavement and casting shadows in the corners of his eyes.
A year ago, he would’ve called Jeongin on the walk home. Chan would get scolded for working so late, and then they’d have made dinner plans. Seungmin would probably have joined them.
A year ago, Changbin might’ve walked home with him, and Chan would have cooked, and after their bellies were full they’d have fallen asleep in the same bed.
A year ago, he could’ve been walking with Hyunjin, or Jisung, or Minho, a late night spent recording adlibs for him if he called and asked them for it.
A year ago, he would’ve called Felix.
He still could, probably. Chan thinks he’d answer even now, hopes he would, at least. His fingers twitch and he shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, just keeps putting one foot in front of the other until the pavement has memorized the sound of his steps.
It’s a twenty minute walk. He takes it slow, no rush. There never seems to be, anymore.
The convenience store on the corner beckons him at the halfway point.
It’s the only place still open at this hour on the way home, neon lights shining, a yellow glow that Chan’s dry eyes wince a little at. He steps inside, head down. Nods at the cashier—a tired, clearly college aged student who doesn’t even look up from his phone. He uselessly pulls his cap down a little more out of habit, despite the fact that none of the employees working here have ever even looked like they recognized him. If they did, none of them seem to care.
The ramen is in the middle row, a familiar path along cheap linoleum. In the background, Dalla Dalla plays at a low volume and Chan hums along to it, scanning the section, and picking two single-serving Shin Ramyuns off the shelf out of sheer nostalgia. Heading to the next aisle, he picks up a bag of shrimp chips and walks slowly over to the counter.
The cashier rings him up, he taps his phone with a small nod. No pleasantries exchanged but it’s late, so it’s understandable. If Chan’s honest with himself, if he tried to talk right now, he doesn’t think he could manage. Any words of thanks caught in his throat. He manages a polite bow, the thought of a headline involving the words Stray Kids’ Leader Out at Night Disrespecting Minimum Wage Workers flitting through his head like an intrusive thought. He slips the food in a small plastic bag and starts back to the apartment.
It’ll end up being dinner. Even if it’s closer to midnight, it’s still dinner. Still something in his belly. The bad habits from before he debuted have come back with a vengeance now that all his boys are gone. A gradual slip, working later and later. Cooking less, ordering more. The worst sort of habits, but that’s what they say about bad habits. They don’t ever go away.
There’s a wry half-smile on his lips as Chan walks the remaining ten minutes to the apartment complex.
Chan keys in his code at the door, the soft beep welcoming him in. He shuts the door behind him, trudges up the stairs to the third floor, to the dorm. He’s not sure what it feels like anymore, but it doesn't feel like home, not like it used to. He gets to the door. Keys in another code to open it, slips in, and closes the door behind him. Chan places his shoes to the side in the spot set for them. He slips them off next to the pile that Jeongin left behind when he enlisted. Chan hasn’t moved them, hasn’t even let himself touch.
Like this, Chan can still pretend that Jeongin might walk in the door any moment. He can pretend like he’s still living with someone. He can pretend that it’s still his and Jeongin’s apartment, even if Jeongin hasn’t been inside it in months.
It’s far too easy to drop his things on the unused couch. Far too easy to place the plastic bag with his food on the counter and drop to sit on the chair. He slips his phone out of his pocket, glancing at the screen. One message from Jinwoo he doesn’t read, ignoring it and swiping across on the screen. One from his main manager about a scheduled meeting for next week, something that might be more for his sake than the company’s.
Nothing from any of his boys in the group chat, laying dormant since the last time Minho and Hyunjin had gone on leave. He hopes they’re at least talking to one another, even if it's without him.
Chan places it face down on the table.
He breathes out, slowly, measured. Once, twice, three times, until he forces himself back to his feet, grabbing the ramyun and starting to heat the water for it.
By the time it’s ready, he’s blinking sleep from his eyes. Slurps noodles from the container, eats the entire first serving and gets halfway through the second. Like he’s back to being a trainee, hunched over the kitchen table with single servings of food in the middle of the night, starving and slurping it down, not even awake enough to grab a bowl, to attempt to feel like the adult he should be acting like.
He’s thirty-two and he’s never felt more like he did at seventeen. Being that boy, sitting in a small, empty dorm, all by himself, everyone else gone. Desperately clinging on, waiting for his time as his dreams seemed impossible to reach. When it felt like giving up was his reality, when he worked himself to the bone just to fall asleep and not have to think about how he would never, ever get what he desired most. Maybe he’s still that boy.
The dorm is bigger but Chan feels the same. The ache in his chest grows larger. He breathes in. Feels it bloom in his chest.
The emptiness of the room grates his senses. The silence of it.
Chan breathes out. It’s not much better.
He closes his eyes. Fuck.
Resting his head on the table, the smell of his half-eaten ramyun doesn’t do much to ignite his appetite any longer. He picks up his phone and scrolls through it idly, ignoring the second text that dings from Jinwoo, eyes glazing over already.
He props his head on his arms, ignores the slight ache in his shoulders. For once, his insomnia loses out.
—
When Chan wakes up the dim light of the kitchen is still on, a clock on the stove reading 2:16 AM. His neck aches as he shifts on his arms, his back cracks when he raises it up, eyes the half-eaten food still in the novelty ramyun cup.
