Chapter Text
In the few weeks that followed, Chan found himself crying in Seungcheols arms more and more often. He would come to his leader every time he felt sad or insecure. He would talk to Seungcheol about how he felt, what was going through his mind and how Seungcheol could help him. They talked about how the group made him feel, how the fans made him feel and how Chan was handling that. They also talked about Chan's past. Seungcheol tried his best to comfort Chan whenever it was needed, he tried to be the best version of himself in front of Chan and that all without making it suspicious for the other members.
They both knew that the secret, that they shared together now, couldn’t be held for long. The amount of times Chan went into Seungcheols room with teary eyes, and left with red, puffy eyes from crying, became suspicious. Deep down Chan knew that it was time to tell the rest of his members, but he was scared, scared for what would change when he would.
He talked to Seungcheol about that too. About how he wanted to do it, what he wanted to say, if he wanted to tell them about his background or not and the biggest question of them all was whether there would be members that would react in a bad way.
The first time they talked about it, Seungcheol assured Chan that everyone would react normally and that everyone would accept it. The second time they talked about it, some names came up. Both of them agreed that there would be members who wouldn’t react perfectly, members who would need time to handle the information.
The third time they talked about it, concrete names were written down. Names of their members that would need time to get used to it. Those few names were written in blue, those were the members that would be accepting in the end. But there was one name that wasn’t written in blue. It was written in thick, red letters, a stripe under it. The only person they were both worried about, the only person who regularly said something about transgenders… and never in a positive way.
Seungkwan. Seungkwan's name was the one written in thick, red letters. Chan never understood how that bubbly man, the man everyone always described as the perfect son in law, was the only transphobic man in their team. Seungkwan didn’t show it directly, because that would cost them fans, but he was and whenever they were alone, it would show. Not necessarily in words, but his expressions… they showed every thought the man had.
Chan hated it. He hated the fact that he knew he had to tell everyone, he hated how Seungkwan would find him disgusting, how Seungkwan would yell at him, how he would avoid Chan. Chan hated knowing that as soon as he would tell his beloved members, everything would change… like it always did.
Seungcheol offered to talk to Seungkwan first, but Chan told him not to. Maybe if Seungkwan was surrounded by the rest of their members he wouldn’t react that heavily, maybe he would see that the others were okay with it. Maybe that would change him. It were just mere hopes, wishes. Chan knew that the chances that it would happen were scarce, but still a small part of him had hopes.
And so the evening where Chan would tell his biggest secret came. The entire day nerves were running through his veins. A big lump in his throat. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours and hours felt like days… every time he looked at the time, it felt like no time passed. But slowly the noon passed and the evening made its entrance.
Seungcheol and Chan had planned it out. They would first eat with the thirteen of them, after which Seungcheol would make all of them stay at the table. Seungcheol would let everyone know that there was an announcement to be made. Chan would get up and would tell everyone. They wrote it down, word for word, so Chan could read it as a letter.
And so they did. With the thirteen of them they enjoyed a nutritious meal, Chan's heart pounding in his chest. The binder around it feeling tighter than ever before. He couldn’t focus on the food, let alone on the conversations going on. The letter burnt in his pocket. If he could, he would get up now and run away. Far from the dorm, far from every person that had something to do with him. He would run into the sea, to cease the burning feeling.
But he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t and he knew he also didn’t want to. He read the letter so many times, he talked through it in his head, he imagined every single member's reaction, he practiced on how to react to them. He had thought about everything, but the minute Seungcheol announced that Chan wanted to tell something to the others, his heart got stuck in his throat.
Chan's legs were heavy, his hands shaking like leaves and his mind racing through every single scene that he imagined before this. What if not only Seungkwan, but some others also reacted badly, what if they did throw him out, what if they would turn their back on him. Every single thought that was racing through Chan’s mind was bad. Not a single positive thought, because it always had to change something for the bad… right?
All eyes were focused on him… twelve pairs of eyes were focused on him. For a few seconds Chan felt like the little girl he one day was. The little girl that once was standing in front of her parents, telling them that she didn’t feel like a she, that she was a he and that he wanted to go by Chan. That little girl who was thrown out of her house two weeks after, just because her parents didn’t accept who she actually was.
