Chapter Text
Jihoon squints disbelievingly out the window, then turns to Jeonghan, accusatory. “You said this was a docking port.”
“You don’t want to be noticed?” Jeonghan grins, gesturing outside towards the giant spokes. “This is how you stay hidden.”
Through the narrow ship window, a towering, gray behemoth of a space station sits in the northern sector of the Slice. It used to be known simply as BDT-0978, but now the galaxy called it the Wheel. It wasn't hard to make out why.
Outside, the Wheel slowly turns and turns.
The average star system is made up of a series of planetary bodies. A planet and a moon, maybe multiple moons. A star, or two, or even three, if its denizens were to be so lucky.
The Besh Gorgon system is the Wheel and the Wheel only. Not as big as a planet, or as bright as a sun, but still a beast in its own right. Its own kind of creature. The Wheel manages to fill the space.
The thing clearly takes its name from its shape. A huge circular ring turning slowly in space, with a second, smaller ring turning in tandem below. A long, cylindrical tunnel runs through the centers of both with thick sets of spokes extended outwards, connecting the layers together. A wheel, spinning on an axis.
The closer the ship draws, the more Jeonghan realizes that he’s clearly misremembered its size. It’s so big that it could even be a city. The Wheel is massive. In a technical sense, maybe it could even be classified as an ecumenopolis. A city-planet.
Technically, an ecumenopolis is a planet, or a moon. But the Wheel is clearly a whole life.
Lights blink out from the millions of portholes dotted along wheel, spoke, and axis. Jeonghan pictures the hundreds and thousands of lives onboard. He remembers almost everything about it; the hospital, the resort, the offices and cantinas, the malls outfitted with more shops than Jeonghan had ever seen in one place in his entire life, the casinos and gambling dens that had earned the Wheel its reputation in the first place. And of course, the docks.
“I mean—” Jihoon starts doubtfully, peering out the window. “It’s big. But I was thinking more, you know—” he gestures vaguely. “Hole in the wall.”
Jeonghan grins, undeterred. “Trust me, Jihoon-ah. You just need to know where to go.”
Excitement isn’t the word for what he’s feeling. It doesn’t feel anything like coming home. But maybe, just a little, something like coming back, instead.
Jeonghan watches the Wheel turn, out through the ship’s narrow window. He hears Seokmin comes jogging down the hall towards him and Jihoon.
Seokmin reports, “Soonyoung-hyung wants to know which docking pier.”
Farther down the hallway behind him, Seungcheol ambles unsteadily out from the crew’s quarters. He runs a large hand through dark hair.
“Thirteen,” Seungcheol responds in a thick voice before Jeonghan can, glancing out the window, too.
“Thirteen,” Seokmin repeats. “Got it.” He throws a jovial salute up over his shoulder and turns back down the hallway. Jihoon moves to follow him, but glances over at Jeonghan before he does.
“Am I supposed to give them a name?”
“Give them mine. Yoon Jeonghan.”
Jihoon nods, slow. “Will that be safe?”
“Do you know how many names and ships pass through this place in a day?” Jeonghan waves him off, dismissive. “We’re invisible, here.”
Jihoon only squints at him. “Whatever that means,” he says finally, but eventually he wanders off towards the cockpit, too.
Jeonghan glances over at Seungcheol, finds Seungcheol already looking at him. Dark hair falling over his face, Seungcheol cracks a tiny, hesitant smile. “Ready?”
In response, Jeonghan only looks back through the glass window at the huge metal creature that is the Wheel. Turning slowly and creaking. No orbit but its own. All he can do is shrug. They’re here now, regardless.
“Come on. Shua’s probably bouncing off the walls by now.”
As the ship drags slowly into the hangar, familiar clunking, groaning noises of docking filling the air, Jeonghan and Seungcheol follow the curl of the hallway and find Joshua by the ship doors. Joshua swats at Jeonghan aimlessly in greeting, Jeonghan swats right back. He turns over to where Hansol and Seungkwan have wandered into the hallway too, peeking around the corner from the lounge doors like twin animals.
“Coming?”
Seungkwan nods. “I’d like to stretch my legs.”
“We’re coming too,” Soonyoung announces, rounding the corner with Seokmin in tow. “You’d be crazy if you think we’d let someone work on our ship without us watching.”
“It’s just fuel,” Seungcheol says, blank, and Soonyoung rolls his eyes.
“It’s just fuel,” he copies, high-pitched. Then, “You’d think that a smuggler would have more respect for his ship.”
Soonyoung pokes his tongue out at Seungcheol, expression satisfied. Seungcheol screws his face up. “Aren’t you meant to be co-piloting right now?”
“U-Ji’s helping,” Soonyoung says, simple, and shrugs, leaning back against the wall, entirely at ease. Seungcheol looks like he wants to say something back, but doesn’t.
Jeonghan pauses then, turning consideringly to Seokmin. He’s looking out the window while twisting his helmet around in his hands, blunt fingernails dragging across the concealing mesh along the front, but his movements slow when he catches Jeonghan looking.
“I’ll put it on when the doors open,” he says shortly. “I was never planning to go without it.”
For a moment, there are about a hundred things that Jeonghan wants to say to him. But then he thinks that Seokmin surely already knows.
The ship steadies itself against the hangar floor, Jeonghan feels the ground settle in beneath him. It isn’t exactly land. The station is still floating in space. But they’ve touched down somewhere, a place in the galaxy where people live, where they pass the time together, and everything is floating in space anyway, if Jeonghan thinks about it long enough. It’s not a planetary core and a troposphere that make up a home. They’re docking and landing and disembarking, if only for a second. It’s enough.
Jeonghan thinks that spending so much of his life in space, threading himself through the galaxy while barely spending any real time on solid ground at all, has irreversibly changed his brain. Measuring everything in light-years, and outer space this huge, black, amorphous thing, filling in the gaps between worlds. All his time spent travelling, on the move; spent nowhere, really, at all.
“Alright.” Jihoon materializes by Soonyoung’s side. “Everyone ready?”
Seokmin has donned his helmet, Hansol beside him with his hood pulled up and over his face. The pair of them anonymous again.
Jihoon leans into the blinking radio on the wall, presses a button. “U-Ji, hit it.”
The ship beeps in response. In front of them, the hangar bay doors start to descend in a slow, even crawl.