His phone lays next to him by his nose, at 5% battery.
Chan breathes out through his teeth. Cracks his back, the sound harsh and loud in the room. Staggering to his feet, he grabs the ramyun and tosses it in the garbage, cleaning up the mess left on the table.
Only then does he grab his phone before he walks the handful of steps to his room.
The sheets tangle around his legs as he slips under the covers, clothes thrown off until he’s just in boxers.
He’s not going to be able to sleep, he knows better than to even try. Knows himself, and how the futility of attempting to sleep and not being able to would just be worse, would leave him even more sleepless. Insomnia, the nipping dog at his heels that he’s learned to coexist with.
He watches the dim screen of his phone blink back to life when he plugs it in, eyes aching at harsh light.
If he can’t sleep, he might as well fuck around for a bit. Do his dailies. Try to pull for a new character banner and end up with a four star weapon duplicate instead. It’s all the sort of things he can do half-paying attention, headache growing the longer he looks at the screen. But he’s not thinking, and that’s all that matters. It’s meditative, his thumbs pressing and swiping across his phone, letting himself think of nothing more than auto-battling monsters, leveling up, side quests he’s been grinding out.
When he’s done, it’s not even 3 AM.
He tries to sleep. Shuts his eyes, takes deep breaths. He even tries a breathing exercise he learned once, something Jisung’s therapist taught him that he thought would be helpful for Chan.
But he remains awake, hopeless.
With nothing to do, he scrolls through his contacts instead. Stares at his boys, the first eight on his list. Up and down the eight contacts, a strange sort of comfort filling his chest at the sight. Even though he knows better than to call. It’s still warm, the ache in his chest contracting a little at the sight of them in his phone, tangible, rather than some strange sort of dream. Scrolls over A. I.N., past A. J.One, A. Seungmin.
His finger lingers on A. Felix.
Chan breathes out, bites his lip, shakes his head at himself. He told himself to give Felix space. Calling him in the middle of the night would be the opposite of that, would be pressure. Would be Chan falling into more old habits, assuming things he shouldn’t. Those things that he knows deep down that Felix must hate but won’t say anything to stop Chan from continuing, because that’s just how he cares for people.
Chan’s not that person. Not anymore.
Instead, his fingers press A. SpearB before his brain thinks through doing so. Clicking into the contact, pressing the mobile bubble. Hitting call.
The phone rings.
Once, twice, before Chan realizes what the fuck he’s doing in this haze of sleep deprivation and presses down on the red icon, dropping the call. It’s not like Changbin could even answer, he’s fast asleep and doesn’t even get access to his phone until after 6 PM. Fuck.
Chan still forgets. He really shouldn’t have, it was just instinctual.
He leaves it be, turning over and closing his eyes. He’ll fall asleep eventually.
—
Chan wakes up with a crick in his neck, stiffness running down his spine.
He rolls over, back against two pillows and his sheets, and twists his neck a little. It’s a fumble to pull his phone from the sheets and he stares at it, notifications from Changbin lining on the screen, the time reading ten in the morning.
It’s Saturday. That’s why Changbin can text him back.
Because that’s a thing that took Chan months to get used to. It doesn’t ache as badly anymore, knowing that. It does make it that he flies to his phone whenever he does get a text from them, that he cherishes such a thing even though that’s entirely a stupid thing to think.
SpearB
Hey, did you mean to call?
Text me when you wake up.
Chan breathes out, roughly. Buries his head back in his pillow for a moment, smashing his face against the mattress. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, thumbs going to the phone screen.
Hey.
I’m up
Dropping the phone on the mattress, he rolls out of bed, hits the floor with both feet and a grunting sigh at the soreness in his body from falling asleep at the table.
Changbin’s not going to respond immediately. Chan knows that, even on his off days when he’s not doing drills, or whatever it is that being in a battalion stationed almost five hundred kilometers away from Seoul in the mountains is required to do. He’s in a decent group, apparently, and gets respected well enough. He doesn’t really talk about anything more to Chan.
Mostly because Chan doesn’t ask him anything more than that.
Chan stretches, briefly, making his way to the bathroom, massaging away the headache still between his brows. By the time he’s back in his room, the phone is ringing.
Changbin’s ringtone: the one that he set himself on Chan’s phone right before they drove down to the boot camp he was assigned to together. No managers, the rest of the boys already saying their goodbyes. Just him and Changbin, in the car together. Like a roadtrip, like a RACHALOG, like Chan driving them both to the studio in the morning. Except it wasn’t that.
It was Changbin enlisting.
Chan dropped him out of the car, and said goodbye. He made it five kilometers away from the bootcamp site before he broke down in that car on the side of the road. He shoves the memory out of his head, breathes out through his teeth.
Then he picks up his phone from the mattress and swipes right. A tap on the screen, and Changbin’s on speaker for him.
“Changbin-ah,” he huffs out, runs a hand through his hair and drops back onto his bed, “How’s it going?”
“Hyung, it’s going,” Changbin’s voice is softer than it is in any other circumstance, likely because he’s got at least four people around him at any given time. Apparently barrack living is a good way to learn how to be quiet, something that dorm living never really taught him.
Chan smiles, despite himself. Knuckles his fists in his sheets, closes his eyes and drops his head back on the pillow. Like this, he can pretend that Changbin’s next to him, that they’re in the same room.
