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The sunrise used to look more magical.
It used to come with golden skin and a golden smile, a laugh to soothe Chan’s complaints. It’s too early, he would say, and Minho would wake him up with kisses, or a pinch on his side, sometimes pulling the curtains open so the sun would shine directly onto Chan’s face and it would wake him up immediately. Some days Minho would nag him, would remind him that this is the reason why Chan should sleep on time because it would be so hard for him to wake up in the morning.
But it would also come with breakfast, or a kiss on his temple, a backhug to fill him up with all the energy he needs to make it through the day. No matter how bad it could get, Chan knew he would come home to Minho and his toothy smiles and his fond, loving ‘Chan-ah’. Chan thinks he misses that the most.
It’s been an entire year of sunrises without Minho’s kisses and Minho’s nagging, a year of waking up in the morning to his alarms instead of the sun blaring into his face, instead of Minho’s sweet kisses on his temple. It still feels like yesterday when his husband was right here, in this house with him, preparing breakfast so Chan wouldn’t have to go to work on an empty stomach.
He wakes up today before his alarm goes off. There’s a flight to catch in a few hours and he’s already sent Soonie, Doongie and Dori to Minho’s parents and Berry to his. The fur kids will have to spend the month with their grandparents while Chan takes the time off for himself. It would be hard, no doubt, because the plans had been for two and now he’s on his own.
The house is too quiet as he gets ready. The suitcase is packed and set aside and he can’t help but look into the closet to find Minho’s empty one still sitting on the top shelf. It’s supposed to sit next to Chan’s, loaded and ready to go. He moves on to take a shower, ignores the blue toothbrush next to his purple one, ignores the skincare Minho used and he ignores the towel Minho hung to dry the last time he used it. Chan should move these things, but his heart tells him it could wait.
Breakfast is a yogurt cup he grabs from inside the fridge, the last one before he would have to restock it when he gets back. He hasn’t done grocery shopping since the last time he went with Minho. He tries to forget how Minho had gotten too many things, how he said they’d never know when they would get groceries again. Chan had thought he was silly. If only he’d known it would be the last time he got to see Minho pick out his apples and strawberries and choose which cereal to buy.
This vacation to Europe was planned more than a year ago. Money was tight but Minho had wanted to travel and Chan would have given Minho everything. They’d saved up together, worked extra hours just to add to their savings, came home late and exhausted but never alone. In the end, Minho never even got to see Chan buy the ticket or book the hotels.
He doesn’t want to go, initially, not without Minho, but their friends tell him it wouldn’t hurt to take the time off, to be alone and see the world for both himself and Minho. It just burns to go to these places and not have Minho to see them with.
He takes a cab to the airport with his single suitcase and everything he needs. He’s made sure the house is locked and he dreads coming home to it empty, to unpack his clothes alone instead of doing it with his husband, but he tries not to think of that for now. Instead, he thinks about how excited Minho was the last time they talked about this trip.
“I’m eating a lot of pasta when I’m in Italy,” Minho had said one night as they cuddled on the couch, both of them under the throw blanket and Minho resting back against Chan’s chest. They had started binge watching Friends again and Minho was chewing on potato chips he’d been craving all day. When Minho looked up and smiled at him, Chan stole a kiss onto his forehead. “We have to bring the cameras and take lots and lots of pictures. I wanna print them out and put them in a photo album so we can show them to our kids.”
Chan had felt so fond, his heart warm as Minho raised his head to focus on the TV again. “How many of them do we want again?”
“Kids?”
“Yeah.”
Minho hummed and his answer was immediate. “Two. When they’re big enough we’ll take them to Europe too and take new pictures with them.”
Chan smiles now at the memory and he thinks about the children they would have had. Minho always had the biggest dreams and the most adventurous plans. Chan misses him so much his chest hurts almost physically.
He reaches the airport eventually and he doesn’t waste any time getting to his gate. It’s just at the departure area that he spots a familiar face, recognising Changbin immediately and Chan’s face breaks into a grin when Changbin sees him too. He’s about to go and give him a hug when he sees Seungmin coming up behind Changbin and then slowly, one by one his friends stand from where they were sitting on the lounge. He hasn’t even noticed them.
“What are you guys doing here?” Chan laughs, getting hugs from each one of them. Seungmin, Felix, Jeongin and Hyunjin and then Jisung last, squeezing Chan just a little tighter. Chan is smiling when they pull away. “I’m not going forever, y’know?”
Felix smiles at him, “We know that. We just thought it’d be nice to see you off so you won’t be so alone.”
Chan grins, nodding. “Thanks. I actually really needed this.”
“I also found something of Minho hyung’s back in the apartment,” Jisung tells him as he retrieves something from his bag. He comes up with a little notebook, a diary of sorts, and hands it over to Chan. “He was looking for it when you guys got the new place but he couldn’t find it.”
Chan turns it over to look at it, leather bound and secured with a band and it looks worn and a little torn, clearly old. He never knew Minho kept a diary. “He never mentioned this.”
“Yeah, he stopped writing in it I think when he ran out of pages,” Jisung laughs a little but his voice cracks when he adds, “I realised I was keeping it in my drawer as a prank and forgot about it and he never got to take it back.”