“You’re okay with leaving this ship in the droid’s hands?” Jeonghan asks, largely joking, but Jihoon only looks over his shoulder at him, utterly serious.
“We always leave the ship with him.”
The last time these doors opened outwards, Jeonghan was met face-to-face with orange dust billowing across the sandy surface of Dohlbani’s Phorsa Gedd, with no clue to what lay in store for him. Now, he glances into the heart of the Wheel’s thirteenth docking pier and feels a familiar feeling return. The doors aren’t even fully open yet but Jeonghan is already craning his neck, peering out into the hangar, searching. It looks just the same. The old, industrial, docking piers of the Wheel. Nothing like the glamor of the rest of the station above, but a fully-functional port nonetheless.
The Wheel’s underbelly had never been in any rush to follow the charm and mystique of its topside. Every time that Jeonghan had been here, he had always found the docks exuding a different kind of appeal. Maybe it had been his own concern in ships, or Joshua’s ease with their mechanics, but Jeonghan had always appreciated the underside as a part of the station. For however many thousand ways a customer could bleed themselves dry here—betting over games of shockball, playing spectator to one of the arena’s endless gladiator fights, getting run through by a horde of Aqualish over a marathon session of saigok—everyone still needed a way to get offboard afterwards, after all.
The docking piers weren’t the height of luxury, here. But they were the Wheel’s heavy, beating heart.
Jeonghan holds onto the inside rail of the ship beside the open door so that he can swing his torso half-out and glance around. Everything is bigger than he remembers. He’s about to make his way down the rest of the ramp when a large, brown Wookiee ambles into view and tilts her head at the sight of them, standing in the belly of their ship and peeking out. She strides closer, bending at the knee so she can maneuver her huge furry head into peering up at them at the top of the ramp.
“Hi,” Jeonghan manages. “We’re just here to refuel.”
The Wookiee blinks at him, then says something unintelligible in that classic Shyriiwook growl. She spreads her paws outwards to her sides in some vague gesture, opening her mouth to say something more, when an odd thumping noise starts travelling rhythmically throughout the hangar. The Wookiee turns to see, furry head swivelling, before rolling her eyes, hard. Then she lets out one more warble before gesturing with a heavy paw until all of them are ushered down the ramp and properly into the hangar space of the dock. Seungcheol lets out a strained exhale as he takes the brunt of her furry hand against his shoulder. Better him than the rest of them, Jeonghan thinks, and maneuvers himself safely out of reach.
They hear it before they see it. Sound drawing closer. Jeonghan finally registers it as boot soles pounding against floor, hurried and strong, the wide paces of legs longer than Jeonghan even remembers, but it makes him heady with memory all the same. To his right, Joshua is wearing a certain look on his face. Like everything else he knows about Joshua, Jeonghan knows it well.
Joshua is a protective and judgemental creature. Kind, but distant. It takes a lot for someone like him to grow attached. And when Jeonghan thinks of Joshua, which is often, he always drifts back to the period in which they first met. When everything was unknown and Joshua was this odd, beautiful thing, luminous in an arid landscape and Seungcheol a shadow behind him in tow, always wary, always careful, always looking over Joshua’s shoulder as well as his own. The two of them, Joshua and Seungcheol, hadn’t known each other long, but already they were fused together. And the way they had looked at Jeonghan, those twin pairs of eyes.
Eventually, Jeonghan managed to wear Joshua down. And something in Joshua’s eyes just changed. It was just this certain expression that he wore. Joshua could make himself scary when he wanted to be. That blank, even gaze. But nothing about him had ever scared Jeonghan. Always too self-assured for that. Jeonghan had always known exactly what he wanted, and in that moment, he’d wanted Joshua.
And Jeonghan remembers it, the way that Joshua had turned and given Seungcheol this look. Secretive, loaded, decisive and singularly defining. Can’t we keep him?
Jeonghan remembered this expression because he saw it again later. Once.
The screech of shipyard work. Boots against floor. The low growl of a Wookiee mechanic, incessant chatter, the sound of something huge and metal accidentally clattering to the ground, and Jeonghan spots a figure in a bright orange vest rounding the corner in a whirl.
A wild shout echoes down the hall, heads of all kind turning in its direction.
“Hyung!”
Arms swinging wildly by his sides, brown hair a tousled bird’s nest on his head—Jeonghan catches sight of a huge, toothy grin before the figure leaps, yells again, gleeful, and dives straight into Joshua’s arms with full force. Joshua rocks back with the impact but takes the weight with grace, only his own strength keeping him from bowling over entirely. Stumbling backwards before quickly regaining his balance, Jeonghan can feel the happiness rolling off of Joshua in waves.
“Shua-hyung! Jeonghan-hyung!” A wild, boyish laugh. “Seungcheollie-hyung! You’re back!”
Joshua grins wide. Seungcheol takes a hurried step forward, clearly anticipating the two of them tumbling to the ground together, but Joshua only laughs, brazen, happy, unbothered.
“We’re back,” he says warmly, voice thick and muffled. “Missed you, Channie.”
He grips him tighter, pink fingers curling. “Sorry it’s been so long.”
Chan’s hair is longer than Jeonghan had remembered. Face defined, jaw cut and eyes shining. He’s taller, built, properly filling out his clothes in a way that he hadn’t before, and he’s smiling. Chan is smiling. He’s so much older, now, but he’s still their boy. Still their Lee Chan.
“You surprised me,” Chan laughs, grinning, eyes so bright. “I was on break.”
Jeonghan finds his voice. “Channie.”
Still wrapped in Joshua’s arms, Chan glances over. Entire face lit up, his wild laughter. “Hyung!”
He crashes into Jeonghan, his full weight, and Jeonghan takes it with a quiet huff. Breath knocked out of him. But he laughs too, quiet, overwhelmed. Wraps his hands over Chan’s shoulders, feels Chan’s arms slink back tightly around his waist. Jeonghan moves a hand behind Chan’s head so that he can tuck him into him and say, low, “Channie.”
Chan smiles into his neck. “Hyung,” he says, muffled and wet. “It’s so good to see you.”
Chan’s hands are tight behind Jeonghan’s back, locking him in, and he’s still Jeonghan’s boy. Even if he barely has to stretch anymore in order to peek up, over Jeonghan’s shoulder. Chan’s eyes are wet, but his face breaks into something like a sun.
“Seungcheol-hyung,” he mumbles, faint, and darts forwards. All Jeonghan can do is follow.
