Work Text:
Felix has this internal clock that always seems to wake him up before his alarm is scheduled for.
Every. Single. Time.
This morning is no different. The curtains are drawn in the bedroom but that doesn’t stop him from peeking out through the window to see sunrise had only begun a few minutes prior. When he turns again, the curtain fluttering back in place, the digital clock on Chan’s side of the room reads 6:45. This is a prime example, really; Felix didn’t have to wake up until 8.
He slides himself out of bed as carefully as possible—he doesn’t want to wake Chan, especially after an overnight shift at the bar—and pads into the kitchen. There are a few remaining eggs and the right kind of milk in the fridge, a few cereal options and a new tin of instant coffee grounds on the counter… Boiling a pot of water would be a good start. Just because he’s awake doesn’t mean he’ll be able to stay awake.
Just under the stove’s neon clock, the date shines at him in the same bright green: September 14. He had wished Jisung a Happy Birthday! via KakaoTalk the day before, as midnight rolled around in Seoul, but he kept his texts to a minimum. He was saving it for their Skype call today, in t-minus two and a half hours. It may not be the 15th for Felix yet, but it would be soon in Seoul, so maybe just once he can allow himself to celebrate a little early.
Chan’s place is small, but not uncomfortably so—the dining table is intended to stretch out to cater up to six people, but that morning it was only Felix in the seat facing outside. His gaze switches between his cereal, his steaming cup of coffee, and the building across the street. Some twenty minutes later, well after his bowl is empty, his phone lights up with another Katalk notification. Lix! I’m on break now, but I’ll be home from work soon, and then we can call!
Felix smiles. The screen darkens again, lights up again. I can’t wait to hear your voice.
If he were to pick up his phone and reply, Felix knows exactly how their messages would pan out: he’d tell Jisung he’s just as excited, Jisung would freak out over how early of a time he had woken up at, and Felix would have to remind Jisung (yet again) that he’s only a week and a half into his semester, and that his sleep schedule isn’t messed up just yet.
Choosing when to move in with Chan—or Chris; he was impartial to what people called him—was the biggest problem in accepting the opportunity to study at NYU for an entire year. To move at the end of August would mean starting school while still jetlagged, and Felix really didn’t want to deal with that, so he picked the last week of July, instead. Chan had even gotten him a bartending job at the same workplace, and as long as he promised not to drink any alcohol, the owners stayed quiet about him being a year underage. They were a kind folk, and they consider Chan like family, so all it took was one Skype interview and Felix was hired. (Bartending experience in Korea also helped…just a little bit.)
Jisung had taken the news harder than anyone, too, and for good reason, but he only let it show once when the two of them were cuddling in bed at their apartment, in Jisung’s bed but in their shared room, well after Hyunjin and Seungmin went to bed. He ran his thumb along Felix’s index knuckle. “What’ll I do when you’re gone?” he asked, quiet. “Ten months is a long time. That’s almost a year without you near me.”
“Yeah, but I’ll come back in December.” It wasn’t exactly easy for Felix to try rationalizing leaving earlier, but it didn’t compare to Jisung’s feelings. He wasn’t the one getting left behind. “That’s not too long of a wait, yeah? You can wait for me?”
“I’ll always wait for you.” Jisung shifted his head from leaning on Felix’s shoulder to his upper arm. He turned his head away from Felix’s gaze. “And December is fine. But you leave in July.”
Felix closed his eyes; he knew Jisung’s holding-back-tears voice from a mile away. “It’ll help me get accustomed to New York before school starts. I’ll have to commute every day. And I can get in the habit of the bartending shifts… If I tried doing all of this as school’s starting, I might just have a heart attack.” When Jisung didn’t respond, he tilted his head closer to Jisung’s. “And we’ll call. We’ll message. Timing might be off, but there are ways to communicate. And now I can pretend to be your pen pal.”
Jisung sniffled. “I always did want an overseas pen pal.”
Felix, smiling, kissed the top of Jisung’s head, then his forehead, his nose… “Just wait for me, Jisungie. I’ll be back for you.”
And so there he is now, in real time New York City, preparing to spend his (early) birthday and his boyfriend’s birthday at (roughly) the same time. Felix decides to spend extra time on himself before the call. He fluffs his hair, the blond dye fading into light brown roots; he wears the mismatched dangly chain earrings he found at a street market before he moved; he slides into his large knitted cream sweater. (They’re all things Jisung likes on him.)