There’s a beat of silence.
“You called me last night,” Changbin says first, and Chan hates how cautious he sounds. Hates how his moment of weakness got Changbin worried and concerned for him. Changbin shouldn’t be the worried one. Changbin shouldn’t be checking up on him.
That should be Chan’s job.
It’s another one of his failures, that it’s become the reverse. Chan can’t even bring himself to ask about Changbin’s service, to offer him reassurance. Changbin doesn’t even seem like he needs it, which only feels worse. He feels useless. He hates it.
“I did,” he admits.
“Was there a reason?” Changbin clicks his tongue, it echoes in the room, kind of like a gunshot.
Chan huffs out, head turned towards the phone, and like a liar, rambles, “Thought you wouldn’t be sleeping. My bad, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
Changbin hums. It’s the same tone he uses right before he calls Chan out on his bullshit, a tone that’s oddly familiar over the years and reminds Chan of that first dorm room, the one where two of them—the one where the two of them shared with Felix. Felix.
Some part of Chan misses all of it. The bunkbeds, the space where Felix would rest his head on Chan’s shoulder and sleep while he and Changbin stayed up late talking about music. He misses them badly, all of them. The ache of not being near any of them sits in his chest. It feels like he’s coming undone at the seams, like he’s just an agglomeration of them and now that they’re not by his side, he’s being torn apart.
And it’s worse when he’s talking to any of them, somehow hurts even more. Like Chan’s an addict, that a little dose of hearing Changbin on the phone has him dreaming about Changbin in his room, working on music with him, just having him around by his side to casually smack on the shoulder and talk to. That calling any of them has him feeling like that, whether it’s Jisung stationed in Busan or Hyunjin just outside of Seoul, Minho too. Seungmin basically on the border between the North and South, and Jeongin all the way in Gwangju.
Chan doesn’t let himself think of how easy it would be to call Felix. That is not something he can think about now, on the phone with Changbin.
He opens his eyes, traces the cracks on the ceiling with his eyes as he listens to Changbin’s breaths through the crackling of the speakerphone instead, grounding himself as he hears Changbin let out a low grumble, metal creaking and squeaking in the background.
Changbin’s in the barracks.
Chan’s in the dorm.
A sudden cough crackling through the speakers jerks Chan out of his head. He huffs, turns his head to the phone, “You can hang up if you’re busy,” he throws it out, “We can talk another time.”
“I’m not busy, hyung,” Changbin sighs out, a beat of silence, “What is it, actually? Don’t lie to me.”
“Nothing,” Chan grunts, “Just. Same old, same old. Some meetings about shit. Made some new tracks. I’ll send them to you when you’re on leave, maybe.”
“Yeah?” Changbin clicks his tongue, “Anything else? Thought you said you’d do something else besides work. Surely, Seoul is boring you by now.”
Chan doesn’t know how to explain that he’s used to it. That right now, he can’t picture himself anywhere else. That nothing feels like a home anymore, not even the dorm he used to share with Jeongin. Excuses, is what Changbin would say, and really, Chan wouldn’t be able to deny that.
He’s always been good at giving himself passes for his workaholic tendencies.
“So you lied to me when you said you’d try to go somewhere then. Do something,” Changbin continues, sounding a little like Chan’s kicked a dog.
Chan tries to ignore the sinking in his gut. The feeling that he’s done something wrong, that Changbin’s disappointed. “I’m not lying to you,” he protests, feeling oddly childish as he says it, as the words slip out from in between his lips, “Bin. C’mon, don’t be like that.”
“Really?”
Chan groans. Changbin’s always been able to call him out on his bullshit. He’s never needed to be face to face to do it either. Chan sits himself up against his headboard, back against the wood paneling. Grabs his phone and holds it up to his ear, takes it off speakerphone.
“Fuck, Changbin,” he breathes out, all the tension in his body lashing out, as much as he doesn’t want to, he can’t stop it from happening, using Changbin as some sort of punching bag. Fuck, he’s an awful leader, an awful hyung, an awful friend, “What the fuck do you think I should do then?”
“Well,” Changbin pauses.
Chan has a feeling he knows what he’s going to say before he says it. Really, some sort of instinct, that gets no, forming in between his lips even before Changbin’s spoke any words out loud.
“You could go see Felix.”
No.
Chan can’t do that.
He laughs. It’s harsh, clawing its way up his throat, scrapes against the back of his molars. He thinks he tastes blood in his mouth when he swallows the laugh down to reply, “I don’t think so, Bin. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
Chan blinks. Breathes out. For many, many, reasons. Felix left Chan in Korea for a reason. It’s Chan who’s the problem. He’s better off here, better off giving Felix the space he wants. Giving him Australia.
Chan’s fine by himself in Korea. He has been since he was thirteen.
He swallows down the lump in the back of his throat.
“Chan-ah,” there’s intent in Changbin’s voice as he keeps talking, “Just because the six of us are serving doesn’t mean you need to stay in Korea and wait for us. We’re living. You need to live too.”
Chan hisses through his teeth, “Changbin—”
“Listen to me.”
Chan bites his lip. Listens. Presses the phone closer to his ear to hear the slight exhale that Changbin lets out through his teeth, the sounds of men talking and metal bunk beds creaking in the background.