Seungcheol takes Chan’s weight like it’s nothing, which it very well might be, for Seungcheol. Jeonghan remembers when Seungcheol used to be able to haul Chan bodily up by the hand without even thinking, just a boy to him, even if they were less than five years apart, picking him up, taking him places, carrying him to his bunk in their quarters when he had fallen asleep with Joshua in the lounge, or Jeonghan in the cockpit, and Seungcheol had never looked sweeter than the way he had with Chan in his arms, holding him against his chest, some odd look on his face as he glanced carefully down at him like he couldn’t believe that he’d found a single person in the whole galaxy worth tucking away and putting to bed.
While Chan was still with them, Seungcheol had discovered for himself an odd kind of silence. Nothing like that of which he could get with Jeonghan or Joshua. Jeonghan had thought it charming. That Seungcheol had found himself someone that he could truly dote over, and not in the way he did with them, the way he was their oldest but as a trio they had always felt like equals, anyway. Seungcheol found something different in Chan. The feeling of giving someone a home.
It had been the hardest on Seungcheol when they finally made the decision to send Chan away. For all of them it had like felt losing a part of themselves. But for Seungcheol it was like having to admit that he wasn’t enough. Wasn’t enough of a protector. Wasn’t enough of a home.
Seungcheol wraps Chan up tightly, gathers him in his arms, and buries his face into the top of his head. Chan’s new, shaggy, brown hair, or maybe not new at all. Maybe Chan grew it out years ago, and has simply been keeping it this way. Jeonghan likes it. Thinks it suits him, the doglikeness of it.
“Channie,” Seungcheol says in a murmur. “How have you been?”
Chan smiles so wide. “Good, hyung.” He looks up. “What about you?”
Seungcheol glances up too, and his eyes quickly and carefully find Jeonghan’s.
They owe it to Chan, to be alright again. The same way they had made him promise, when they first dropped him off at the Wheel to start his new life, that he would call if he needed anything, and he promised he would, and he never once did. Always claimed he didn’t need to. And he had never made them promise anything back.
Seungcheol’s face softens into something sweet and real. “We’ve been good, Chan-ah.”
Chan’s face nearly splits in half with his resounding grin. “Hyung, it’s so good to see you.” Then he glances around quickly, blinking large, expectant eyes.
“And you brought friends.” He turns to introduce himself. “Lee Chan, Wheel ship technician.”
“So professional, Channie,” Joshua coos, laughing, and Chan rolls his eyes. “It’s been a while,” he protests, young and fond.
His eyes flit from Jihoon to Soonyoung, pausing on the latter, but he moves on swiftly, curiously taking stock of Seokmin and Hansol’s obscured faces. Stranger things pass through the Wheel on the daily. Chan only blinks and smiles, perfect customer service.
Jeonghan clears his throat. “We’re running a job.”
Chan blinks again. “Big enough for a real crew?” He grins. “Moving up in the galaxy, I see.”
“Well, you know,” Jeonghan replies, dry. “The Empire has been cracking down on everyone, recently.”
At this, the first symptom of a frown crosses Chan’s face. “Out there, too?”
Joshua pauses. “What do you mean? Is something happening?” His voice is tight, but Chan only shrugs in response.
“Nothing big. The senator managed to get us an immunity sphere, so we’re not Imperial, but we’re getting taxed, heavy. And they’re really coming down on the alien thing.”
Chan makes air quotes with his hands, frown deepening.
“Can’t you tell that this is way more Wookiees than usual? They’ve got them all out of sight, down here in the docks. They’re trying to get us to build an Imperial dock, actually, and I’m worried it’s just a matter of time. I think they’ll win out, eventually.”
Joshua raises an eyebrow. “And they left you down here?”
Chan crosses his arms, resolute. “I asked to stay.”
His eyes are narrowed and hard. He’s still Jeonghan’s boy.
Chan’s shoulders drop. “It’s not all bad, not for me, especially while we still have immunity. It’s still my home.” He glances over their shoulders. “Is this your ship? Hyung, you upgraded for sure.”
“Hey,” Seungcheol protests, “Watch it.”
Chan shrugs him off, stepping closer to look. “Not yours, then?”
Jihoon clears his throat. “It’s ours. We’re the pilots.”
Chan’s eyes dart over, between Jihoon and Soonyoung quickly before he breaks out into a wide grin. Jeonghan watches him mouth to himself, pilots.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Has Seungcheol finally admitted he can’t fucking fly?”
Soonyoung laughs out loud, delighted, and Seungcheol’s mouth drops open, wide-eyed and affronted. “That’s hyung to you, brat.”
Chan grins, and glances over his shoulder at Jihoon and Soonyoung. “If you know what’s good for your ship,” he says seriously, “Don’t let this hyung in the cockpit.”
Soonyoung blinks and replies, equally serious, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Seungcheol scoffs, disbelieving. No one pays him any mind.
“What do you need? We can just fuel you up, but we have some really good fixers.” Chan grins. “These Wookiee mechanics really know what they’re doing.”
He’s just the same. Jeonghan had hoped for this. That no matter what happened in the galaxy, the Wheel was alive and busy and potent enough to keep Chan focused. That if they couldn’t keep him by their sides forever, watching over him, wishing him well, there was somewhere else that could do the same.
“Just fuel is good,” Jihoon says. Chan squints up at the ship.
“Liquid or gas?”
Jihoon makes a face. “Liquid. Don’t put that other shit in my tank, kid.”
Chan smiles happily, eyes curving into crescents. “That’s the right answer.” He claps his hands together. “Okay. Give me two seconds. I’m going to set up the fuel transfer.”
Then he takes a deep breath, and at the top of his lungs, turning towards the back of the hangar, so loud that Jeonghan sees Seungcheol jump, he yells, “Noona! Liquid—fuel—pump!”
He shoots them a sheepish look over his shoulder. “Sorry. Loud in here.” He turns back around. “Noona!”
An answering roar floats through the hangar, Chan grins, and a tall, red-brown Wookiee ambles into view, dragging a giant fuel pump with her. It’s a behemoth of a thing, trailing along the ground like a thick, long snake, and Chan has to hop over the nozzle one foot at a time as she yanks it across the floor so that he doesn’t trip over it and fall flat onto his face.
The Wookiee shoots Chan a look that Jeonghan can’t decipher, face shrouded in fur. Chan only rolls his eyes.