Chan cleared his throat and looked around the room. “Uh yea… I have to tell you something” he started, voice uncertain “and… it’s something very big… so please be patient with me.” He smiled softly as he tried to take the letter from his pocket. His shaky hands were worsening, tears already pricking behind his eyes. He looked at Seungcheol and shook his head. He couldn’t do it, his mind was protesting, his body was protesting even more.
Seungcheol gave him an encouraging nod. Chan shook his head again, a single tear falling down on his cheek. “Hey… whatever it is, if you don’t feel ready you don’t have to tell us.” Motherly Jeonghan spoke. Jeonghan had known that there was something going on with Chan, Seungcheol telling him all about his worries but never telling what was going on. Jeonghan knew that it was something big and so the only thing he could think about was encouraging his youngest and making sure he was feeling safe.
“C-can I…. Can you read it for me..?” Chan asked Jeonghan while he handed him the letter over. “Are you sure you want me to?” Chan nodded. The only thing he wanted to experience now were the strong, warm arms of Seungcheol around him. The arms of his leader, the arms that made him feel safe from the world.
Jeonghan waited a few seconds, then he opened the letter. With a steady voice he read the letter, word for word, sentence by sentence.
Dear members, dear brothers.
There is a small chance that I am the one who is actually reading this in front of you, because I am scared to tell you this.
For the past seven years, I have been carrying a secret with me. Something so big that I never got the courage to tell any of you. But now is the right time. Not because the secret is smaller now, or that the impact of it being told will be less. It’s just the right time… because it feels like the right time.
And before I tell you the big thing, I want to ask you one thing. When the few words that contain my biggest secret are spoken out. Please keep to yourself for a minute, think about how you are feeling and what your thoughts are. I am not in the need of perfect reactions and encouraging words. Because what I am going to do now, has also played a big part in one of the trauma’s I am carrying with me.
I am not going to elaborate on the trauma, that’s something for later. All I am asking you is to be honest with your feelings and thoughts, because that’s important to me. Even if your feelings are bad or filled with questions and errors, I want to know the truth. Because this is something so big… when there are secrets kept about this… nothing will be the same ever again.
So… here I go. The next three words contain that big secret.
I
Am
Transgender
Sincerely,
your maknae
Dino
Jeonghan laid the letter down and as Chan had asked, all the members stayed silent for a minute, or so they thought. In that tiny minute, Chan got the chance to look at their expressions, to look at their first reactions.
The first one to speak was Seokmin. “So like… how the fuck did you hide this from us that well? I never suspected anything.” He sounded confused, so confused that it made Chan laugh. “I truly… holy shit I am so proud of you for telling us.” Joshua said, his English accent worse than ever. Even though Chan had explained that he didn’t want the encouraging words, hearing them from Joshua made him feel relieved and happy. Maybe he did want the words.
The other eight members also respond really well, words of encouragement and proudness filling their sentences. Hugs exchanged between one another and sometimes even laughing through the tears of happiness. Chan felt happy in the arms of his members, Chan felt happier than ever…. for those few minutes.
“I don’t understand it. How can you lie to us for that long?” Seungkwan’s stoic voice split through the room, the laughter from all the members dying down. “All this time you were a girl and you didn’t tell us. What did you think you were going to reach with this?” Chan gulped, the lump in his throat that had gone away with the positive reactions from his members appeared again. “I- I uh…” Chan had practiced his respondings to Seungkwan in the mirror, but now the real person was standing in the same room as him, he wasn’t able to form any proper sentences.
“I’m sorry…” was all Chan was able to say. His eyes were averting Seungkwan’s gaze, he even couldn’t look into Seungkwan’s direction anymore. He prepared so hard for this reaction, he knew it was coming… but yet it hurt like an arrow driving through your heart. “Fucking answer! How can you be so fucking egoistic?! You’re endangering the career of every single member with this! You’re endangering the possibility of becoming one of the biggest groups out there! And that's all because you’re silly little mind wanted to play a boy role! This is not a fucking play Chan! This is real life!” Seungkwan shouted right into Chan’s face. Chan accepted it, he accepted the hatred from the older boy. He accepted the rage Seungkwan had in him.
The shouting continued for more than half a minute and all Chan did was stand there and accept it. “That’s enough Seungkwan” Seungcheol said as he pulled Seungkwan out of the room. Chan swallowed and looked up. Multiple pairs of worried eyes met his gaze. “That… was ridiculous,” Mingyu mumbled. Chan shrugged “I knew it was coming… me and Seungcheol wrote his name down…” Chan mumbled, tears starting to stream down his face.
