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A simple spark in his mind, a plan to convey a vague premonition pestering his heart, an emotion deep within, unspecified but familiar – that’s how it starts. Late at night, as the wind mishandles the trees and the rain pelts the windows, with merely his red-tinted desk-lamp as a source of light, he scribbles on a scrap of paper with a pen that’s so aged, there’s still bite marks from his boring school days on it.
It's been long since he composed like this, having picked up a liking to type down his thoughts on his phone or laptop. He’s warm under the two layers of sweaters he wears, but too tired to take one off. The dorm is mute, most already asleep. Words don’t come easily today, something he foresaw would happen if he sought to express this feeling inside him.
Another sentence, another scratched out word, rinse and repeat.
Until late, he sits over the paper, more lost in his thoughts than writing – he achieves only two sentences that don’t ring true, so he erases them both with a disheartened sigh.
Felix comes back around midnight, smelling like popcorn and wind. His hands are icy where he hugs Changbin as he peeks over his shoulder, yet still it warms Changbin’s heart. Felix stays a while, but leaves once he realises that Changbin won’t grant him any attention – the sheets rustle not long after and silent breathing soon permeates the room.
Changbin is cold, a lot more than he should be, and puts the pen down – he won’t be writing any more today, anyway. With a glimpse over his shoulder, he discovers the blonde curled up in Changbin’s bed, on top of the sheets, his phone loose between his relaxed fingers and Gyu tucked under his chin.
With a pang of affection and a smile so fond it challenges the one Felix usually bears, he curls up next to him, tucking the blanket over them both.
You’re the best thing I’ve got
.
Felix is on the phone with his sister while baking brownies, and Changbin tunes out their conversation as soon as their English becomes too swift for him to discern. The paper from last week innocently lies in front of him, stripping him of words that had sounded so natural to figure out earlier. Felix keeps sending him looks whenever he’s pondering over what to say, and Changbin finds it terribly distracting.
It's not helping him write, though it helps keeping his body warm.
He surrenders after the eighth time and looks up to find Felix’s eyes. Latter smiles instantly and averts his face to resume cleaning the spoon he washed no less than six times already. Despite Felix not looking, Changbin smiles, and peers back at the paper between his hands with a pleasant tingle lingering in his chest. It’s so easy to identify what he feels, but what he wishes to encompass, what he means to say and write – those words get stuck somewhere on the way from his heart to his head.
A clatter, the spoon falls to the floor. Changbin watches Felix bend down with a snicker. Blonde hair falls onto his forehead, and he hastily cards it back, smile scrunching up his cheeks and creating fine lines around his eyes. He’s bare-faced, freckles visible and expression much softer like this, without make-up.
A twist, a pleasant wave of affection floods through him. He stares too long, long enough for Felix to notice. They both blush, but Changbin only because he’s been caught.
It’s like free falling, he muses, as he gets up and avoids Felix’s questioning glance. Without a parachute, with no way back up and it’s too hasty, too much, even for him.
With no words of goodbye, no excuse or glance, he leaves the kitchen with the paper safely tucked in his pocket. Foolish, that’s all this is, but he doesn’t know what else to do.
I shouldn’t run away
.
Like every Saturday evening, Changbin sits on his bed, an ancient, rattling laptop loading a movie stream. A bowl of popcorn rests forgotten on the desk, packed to the brim and a pair of bottles, with unbroken seals right next to it.
Movie night. As always, as every second Saturday in the month. This month, it’s different though, different, because Felix didn’t show up like he normally would. Changbin should have realized he wouldn’t, because after yesterday, after he fled the kitchen… Something is amiss. As if he had cut an unseen thread, an unspoken understanding between them. The fault is not on Felix, because he’s right, the blonde is right.
They both knew where it was heading, Changbin knows the feeling growing in his chest for months uncountable – that this thing between them was close to reaching a change that Felix dearly wants, but Changbin doesn’t. Or didn’t. He’s a fool, because he fears something that had been coming with shrill colours, obnoxious trumpet music and all kinds of other overt signals for months.
