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Warm sunlight, diffused and feathersoft, streamed in through Chan’s curtains. It placed pillars of heated light onto his eyes, as if Mother Nature herself is kissing him awake.
Chan grumbled as the measly hours of slumber melted from his pores, a pitiful groan that sounds more like squeaking door hinges than anything particularly human. He stretched, wringing the last ounces of sleep from his toned muscles while bidding farewell to the skimpy night of rest he was able to grasp.
He went to bed around...3 a.m.? Not bad, in the grand scheme of his turbulent sleep schedule. But he knows he should’ve retired earlier, knows that his boys would be disappointed to learn he spent the night working once again, but he was in his zone last night—and nothing can pull him out of his zone. Not even the detonation of an atomic bomb, or an asteroid careening into the crust of the earth.
Or the fact that last night was October 2nd. Meaning today, is October 3rd.
Chan clicked on his phone, the polished screen doing little to hide the reflection of his haggard, bag-laden eyes. Lo and behold, the date reads October 3rd, 2019.
It’s Chan’s birthday.
The time reads 12:36 p.m.
He slept later than he has in months—on his birthday, no less. Perhaps that’s his own subconscious’ gift to him this year; which he’ll accept gratefully.
He didn’t even consciously realize the rapidly encroaching date while he was working the night away, virtually dead to the outside world. He was blissfully unaware that he grew another year older as the hours trudged on and midnight came and went, before he crawled into bed without even sparing a passing glance at the calendar.
Chan’s birthday has never really...meant much to him. He doesn’t understand the big deal with celebrating birthdays in general, in all honesty. It happens to everyone, every year without fail. You’re not special for having a birthday. He’s not special for being born on October 3rd, 1997. He doesn’t understand why his members insist on throwing grandiose parties for such a mundane event.
To Chan, birthdays are so trivial. He could spend the whole day working on the endless list of half-finished songs residing in the well-worn thumb drive on his bedside table—but he knows his members would have his head if he tried to slink away to his studio at any point during his birthday.
They simply wouldn’t allow it; two years ago Jisung quite literally barred the door to Chan’s studio at the company building. With wooden planks. And a padlock, for good measure. Chan still doesn’t know how the younger procured those items, or how the managers allowed him to physically board up the door to his company sanctioned studio, but it certainly did the job.
Chan knows why Jisung of all people did it, however. He remembers the catalyst like it was yesterday; long before their debut, on his birthday. Except it wasn’t technically on his birthday, because Chan ended up working like a mindless zombie straight through midnight—straight into October 4th without even a second thought.
He promised the boys he would take a break, pry himself from the ceaseless throws of his work, and come back to the dorms for a family dinner—like a hollow-eyed shade making the trek from the River Styx back to the world of the living.
But the hours ticked on and on and on, and after a while Chan became admittedly complacent to his body staying firmly in place in his chair. He should’ve gotten up, he should've shut his computer off, saved his already stinging eyes the harsh artificial light, and gone to his boys.
But he didn’t. He kept his heavy-lidded eyes that teetered on the cusp of vacant trained solely on his computer, on the laundry list of songs that need his perfecting touch. Deadlines flashes behind his eyes with each lethargic blink, muddling the 8 familiar, smiling faces that are a constant presence in his mind.
11:59 p.m. on October 3rd became 12:00 a.m. on October 4th, and Chan never went to the dorms for dinner.
Then there was a knock on his studio door, small and barely perceptible and just as dainty as its owner; revealing a fuming Jisung in the threshold, clutching a bag of luke-warm leftovers to his slight frame.
Jisung was so small back then—much smaller than he is now, which is saying something. The garish pink hair he boldly had during trainee days did little to mask the hollow cut to his usually rounded cheeks, the oversized sweater hanging off his shoulders did little to hide the all-too prevalent dip to his collar bones. But the molten rage gleaming in his eyes was strong enough, concentrated enough for someone twice his size.
And then he said something that has since been tattooed on Chan’s psyche, an ever present reminder of the mistakes of his past.
“Hyung, why are you alone on your birthday?” Jisung choked out, his teeth almost audibly gritting as he forced a gulp down his throat. Chan swears, to this day, he saw a prick of orange flame flicker in his eyes.
But then that fury morphed into palpable agony, and then agony turned to dejection. Dejection turned to melancholic acceptance. Melancholic acceptance turned to pure sorrow.
And then Jisung started to cry—thick, crystalline tears that ran from his eyes like a broken faucet, only to drip off his chin and dampen the knit fabric of his sweater. They seemed to sear into the plump skin of his cheeks, two hideous brands of salty stains.