Felix opens his laptop and sits at the little table to prepare for the call when he gets another text from Jisung saying he’s on the way home. He had picked up a job at a high-end café sometime in early August, after Felix had already left. He thought he would be a barista, but the café has a special section for high tea, and high tea has wait service, and even though Jisung said he would never be a waiter, he got the job. At least it pays well, he’d say after a complaint or three from the most recent work shift. Sometimes the hours were unreliable, though. In the month he’s worked there, some weeks consisted of seven hours while others consisted of twenty.
It isn’t long before staring at his laptop screen finally pays off. At 9:36am the Skype bubble pops up; Jisung’s puffy-cheeked icon has Felix biting back a sickeningly sweet smile before he accepts the call. The video window pops up instantaneously. For once, the video doesn’t appear super pixellated. “Good morning, baby.”
Felix should respond—that’s the normal thing to do, but he can’t bring himself to. There’s Jisung, seven thousand miles away, with his mussed dark hair and pinked cheeks, wearing the pussybow blouse he’s required to wear at work. Felix prays the video quality is slightly poor enough that Jisung can’t see him blushing. His boyfriend looks really good.
“Felix? Lixxie? Can you hear me?”
Felix snaps out of his trance. “Y-Yeah. I’m here. Happy Birthday, jagi.”
Jisung’s eyes widen. He blinks once, twice, and then Felix watches as his whole demeaour softens. “Thanks, jagi. Didn’t know we were starting with pet names.”
“You called me baby, so I thought I’d give it a shot.” Felix rests one elbow on the table and his chin in his palm. “So. You look good.”
“Look good? I just got home like, ten minutes ago. All I did was take off my jacket and pee and now I’m here.” Jisung groans. He leans back in his chair. Felix wants to grab him by that bow and kiss him. “You’d think some people would be kinder towards wait staff about the prices of things. I’m right there. I’m just serving them what they asked for, but apparently two rounds of authentic high tea shouldn’t cost 80,000 won.”
Felix’s lip twitches. Not only does he look really, really good in his work uniform—and he’ll never shut up about it—but he’s also really attractive when he gets worked up over things. If they were within touching distance, Jisung’s head would be cradled in Felix’s chest right now, and they’d be laying down.
“At least the work day is over,” Jisung continues. “It was a stressful day, but it was worth it because I knew I’d be able to come home and see your face for once. And speaking of looking good”—Jisung pauses for a moment, and Felix sits back in his chair so his boyfriend could see everything about his appearance—“I see you went all out for me.”
Felix finally breaks into a larger smile. Tears well up in his eyes; he misses Jisung so, so much, but it’s okay. They can regulate their Skype calls now. “I did. For one special occasion, I thought, might as well.”
Jisung hums. “Alright then. Should we get along with the festivities? I’m dying to know what you got me. I’ve just been staring at it since it came. It’s been a painful week, you know.”
Although Felix had only been in New York for five weeks so far, he had started working two days after he arrived; jet lag gave him enough energy to work the overnight shifts without a problem for a week and a half, and half of those nights he was the only one working, so he would get to collect all the tips. Those tips went towards Jisung’s Birthday Gift Fund, and Jisung’s Parcel Cost Fund, and he was able to send it out halfway through August with no problems. The package had arrived on September 8th, thankfully.
“You’re telling me,” Felix says, looking at the little box on the coffee table. “Your gift for me arrived at the end of August. It’s been two long weeks of me trying not to open it.” He pauses. “Chan had to take the box cutter away from me at one point. That was quite a night.”
Jisung’s laugh is staticky through the connection, but it makes Felix’s heart twist—both from happiness, because Jisung’s laugh is everything, and from sadness, because, again, they were so far from each other. That shouldn’t matter now, though. Felix tries to push the thought from his mind, instead focusing more in the moment—Jisung was in front of him now, on a screen, and that’s what matters.
Both of them leave their cameras while they grab their gifts and something to open them with. Chan still had the box cutter hidden somewhere in the apartment, so Felix had kitchen scissors instead. “Wait,” Felix says when he sees Jisung about to puncture the box tape. “I want to open your gift first.”
“Ah…okay.” Jisung grows timid. “It—It isn’t much, though. Don’t get your hopes up or anything.”
“I’m going into this with no expectations,” Felix says with a teasing smile, already digging one end of the scissors into the tape. When he opens the box, he has to bite back a laugh—but not the smile—at how extremely Jisung his gift is.