Yet it’s sudden, or perhaps it’s slow, it probably is, because Felix isn’t like him, he’s okay, he welcomed it all so swiftly – it’s just Changbin lagging behind, struggling to catch up to something crawling with the pace of a snail.
Felix gave him so much time, so many signs, so many chances, smiles. The patience of a saint.
Changbin sighs, frustrated with himself, places the laptop back under the bed and tidies up the foods that won’t be eaten, anyway. Instead, he remains until much too late in front of his desk, figuratively ripping out his hair as he fluctuates between mentally kicking himself and writing insulting sentences that don’t benefit his situation at all.
No matter – he stays alone that night.
I should have hurried
.
Thunder roars in the distance, rain batters the windows, the roof creaks under the harsh wind. The blanket wrapped around him is warm, much like Jisung’s head that’s squished to his arm. Darkness surrounds them, just the TV lightens them up as a horror movie that has no right to be called such plays. Or maybe it has – it’s not as if Changbin is earnestly looking. His attention keeps flickering to where Felix’s lies in Chan’s lap.
It's dumb. The ugly snake slithering through his chest at the view. Those two are close, much so, but not enough for Changbin to suffer like he does right now. With a flash of the screen, Jisung startles, cursing enough that Chan laughs. Felix throws a glance to Jisung with a smirk, before his gaze lands on Changbin – a brief contact, but sufficient to make Changbin’s lips thin when the blonde looks away immediately.
Chan resumes his idle petting of Felix’s hair, a nervous habit, Changbin knows, yet he can’t help but hate it.
His eyes linger on the two, his stomach a pile of regret. Not even thirty minutes ago, Felix was laying in Changbin’s lap – but Changbin hadn’t been able to get over himself, hadn’t touched Felix, hadn’t cuddled him as he wanted to – as they both wanted to - and so the blonde went to cuddle Chan.
With trouble, he withdraws his gaze from the pair and fixes them with rigid resolve on the TV. Mind somewhere else. He doesn’t see, just glares.
It’s too late to regret it now
.
“No restrictions.”
It’s strange to hear something like this from their team. Nowadays, there’s always something to watch out for, but today, they’re free to pair up as they want. So, any second now, Felix will come to him, because this is one of the few times they’ll be granted to team up out of their own free will.
They’ll take this. Naturally.
As the words fall, Changbin finds Felix’s eyes instantly. They’re on different sides of the room, but discover themselves as if they’re right in front of each other. Contradicting his expectations, there’s no smile meeting him. No, in fact, the blonde doesn’t act as Changbin expected him to either, remains where he is, expectant eyes latched to his.
It hits Changbin then, that Felix wants him to do this step.
The realisation comes with a faltering step forward, but solely that. He seldom does this, doesn’t need to, because Felix usually does, ever turning to him like a kitten wanting affection.
He’s still angry at him, Changbin realises, reflecting to a week earlier, when he left the kitchen, when…
No, that’s not it. Felix isn’t vengeful like that. It’s not that at all. Changbin bites the inside of his lip, finding Jeongin at his side and Felix with Jisung before he completes his pondering. It had been a test to determine if Changbin can finally get over himself, to accept what he should have long since, and he failed.
With a sour taste in his mouth, he watches as Jisung makes Felix laugh, latter not granting him more than a few glances between tasks.
That evening, he’s alone once more. Not because Felix doesn’t come back, but because he sleeps in the living room out of shame.
I should have let go of my foolish pride then
.
After hours of practising, the room is stuffy and smells more of deodorant than it should. They open the windows to let in the frosty outside air because the air conditioning broke down – most of them leave, just Changbin and Felix stay. In the subsequent minutes, Changbin observes the blonde perfect a move he can’t see any flaw in – it’s boring, but Changbin knows he has to stay.