Chan accurately remembers feeling his heart shatter to jagged shards behind his rib cage, the shrapnel piercing his lungs and draining every drop of oxygen from his body.
And then, Chan started to cry. He doesn’t remember the unmistakable venomous bubbling of heartbreak in his core, but it must have been so intense and violent it canceled out until his numbed body felt nothing at all.
He didn’t physically feel the beady tears escaping his eyes, but he still remembers the sickening, sticky tack they left on his cheeks. What else was he expected to do in the face of one of his boys—his boys that he’s supposed to protect —borderline sobbing because he overworked on his birthday. Something so simple and meaningless in Chan’s mind was unforgivable and downright brutal to Jisung.
That moment, that moment of seeing Jisung cry so desperately because of him was effectively seared onto his eyeballs to haunt his nightmares to this day.
But that’s the past. The past that thankfully won't rear its ugly head again. Since that day, the members have made it a rule that Chan is not allowed to work on his birthday, and he can’t find it within himself to argue.
It was forced acceptance at first, but as the years went by the routine of not working on his birthday became...natural? What used to be a prickly pill to push down his throat became something akin to an oasis of relaxation in a lunar landscape of rapidly approaching deadlines.
In some round-a-bout sense, Chan is grateful his members bar him—literally and figuratively—from working on his birthday. It makes him feel...weightless. It makes everything so startlingly simple, like he temporarily doesn’t have the self-imposed thousand pound burden of expertly producing track after track after track day in and day out. The boys don’t want him to work—who is he to argue.
In that sense, Chan wishes every goddamn day is birthday.
Speaking of which, he should probably make his way out of bed. He’s been daydreaming under his plush comforter for long enough.
He extracted himself from his insulating blankets, making sure to reset his bed to some sloppy suggestion of neatness, before toddling out into the main room. He forwent washing up for now—he doesn't want to keep his boys waiting any longer.
He already heard hushed whispers from his modest distance down the hallway; something along the lines of “He’s coming! Places everyone!”
An unconscious smile started to pull onto Chan’s lips. Call it premature, but he has a feeling he knows exactly what’s coming, and that the lopsided grin threatening to upturn his lips is warranted.
“Happy birthday, Channie!” The boys all cried in eager unison at the sight of Chan padding into the dining room, a chorus of layered tones and tenors that somehow, someway, sounded haunting beautiful.
Just as Chan suspected; his grin bloomed like the petals of a budding rose until it stretched his cheeks to the point of the flesh aching. It’s a pain he revels in, a buzzing sting he wishes would plague him every day.
Before he could even reply, Jeongin and Seungmin skipped forward to flank Chan on either side, each grabbing a fistful of the Australian export and virtually dragging him over to the other boys. It’s just now that Chan had enough mindfulness to take in the sight before him:
All the boys are stood around the dining room table, matching expectant glimmers bouncing between their mischievous glances. Key word: stood. They’re literally all standing around the table, surrounding a single empty chair.
It looks slightly...intimidating? Menacing? A bit like they’re about to sacrifice him to some satanic entity?
Chan didn’t expect anything less.
Well, at least there’s no pentagrams scribbled on the floor. Now he can just hope the only candles will be the standard birthday variety, and nothing overtly occult.
Jeongin and Seungmin corralled Chan over to the single, vacant chair, putting a virtual patchwork quilt of hands on his shoulders and gently shoving him into the seat.
Once satisfied with their Chan-wrangling handiwork, Jeongin and Seungmin scampered off to rejoin Minho flanking Chan’s right. To his left, Felix, Jisung and Changbin are towering over his newly seated figure, their eyes alight with affection and joy.
But wait a minute...one’s missing. Where’s Hyunjin?
Chan’s gaze flitted about the room, mentally ticking off each member only to come to the same conclusion: Hyunjin is gone. Totally disappeared. The lanky, gorgeous dancer is nowhere to be found, in spite of Chan swearing he saw him join the cacophony of birthday cheers to greet him.
Chan’s brows furrowed, his thick lips jutting into a child-like pout. He was about to voice his concerns; until Changbin beat him to the punch. As always, his right-hand 3racha member showed his uncanny ability to virtually read Chan’s mind at any given time.
“Ok Hyunjin, you can bring it in now!” Changbin called into the kitchen, before his unfathomably warm chestnut eyes darted back down to meet Chan’s. He left Chan with a sly wink, and more questions than he had before.
It? What on earth is it?
Oh lord—Chan can only pray this mysterious it is something normal. Like, you know, a birthday cake. Not like two years ago when they somehow smuggled a literal baby goat into the dorm as a “birthday gift” of some sort .
“ Look Chan, it’s a literal stray kid!” they cheered, because of course they did.