“I know,” he tells her, emphatic. “Just making sure.” A bold wink. “Help me set up?”
The Wookiee growls at him, some gruff Shyriiwook that makes Chan pull a face, but he only makes grabby hands at her until she dumps the nozzle in his outstretched hands, body sagging with the weight.
“Heavy,” he complains. The Wookiee drops an even heavier, furred paw onto his shoulder.
Jeonghan watches them bicker back and forth a little more, Wookiee and Human, Chan batting pathetically and ineffectively at her. He laughs when she snarls at him, ducking under a huge, vicious swing, still doubled over as if it wouldn’t have taken his head clean off if he hadn’t gotten out of the way. She thumps him on the back of the head with what is probably a fraction of her real strength. Chan only sways, taking the blow, still laughing.
Beside Jeonghan, Joshua grins. “Trust Channie to befriend a Wookiee.”
“Channie would befriend a rancor,” Seungcheol responds, but his voice is faint and warm. Their boy, all grown up.
Soonyoung sidles up quietly beside Jeonghan. “Where the hell did you find that thing?”
They both turn to watch Chan fiddle with the fuel nozzle and chat with their Wookiee technician with perfect receptive fluency. Listening to her snap Shyriiwook at him and responding in cheeky Basic of which she only growls at, distracted and impatient. Chan has safety goggles pulled up to his forehead to keep his fringe from falling into his face, and he works the fuel canister without thinking. When the Wookiee growls something unintelligible at him, Chan laughs a full-body laugh, shoving at her playfully, even if her two-and-a-half meter tall frame doesn’t even budge an inch. It only makes him laugh more. She says something further in response, that delightful low-toned Wookiee bark.
“Found him in a dumpster,” Jeonghan replies, distant, watching Chan. All grown up. “Practically hauled him out by the ankles.”
It isn’t too far from the truth. Chan came out of nowhere.
They hadn’t even really noticed him at first. A couple years after they had truly dug their claws into their new lives as smugglers, accepted the danger, really learned to look over each other’s shoulders and dive right in. It was before they met Bumzu and got themselves their very own infochant, back when they were still looking for scraps of jobs all over the galaxy themselves.
Like everything else, it was a job. Something inconsequential, the trading of ship parts between smugglers, on a mutual understanding. Wasn’t a bad deal at all. The only starship material as revered as Corellian products were Kuati ones, the other industrial shipbuilding hotspot of the Core Worlds, and they had stumbled right across a whole batch of it. Not a bad find, especially early on, for the three of them.
It was only towards the end of the trade that they even noticed the boy. They had been waiting on the docking tube hovering between their two ships when Seungcheol had spotted him. The boy, crouched in the corner.
They had never met smugglers with a child onboard before. The existence of him intrigued Jeonghan. And after the first time they noticed him, they couldn’t help but look for him each time. He never seemed to go anywhere, like some kind of pet. Made to fetch drinks or carry bags, or pass along messages like some model of third-class-droid. They seemed to be feeding him, at least. And he had to have been sleeping somewhere.
They had spoken about this boy at length in private. Seungcheol was of the opinion that there was nothing to be done. Joshua had disapproved of such a diagnosis.
Jeonghan had frowned. It was only a brief moment in which he thought of himself. The way that as a child he would watch every ship swerve upwards and depart the atmosphere with a hunger so great that he would have swallowed up the entire planet without thought, if only it had meant getting the whole thing out of his sight.
He’d thought of the miraculous out that Joshua and Seungcheol had gifted him. Befriending him, the three of them escaping together. Then he’d looked over, serious.
“Let’s just take him,” he’d said.
Seungcheol looked as though Jeonghan had swallowed down the whole of Desevro in one fell swoop. Joshua had approved.
They waited until the final moment of their exchange, when the smugglers’ backs were turned to count their credits, and they took the boy. It was as easy as ushering him close and asking him if he wanted to get the hell out of there. The boy knew Basic, knew how to move silently through a room, and they were deep in the throes of hyperspace before Jeonghan’s heart had even slowed back to normal. Seamless.
They had thought that they would drop the boy back where he belonged and be done with it. One good act, and leaving the mess of it all behind them.
They learned a few things about him in quick succession, in Kuati airspace, hovering between planets in the Core Worlds. He was from Kuat, like they had thought, but he couldn’t go back. Had no one there, his family long gone. He had been picked up by a group of Kuati smugglers to play as their dog before he was old enough to have his wits about him, foolish enough to believe any stray thread of generosity, and he hadn’t been onworld since.
His name was Lee Chan.
Jeonghan hadn’t said a thing about it, but to him it had always been personal. It was too much like looking into a mirror and rewinding half a decade, the simple misfortune of just having not met Joshua and Seungcheol at the time that he did, making him believe that even on a slightly different path, this could have been him.
They had no idea what to do. But still they kept the boy. Jeonghan had always strongly felt that it was one of the only good things he ever really did.
The time that Chan spent living with them on their ship was maybe the happiest they’d ever been. He was only four years younger but it felt like more. They had found themselves with something to look after, suddenly, a tiny spot of purpose in the galaxy. Jeonghan remembers so clearly thinking that maybe they could make it work like this, live, for real, the four of them, a life. He remembers looking over at Seungcheol, watching him watch Chan, and seeing an entire world unfold in an instant, right there in front of them.
Chan loved to play dejarik with Joshua. He could make holomonsters leap across the hologame table like they were dancing. He would sit in the cockpit with Jeonghan and weasel his way closer and closer until Jeonghan let him sit in the pilot’s seat. Often he would just sit back and look at the stars. Just sat back and staring, and he would always have something innocuous and simple to say when Jeonghan asked him what he was thinking about. Jeonghan would wait until Chan fell asleep before bringing Seungcheol in to hoist the boy back to his bunk even though he could easily do it himself, because he knew that was Seungcheol’s favorite part. Providing.
Chan followed Seungcheol around like a dog for weeks before it stopped freaking Seungcheol out and he started letting the boy in instead. Chan had loved Seungcheol from the start. In contrast, it was harder for Seungcheol to get used to another person around. He had always tunnel-visioned in on Joshua and Jeonghan, and no one else. For Seungcheol, Chan crept up on him.
It just happened. He was their boy. The four of them were family.
But, at the end of the day, they were smugglers. They could love him all they wanted, but they couldn’t offer him a bed and a roof over his head that was vastly different to the bunk he had been relegated to on another smuggler’s ship. They couldn’t offer him a stable home. Couldn’t offer him a life.
