Chapter Text
Felix knows he’s fucking up. He’s fucked up his part on the song at least five times, and every time, Chan’s face has grown a little darker. The first time, when Felix looked at him through the glass of the recording booth, Chan had been smiling still, indulgent and fond; the second time, he’d been patient and neutral, just a leader who understands that mistakes happen; the third and forth times, he’d looked tired and pinched, like he was holding something back; now, he’s visibly frustrated, and his frustration is tipping over into anger.
“I’m sorry,” Felix says, coming out of the booth. He hovers near Chan’s chair, looks at Chan’s hands as they rest on the mixing board. It’s so late, and they’re both so tired. “I’m sorry, hyung.”
He says it in English, because he doesn’t want Chan to be angry at him and because he thinks that maybe, if he reminds Chan that they’re connected by their shared origins and that in that way they’re alike, then he won’t be.
Chan cracks his neck and turns towards Felix, and everything about how he’s moving feels sharp and aggressive. Felix hates it. He hates when Chan is harder on him than he is on the others, because he knows he tries just as hard as they do. He works just as hard, he cares just as much, and even though sometimes it takes him longer to get where he needs to be than it takes someone like Jisung or Changbin, he gets there, and he does well.
“Jesus, Felix,” Chan snaps, also in English. “It’s not that hard.”
Felix feels his face go hot. The air crackles. Felix waits for Chan to say that he’s sorry and to take it back, but Chan doesn’t.
“Sorry,” Felix says again, after a moment. “I’m just tired.”
He is tired. They’ve been recording for days, and he’s the only one who still has parts to finish. Debuting is exhausting and he’s sure, in his uncharitable gut, that Chan wishes Felix weren’t doing it with them. If Felix weren’t there, fucking up, Chan would be able to go home. The song would be that much closer to finished.
“I know,” Chan says. He scrubs at his face with the palm of his hand and then messes up his hair, which is frizzy and curly and untidy. Felix wants to touch it. Felix always wants to touch it, to touch him — he’s wanted to touch Chan for months, and it’s a feeling that seems to deepen, roots spreading out into open earth. What had started as the need to be close to someone from the same place as he was, who spoke the same language he did, has since evolved into something messy and complicated, admiration turned to desire turned to a horrible mixture of the two.
“I can try again,” Felix offers, although he knows he absolutely can’t try again. If he tries again, he will mess up again, and if he messes up again, he doesn’t trust himself not to burst into tears at the expression he knows will darken Chan’s face. He loves Chan, for all his kindness and for the way he cares for Felix, but Chan’s temper is quick, and Felix can’t face it right now.
“Don’t bother,” Chan says. He still sounds angry. “It’s not worth it.”
Felix nods. “Yeah,” he says, and then, because none of this feels fair, adds, “I’ll just fuck it up again.” He doesn’t wait to see the face Chan makes before he turns tail and flees.
At 2 a.m., once he makes it home, Felix spends the next hour lying in the dark on his bunk bed in the room he shares with Chan and Changbin. Changbin’s with his family and Chan still hasn’t come home, and Felix listens for him, for the particular rhythm of his footfalls, for the way he huffs out a breath when he shuts the front door behind him. There are so many peculiarities about Chan that Felix has memorized without meaning to, that he’s tucked away inside himself like letters tucked in a box under a bed. He’s never wanted anyone like he wants Chan and it makes it hurt worse, than Chan doesn’t seem to want or respect him the way Felix wants and respects Chan.
Eventually, there’s a knock on the bedroom door.
“Felix,” Chan’s voice says. The way he says Felix’s name changes when he’s speaking English and normally Felix cherishes it, because it means it’s a conversation just for the two of them. Now, he just expects more anger.
“Yeah,” he says. His voice is audibly throaty and he knows Chan will know he’s been crying.
Chan slips inside but doesn’t turn on the light. He crosses the room and kneels beside Felix’s bed.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Felix wants to accept it. He wants to say it’s fine, he gets it, not to worry.