“I don’t understand why you’re so intent on doing this to yourself. You’ve only left Korea twice in however long it’s been and it’s just been for a brand deal in Italy, hyung. I know things didn’t go the way you planned but—”
Chan lets out a noise through his teeth, a half-whimper, half-whine. Wishes so desperately that he could take it back.
The way he planned. Sharing the apartment, the dorm, with Felix. Living together. He doesn’t know if Changbin knows. He didn’t mention it to him.
Felix probably did. The thought makes his stomach hurt. Bile bites in the back of his throat, acidic and putrid.
“But that’s life, hyung,” Changbin’s sympathetic tone does nothing to the piercing nature of his voice, the way it cuts straight through all the lies and the walls Chan’s been building up, “You have to do something with the time off you have. See your family, see Felix, but do something. Just don’t ask me to lie to you about why you feel this way.”
“I’ll think about it.” It’s all Chan can give him right now, and Changbin must know that too, because he breathes out and doesn’t continue.
They sit in silence a little longer. Chan taps his fingers against his mattress, glances around the room, sunlight seeping in underneath the blinds.
After a few minutes, he hears rustling on the other end of the line. A murmur.
“Gotta go, hyung,” there’s an apologetic tone in Changbin’s voice, and Chan sighs out.
Nods.
Then remembers that Changbin can’t see him, and speaks an affirmation outloud, “Later then?” his voice pitches up, just slightly.
“Later.” Changbin says the words like they’re a guarantee, like a fact of the universe. It’s oddly comforting. Chan tries rather hard not to think about why that is.
The dial tone buzzes.
Chan lowers the phone from his ear, placing it on his thigh. Closes his eyes, leans back against the headboard.
Changbin might be right. Might be.
But he isn’t going to call Felix.
He can’t. And if that makes him a liar in Changbin’s eyes, well, then maybe that’s just who he is now.
He’s so fucking lonely.
It’s not like he has anything planned anyways.
—
It’s half-past 3 when Brian walks in, takeout bags in hand.
“Channie,” Brian coos, leaning all up into Chan’s space to pinch his cheeks
“Brian-hyung,” Chan doesn’t look up, keeps screwing with the beat under the pre-chorus.
“I have curryyy,” Brian sings, pulling away to plop down on the sofa.
Chan frowns, but the crinkling of bags and styrofoam containers give way to comforting smells of cooked vegetables and hot rice, and his stomach reminds him he hasn’t eaten today.
He sighs, saving progress and spinning his chair around.
The smile on Brian’s face is stupid, self-satisfied and entirely too delighted.
Still, Chan grabs a bowl of thick curry and piles a heap of rice into it, pulling it to his chest.
“Are you busy lately?” Brian starts, two bites into his own food already, “You haven’t been calling.”
“I never call.”
“Yeah, because you were busy.”
“Okay, well, I’m still busy now.”
Brian shrugs, and he makes a face that reminds Chan so much of Jisung his eyes start to sting for a moment. He shovels in a spoonful of rice to distract the tears.
“Not as busy. You don’t have to be, you know.”
“I like being busy.” Which is true. Less free time, less time for his mind to wander.
“You could be busy in other ways.”
“Jesus, hyung, did you just come here to talk about how busy I’ve been? It doesn’t even sound like a real word anymore.”
“Don’t get so snappy, Channie-ah,” Brian laughs, “Can’t I worry about my dongsaeng?”
Chan curls his face up into something like disgust, “Ew. Don’t talk like that.”
“Fine, you want it more serious?”
“I don’t really want it at all, hyung.”
Brian shrugs, but he sits up properly and sets his face, sympathetic but rid of the gentle humor Chan once found so much fondness in.
“That sucks, then. But you’re going to get it, because regardless of what you want to say, I love you, which means I care about you, which means I don’t like watching you waste away in the damn studio like your members' military service is a life sentence.”
It hits Chan like a bullet to the chest, pierces through his lungs to steal the air out.
“I—”
“You are,” His Brian-hyung, always a step ahead of him, “How long have they been gone? A year? And what do you do? You work, and you work, and you work, and you don’t call me, or Sana, or Jihyo, or Jaebeom. Or anyone else you should call, but won’t.”
“It’s been hard.”
It’s a weak defense, but a real one. It has been hard. It’s been really fucking hard, and all Chan can do is pretend it isn’t happening. Or maybe he’s all too aware that it is happening, and that’s what’s fucking him up.
Either way it gets him here. Brian gives him a look.
“Of course it has been. But it isn’t the end of the world, Channie,” Brian softens, “They’ll come back. You aren’t alone without them, you know that, right?”
“I know,” he nods, but he isn’t quite sure if that’s true. There’s that one saying about abandoned dogs always remembering the feeling, and Chan feels a bit like that now. He knows he has them, but a part of him is freshly seventeen, taken out of the debut lineup and told he just wasn’t quite good enough, and that he had to wait a little longer, the same day everyone else was let go. He breathes in.
“You know it was hard for me too, when we all went to the military. I know it wasn’t the same, that we aren’t…like you guys.”
Chan shifts. Breathes out through his teeth.