He wasn’t suiting the smuggler ethos, and he never had. There was surprisingly little stargazing to be done on a busy freighter ship. Smugglers were too often looking behind them, to be able to look up and out.
Jeonghan thinks that it might have been the biggest heartbreak of Seungcheol’s life, leaving Chan behind. Even if Chan didn’t see it that way. He saw it as being set free.
It had taken months of endless debate, with and without Chan, between all three of them, arguments of all forms. Eventually, they decided on the Wheel. Chan had always had that Kuati love for ships, and there was no planet Jeonghan trusted enough to house him. That deep mistrust of land must have been something that Jeonghan had always had. The pervasive idea that any planet in the galaxy could have been Desevro, if only Jeonghan had had the misfortune of being born there.
Chan cried, when they finally dropped him off on the Wheel. Said that they had paid their dues by looking after him for so long, all this time. He was wrong. Chan was shockingly independent, entirely self-sufficient. It had been them who had wanted him.
They told Chan that he was free to go wherever he wished, as long as he let them know. Chan agreed. And occasionally they would get an update, that he’d gone on a trip with friends, or an assignment had taken him onworld somewhere, but for the most part, he kept going back to the Wheel. All his transmissions to them inevitably came from there. For Chan, at least, it seemed to have stuck.
Of course, they told him, he was always free to come back.
Jeonghan thinks that he left a part of himself behind on the Wheel when they left Chan there, too. They had been a family, and Chan their small semblance of normal. Something to care for. A sign of life.
They visited. Whenever there was even the slightest opening they would fly back in to check up on him. He was always happy to see them. Chan was happy and thriving and alive, growing without them, years passing, and they kept on visiting. He really did have that native Kuati love for ships. Just not for living on one. Just not theirs. Each time they visited, Jeonghan would feel like he was looking down at his own beating heart in front of him, and every time they left it had felt like an admission of guilt. That they hadn’t been enough. That it was their fault that Chan had wanted more. And that Jeonghan could have given it to him, maybe, possibly, if he just hadn’t been exactly the way he was.
It was the kind of life that Seungcheol had always talked about. Selling the ship and buying some land.
And then the Jedi fell. They saw little of anyone, after that.
And Chan is still their semblance of normal. Jeonghan does the same thing he does every time they see each other—checks if he’s still breathing, finds him more alive than ever, and hides away anxious, terrible thoughts, until the moment he sees Chan smile. Jeonghan’s boy.
Chan is their semblance of normal, so he will not know about the Jedi whom they harbor. He stepped away from the smuggler lifestyle, and he won himself the right of ignorance. Fuelling ships and replacing batteries, drinking beers and betting on the weekends, whatever the life that he wanted was like, here. They couldn’t do that to him. Not any more.
Chan will fuel their ship, and Chan will make them laugh, and he will not know what it is that they’re doing here. It’s only fair. Chan got out, and he’s their boy.
Kuati native Wheel denizen Lee Chan stands with his hands on his hips and peers up at their ship like he could squint hard enough and see fresh fuel running directly into the reactor. No one is that good of a technician. But Jeonghan wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe Chan’s learned a couple tricks, over the years.
The Wookiee beside Chan croons something low, and he reaches up to tangle his fingers in the long fur of her arm, casual, familiar. Before she walks away, she drops a heavy paw directly over the top of his head, one of her claws sifting so gently and carefully through his fringe with the kind of pinpoint restraint that must come from having the natural strength to pull an arm clean from its socket without effort. Chan takes the weight of her paw without even blinking. Maybe that’s how he’s built up so much muscle since they’ve last seen him.
This suits him endlessly. Floating on a man-made rock in the middle of space with two-meter tall, giant, bearlike hyungnoonas for company, neither party with vocal structures similar enough to speak each other’s languages but enough time under their belts together that they’ve found their own way to communicate, regardless.
It’s a beautiful thing. Chan has built himself a life.
Jihoon and Soonyoung have inched their way over to him, each peering up over his shoulders at their own ship. Chan turns his head and asks a question, Jeonghan watches Jihoon hum as Soonyoung answers, voice inaudible from a distance. Chan’s shoulders shake in an easy laugh as Soonyoung’s eyes crinkle. Jihoon looks away so that neither of them can catch his smile.
Jeonghan thinks distant thoughts about shipgoers and their ships.
Chan turns to Jihoon, bright-eyed, posing a question with his head glancing back at the rest of them. Jihoon and Soonyoung turn to glance at them, too. When he catches him looking, Chan shoots Jeonghan a goofy, boyish grin.
“Enjoying the show?” he calls, face wide open and happy. He nods to the other side of the dock. “Come on, we can catch up while she’s refuelling.”
Jeonghan opens his arms. “Lead the way.”
Chan leads them through the hangar bay with all the confidence and surety of a Wheel denizen who’s called it home for years. Waves at a handful of technicians and mechanics on the way. Jeonghan knows that Chan is well-loved, here. Had cracked the code when he was young, that the secret to belonging was picking a place and sticking to it. The hangar is dense and littered with materials, but it’s an organized kind of mess. Bodies and droids weaving like water. Elevators zipping upwards and hallways leading into darkness barely hint at the magnitude of the station, but Chan, head down and cheerful, knows exactly where to take them. It’s the breakroom towards the back of the hangar that Jeonghan remembers, even if its skeleton has been largely redone since the last time he was here, where Chan had earned his first paycheck, made his first friend, tried his first stim drug. Jeonghan knows because Chan had told them, back when they still had the time to tune into monthly catchups, Chan and the three of them both. And Jeonghan remembers everything that Chan tells him.
They bump into another Wookiee leaving the breakroom as they enter. Chan gestures wildly. “Brought my friends!”
The Wookiee rumbles something his way, and Chan grins. “Yeah, thanks. See you later, hyung.”
He ushers them all through the threshold, just outside the hangar bay, and they follow him inside, a line of ducks. Joshua strides right up to the window without delay and peers out.
“You guys have upgraded since the last time we were here.”
The room is bare bones; a water dispenser, an air cooler, a fridge and cooktop, a few ratty sofas and a scattering of chairs and tables, but it’s clean, lived-in, and huge, thanks to the usual height of its regular users. Jihoon sidles up to Joshua to peer out the window, too. From the center of the room, Chan raises his eyebrows at Joshua.