To this day Chan thinks they only presented him with the baby farm animal simply to make that one joke. He also doesn’t know where they managed to snatch that poor, innocent little goat from, which he probably should’ve investigated; being a “good” leader, and all. But he was just glad it was gone the next day, and Jisung didn’t try to attach a leash to his new buddy’s neck and attempt to hide it in the dance practice room.
“Coming!” Cried the telltale lilt of one Hwang Hyunjin, just the single word sending electric sparks of excitement down Chan’s spine. And a bit of fear, if he were being completely frank.
And then, Hyunjin came bounding in. Holding a plate of...what is that?
It’s not a farm animal—Chan let out a breath of relief he didn’t know he was holding.
So far so good. So far so normal.
There’s at least two candles shoved into whatever it is, if the wobbling flames dancing with Hyunjin’s jostling movement means anything. But it's certainly no birthday cake; unless Changbin got his hands on it and squashed it to smithereens.
Hyunjin skipped in with the grace only a dancer with his expertise could possess, his plump lips pulled into his patented goofy, life-loving grin as he slid the plate of...definitely not a birthday cake right in front of an unsuspecting Chan.
“Happy birthday, hyungie!” Hyunjin exclaimed, gesturing wildly and bouncing in place and just generally being the human embodiment of pure joy that he is. Chan looked down at the plate before him, trying valiantly to not become hopelessly entranced in the sentient form of euphoria that is Hyunjin.
And this long anticipated it, is...pancakes?
It’s a stack of fluffy, slightly misshapen pancakes. As he briefly guessed, there’s two candles shoved into the starchy treats; one metallic pink, the other matte crimson.
Chan knows the culprits from the cursory glance at colored candles sticks alone—Jeongin and Minho, respectively. Gobs of wax are already starting to drip down the candles, molten pink and red streams slithering dangerously close to the enticing pancakes in question.
And Chan now notices said pancakes in question have a face piped on the top flap jack in chocolate syrup; which has become a tad runny from the heat of the freshly made breakfast treats. But he’ll have to unpack that one later. There’s a smattering of what appear to be chocolate chips throughout the hot cakes—which his brain deemed more important—and Chan’s mouth began to water.
“What...what is this?” Chan asked as innocently as he could, trying desperately to decipher just what exactly he’s looking at. Or who he’s looking at, given the rapidly melting portrait drawn on the pancakes.
“It’s chocolate chip Chan-cakes!” Jeongin and Hyunjin hollered in unison, as if they’ve been practicing shouting this very statement all week.
Oh. Oh.
That means...the face piped on in chocolate syrup is...him?
Now that Chan thinks about it, there is a bit of a resemblance between the crude sugary drawing and he himself, in spite of the primitive chocolate caricature only supplying eyebrows, eyes, a nose, and lips.
But the bushy, accurately sculpted eyebrows can be no one else’s. A wide, almost cartoonishly broad nose that can belong to no other takes residence in the center of the “portrait”. The lips are slightly bulbous, and shaped more like an abstract heart than a true human mouth. As he looks more intently, he finds the pupils are two strategically placed chocolate chips, with concentric chocolate syrup circles forming the irises and subsequent angular almond shape.
The eyes look a bit more like that of an anime character than Chan would’ve given himself—but he’s not surprised. They’re not called weeb kids for nothing.
Perhaps they’re exclusively called that by Chan himself, but that’s not important.
His heart swelled with love, filled to bursting with palpable affection. A rosy blush colored his cheeks, a delicate pastel median between the scarlet of Minho’s choice in candle and the bubblegum pink of Jeongin's.
“Do you like it? We all helped!” Hyunjin asked, leaning his long arms on the table to slink right up into Chan’s face. His eyes seem to harbor the entire Milky Way galaxy, seem bejeweled with polished pearls and jewels and Chan felt himself getting lost in those twinkling chestnut pools.
We? Chan thought, with a silent chuckle. How many members of Stray Kids does it take to cook a stack of birthday pancakes?
Many, apparently.
“I love it, Hyunnie Bunnie.” Chan mused, reaching a hand out to pinch the artful slope of Hyunjin’s cheek.
But then his hand froze on Hyunjin’s velveteen skin, his heart froze in his chest, his breath froze on the way out of his lungs. The fevered, ruby red blush that was already dying his pale cheeks deepened considerably, despite how hard he tried to will it away.
Now Chan understands why they're called the apples of your cheeks, because he’s certain his own are tinged the same intense burgundy of a sugar-coated candy apple.
Hyunnie Bunnie.
Oops. In his love struck stupor, he accidentally let his personal nickname for Hyunjin slip. His personal nickname that was supposed to be kept private.