“But,” Brian continues, “It was hard. It was hard knowing we were all somewhere apart, that after I was released, Wonpil and Dowoon still had months left. But I was able to see them, right? I could call them, visit them. And I still had Sungjin. I worked but I still had a life. I saw friends, travelled a little, made music. My life didn’t stop because my members were gone for a while.”
“It’s not like that for me,” Chan steels himself, looking away.
“How?”
“It just— it isn’t. It just isn’t.”
“Oh, right, it isn’t like that for you because you have a member who isn’t serving, that you’re just avoiding seeing on purpose.”
And there it is, the right hook to his cheek. The bruise being pressed on, scab being picked.
Chan grits his teeth, sets his mouth. He can’t think of something to say because there isn’t.
“You could go see him, Chan-ah,” Brian ducks his head until he meets Chan’s eyes. “You could go home for a little while.”
“I don’t,” Chan’s throat clenches, trying to keep the words back, “I don’t know what home is right now.”
Brian makes a noise of understanding, “Then start with calling him. Just talk to him. You don’t have to have this empty hole in your life just because you don’t know what else to do.”
“Then what else am I supposed to do?” It bursts out of him, spit-fire, “What do I do then? They’re gone, Felix is in Sydney, and I’m fucking here, and I’m alone, and that’s… that’s it—” A long, embarrassed breath. “That’s all there is.”
“It’s not forever, Chris. You don’t have to rot here waiting for them to come back. You can leave. You aren’t in a cage, nothing is keeping you here but yourself. Don’t keep yourself here. Call Felix. Visit your family, go see your mom. See the ocean. It always makes you feel better, right?”
When he closes his eyes for just a second, he sees the waves crashing. He smells salt water when he opens them again.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
And that’s all he can give for now.
Brian understands, and for a while after they just eat in silence until the curry is gone and conversation drifts back to normal. They talk about work, about studio sessions, the new guitar Wonpil bought Brian as an early birthday present.
“Even if you ignore everything else I said today,” Brian tells him from the doorway on his way out, hip cocked, “Call me at least, okay? Just sometimes. Just when you feel like it. But do it.”
Chan promises him, even if he isn’t sure he means it.
—
He’s still in the studio the next day, but Brian’s words echo in his head. Changbin’s too. It’s utterly distracting, he can’t focus on the track that he’s pulled up on his laptop, which only makes him spiral even more. Chan just keeps thinking. He breathes out, shaky.
The studio is still his home, at least. Sort of.
It has to be. Chan has nothing else left.
He takes a sip of the water on his desk to quell the parchedness in his throat. Exhales through his teeth. Messes with a melody but there’s still something inherently wrong with the track, and he just can’t concentrate anymore.
His stomach twists. Fuck. He has half a mind to delete the whole thing, but years of production beat back that particular gnawing impulse in the back of his head. He leans back on his chair, lower back aching.
He’s so fucking tired. It’s in his bones, the gnawing emptiness of all this. The pointlessness of it all, this waiting. He taps his fingers against his keypad.
Talk to Felix. See Felix. Visit Felix.
If only it was that fucking easy.
He tilts his head up at the ceiling. The crack there, jagged over white tiles. Slowly exhales through his mouth, then looks back down at his laptop. Chan hates the song now. Hates himself more, the growing ache in his gut turning on him, consuming him, like a rabid dog in his chest.
His hands grip the armrests of his chair, white-knuckling it as he suddenly can’t breathe. There’s a tightness in his throat, a swell of panic rising up his spine, through the rest of his body.
A random notification jerks him out of his spiral before he can fully drop. Chan breathes out through his mouth, stares at the text from his manager and ignores it. Turns back to his laptop. It’s late. He’s just asking if Chan needs a ride, and Chan doesn’t even know himself. He’s been so incredibly unproductive today and it doesn’t even matter, yet he doesn’t want to leave the studio just yet.
Replaying the song one last time, he’s still not feeling any better about it. He saves it anyway. Shuts down Cubase after he does, because if he doesn’t, he thinks he won’t be able to work on anything else without wanting to tear the hair out of his skull.
Aimlessly, he starts clicking around on his desktop.
Saved mixes of all of their released albums, in his file system. Clicks through the abandoned audio files buried in his folders, through stuff he’s worked on with Changbin and Jisung, with the rest of the boys, through the songs he’s never shown to anyone. Through the folders of songs that he’s thought could be released as skz-records but never quite felt right.
It’s like a winding road through the years as he keeps clicking around. All of the things he’s started and hasn’t finished for whatever reason, song ideas that morphed into other songs throughout the years, title track ideas that just weren’t quite good enough.
And then he stumbles across a folder that he forgot existed.
Felix_Idea_version_3.
Chan exhales as he opens it, right hand on the mouse-pad and the fingers of his left hand gripping his chair tight.
It was just a song. Nothing more than an idea, he reminds himself, even as he aches as it starts to play, listening to the mostly finished mix.
It’s techouse-inspired, made back when he and Felix both kept talking about trying to go to the World DJ Festival together.
Chan had the idea—unspoken as they were creating the track and then never properly verbalized to Felix before he left—that they could perform it together. A track release. Maybe even a special comeback. A duo unit formed in the space left behind by the others.
It could have been something fun. Doing the promotion circuit together, music shows, finding a little special piece of the industry where just the two of them fit.