He needs to make this right again, no matter how.
With a flourish of his body, Felix repeats the jumped-kick they included in their routine and Changbin averts his eyes to recover the paper full of half-assed lyrics from his bag. Something good came to his mind, something that fits, makes sense – the pen clicks, his handwriting is sloppy, but what’s on his mind can’t wait.
Just as he wraps up the second read-through, Felix falls to the floor next to him, close enough for their knees to touch. Changbin knows he’s peeping at the paper, and he lets him read even though it’s oddly revealing, even though he has the urge to cover it. He stays put and lets the blonde submerge himself in Changbin’s muddled thoughts. He has to.
Minutes pass in silence. His brain is void of words, too focused on the presence next to him. The blonde’s breathing slows, their arms now touching. He smells good, even now, after exhausting himself with their training. Whatever Felix finds in his lyrics, in the chaotic emotions written on paper, it seems to appease him. In a sidelong glance, their eyes meet and something unspeakable passes between them – it dissolves immediately though, as the door to the room opens and the rest of the group comes inside with staff wielding cameras in tow.
Felix stays for a minute, Changbin gets the impression he should say something, anything, but he doesn’t and so Felix gets up and joins the others. He would have stayed, Changbin knows, but the words still won’t leave his lips.
I should have held on to you
.
The dorm lays in silence, everyone asleep or gone to meet friends and family. He’s alone with himself, with his thoughts and the tattered piece of paper that stopped unfurling all the way days ago. With nothing better to do, and the lyrics still incomplete, he thought he might as well try working on it. Secretly, he counted on it to take his mind off things, but it merely aggravated them. What did he expect?
He leans back in his chair, sinking his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. It’s pleasantly dark in their room, because Felix hung up fairy lights earlier this week, and while Changbin had thought little of it back then, he promptly came to love having them as the sole light. Right, and just like that, his mind strays back to him, to Felix. Like it so regularly does lately – no scratch that, as it always had, it’s only him paying better attention to it now.
Not that it shocks him.
With a last glimpse at the paper, he gives up and instead curls up on his bed, using the duvet as a blanket. It hasn’t even been two hours since he saw the others, spoke to them and joked around. He’s okay with being alone for some time, but today? Today he requires a hug, a reassurance, anything. If Felix were here, this wouldn’t be an issue. Felix gives easily – a hug, kind words, anything he would need. But the blonde isn’t here, and Changbin doesn’t want to text him and make him come home when he’s out meeting friends.
He views the paper he crumbled in his desperation and flung to the floor. Soon, he drifts off into a dreamless slumber, but not before being the silent witness of his thoughts running in circles.
When he wakes up the following morning, the paper lies unfolded next to his head with words written that aren’t his:
I might fall apart by myself
.
It’s weird. Not because it’s unexpectant, but because from one day to the other, it’s like a switch turned in his mind and he can’t identify how it took place, can’t grasp how he had been this foolish, this… cowardly.
That morning – that Monday morning he wakes up with the sun. It’s foggy outside, he can scarcely make out the skyscrapers in the distance. Not that it’s important – it isn’t. His attention soon wanders off to the snoring form next to him, curled up against his arm in a nice, warm presence he became used to over the years.
Years. It had been that long already since they started this. Since they created a chase so slow, yet so rapid.
Changbin turns his head, directs his eyes to pale skin dotted with freckles. The blonde crinkles his nose when Changbin blows air at his face to tease him and that’s it – that’s when his brain decides it’s the proper time to accept the feelings Changbin had harboured for god knows how long already. Feelings that issue a pleasurable shiver down his spine when he touches those pale cheeks and lets his fingers rest against them.
Felix doesn’t wake, and that’s good. He can’t deny that he’s guilty, because it took him so long, not to realise, but to accept when Felix had so readily welcomed them… months ago? Perhaps years. God, he waited so long.