“You haven’t visited recently enough, then. Noona managed to install holochess last year. We play every day now.”
As if to prove his point, he kicks at the side of a rusty-looking hologame table, and beams as it lights up. He looks over at Joshua, knowing, and brags, “I told them all about you.”
Joshua raises an eyebrow. “That I kicked your ass?”
Chan only grins. “You should see me now.”
“Pull up, Lee Chan,” Joshua says, brisk, and sits down primly in front of the holotable. It lights a visible fire in Chan. One of the best things about him, always an eager dongsaeng.
He glances up as he takes a seat across from Joshua. “You’re all the crew of a ship, you’ve got to be good at this shit. Come on, don’t let me kick Shua-hyung’s ass alone.”
“I’ve never been good,” Soonyoung sighs from across the room, dramatic, stretching orange arms above his head. “Even Junnie can beat me.”
Soonyoung never presupposes the names out of his mouth with titles or description. Like they exist in the world purely as he sees them, no fluff or decoration necessary. Soonyoung’s Junnie.
Joshua raises an eyebrow. “Jihoonie said dejarik was your favorite.”
Soonyoung glowers back. “That doesn’t mean I have to be good.”
“Oh, Shua-hyung.” A slow smile creeps over Chan’s face. “This isn’t derjarik. The Wheel has really gotten into saigok lately.” He cracks his knuckles, eager. “I’m really going to beat the shit out of you now.”
“Maybe not,” says a quiet voice, amused from across the room. Jeonghan glances over curiously. Hansol. He nudges at Seungkwan beside him. “Didn’t you play this back at home, Boo?”
In response, Seungkwan shoots Hansol a dirty look.
“Oh?” Chan grins. “Maybe I won’t have to beat the shit out of Shua after all.”
“Hyung,” Joshua sighs. “Chan-ah, honestly.”
“Seriously,” Chan replies, equally serious. “I need some fresh meat in here. Hyung—” He turns to Seungkwan, then pauses. “Can I call you hyung?”
Seungkwan purses his mouth. “Yes,” he says, as he gives Hansol another unimpressed glance, but he ambles closer, a creature coaxed into a clearing. “Sollie knows that I can never resist a game.”
“They had one of those boards in the bar,” Hansol offers, good-naturedly, right on Seungkwan’s heels, and Chan glances over at him as well.
“Just what I wanted to hear. Do you play too?”
“I’m shit,” Hansol responds bluntly. “You don’t want me.”
Seungkwan laughs suddenly. “It’s true,” he echoes. “Hansollie’s shit.”
“Then I don’t care about him,” Chan teases, grinning right back at Seungkwan. “Show me what you’re made of, hyung.”
Seungkwan rolls his eyes demurely, but lets himself be coerced across the room. “It’s been a while,” he says, even if the smile is already tugging at his mouth. He leans over the table with interest, casting his eyes across the board over Chan’s shoulder while trying to make it look like he’s not.
Before long, Chan has forced Seungkwan into his seat across from Joshua, even despite Seungkwan’s hurried protests, but he gives in quickly, Hansol hounding him from his other side. It’s something that Jeonghan gets to learn newly about him—that Seungkwan is weak to dongsaengs. Like everything else he learns about Seungkwan, unfortunately, it’s charming. Chan ends up kneeling by Seungkwan’s feet with his hands over Seungkwan’s knees, laughing as Seungkwan shoots a vicious glare across the table at his new saigok opponent, Joshua. Hansol leans into Seungkwan’s other side, giving him some of the worst tabletop advice that Jeonghan has ever heard from a living person as Seungkwan resolutely ignores him. Hansol was right. He is shit.
After a few minutes, Chan glances curiously over at Seungcheol, who’s still lingering by the threshold. “You’re not going to backseat us? What happened to my Seungcheol-hyung?”
Seungcheol’s jaw drops open, surprised and scandalized. Jeonghan has missed this, the way that Chan manages to get under Seungcheol’s skin.
“I don’t backseat,” Seungcheol insists, glaring as he makes his way over to them, too. Chan’s face splits into a grin at his oldest hyung. He looks at Seungkwan. “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”
Seungkwan makes a face. “I don’t know you,” he says, refusing to entertain him, and Chan only laughs, loud and helpless, eyes crinkling. Just the same.
“Seriously,” Soonyoung says quietly to Jeonghan, watching too. “Where’d you find him?”
Smiling, Jeonghan can only shake his head.
Over Joshua and Seungkwan’s heads both, Jeonghan sees Chan gives Seungcheol a careful, appraising look. Like there’s something he just can’t quite figure out. He diverts his gaze when Seungcheol looks back at him. Jeonghan sympathizes. The ambiguity is something he can relate to.
He turns to glance out the breakroom window. Wheel gravity, as standard as always, keeps them firmly against the floor, but the stars outside twist at an angle, each one of them familiar stops along the Perlemian Trade Route. If they followed the path north-northeast, they could be in sight of Desevro within the day. The starscape doesn’t look familiar to Jeonghan even though it should, this part of the galaxy his metaphorical stomping grounds, but it’s been a long time since the Desevrar view of the sky was his normal, anyway. It looks different here than it does on his homeworld. And that’s about most of what he can remember.
These are the same stars that Chan has been seeing for years. While Jeonghan’s view keeps on changing.
Outside the window, the curve of the Wheel runs its gargantuan circle, docking piers merely singular cogs in a huge, churning machine. It reminds Jeonghan a little of the round hallway of Jihoon and Soonyoung’s ship, the feeling of walking that loop and feeling like he’s circling the world, instead.
On the other side of the room, from the window, Jeonghan hears Chan, speaking in a low, soft tone, and when he glances up, Seungcheol has crossed the room to Chan.
“I was worried, for a little,” Chan confesses, quiet. He’s practically kneeling by Seungcheol’s feet, blinking up at him. “I missed you a lot.”
It’s textbook. Chan looks up expectantly and Seungcheol opens his mouth and closes it again, head half-dipped like he’s about to reassure him, but his face is creased in that pained, familiar way. Worn, tiredness flashing. Utterly readable.
And then he does the worst thing possible. Seungcheol looks at Jeonghan.
Say something, Jeonghan thinks fiercely at him. Idiot.
But it’s too late.
“Okay.” Chan frowns, straightening in place. “I thought I was making it up. What’s wrong with you two?”