That had never happened.
Instead, the song died on Chan's laptop.
He forgot how it sounded. The intersection of the melody and the tweeting in the back. Felix’s recording of birdsong from the last time they were in Australia together, on the beach. The screeching of seagulls and the chirps of a cuckoo shrike at the hook, right before the beat drops.
It’s fun.
Chan remembers the way Felix’s nose kept wrinkling when he listened to the topline that he had painstakingly worked on, with Chan only offering the most minor edits. The furrow of his brow when they were recording together, the smile he shot after Chan praised him for his vocals and the rap that Felix had mostly written himself.
The track comes to an end.
Fuck. He grinds his hands over his eyes until his temples hurt.
Chan doesn’t know if he likes it or hates it. He takes a sip of water in hopes of washing down the lump in his throat.
He reopens Cubase. It boots, loading up, and he opens the song in the program. The program is filled with color on the vocals screen, blue and yellow, him and Felix.
It’s all just the two of them. The lyrics, the melody, the samples. Everything reminds him of Felix, of Australia. It hurts a little, he swallows down the tremor in the back of his throat.
He plays it again.
He fixes a small mixing error he notices a minute in, replaying the first third of the song. Sighing out loud, long and echoing into his microphone. He adds it to the bridge.
Like this, it’s all too easy to slip back into working on it. Even if it’s for nothing, it's not like he’s working on anything that matters now, not really. He’s weeks ahead of the projects he does have to do. The benefits of locking himself in his studio and doing nothing else. He laughs aloud, because it’s better than sobbing at the mere thought of everything.
Maybe if he works on the song, he won’t think about it. He can fix the issues with it. Because he can do that if nothing else.
The odd beat drop that both he and Felix were working on that doesn’t sound quite right. The last hook that was partially unfinished. Harmonizes with Felix’s voice in the background.
By the time he looks at the clock again, time has passed. An entire hour. It’s a miracle, really, when his days usually feel like dripping molasses.
The song is basically complete, and Chan plays it all through. Hums along, actually enjoying it.
He saves the song and closes his programs again. He feels a little better that he’s worked on something, even if it’s never seeing the light of day, which hurts just a little. Hurts the same way it hurt when Felix left, when all of Chan’s ideas of a release went with him, a song, even an album, petered out. It’s not like he’s planning on doing anything with it, showing it to Jinwoo or Seunghyuk or anyone else in the company. It’s just his right now. He pushes the headphones off his ears.
This time, he feels just the slightest bit better as the beach background on his laptop stares back at him. And Chan can’t help himself.
He picks up his phone, opening Instagram.
And of course the first thing he sees is Felix’s recent post. A reel.
It pops up right at the top of Chan’s screen as soon as he clicks it. It’s a video of him laughing in the Australian sun, it beaming behind him, illuminating his face. The freckles dusted across his cheeks, the shimmer of gloss on his lips as he advertises for the beauty brand he’s an ambassador of. It’s candid, at least as much as an ad can be.
Chan watches it twice.
His finger hovers over the screen, then Chan double taps.
Likes the post.
This isn’t his public account, gnabnahc. Even if Felix won’t ever know what he did, Chan’s heart is still in his throat.
He flushes, staring at himself in his monitor’s reflection. Huffs down at his phone. He shouldn’t have, but he doesn’t want to take it back. Chan turns the volume up and replays it a second time. A masochist, always.
Felix’s laughter makes him feel sick as soon as he hears it, the low, bright husk of his voice through the phone’s speakers. He wants to hurl, spill his guts all over the floor at the way jealousy burns, the gnawing in his stomach spreading. Chan wants to make Felix laugh like that.
Chan wishes he could laugh like that right now.
He could. If he actually just spoke to Felix. The thought’s an intrusive one, popping into his head, and for the first time, it’s not Changbin’s voice he’s hearing the words in. Not Brian’s. But his own.
And that’s the worst part. It’s not like he doesn’t want to talk to Felix.
Chan wants to, he always does. Badly. But that’s dangerous for people like him. Because he is a selfish creature, and selfish creatures want so much, all the time. Time has helped him learn to deal with the raging in his chest for doing so, the slow turning of his organs. He swallows down the bile building in the back of his throat, that sick, desperate need, harsh and acidic because it always hurts him. Always.
Chan picks his phone up again. He closes Instagram. Glances at the time on the corner of the screen. It’s seven pm. Australia’s an hour ahead, so it’s eight for Felix.
If he called—
If he called Felix might answer. Chan wouldn’t be disturbing him having dinner, or waking him up if he was asleep. He wouldn’t be imposing, not if Felix picked up.
He clicks on his contacts.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
Chan stares at the list of names, the first eight, his boys. The ache in his chest, expanding, contracting. He misses them. He wants to talk to all of them.
His studio is so empty, his dorm, everywhere, without them.
He’s really fucking lonely. Admitting it to himself like this, in his studio, the only place he’s managed to briefly consider his home since they left, just makes it worse.
Chan sighs out, long and loud. He’s been such a fucking idiot about it, but he’s homesick. He’s so homesick, and since the first day he met Felix, young and bright-eyed and freckled, his glowing smile as he introduced himself in the thickest Australian-accented Korean that Chan had heard in years, he felt like home. Australia is far away.
But he can call Felix.