He heard the unmistakable cackling of Minho to his left. Jeongin and Seungmin joined in a few seconds later, after presumably trying to stifle their own giggles. To his right, Changbin buried his head into Jisung's neck, who buried his head into Felix’s neck like some sort of human-centipede of second hand embarrassment.
Hyunjin, however, seemed positively dandy—not to tread dangerously close to Seungmin’s well-loved self descriptor. Hyunjin seems as poised and unaffected as ever, as if he’d been expecting Chan to slip up and divulge his nickname to the other boys. Hyunjin looks like he’s surprised it took Chan this long.
“We love you, Channie Chan Chan.” Hyunjin mused, placing one of his hands over Chan’s—which was still petrified on the flesh of Hyunjin’s cheek.
Channie Chan Chan, being Hyunjin’s own personal pet name for the leader. Chan is so used to the loving moniker being a hushed, breathy whisper behind tightly shut doors and under the dim light of his bedside table lamp, that it sounded nigh unfamiliar to his ears.
But Hyunjin said it loud and proud and brimming with assurity and affection—Chan doesn’t want to go back, never wants to hear it whispered again.
And suddenly, Chan didn’t care that he let his own little nickname for the dancer escape the confines of their private cuddle sessions. He suddenly didn’t care about anything. All he feels, all he can perceive is the tidal wave of love washing over him.
He was met with a chorus of agreement, all the other boys mimicking Hyunjin’s declaration of affection. It was a dissonant cacophony of adoration, but it was the most delightful of symphonies to Chan's ears.
“We love you, Channie!” Exclaimed Seungmin.
“Happy birthday to the best leader in the world!” Cried Jisung.
“You’re ok, I guess.”
That was from Changbin—Chan can translate Changbin-ese well enough to know that’s his own special way of saying “I love you, thank you for everything.”
“Happy birthday, Chris. Thank you for being my home.” Felix bent forward to whisper to Chan and Chan alone, the younger Australian’s breath fanning against the skin of Chan’s ear; the leader felt his heart quiver like a blade of grass against a typhoon, felt the telltale tingle of white-hot emotion begin to well up in his eyes.
Felix’s breath always smells like spearmint gum and grape soda and something implacable that reminds Chan of the balmy height of an Australian summer. Just one whiff and Chan feels like he’s back in Sydney; familiarity and comfort are concentrated in Felix’s lungs, as far as Chan’s concerned.
Felix is just as much home to Chan as the leader is to him—Chan can only pray the freckled dancer knows, because the lead-ball in his throat is preventing any words from leaving his lips.
After some goading—and a few seconds for Chan to will away the ream of tears that flooded his eyes—the boys convinced Chan to blow out the candles and finally take a hearty bite of their so-called “Chan-cakes”.
It seems he may have spent too much time talking—read, partially embarrassing himself and partially teetering on the verge of hysterics—and the candles have melted to nothing but meager stubs of their former grandeur, creating half-solid piles of wax with the minuscule little flames bobbing amongst the last remnants of the wicks.
It's ok, they can cut around the unwelcome waxy intruders. Chan chuckled, silent but good natured and feeling like fizzy bubbles of elation were set off in his core.
Chan closed his eyes, and blew out the candles—or the suggestions of what were once candles. But you know what they say: it's the thought that counts. Thick tendrils of grey smoke curled into the air, undulating like ghostly snakes in the air.
Chan, in all honesty, didn't make a wish. He closed his eyes, thanked whatever deity is looking over him for sending him his members, and blew out the candles.
If you asked Chan, he'd tell you all his wishes already came true. He'd tell you he's the happiest, luckiest, most blessed man on earth. He'd tell you that it'd be a mockery of the sheer beauty that is his life, with his best friends and loves of his life as constant companions at his side, to even dare to make a wish.
But his boys don't need to know that. All they care about, now that the raucous applause in the wake of the dissipating smoke has petered out, is getting Chan to dig into their masterpiece: the Chan-cakes.
He swiftly cut out a small helping of the stack of flapjacks, making sure to avoid any of chocolate-syrup Chan’s vital organs, and took a delicate bite. He could feel the entire population of the room hold their breath, could tangibly sense their anticipation like electric currents zapping the otherwise stagnant air.
They're just pancakes, guys, is it really that deep? Chan thought as he gulped down the first bite.
Sure, it sounds silly for a group of (mostly) grown boys to be waiting with bated breath for a pancake review of all things, but it's simply not that one dimensional. The boys love Chan. They want Chan to enjoy what they poured their hard work and effort into for his birthday.
So yes, Chan realizes now, it is that deep.