The thing about Chan is that he’s never had a moment of privacy his whole life. Always in the company of others, the youngest, tossed around like a sack of flour until he learned how to throw his own weight. All of it means that he’ll say anything he thinks. Privacy a luxury, and at the forefront, the need to voice things out loud.
He’s kind of like Hansol, in that way.
“Chan-ah,” Jeonghan says, intervening firmly from across the room. “Nothing’s wrong. I don’t want you to worry.”
A marionette with its strings plucked, Seungcheol comes back to life. “Nothing’s wrong, Channie,” he echoes. “Seriously.”
“But—” Chan frowns, gesturing helplessly. “You’re standing on opposite sides of the room.”
Jeonghan stifles a sigh. Still, always, he hates seeing Chan upset, and especially if it’s because of him. He crosses the room in two quick strides, dropping a hand onto Chan’s shoulder and forcing him to look up at Jeonghan. Behind Chan, the sounds of Joshua and Seungkwan over the hologame table slow, and flicker.
“Hey,” Jeonghan says, gently. “Chan-ah.”
Chan meets his eyes, resolute.
“Cheollie and me are fine, okay?”
He reaches down, tangles his fingers into one of Chan’s hands. “It’s a big job, and we’re tired. Just look at all our new crew. This isn’t our usual kind of haul.”
A heavy presence behind Jeonghan, Seungcheol comes to stand next to him. An arm wraps around his waist, dragging him closer, and Jeonghan lets himself be dragged. Seungcheol, pulling him in, the weight of him firm and protective. Dogged, like he’s always been. Jeonghan nearly shuts his eyes at the feeling.
Seungcheol holds Jeonghan close and doesn’t waver. Warm and strong and tall. Jeonghan can feel the rise and fall of every deep and even breath, pressed against the whole length of him, and all the feel of him the same. All of Seungcheol the same. Seungcheol tugs Jeonghan into him, practiced and fluid, the way he’s done a million times before.
“Chan-ah,” Seungcheol says, quiet and low. He smiles, tired and uneven, but it’s real. “It’s fine.”
Jeonghan makes himself smile, too. “Hyung is sorry for worrying you.”
Across the hologame table, Joshua gives him a look.
Still half-crouched on the floor, Chan glances between Jeonghan and Seungcheol once, twice. Slowly, his shoulders slump. Either choosing to believe them or simply letting it go, Jeonghan doesn’t know.
Chan says, finally, “Okay.”
The slow sigh of his breath, the barely audible click of Joshua’s hands over the buttons of the hologame table. Chan is still bothered, anyone would be able to tell. Jeonghan crouches down so that Seungcheol has no choice but to follow.
“Chan-ah.” Chan’s hand is still in Jeonghan’s. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Chan mumbles after a beat, shrugging. “I just haven’t seen you in—” He hesitates. “A long time. I don’t know.”
He squeezes Jeonghan’s hand back. “Something just feels different.”
He’d always been so quick. Raised by smugglers, knew all the old tricks.
“We’re fine,” Seungcheol says, pained. “Really.” He’s always had the hardest time lying.
Jeonghan reaches up blindly behind him, fumbling for the hand hanging limply by Seungcheol’s side. He tangles their fingers together, the feeling of him so warm and sweet, and Seungcheol stutters and flexes in Jeonghan’s grasp, like he hadn’t been expecting it at all. Always so transparent. But he doesn’t pull away.
Jeonghan lets go of Chan’s hand to pet his hair. It really has grown long now. Brown and fluffy and thick. It kind of reminds Jeonghan of Seungcheol’s.
“Chan-ah,” Jeonghan sighs. “My baby.” Chan’s face scrunches up, just like Jeonghan hoped it would.
“We should have come more regularly, hm? Our Channie’s getting older?”
“Hyung,” Chan whines, voice tiny, starting to smile. “That’s not it.”
“Don’t worry, aegi,” Jeonghan says gently. “We’re just the same.”
Seungcheol’s hand in his is frozen still. There’s a second or two of silence as Chan looks at Jeonghan, down to their clasped hands, and back. Jeonghan watches as his gaze flits back and forth. Ever since they’d met him, he’d always been so perceptive.
Then, Joshua straightens artfully across the hologame table, casual and picture perfect, and drawls, “I don’t know, Kwan-ah, I don’t think you know how saigok really works.”
Seungkwan bristles viscerally, and it’s like a spring being unwound. He snaps a glare at Joshua, leans over the table with full-bodied vigor, Chan’s attention gets yanked right back, and Jeonghan sends a mental thank you to Seungkwan’s ability to read the room.
Seungcheol’s fingers stutter around Jeonghan’s. Jeonghan had forgotten that they were even there. Like it was the most natural thing, looping their hands together, even if they hadn’t done anything like it in days, days that had felt like years. It always feels like years, being away from Seungcheol. Even if neither of them had gone anywhere at all.
A reflex, or maybe a response, Jeonghan’s own fingers twitch, just once, but still damning. Immediately he knows that Seungcheol will interpret it a million different ways.
He can practically hear Joshua’s voice in his head, all over again. Is it really that bad? Jeonghan-ah?
Jeonghan hates nothing more than not having Seungcheol’s back. Hates nothing more than not having Seungcheol.
Across the room, Chan is crouched at Seungkwan’s feet, Hansol over Seungkwan’s shoulder, the three of them poring curiously over the hologame table. Chan makes some low-voiced comment, and affront bursts from Seungkwan as he shoves lightly but meaningfully at the side of Chan’s head. Chan rocks obligingly with the force of it, smile clawing at his face.
The ship is not a home. Jeonghan knows this. He’s always known it, and still he’s always tried to pretend like he could find the same thing in anything other than people. He isn’t the most possessive creature by nature, lax, unconcerned, but what he feels for Joshua and Seungcheol is different to possession. Only simple, law-of-nature belonging.
Jeonghan maintains that stealing Chan away was the best thing they’d ever done. The way he’d spotted Chan, and known immediately that he was his.
When Jeonghan finally pulls away from Seungcheol, Seungcheol lets him. Without delay, Jeonghan crosses the room.
“Chan-ah,” he says, voice thick with genuine regret. Chan blinks, and immediately knows.
“Right.” He rises slowly, brown eyes darting carefully over Jeonghan’s face.
“I wish we could stay.” Jeonghan tries to imbue the words with how much he means it.