Chan stares at the A. Felix there, at the top, his first contact.
This time, his finger presses down. Opens up the small list of information, his phone number, his new address in Sydney, the proof that Felix is real and alive and living somewhere that Chan can’t see him.
And breathless, heart in his throat, stomach twisting with the feeling, Chan calls him.
The phone rings once, twice. Chan takes it away from his ear to put it on speaker. Three times.
Chan probably should have texted first. He shouldn’t have just expected that Felix could be free to pick up the phone, to answer him. That Felix would even want to pick up seeing his name flashing on the phone.
He breathes out, shaky, prepared to let it ring out, for Felix to not even pick up—
The call clicks.
“Chris,” Felix’s voice is a balm, the churning in his stomach dissipating, the hollow in his chest a little less heavy. All because of the low tone of his voice through Chan’s phone. This time, it’s not a video posted on his Instagram, or old content on YouTube, it’s Felix. He picked up the phone. Chan stares at it, presses the speaker button and closes his eyes.
“Lix,” he smacks his lips together, “You picked up.” He feels stupid for saying that, putting the observation lingering in the back of his head in words. Laughs, tries to play it off.
“Ah, mate,” Chan can picture Felix’s face in his head so clearly, picture the expression on his face as he responds to him, the little roll of his eyes and the way his smile would show off his teeth, “What are you doing, dude?”
“Nothing,” Chan breathes it out through his teeth because admitting that he actually doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore, feels like the sort of honesty that would break him.
Felix makes a noise. Doesn’t mention that it’s been months since Chan’s even texted, that they haven’t spoken since the day that Felix told Chan he was moving back to Australia. That they’ve spent more time briefly DMing on League of Legends, Felix queuing while Chan had been playing TFT, and that every time they have, it’s just been superficial. Quick and easy conversations, like they’re coworkers and haven’t known each other now for longer than they haven’t.
It’s only made the loneliness worse, Chan realizes suddenly, as he leans his head back on his chair. It conceptualizes suddenly, right here. It strikes him like a hand across the face, realizing just how badly he missed Felix. The kilometers that separate them now, Chan in Korea, Felix in Australia.
“Really? You’re a fucking workaholic, and you’re telling me you’re doing nothing? Nothing at all?” Felix laughs, like the very idea is amusing. Maybe it is.
Chan breathes out, “Hey, c’mon. ‘m not that bad.” His chest feels a little lighter just hearing Felix laugh, even if Felix is making fun of him. Maybe because Felix is making fun of him.
“Then tell me I’m wrong,” Felix grumbles back at him, “Like seriously. You’re in the studio right now, aren’t you?”
Chan can’t say anything back. Because Felix is right, and his chest aches a little because of it. He stays silent. Exhales through his teeth instead, leans further back against the chair.
“Yeah, I knew it,” Felix exclaims, just the sort of cocky that Chan fucking missed so badly. He shouldn’t feel so close to crying, not over this, but he can feel the tears burn in the corners of his eyelids, blinking them back. He missed him. He missed him so much. He doesn’t even think he can put just how much he did into words.
“Well..and you?” Chan tries to sound casual. He thinks he fails miserably at that though, judging by the instant cough he hears from the other end of the line, Felix audibly clearing his throat. He continues, “How’s ‘straya?"
He winces even as he says it. Decades of idol training and he can’t keep a conversation to save his life. He squeezes his fingers together, clench and release. Breathes out.
“Chris?”
It tumbles out of him, “I. Felix. Should I visit?”
Felix goes silent. Chan does too, staring down at the phone in his hand. Breathes out.
“Chris,” Felix’s voice is quiet, soft, the same tone he uses with small children, and Chan hates that he knows that, hates how he feels the tentativeness in Felix’s voice. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it directed at him at all, and can almost see Felix’s wide eyes staring back at him through the phone’s speaker, “I don’t think. Well. Do you really want an answer from me?”
“Yes,” Chan chokes it out. His worst nightmare turned to life, the idea that any of his boys, that Felix could think he doesn’t care, that Chan doesn’t need his opinion more than he needs anything else.
“I think- I think it would be nice. I’ve missed you,” he says it so easily, because it’s easy for Felix.
Chan breathes out, quickly. Swallows down the feeling trying to escape through his throat, hums down the line.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
A beat of silence.
There’s so much Chan wants to say. He says none of it.
He places the phone on the table, turns the volume up just a little more. Hears Felix breathing on the other end of the line, timing his breaths with his.
Because it’s not that easy for Chan. It never has been, it builds up in his chest and he swallows it back down, always. Repression is what the therapist he went to for a company-mandated session once told him. Chan had ignored her and never went back to therapy but he did recognize it, recognizes it now, too.
Felix laughs, a barking noise through the phone, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, hyung. I’m not gonna hold it against you. It’s whatever. Maybe I’ll come to Korea soon. It’s fine, mate. You don’t need to visit.”
“Felix,” Chan breathes it out, fights past the lump in his throat, “That's not.” His voice is loud. Too loud. He pauses, swallows it back, “I think I’m asking this wrong.”
“Yeah, really, Chris? You think so?”
Chan sighs, “Felix.”
Felix makes a noise that sounds slightly put out.