The smile slips off Changbin’s lips, but the pleasant tingle stays, even if malformed with regret. How to best put this into words? Yes, how...
I was walking following your pace, then I got lost for a moment
That’s it, yes.
That’s it.
.
The walls are thinner here than in their dorm. His family is watching another movie, they’re talking and laughing and the walls barely dim any of the sound. Not that he minds, sleep wouldn’t find him, anyway. For three days he’s been home with his family, and for three days, he’s having trouble falling asleep. It’s because it’s so quiet, he muses, or because Felix isn’t laying next to him, breathing faintly, warming him and smelling so good that Changbin scavages his things for the origin, only to realise it’s him. It’s just how Felix smells.
He turns once more, exhaling as he stares at the wall plastered with photographs from years ago. The room may be his still, but it doesn’t feel like it anymore. Someone is missing for it to be complete. Sheets too cold, the air stale from disuse. With a mind too fatigued to think, he draws out his phone and dials the blonde’s number before thinking about the time. No one takes the initial call, or the second and third. The fourth is picked up directly with a voice rough and soaked with sleep.
They last almost five minutes before the voice on the line doesn’t answer anymore.
He thinks about it, but doesn’t disconnect the call, puts it on speaker instead and listens to the breathing he’s become too used to. It’s not long before he falls asleep.
In the morning, the call is active still; he wakes up to Felix calling his name. Changbin smiles into his pillow, chuckles when a yawn reaches his ears not long after.
I got too used to it that it became my daily life
.
The server leads them through a maze of chairs, stairs and tables until they ultimately arrive at the detached section of the restaurant. Changbin walks behind Chan and Felix, who, like usual, sit in front of each other at the end of the table. Changbin’s hand glides over the back of the chair on the other end where he normally sits, but then Felix looks at him and he lets go of it. Right, there’s no need to sit here, is there? Not if he would much rather sit next to the blonde.
Before Jisung can claim his regular spot, Changbin takes it. It’s weird to sit there. Chan must think so too, because he considers him with a lifted eyebrow. Changbin shrugs, a move he repeats when Jisung finds his chair occupied – luckily he doesn’t make a scene, just sits somewhere else after wagging his eyebrows with an annoying grin. With everyone settled, Changbin peers to Felix and finds him with a contented smile on his lips.
Their knees bump together under the table and stay. The touch is so good, that he deliberately starts physical contact with bad excuses during the rest of the evening. A brush of their hands here as he passes food, a shoulder bump there as he makes a joke, or a small slap on the leg that’s much more a caress than anything else.
Felix smile brightens whenever it happens, sometimes he even grants Changbin a knowing smirk and touches him right back. It’s like a game - it’s addicting.
That night, when they’re back home and his cheeks sting from smiling so much, he curls up in his bed, waiting for Felix to finish his shower. When the blonde joins him, his hair is still damp, but his body warm when Changbin draws him close and submerges himself in their embrace.
Once again towards you, one more step, I’ll never stop
.
Changbin sits by the window, lost in thought, observing the clouds and odd leaf flutter by. It’s been two weeks since he accepted his feelings, two weeks since a certain desperation settled in his gut. They’re still no further, yet the air between them constantly increases with unspoken feelings, with electricity of the kind that drives the hairs on his arms to rise just from hearing Felix’s voice.
The paper from weeks ago is in his lap, on top of a stack of papers that make writing easier, yet he didn’t write a word – the lyrics stop where their progress does and it's maddening.
The door opens, Changbin expects Chan, but watches Felix come inside. The blonde walks in with a brief glance and smile before tumbling down on his bed, next to where Changbin sits. His hair is damp, he wears a shirt from Changbin – something which makes latter smile – and his favourite pair of sweatpants.