Not only did the words that Seungkwan yelled at him hurt, he also felt some sort of relief. He expected worse, way worse. He had thought that there would be more members that wouldn’t be accepting in the first place… but it turned out that his members were a lot more accepting than he thought.
“So like… have you had any surgeries?” Vernon asked carefully. It was a few hours later and the mood in the dorm had settled down. Everyone was just chatting away while being curled up on the couches. Some members were cuddled against each other, others were hugging a blanket and some were sitting against the couch on the ground. Seungkwan was the only one who wasn’t in the room, but they accepted it. It was better that way and Chan had already told them that he would talk later to the man.
“I wish I had,” Chan answered Vernon “I only started testosterone at seventeen, a couple months after our debut. Since I didn’t feel comfortable telling any of you… surgeries weren’t even an option. Because how would I get surgery and go on a hiatus for multiple weeks without telling you guys the reason. So no… I never got any surgery.” Vernon nodded softly. “But you want to get them? Or are you okay with how it is going now? I’m sorry if I am asking too many questions.” Chan smiled “You’re good. Yea I really want to get top-surgery, so now I told you guys… I hope it won’t take long anymore”.
The next few days, life continued as before. It felt like nothing changed and Chan liked that feeling a lot. Ofcourse, he didn’t have to hide his body as much anymore and he could comfortably walk around without a binder or in just a binder, but further than that nothing really changed.
Except one thing, Seungkwan hadn’t talked to Chan yet, and Chan didn’t have the courage to talk to Seungkwan yet. They were avoiding each other at all costs. Seungkwan didn’t see the harm in it, he had already told Chan how he felt and as long as Chan didn’t tell anyone else about his ‘act’ they would be good. For Chan it was something completely different. Chan was hurting, because he understood that Seungkwan's hatred came from misunderstanding.
So after four days of ignoring each other, Chan made his way into Seungkwan's room. “Hey… can we maybe… like talk?” Chan asked Seungkwan. “Sure.” Seungkwan responded harsh. He didn’t think there was a need to talk, but Chan knew better.
They sat down on Seungkwan's bed, awkwardness spreading through the room. “I just… I wanted to talk about the whole secret thing… I want to understand why you hate me for it.” Chan spoke softly. He wasn’t necessarily scared for Seungkwan, but he was scared for the words that would come out of Seungkwan’s mouth. “I don’t hate you for it, I just don’t understand how it works and why you would make yourself and the group go through that. Why not go for the easy way, be a girl like you were born and join a girlgroup if you want to be an idol so badly. Why do you have to make it so difficult for everyone?” Seungkwan’s voice was filled with sincerity.
“It’s not that I want to make it harder for everyone… I just want to be myself. For you it is maybe hard to understand, because you were born a boy. You never had to convince other people that you were a boy, because that was the way they know you and how they see you. For me that’s different. When I was little, like five or six, I didn’t want to play with the dolls and crayons… I was a girl who loved to play with cars and trucks. I loved to play outside in the mud, while my friends all wanted to play with more ‘girly’ stuff. Whenever my parents tried to put me in a skirt, it felt wrong. It always did. For most of the girls, wearing skirts was the ultimate clothing item. Whenever I had to wear one, it felt like dressing up for a play. I never liked it… At that time I didn’t know what it was, I just thought it was me being a bit rebellious. Later, when I was twelve or thirteen, I figured out it wasn’t a rebellious phase, it was me. I never felt like a girl and I learned that I also would never. So yes… maybe my body shows that and maybe it is shown on my passport. But deep inside, I am a boy, I’ve always felt like a boy and that's all that I know.”
“And absolutely… if I had the choice I also would rather be a girl. Not because I want to be one, but because it is so much easier. All the struggles you go through, all the convincing you have to do. The struggle of buying clothes, because it can’t be too revealing but it also has to be big enough to hide your chest… the struggle of going through security every time while looking nothing like your passport. There are so many struggles and if I had the choice, I would never have chosen this path…. but it isn’t a choice… it is who I am…”
It stayed silent between the two of them, both not knowing what to say anymore. “I think… I think that I reacted so badly because… because I know what you are talking about.” Seungkwan looked at Chan and slowly took Chan's hands in his. “I know you’re struggles… and I am jealous that you found the courage to tell all the members… because I am still searching for that courage.”