“If you thought I wasn’t good enough, why didn’t you let them eliminate me?” he says instead, his back to Chan, knees tucked up towards his chest. He’s curled around his organs, protecting the soft innards of himself from danger.
“Felix,” says Chan again. It’s so different this time. He sounds like Felix just punched him in the stomach.
“No, really. You’re so much harder on me than you are on anyone else. Do you regret bringing me with you? Is that?”
“Felix.”
“I try so hard, and I can’t help it that sometimes it doesn’t work! I’m newer at this than you are, and you knew that when you picked me!”
“It’s not that,” Chan says finally. He speaks slowly, still in English, and Felix feels it in his chest. “I haven’t regretted for a second bringing you with me. I’d do anything to keep you here.”
Except what I want you to do, Felix thinks, but he stops himself. He lets the reassurance, sour and spoiled though it is, wash over him for a moment before letting it wash back out again. He isn’t done. This still isn’t fair.
“Then why?” he asks. “I thought — I don’t know, sometimes I think — it feels different. With us.”
“It is different,” Chan says, and something about his tone of voice makes Felix roll back over to face him. In the dark, Chan’s eyes are liquid, his skin even paler than normal. Felix wants to kiss him.
“How?” Felix’s voice is almost a whisper now, and he doesn’t know how it got that way. He doesn’t know what he wants Chan to say, or what he thinks Chan might say, and he feels the same fluttering in his stomach that he gets when he goes on stage and knows he’ll do well.
“I don’t want to lose you,” says Chan. “I just — I don’t want them to take you away from me again.” He pauses, breathes. “I don’t want them to take anyone, but I really don’t want them to take you.”
Felix watches Chan’s face as he speaks and doesn’t recognize what he sees there. Chan’s head is tipped sideways like he’s asking Felix a question, but whatever it is, Felix has no idea what kind of answer to give. Felix opens his mouth, feeling his lips part more slowly than he means them to, and he thinks, for a second, that Chan shifts closer towards him. That the distance between them has shrunk. That Chan might be about to kiss him.
But Chan stops moving, and clears his throat.
“You’re already so good,” he goes on. “It’s not that you aren’t good. It’s not that, it’s never been that. I just worry — if any of us mess up, if anything happens — ”
“Then maybe we’re gone again,” Felix finishes. He remembers crying and knowing cameras were watching him, were picking up on each individual tear as it ran down his face. He remembers the headache he’d cried himself into by the time he went to bed that night, and he remembers that he didn’t sleep.
Chan lets out his breath all at once. “Yeah,” he says, and he sounds relieved, that Felix gets it. That Felix is going to let him have this. Felix realizes that a moment has passed, and that they won’t get it back for a long time.
“I don’t want you to have to go through what I went through, when I was new,” Chan adds, and his voice is soft still, but in a different way. He sounds tired. He sounds soft like he sounds when he’s falling asleep, when he’s whispering to Felix that maybe if they just rest, tomorrow won’t be as bad. “I really am sorry, Felix. I swear I am.”
“I know,” says Felix. “It’s okay.”
It isn’t okay, not really, but Felix doesn’t know what to do about it. He imagines what might have happened if he’d gotten properly angry at Chan in return, if he’d told Chan to stop treating him badly and let Chan stew in his own tendency towards martyrdom, but he knows it wouldn’t have changed anything. Things are different between Chan and Felix than they are between Chan and anyone else, and Chan’s explanation for why that is both makes sense and is leaving something out.
“Can I sleep here tonight?” Chan asks, and Felix doesn’t know if Chan means the room or Felix’s bed. Either way is fine, because Felix can’t tell him no.
It turns out Chan meant the bed, and he slips under the covers in his boxers and t-shirt. Felix faces the wall again and lets Chan curl up at his back, and he thinks that today won’t be the last apology like this. Chan will do this again, and it’ll be for reasons neither of them will acknowledge out loud, and Felix will accept Chan’s apology, even if he doesn’t want to. He’ll accept it because he’s in love, and he’ll accept it because he’d need Chan even if he weren’t.