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Felix is three shots in and more drunk on the atmosphere than anything else. The blue-tinged lights pulse in time with the bass of the music and the venue is getting just hot enough for Felix to feel uncomfortably damp, his open-necked shirt sticking to his skin and his leather pants edging toward more….stuck to his derriere than he’d initially intended.
Wedgies aside, the place is nice, much nicer than he had expected when they told him Mnet was going to throw the Kingdom idols a night out to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the show. It’s a real club and everything—well, it isn’t open to the public and it’s only filled maybe halfway with tipsy, dance-happy idols and their weary managers huddled by the bar—but Felix will take what he can get. He used to imagine what it would be like to go out clubbing— properly clubbing—when he was sixteen and too-obviously-young to experience the Sydney nightlife. He’s a dancer, for god’s sake—it’s kind of the dream to go out and lose himself in songs blasted so loud he can’t hear himself speak. And, well, dance parties with the members in the living room of the dorm are lovely but something about this —this enveloping throb of music against the skin of his neck and the lights that play temporary colors across his glittered eyes—is honestly unmatched.
More than the music, though, he also feels overwhelmed by stickiness. Like he wants more than anything to cling, like now is the time to let everybody he’s ever felt lovely about know that he does, in fact, feel lovely about them. In this vein, he’d spent the last five whole minutes plastered to Wooyoung’s back, getting Wooyoung’s impressed hand stroking through his long blonde extensions like a small reward. Under Wooyoung’s hand (and Hongjoong’s, when he walked up behind him and attempted to join in by braiding Felix’s hair with his kind, deft hands), Felix had settled, like an especially soft puppy that was getting its headpats after weeks of nothing.
He had nuzzled forward into Wooyoung’s ear and then back into Hongjoong’s hand before deciding, yes, he wanted another shot.
Now, one . . . two shots later, he’s bouncing along to the blaring EDM with Seungmin and Jisung, lighthearted and energized, holding onto Jisung’s arm as Changbin, sprawled on the couch just behind them, reaches a periodic hand out to steer Felix away from crashing backwards into the furniture. It’s happened once already, Felix banging into the side of the low table laden with empty soju bottles and tequila shot glasses, so Changbin was keeping an eye on him. Yet even his wary attention, born of exasperation and Felix’s less-than-admirable reflexes, was sliding through Felix like warm syrup, a sensation that came from knowing he could throw himself around and still have somebody catch him and soften his landing. So he let himself get lost in the relentless beat of the song, Seungmin and Jisung bouncing right along with him, happy with the atmosphere and the way everybody he liked was here—
—well, almost everybody. Chan was coming late. Something about a dinner party with a hyung that he had scheduled weeks before the party, and Chan is never one to bail on time with a friend for an off-schedule party. He had promised (he had promised ) that he’d still come afterwards, laughing away Felix’s pout, a brusque hand reaching out to push Felix’s bangs flat down into his eyes.
“Put that face away,” he had said, hand coming to rest warm and large over Felix’s line of sight, blocking out the rest of the world.
His current absence needles at the back of Felix’s brain, a sting of longing lancing through his music- and alcohol-driven euphoria every now and then. It’s just….it’s just that Felix may or may not have dressed up with Chan in mind. He’d pulled out all of the stops he knew how because he wanted to feel stunning about himself tonight . . . but he’d also wanted Chan to see him feel that way. Something in him had hoped, perhaps distantly, that witnessing a Felix who was dressed to impress at a club might have, at least subconsciously, transported the two of them to an bubble of an alternate universe where Felix was just a guy, pretty enough to distract, who Chan happened to come across in a Sydney nightclub.
(A universe where Chan might look at him, where his gaze would lock, where it would stay in a different way).
In this universe, Chan never said anything about the long blonde extensions he had gotten for the Thunderous promotions, never even complimented them in passing like he did so many other details of the members’ outfits. Felix had even leaned down from his position on Chan’s shoulders during practice and let the hair fall right into his eyes—unavoidable, annoying even—and Chan had said nothing except to start from the top again, a hand reaching up to guide Felix’s head back up and into place.