The pen slips from his fingers when Felix cards a hand through his hair and all tension drains from his face. He’s so pretty bare-faced, it’s unfair. Changbin can’t help his staring, taking in the smooth skin, his lips, the freckles, his entire face that Changbin had seen too often to count and yet still never enough. In his head, the urge to touch resurfaces so thickly, it makes him breath out deeply to not blindly give into it.
His reeling mind stops at the thought, because… why not? Why not give in? Isn’t he past the point of withholding?
The bundle of papers slip from his fingers and with a thud they’re in a scattered heap on the ground. Changbin doesn’t care, he’s next to the bed already, kneeling as he feathers a hand through partly dried hair. Felix opens his eyes with a pleased hum, their gazes meet. The blonde smiles, his natural, too-soft, kitten-like smile and turns on the bed extending his hands to touch Changbin’s arms. It relieves him to see the timidity in the gesture - they’re experiencing the same.
There’s no need for his desperation, he realises, because there’s no need to rush any longer. They agree once more, walking side-by-side. Still, in the subsequent days, he can’t stop himself.
He keeps looking for and at Felix, too much, too long, too often, but he doesn’t care.
The moment will come, the one they both look for, and it’ll be perfect.
This constant desperation of mine, makes me look for you
.
It’s dark, long past midnight and back in Korea, they wouldn’t be allowed to be outside alone right now. But they’re not in Korea, and they’re not with their team. They walk together, all eight of them, in the night's darkness over a lengthy bridge bathed in silence, that merely the water far underneath breaks with the crashing of its waves. Jisung entertains everyone with a story of his, but Changbin isn’t listening. With eyes glued to the horizon, where an uncountable number of twinkling lights from skyscrapers are, he revels in the breeze that stings him with its icy dampness.
Felix holds his hand, has been for most of the evening, and Changbin is content with it, loving the touch and the pleasant tingle and cheerful buzz it sends through him. He can’t explain it, the joy he takes from the night and Felix by his side, but he loves it all the same. He glances to Felix who walks half a step before him, he’s wrapped in a tight jacket, a shawl up to his nose as his hair swirls around messily with the wind.
Changbin stops, the others keep going, so does Felix, until their linked hands make him pause. Felix looks at him, hesitates, withdraws his hand, but Changbin’s grip tightens and Felix gives in, lets himself be drawn back. Until the others are a few paces ahead, Changbin waits before tugging the younger to the railing. The view is marvellous, Felix’s hand warm and his heart oddly full.
Changbin lets go of him to wind his arm around his shoulder, but it’s wrong, too detached, so he adjusts his grip to circle his waist. His heart has no right to beat as heavily as it does. Not because of this, something he prepared to do for so long, something he knew he would do for months, something he knows Felix wants as much as him. He gulps down the numbing anticipation that twists in him, pulls his eyes from the glittering waves underneath and faces the blonde.
Felix already looks at him, in his eyes the reflection of the surrounding lights and emotions they both never spoke of aloud. It appears so natural suddenly, to raise his hand and ghost the tips of his fingers over his chilly, pale cheek. The touch causes the blonde’s eyes to soften, makes him shuffle closer and put an icy hand to Changbin’s neck. Goosebumps rise, not because of the cold, but because of what’s about to happen.
Changbin takes a lungful of frosty air, breathes in Felix’s faint scent, and leans forward to seal their lips in a kiss that sends fireworks into his stomach. Felix smiles against his lips, and he can’t help but smile right back – a leisurely kiss, slow as their chase, but just right.
Perfect.
And he knows it right then:
I can never let you go
.
When he wakes up the following morning, he’s alone. A yawn chases his disapproving grunt. He tosses and turns, but ultimately gets up because the memory of yesterday, and the succeeding night resurface in his mind, driving his heart to pound, and issuing a satisfied rush through his body which wakes him right up.
With his faculties awakening, he notices the shower running – that’s where Felix disappeared to. Changbin rubs his eyes, checks his phone and ends up in front of the table in their hotel room, where he discovers the piece of paper from weeks ago which he thought lost. He scrunches his forehead in bewilderment, but the realisation doesn’t take long to settle.