“I know,” Chan says in understanding, eyes going glassy. He means it, too. “Hyung. You’ll be back soon?”
“Yes,” Jeonghan answers quickly. “Before you’ve even noticed we left.”
Joshua stands too, right on cue. “You’ll be alright?” he asks, pulling Chan into a hug. Chan muffles something unintelligible into Joshua’s neck but Joshua only hums back, acquiescing. Chan barely gets a second to breathe before Seungcheol drags him in right after.
“Cheollie-hyung,” Chan mumbles, voice wet. “Come back soon?”
Seungcheol’s always been sweet on Chan. Especially weak for him. Their boy.
“Of course, Chan-ah.” Seungcheol’s voice is thick. “So soon. You have no idea.”
With all the credits they’ll make from this job, they’ll be able to do whatever Chan wants. The Wheel is no stranger to excitement and satisfactions, and Chan no doubt knows them all. They could watch a game of shockball, day-drink their way through its entire array of cantinas. Maybe they’d even be able to coax him out of the station as he so rarely did, maybe they could visit the Inner Rim. They have a lot of time to make up for.
Chan blinks, glancing between them. “I’ll walk you back.”
He trails closely alongside Seungcheol as they leave the breakroom, and Jeonghan gets thrown back years and lightyears at the sight of Chan against Seungcheol’s strong back. The galaxy has treated them differently, but they’re still just the same. Seungcheol nags quietly at Chan and Chan grumbles right back, but he lets Seungcheol ruffle his hair and takes the weight without blinking. He’s worried, Chan, Jeonghan can tell, but he doesn’t say a thing. Glances over at Seungcheol when he thinks he isn’t looking, but each time he always is.
They retrace their steps through the hangar. Chan casts his eyes carefully over their ship, like he can tell just by looking at it where it’s going to take them. He doesn’t know a thing about their mission, but still they keep up the half-ruse. A feeling is only a feeling if they don’t give a name to it. And Chan doesn’t need to know.
They say goodbye. Joshua gathers Chan in a hug so tender and careful that it’s a miracle they even separate afterwards. Chan links his arms around Joshua’s waist and doesn’t let go for the longest time, smiling so wide. Soonyoung throws an arm over Chan’s shoulder, Seungkwan on Chan’s other side, with Hansol trailing behind them. Chan laughs with his head thrown back, and calls them hyung.
When the ship lifts off, Joshua leans out the door for as long as physically possible before the laws of outer space dictate that Jihoon has to close the airlock to prevent Joshua from freezing and splintering into a million catatonic little pieces. Chan stands in the bay the whole time, arm waving furiously above his head. A pair of Wookiees meander to his side to watch them leave. Chan looks perfectly at home. Jeonghan’s boy.
Outside the Wheel, the spin of space slows to a stop. And when Jeonghan glances backwards through the cockpit window, it’s only the station itself, turning. The stars are back to their usual angles in the sky.
“Alright, captain.” Soonyoung says quietly, even though he’s the captain. “Where to now?”
“All fuelled up?”
Soonyoung nods.
Jeonghan breathes. “Straight to Jalindi, then. Let’s get this done.”
Jihoon shoots a glance behind them, the closed cockpit door, all the people through it, and agrees. “Let’s.”
He fiddles with the navicomputer, while Soonyoung kicks back in the co-pilot’s seat. “U-Ji,” Soonyoung calls airily. “Set course for Jalindi.”
The droid whirs to life behind them. Jihoon scowls. “I was literally just doing it.”
Soonyoung only shrugs, his usual grin plastered over his face. “Just trying to give the guy something to do.”
U-Ji trills at them, some complex tone that Jeonghan fails to make out. The ship leaps into hyperspace, stars thinning into pale, white streams as they zip through the galaxy. When the blue starts to drain in through the windshield, Jihoon finally cracks a smile and leans backwards in his seat.
“You were right. The kid’s a good technician.”
“Of course,” Jeonghan says, affronted, but he’s pleased.
He’d expected it—Chan has a way of getting on the good sides of people. But for some reason he’s still happy that Jihoon approves. Chan isn’t the type of person who suits being hidden away with his head down for the duration of his life. He’s comfortable where he is, and happy, fulfilled, but still Jeonghan has always seen him moving on from the Wheel, somehow. He never expected it to be a permanent post, and every year has only been pleasantly surprised that Chan has chosen to stay. It was just the thing about Chan. He liked having a home.
Since they’d known him, he’d always been the more reclusive type. He could put on an admirable face, but at the end of the day he was the kind of person who needed his own private space. It was the main reason that being with the three of them hadn’t worked out, for him. The same reason that the Wheel did. His living quarters weren’t much, but they suited him, and he felt secure there. Always the more reclusive type, at the end of the day. And the Wheel, even in its chaos, was the easiest place to find some hole to vanish into, invisible.
“It was a shame,” Jihoon says softly, “That we couldn’t go under different circumstances.”
He glances out through the windshield, even though there’s nothing to see. The way that hyperspace anonymizes.
“You were right,” he allows. “We were invisible in there. It gives me hope, I think. That there are places left in the galaxy to disappear.”
His meaning is clear. Soonyoung hums, slow and thoughtful. Most likely thinking the exact same thing. The Wheel is a place where more people than just Chan can manage to stay invisible. It was why Jeonghan had brought them there, after all. There were still a hundred ways in the galaxy to disappear, one way or another. Regardless of what it was that they needed to hide. Jeonghan thinks about the way that Seungcheol had taken his hand.
“Seokmin’s face,” Soonyoung says, distant expression suggesting that he’s merely thinking out loud. “I mean, he’s recognizable.” Soonyoung shrugs. “But so am I.”
Jihoon pauses for a moment. “I’d never met a clone, before. Or at least never seen one under the armor.”
Soonyoung nods, agreeing. “Seokminnie is just Seokminnie, now.”
With every second, Chan floats farther and farther away, on his man-made rock in the middle of space. There’s no distance that could ever make him even slightly less distinct, to Jeonghan. One of a kind. His boy.
Seeing Chan always makes Jeonghan feel a little deranged. Like looking through a window with his hands pressed right up against the glass, dragging his fingerprints across the cool surface and feeling the inevitability of watching them smear. He’ll never tire of it. It’s something that he’ll never be able to get enough of.
The ship soars through the galaxy at the speed of light. Jeonghan’s hand flexes, residual tremble, still warm.