(But something about the way Felix would sense a change in Chan’s face when he turned a-little-too-suddenly to look at him in those waiting rooms, the way something startled away as soon as Felix locked eyes with him, made him tentatively hopeful. Hopeful that Chan had been looking, quiet, lingering, and all too-ready to flee if Felix looked back.)
It’s just! The hair was so blatant as a costuming choice! Why didn’t Chan compliment it? Felix didn’t know. It could very well be that Chan maybe actually kind of hated it, but Felix woke up this morning confident enough to hedge his bets on this one—and besides. Enough of the others here have complimented him on it so far that it’s already paid off. And he feels good. Pretty. Sexy?
Yes, sexy—he feels sexy as he dances with Wooyoung, Wooyoung who is unafraid of holding Felix’s hand and spinning him into himself, who’s unafraid of wrapping his arms around Felix’s waist, of putting on a show. Wooyoung has a confident ease about him that makes their touching thoughtlessly easy, loose and unassuming: a hand against the back of Felix’s head, fingers hooked into the waistline of his pants at his hip. Felix blossoms under the intimacy from his friend, tilting his head back into the lights as Wooyoung laughs against his shoulder, tugs him in, spins him out, brings him back.
Felix knows distantly that Wooyoung is attractive. But the kind of pull he feels is less personal and more performative: an understanding that while he doesn’t feel any visceral desire for Wooyoung himself, he’s confident in the way he can dance like he does. It’s a show, a spectacle, that Felix leans full-throatedly into, his instincts as a performer melding into his secret joy at touch. Draping his arm around Wooyoung’s neck (who smiles fondly at him in return) Felix sways forward, dragging his chin up along Wooyoung’s jaw and pausing right by his ear to whisper, hold my hand .
Wooyoung has just grabbed it before Felix is using it to spin himself around and anchor himself before dropping to the ground, the beat dropping heavy along with him, as the blue lights pulse with near-white strength across his vision.
He’s so delighted by his own timing that he pushes his ass dramatically back and up against his friend, going for playful now more than sultry, as he bounces on the soles of his feet, and Wooyoung’s loud responding laughter behind him makes him feel triumphant. He takes the hands that grab his hips from behind and straightens up, flipping his hair over one shoulder before reaching an arm back behind him and looping around Wooyoung’s neck again. Felix turns to nuzzle against it and falls back easily into the music.
As he leans his head back, he looks lazily over at the bar area—and his body awkwardly misses a beat when he catches Chan’s eyes directly across the room. He’s near the door, outside jacket still on, clearly just arrived, and phone tilting nearly out of his hand—likely because he’s not looking down at it but instead at Felix, gaze fixed, the unreadable expression on his face obscured by the strobing blue lights.
The expression shifts almost as soon as he’s realized Felix has seen him, and Chan finally moves, blinks, and does a small, almost hesitant wave.
Felix waves widely at him in return and gestures for him to come over and dance with them (because he can think of nothing he wants more than to throw his arms around his neck, too). But Chan waves his hands at them in denial, jerking his head at the bar, and turns to make his way over there.
Felix squeezes Wooyoung’s hand. “I’m gonna go say hi to Channie-hyung,” he shouts over the music.
Wooyoung ruffles his hair and lets him go, Felix bounding off toward the bar, zeroed in on Chan, who’s got his arms crossed on the counter, leaning against it as he waits for the bartender to put something together for him. Felix scampers forward through the scattered high tables until he can slide his arms around Chan’s waist from the side. In a burst of inspiration, he attempts to push his head up under and through the space of one of Chan’s crossed arms, but the way they’re folded against the bar makes this, unfortunately, very difficult.
Chan flinches at the first touch of a body by his side, but on recognizing Felix’s blonde head struggling to push its way through the gap between his arm and his chest, he laughs and makes space for him, shifting his arm down to grip Felix by the hip and pulling him in tight, pressing his nose briefly in greeting against the top of Felix’s head. To Felix, Chan’s bomber jacket still smells cold, like the brisk night air and the sharp scent of gasoline cars. He inhales and presses his nose against Chan’s chest in return. He’s too tipsy to do anything but nod at Chan’s, “You doing okay there?” And he returns his focus to squishing his face as flat against Chan’s pectoral as he can.