The pancakes themselves are...about as good as Stray Kids can make them.
A little soggy and lukewarm from being left uneaten on the dining room table? Yup. A bit too thick with some brittle burnt edges? All there. The chocolate chips had melted, then re-solidified into some amalgam of chewy and hard and something vaguely off-putting in between? You know it. The chocolate syrup has that bitter aftertaste that can only be from the cheap, mainly artificial crap from convenience stores? Through and through.
But to Chan, they are the most delicious treat he’s ever had the pleasure of tasting. In the most primal and intrinsic way possible, they are made with love.
Chan took a few more hearty bites, much to the immense elation of his boys. If he accidentally bit down on a glob of wax or two, well, he doesn't think they need to know. If he almost choked on a particularly burnt section of pancake and could virtually taste what a bonfire smells like, then he chose to keep it to himself.
He placed his fork down after finishing two out of the seemingly endless stack of hotcakes—it was slightly sad to eat his own chocolate-syrup portrait. yet in some odd, probably not completely sane way, it was more than a little therapeutic. Cathartic, even.
Eat the old you if you don't like it; make room for the new you. Chan couldn't help but think something vaguely deranged along those lines as he wolfed down the sliver of pancake with the final chocolate-syrup excuse for an eyeball.
He thought about his studio at the company building. He thought about how his computer is safely shut off and tucked away, collecting a thin layer of dust in his absence. The door is locked and the room is empty on his own volition, not from his members physically preventing his entrance. He thought to his little thumb-drive sidekick, about how it’s left abandoned and (mostly) forgotten in his bedroom.
It feels good. It feels like some twisted sense of freedom, to consciously forget his endless list of work for 24 simple hours. He knows it has a rapidly encroaching expiration date, of course. He knows this weightlessness can't last forever, but he’s going to savor every second of potent euphoria with his favorite people like it's his last day on earth.
He's gonna savor every minute like he savored every bite of those burnt, lumpy, luke-warm pancakes that were sweetened with a heaping helping of love rather than sugar.
In fact, Chan fears they might have accidentally used salt instead of sugar. The slightly acidic aftertaste seems to have confirmed his suspicions. But that's ok—it tastes like ambrosial love all the same.
Love tastes like the nectar of the gods, tastes like home and comfort and melted marshmallows and dried lilacs tied with satin string.
Stray Kids may not be the most adept at making the best tasting pancakes, but they taste like love. And that's all Chan could ask for.
They were then plunged into amicable silence, as the boys apparently took Chan setting his fork down as their cue to set on to the next “birthday activity”.
“Birthday kisses time?” Jisung asked, his eyes wide and owlish and brimming with anticipation.
Chan was about to protest—to implore them to at least let him wipe the chocolate from the corners of his mouth—but as always, he was cut off by a certain maknae on top.
“Birthday kisses time!” Jeongin shouted, and Chan didn't need to look to see the beaming grin splitting his lips. And before he knew it, a stampede of increasingly wet smooches were placed on every inch of his face.
Minho and Jisung took turns placing sloppy kisses on the right side of Chan’s cheeks, leaving reddened splotches in their wake; the ruby color almost blended perfectly with the fevered blush still firmly in place on Chan’s skin. Almost .
Jeongin left an innocent kiss on Chan’s nose, while Felix and Seungmin tenderly smooched the non-slobber covered left side of Chan’s cheeks; their lips brushing his skin with such feather softness he had to strain to commit the kisses to memory.
Changbin pecked the crown of Chan’s head, smack in the middle of his unruly brown curls. Changbin’s wide nose scrunched in discomfort as the frizzy tendrils tickled his skin, but Chan was left blissfully unaware.
That just leaves Hyunjin.
And Hyunjin, well...Hyunjin darted forward to leave an audible smooch on the corner of Chan’s chocolate stained lips.
If you asked Chan, he’d say the kiss was ten times sweeter.
They spent the rest of the morning piling around the dining room table, all 8 boys sharing hearty forkfuls of Chan-cakes. They’re pretty good, if Chan’s being honest.
As Jeongin downed the last slice of chocolate chip Chan-cakes, a realization prickled at the back of Chan’s love-muddled brain.
Maybe he should be more excited for his birthday every year. Maybe he’s been a fool to take them for granted each year, to not mark the date on his calendar with stars and hearts and a million exclamation points. In fact, he knows he’ll be counting down the seconds until the next time the clock strikes midnight on October 2nd.
And if you ask Chan now, he’ll tell you wholeheartedly that pancakes beat a generic birthday cake any day. Especially when it’s made by those who you are destined to love, and be loved by.
Forever—for every October 3rd to come.