Felix. Felix took it. He should have known.
He unfolds it, discovering new sentences he can’t recall writing, but resonate with him on a level he didn’t think possible – but then again, it makes sense, does it not? What he wrote here, all the emotions that made him write these words… they are just the same that Felix experienced. Changbin smiles, re-reading them a second and third time. Exactly what he would have written, as if Felix had taken them right out of his mind.
The door to the bathroom opens, and before-mentioned emerges with nothing but a towel around his hips. Felix freezes in the doorway, evidently not having expected Changbin to be awake yet. Latter feels the heat rush up his neck, but he smiles because Felix looks adorably shell-shocked.
It takes five steps, and he’s got him in his arms, shrieking, because the towel apparently nearly slid off, but Changbin doesn’t care and shuts him up with a kiss. And another, and another…
How could I ever let you go?
.
With the cameras gone, they remain in the karaoke bar alone – well, alone, as in merely the eight of them. With a wave, the last of their staff retreats, and soon everyone’s smiles turn wider. The music plays for hours after, and the room becomes warm with happiness.
The lights are dim in Changbin’s corner, only a rare gleam of colourful forms rushing past. Changbin sips on his lemonade, grinning when Jisung doesn’t hit the note, and shouts something incoherent instead. Chan is a laughing mess on the floor, right next to Hyunjin, whose face is so red, he could make a tomato jealous.
As the next song starts, Felix strolls over to Changbin – his hair is a mess from bouncing around so much, sweater crumbled from where Jisung had dramatically grabbed and whirled him around. Changbin smiles at the blonde – it’s too loud to talk normally, so Felix leans down to shout through the hysterical shrieks behind him.
He understands nothing. It’s too loud and Felix’s voice too low. Still, Changbin lets the blonde repeat himself three times, grinning like a fool as he moves his arms to the blonde’s waist. Felix soon notices he’s being teased and tries to escape with a pout, but Changbin won’t let him. With nothing but a smirk as warning, he traverses the small distance between them to peck his lips. Maybe peck is too kind a word – Changbin enjoys kissing him too much, so it never stays at a peck.
Felix returns the kiss, more out of reflex than anything, and soon realises where they are and that the others don’t exactly know of this yet – to say it shortly: Felix breaks away from him with a shocked gasp, and cherry-red face that is too adorable for his own good. Changbin grins, and draws him onto his lap, winding his arm around his slight form – he intended this, the kiss that is, but he didn’t intend anyone to see it. Apparently though, the corner isn’t dark enough, because Jeongin looks at them aghast, mouth hanging open so far, it makes Changbin laugh with an odd giddiness.
Felix buries his face in Changbin’s neck, latter keeps him close, helping him hide his blush. Let the others know – let them all know it.
You’re the best thing I’ve got
.
Chan and Jisung nod in tandem as he explains the meaning of his song once more, in all detail, but without mentioning Felix. Not that it matters, because Jisung’s knowing look and Chan’s grin tell him his endeavour is meaningless. Five minutes and a teasing remark later, he huffs, his cheeks aflame as he gives up all pretence, and leaves them in the studio with a single statement that shocks them into silence.
Felix comes home late that evening and crawls into Changbin’s bed without hesitation. He’s cold, so Changbin wraps him in his arms and kisses him once, twice, and Felix smiles through all of them, giving back what he receives double. With a hum against his lips, fingers skim over naked skin, leg pushing between his. Changbin relents the space, pulling the blonde close by the waist, nestling their bodies together. It’s much warmer instantly, just right, as it always is with Felix.
They kiss again, with hushed affections whispered into the air between them. How he could wait so long to claim this, he doesn’t know to this day. But he knows one thing: He won’t let Felix go, not now, never. He’s the best thing Changbin has - could ever have.
Even a fool knows this