Felix holds the squirrel plushie at chest level, perfectly distanced between him and the camera. In the squirrel’s soft little hands is a felt acorn. A stitch in the acorn popped open somewhere along the way, probably, and he can see the white stuffing through the hole. “Jisung, did you—”
“Just the acorn,” he interrupts. Felix moves the squirrel into his lap, watching Jisung intently. He’s not looking at the camera or the screen. His gaze is somewhere in the distance, and his palm covers his mouth. “I bought the squirrel. None of the plushies I found had one holding an acorn, so I tried to make it and sew it into the hands myself, but… the stitching, I can see—”
“I’ll fix it,” Felix says, tears threatening to make a visible appearance. “Chan has a little sewing kit around here for emergencies. I don’t know how to fix it, but I’ll do my best. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
There’s silence through the camera. Just as Felix is about to ask if he froze, Jisung, still looking away from the camera, asks, “Do you like him?”
He gives the squirrel a little squeeze. “I love him.”
“I was also thinking about how you said you felt homesick, like, not even a week after you left. And you kept messaging me about how you were homesick, so I thought maybe I’d give you a Squirrel Sungie until you come back and I can hug you properly.” Jisung huffs out enough air for his bangs to lift off his forehead. Tears start up in Felix’s eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. “So you definitely like him?”
“Not like—love. I just told you this.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
“And now you have.” Felix adjusts his position, sitting cross legged on the chair. Squirrel Sungie sits contently on his lap. The time is now 9:48. “Okay, okay. Now it’s your turn. Open your gift before it hits midnight. Otherwise it isn’t special.”
Jisung mutters something about how he should have opened his gift first since Felix would have opened his after midnight, Korean time, which would have worked for his own birthday, but Felix writes it off. He’s too engrossed in watching Jisung struggle with the packaging. There was the shipped cardboard box, then large air pockets to keep the actual gift in place, then wrapping paper in a flashy gold around the actual gift. “You really went all out to protect this gift.”
“I didn’t want it to get to you only to be damaged.” Felix holds one of the squirrel’s hands in his. They’re both silent as Jisung carefully unwraps the pretty paper, revealing the dark manufacturer’s box of a brand Jisung recognizes instantly.
His head shoots up. “You didn’t.”
Felix doesn’t say anything—he just keeps watching, but his attempt at a passive expression fails. He feels like his smile is going to split his face in half. Jisung opens the product’s box slowly. His lip is trembling so hard when he pulls the styrofoam out of its case. When he opens it to reveal red headphones, the tears spill over. “Felix, you idiot. You didn’t.”
“They’re in your hands, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, but—” Still holding the headphones in one half of the styrofoam mould, the other hand raises to wipe at Jisung’s eyes. “Monumental Audio is so expensive. You haven’t even been in America for that long. How did you afford this?”
If there’s any trait Felix has picked up on, it’s that Jisung is surprisingly coherent even when profusely sobbing. For as long as they’ve been together—they hit their first anniversary just before Felix left for New York—Jisung has eyed the noise-cancelling, feature-induced headphones of Monumental, a tech brand that doesn’t ship outside of the United States.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Felix said. I bought it when I first got here, paid off my credit card with all the money I was making from bartending… We’re in a surprisingly bustling part of the city. It’s kind of nice.” He stops talking in order to Jisung a moment to collect himself.
Not much of him is collected. “B-But you—the cost—why did you s-spend so m-much on me—?”
“Because you wanted them.” Felix hugs Squirrel Sungie close to his chest. “You wanted them, I knew I could get them, and here we are. And you always complain about how you can never find the peace and quiet to write lyrics and melodies like you used to because of how loud Seungmin and Hyunjin are, and about the neighbours above us when they’re having a party, and the sirens outside whenever someone’s grandparents think there’s a fire when there isn’t…”
“There are cheaper brands out there, Felix—”
“You wanted this one,” Felix says again. There are noticeable tear tracks on Jisung’s cheeks, and all he wants to do right now is kiss them away. “And since I’m here, I got it. And I sent it to you. And it has warranty but I can’t exactly return it.” He smiles. “Think of me while you’re doing the things you love to do. I can’t wait to hear whatever you’ve created when I get back.”
Jisung chokes out a laugh through his tears. “You mean I have a deadline for when to complete a single track?”
“Oh,” Felix muses, “only a track? I was expecting an entire album.”
“With cover art and everything?”
“Cover art and featured artists. The whole shebang.”
Less teary now, Jisung laughs again. “The whole shebang. You know the first thing I create is going to be for you, right?”