“Oh, Sungie,” Felix whispers when Jisung starts tearing up and Chan watches as the two embrace.
Seungmin steps a little closer, offering Chan a small smile. “We didn’t want this to be a crying session, hyung, I’m sorry. Hyunjin and I thought it would be nice to see you off.”
Chan smiles and waves him off, shaking his head. “It’s okay, really. I’ll be away for a month, max. But I’ll keep you guys updated so you don’t worry too much.”
“Did you bring your camera?” Hyunjin asks.
Chan nods, “And Minho’s. I thought why not take some from his perspective too, y'know? I'll fill up the photo album when I get back.”
“That’s great, hyung,” Jeongin agrees with a nod as well. His eyes are a little glassy and when Chan opens his arms in invitation for a hug, Jeongin doesn’t even hesitate to jump into his arms. Like Jisung, Jeongin sobs. “I miss him.”
Chan gives him a squeeze, if only to stop himself from succumbing into his tears as well. “I miss him too, Yen-ah.”
“Hey,” Changbin pats at Jeongin’s back and Chan gently transfers their youngest friend into Changbin’s hold. “You go on ahead, Chan hyung. I’ll take good care of them until you get back.”
Chan knows that. If anyone could take his place and be the pillar of their friend group, he knows it would be Changbin.
-
The sunrise in Europe feels exactly the same as it does back home, a little meaningless but a start of a new day. Chan wakes up to an empty bed too big for him alone and fights the urge to change rooms so he could have a single bed and feel a little less lonely. He remains in the room Minho had wanted to get just so he could pretend Minho is there with him.
The first few days go smoothly. Chan learns as he goes, the histories and the traditions they practice and he takes pictures to keep as memories. He eats at places Minho had made a list of and visits stores Minho said he wanted to. His favourite, still, has to be the beach. It reminds him of meeting Minho for the first time, of the sand under their feet and the sunsets they have enjoyed together for years and years.
He has avoided the diary for nearly two weeks now but he keeps it in his hand-carry during his travels. Greece, Croatia and now Italy, where he would stay for the remaining two weeks. He plans to extend his time off, maybe travel a little further. France, perhaps, maybe even Netherlands. For now, though, Chan sits by the beach that’s just behind his hotel, enjoying the breeze and accompanied by a glass of piña colada.
He finally picks up Minho’s diary, and he starts from the very beginning.
It starts off when Minho’s handwriting were just scribbles on paper. He was seven and wrote about wanting to get a cat. He didn’t write as often, Chan notices, and only wrote about significant occurrences throughout his life. Like when he first brought Soonie home, his first kiss, realising he liked boys and then coming out to his parents. Chan already knows these stories from Minho himself, but it’s nice to read about them.
At some point in the diary, Chan starts showing up on the pages. Minho wrote about their very first meeting in Gimpo and then the second time they met in Jeju, how that meant that it’s fate that brought them together. He wrote about Chan in copious amounts, from when he first admitted to having feelings for Chan all the way to the day Chan proposed.
On the very last page, Minho wrote about the house they bought together. He mentioned their little fight about where to put what furniture and how he would do it all over again if he had to, how Chan might be his forever.
The drop of tear that drops onto that last page brings Chan back to present time. His heart aches. He could almost hear Minho’s voice reading these pages to him and now that it has reached the end, Chan can’t help but feel like he’s lost Minho all over again.
He uses the sleeve of his shirt to wipe his cheeks and his eyes, closing the book and holding it to his chest. He looks up at the horizon, where the sea meets the sky and he thinks about how he really is Minho’s forever, how Minho will be his. It’s unfair what he has had to go through and Chan might never understand it but he moves. He has to. Minho would chide him and nag him if he stopped moving.
If he could, Chan would ask Minho to stay a little longer. He’s gone through the stages of grief. First, when he came home a year ago and found Minho still in bed, still asleep. He’d seen Minho that morning before he left for work, a little under the weather but awake when Chan kissed him goodbye. Minho had apologised for not making his breakfast and Chan had told him it was okay, that he should rest his heavy little head.
He remembers it being a particularly hard day at work and all he wanted was to be home and be with his husband. The house was quiet, the cats were restless and Berry had been sent to the vet for a little surgery and Chan was supposed to bring her home the day after. Minho wasn’t in the living room where he would usually be, nor was he in the kitchen. When Chan had gone into their room and saw him still in bed, he hadn’t thought of the worst.
His first thought was that Minho must be a lot sicker than they had thought and he had approached him gently just to tell him that he should go to a clinic. Except Minho’s skin was cold to the touch and he wasn’t breathing. They tell him rigor mortis had set in by the time Chan found him.
They tell him it was an unexplained heart failure.
He had woken up with Minho that morning, kissed him, told him he loved him, and then he had come home to his entire life completely destroyed.
He stares at the book in his hands now and he sniffles, thinks about all the things he and Minho had planned together and decides, perhaps, he could continue writing Minho’s diary. He smiles and presses a kiss to the front of the book. If he keeps it close enough, he could almost smell Minho’s favourite cologne. That might just be his imagination, though.
“I’ll live,” he says to himself, hoping Minho could hear him, hoping living wouldn’t take too long until he gets to meet Minho again. “For us. For me. I miss you, Minho-yah.”
He always will, he thinks, but for now he will keep moving.