Chan goes silent. Breathes out through his teeth, closes his eyes and massages his temple with one hand. He shouldn’t have called and this is why. Because he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to explain anything. Doesn’t know what to do, knowing that Felix wants to see him, that Felix misses him, with the echoes of his younger self telling Felix that he’ll never leave him behind in his brain.
Somehow, years and years later, Chan did. The realization hits him in the gut like a sucker punch. He breathes out roughly, harsh and grating in the back of his throat.
He’s been such an awful friend. An awful person.
“Can I start over?”
Felix hums an affirmation through the phone. It’s enough for Chan to sigh out, stare down at the phone on his desk table, right next to his laptop.
“I. I miss you,” Chan breathes out, cautiously. Breaks the silence, the gaping hole in his chest acknowledged, “I guess….I guess…Brian said I’ve been lonely. Bin did too. I thought…”
“Yeah?”
Chan takes that as a prompt. Continues, even if he can’t look at the phone, “If I come to Australia,” the confession grates on his tongue, scrapes past his esophagus, “I just- what for?”
“Can’t you just come for yourself?”
The bluntness of it shocks him. Felix would have asked him that years ago back when they first debuted, blunt and open and honest. And then things changed. Felix before the boys enlisted wouldn’t have asked him that.
The icy realization sweeps through his veins, he shivers a little. Breathes out.
The question reverberates in his head as he does. Can’t you just come for yourself? Chan doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to admit it.
He just doesn’t think he can answer that. He doesn’t think he can come for himself.
Chan opens his eyes to stare at his phone. Breathes in.
It’s silent. Too silent.
But he doesn’t even know what to say, how to break the silence.
Not this time.
“Then,” Felix’s voice trails off, the faintest trace of hurt there, “Come…come for me. Come visit for me. Could you do that?”
Chan leans his head back against the headrest of his chair. Opens his eyes, stares up at the crack on the ceiling, that he’s mapped for years in his head, his small little studio that he’s sequestered himself in. For Felix…
He breathes out.
And maybe… maybe he can.
He opens his mouth—
“Nevermind,” the hurt is clear in Felix’s voice, shot down before Chan can respond, and fuck Chan can’t disappoint him. He can’t.
He swore it to himself the day they met, when he first met that small boy that reminded him of home with his sweet smile. Who looked at Chan, and even knowing the rumors of the legendary, tenured trainee who was harsh and sullen, even getting that anger directed at him, never said anything harsh back. Smiled at him, dropped honorifics even, and Chan never cared even from the start.
He can’t let that boy down.
He can’t let Felix down now.
“Felix.”
“Yeah?"
“I’ll come,” he breathes it out, voice hitching just slightly, “‘M gonna come see you, Lix, but—”
“But?”
Chan takes it, “It’s just- it just feels weird to just. Go to Australia and like. I don’t know,” he clicks his tongue trying to square out the inadequacy he feels, “It’s not the same anymore, right? I’ve spent longer in Seoul now than I ever did in Sydney. Like…’m not sure if I even belong there.”
Felix makes an inquisitive noise. Chan thinks he might want to ask about his family, but he’s not really sure what he’d say to that either.
Chan continues, the sinking in his gut feeling all so familiar, “I just…it doesn’t make sense maybe. I don’t know how to talk about it. I think I’m afraid to go back.”
“Tell me this then,” Felix interrupts, “Do you want to?”
“Huh?” Chan breathes it out, “I don’t—”
“Yes or no, hyung?”
“Yes. Yeah.” It feels good saying that, quick and instinctual. Some kind of a decision, a decisiveness there that Chan hasn’t felt in months. Maybe a whole year.
“Then we can figure it out,” Felix says casually, laughing out loud and it’s like the sun escaping the totality of the moon, the light of a sun no longer obstructed by the moon, its rays fully shining, “That’s easy, Chris. We don’t even need to stay in Sydney. It’s a whole continent, hyung.”
Chan nods.
Remembering Felix can’t see him so he breathes out an affirmation, massages his temples with his fingers. If Felix wants that, well.
Chan’s not going to say no. Not to Felix. Not this time.
The heaviness in his chest feels lighter. Not much, but a little. Enough that he can feel it.
“And if you’re coming for me,” Felix huffs, as if he’s rethinking what he’s going to say, before he continues, spurred on by something, “Hm. Maybe we could go on that tour of Australia we mentioned way back then. You remember that?”
“Really? You’d want that?” Chan smiles, reminded of it. They were so young back then, he can’t even believe Felix still remembers them talking about that. The fact he remembers it nearly ten years later fills Chan up with a feeling he doesn’t quite want to name.
“Chris,” and Chan can hear Felix roll his eyes, “Of course I do. Just fucking come to Australia. We can figure it out here.”
Chan agrees. He lets himself take a few minutes just chatting with Felix about normal, stupid things like his Genshin pulls and Felix’s League rank, before they end the call. He takes a breath.
Then Chan opens a website on his laptop, booking the flight. No time to overthink it, to back peddle and talk himself out of the idea. A ticket is a commitment.
He sends Felix a screenshot of the flight information, one-way to Australia into their chat, scheduled for tomorrow morning. It’s his first message in months, since Felix’s message to him on his birthday.
Felix responds back immediately with a thumbs up.
And just like that.
Chan’s going back to Australia.
For Felix.