“I know. But I only want that if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, it’s what I want,” Jisung says. He finally takes the headphones out of the styrofoam completely, saying in a tiny voice that he wants to try them on their Skype call. While he’s distracted, Felix takes a moment to send Hyunjin and Seungmin a quick message.
“You know,” Jisung continues, “if I knew you were going to spend so much, I would have gotten you a lot more than just a squirrel plushie.”
“How dare you.” Felix holds up Squirrel Sungie again. “Look at him. If there’s anything I’m upset about, it’s that you forced me to stare at a package with this ball of your love inside for over a week. I could have been hugging this in bed instead of texting you at 4pm Korean time because I couldn’t sleep.”
“Don’t not text me when you miss me, though.” Jisung adjusts the headphones around his ears. “Maybe getting you Squirrel Sungie was a bad idea—”
“No!” Jisung jumps in his chair—with noise cancellation comes louder overall sound. Felix looks down at the plushie again. He pets the top of his head with one hand and clutches him just a little bit tighter. “No, Jisungie. It was a great idea.”
“I’m glad you like my sad attempt at showing you the love you deserve.”
“Don’t be so self-deprecating.”
“I am nothing if not self-deprecating.”
Felix rolls his eyes. “I beg to differ, but okay.”
“Believe what you want.” Jisung exhales. He sits back and adjusts the bow on his shirt. “I should change for the rest of this call, shouldn’t I? Do you have to go anywhere?”
“I have a class tonight at 5, but we’re not staying on call until then. You need to sleep soon.”
Jisung pouts. “At least for another two hours, Lixxie. I haven’t heard your voice in ages.”
“Don’t pout at me!” Felix says through laughs. “Okay, your cutoff is 1:30, your time. Think you can handle it?”
“I guess I’ll have to,” Jisung says, his nose scrunching up in distaste. “Anyways, it’s past midnight here, you know.” And Felix should have known, but he stopped paying attention to his little clockface a while back. It was 10:17. “You may have a couple hours left, but Happy Birthday, Felix.”
It was 10:17 and even though Felix had enough brain activity to thank his boyfriend and say a quick I love you, all he could focus on were their roommates. Where were Hyunjin and Seungmin? “Say, are the others around?”
Jisung furrows his eyebrows. “I think so. I haven’t seen them since I got hooOME—”
As if on cue, the door behind Jisung is thrown open and Hyunjin barges in. “Jisungiiiiiiie—we have arrived with a special delivery!”
Jisung pulls off his headphones and clutches at his chest, turning to glare at his flatmate. Again, for his sake, Felix doesn’t acknowledge the little—okay, big—squeak that escaped his boyfriend’s lips. “How the fuck do you yell loud enough for me to hear you through Monumentals? What kind of inhuman creature—”
Hyunjin doesn’t say anything else, but Felix can see him beaming from his spot in the bedroom. Seungmin walks in at turtle’s pace, five candles lit and flickering on top of a classic cheesecake from the bakery around the corner of their apartment—Felix, of all people, would know this information.
As the Happy Birthday song begins between Hyunjin and Seungmin, Felix pitches in with the hope that connection is good enough for his voice to not be a few seconds too late. By the time the cake is placed on the desk between Jisung and his laptop, there are tears in his eyes and a tremble in his lip. Again.
So maybe Felix also transferred money to Hyunjin via Paypal to prepare a cake for Jisung in time for his birthday, and maybe asked Seungmin to pick it up from the bakery once it was ready. Even though they were a little late because it was now Felix’s birthday time-wise, it’s better late then never.
“Felix…” Jisung sniffles, staring at the cake. Happy Birthday, Jisung. This cake holds my love. “You’re such an idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Felix corrects. Jisung laughs. “I’m your idiot. Now hurry up and blow out your candles.”
(Felix would worry about his cake later—he still had another fourteen hours before his birthday in New York. He and Chan already made plans to go out, but he’ll only learn later that Jisung transferred Chan enough money to pay for a few of Felix’s drinks. He hates how equally give-and-take Jisung is about everything, but sometimes it’s a cute little surprise. He’ll send a picture to Jisung on Katalk, taken by Chan, of him double fisting his drinks. He’ll tell Jisung another celebration is in store for when he returns during winter break. And when Felix arrives, mid-December, they’ll shower each other in kisses all the way until the flight back to New York City.)
(Maybe long distance relationships do have a few perks. They just involve a lot of time and patience.)