Chan laughs a bit at Felix’s refusal to surface and just rubs his hand down Felix’s arm, fingers catching and tangling in the strands of his extensions. He continues to tug gently at them as the bartender returns with a question about his drink—whether or not he wanted the salt rim? sugar?—and Chan’s easy back and forth with him fades into the background, replaced mostly by the sensation of his fingers in his hair, the steadfast warmth around Felix’s back and against his front.
Chan jokes with the bartender as he gets the details of the tab for the event, his charismatic laughter vibrating through Felix, who only slips his arms beneath Chan’s jacket to hold his stomach better against his own, and closes his eyes. The song playing right now is too repetitive and slow for his taste, so he’s content to stay right here, wrapped around Chan like a second jacket until Chan has to awkwardly maneuver them both to the tables where their members are.
Hyunjin snaps his head up at their approach. “ Hyung . Thank god you’re finally here; tell him that you wrote that track with the horn section for me.”
Jisung, sitting next to him, scoffs with exaggerated offense. “Hyung literally played it for me two days ago so I could start writing the first verse!”
He surges forward and pushes his face directly into Hyunjin’s own, staring him down eye for eye. “How could it be for you?!”
Hyunjin startles so badly at this that he spills some of his drink on the floor, the rest of the drink only saved by his own quick reflexes as he rights the glass and uses the full palm of his hand to push Jisung’s face away.
Chan, ignoring the commotion, steps carefully over the new puddle on the floor, Felix still plastered against his side like a stubborn limpet.
“I wrote two different tracks with horns, guys.” He settles against the couch next to Hyunjin and leans forward to place his drink on the low table in front of them, before resting back against the couch. He reaches down to draw Felix’s legs over his own, and once he’s heard Felix’s small chirp of satisfaction against his shoulder, he turns back to the bickering pair.
“One for you, one for Jisung.”
Jisung leans over, suspicious. “And they’re sufficiently different?”
Chan flicks his forehead. “They’re sufficiently different.”
Felix snorts against Chan’s shoulder and lifts his head. “Why would Channie-hyung double time you guys when he’s got, like, five hundred songs ready to go.”
Chan sputters and tries halfheartedly to cover Felix’s mouth. “I do not have five hundred— ”
“Oh!” Felix jerks up in the circle of Chan’s arm, nearly sending his head into the other’s face, but Chan dodges backwards just in time. “I love this song.”
The DJ playing the previous set must have taken a break and handed it over to the next person because the atmosphere has changed from tepid-European-club-near-closing-time to triple-beat-island-dance-party, and Felix immediately finds himself torn between sitting with Chan, who’s just arrived after all this time, and heading out to the floor. He’s practically vibrating with indecision and Chan laughs softly, almost as if to himself.
“Go dance, little one,” he says, nudging at Felix’s lower back in the direction of the newly gathering dance crowd.
“But you just got here,” Felix pouts.
Chan looks a bit confused. “I’ll still be here when you come back, yeah?”
“Oh!” Felix does a flat-lined smile of satisfaction. “Yes. Save my spot.”
“I’ll guard it with my life.”
“What,” Jisung says laughing, “you’re gonna guard your own lap?”
Felix has already tuned out their bickering as he disentangles his legs from Chan’s and uses his shoulder to bounce himself up onto the balls of his feet, noting with pleasure that whoever was in charge of the lights has switched out the low blue palette for a warm magenta hue. It bathes the club with new energy and just like that, he’s ready to go.
A strong hand appears before Felix, and he looks up to see Minho’s mischievous face behind it. “Let’s go, Yongbok-ah.”
Felix grabs the hand with relish and lets himself be led out onto the floor, slinging his arms around Minho’s neck when they get there and swaying his hips with more than a little abandon. He tries to get his extensions to swing with him, but it’s a bit hard to figure out how to do that without throwing the rest of his rhythm off, or otherwise looking too obviously like he’s trying. Felix briefly wishes he had time to practice with his hair in the mirror before he came out tonight—but oh well, he’ll make do.
He’s glad to have Minho’s warm hand in his, and he doesn’t let go, even when an overly ambitious hair toss gets the extensions caught in Minho’s ring and they have to spend several confusing minutes trying to free Felix, while Felix also tries to keep dancing in a near-ninety-degree bow. He lets out an indignant yelp when Wooyoung takes the opportunity to smack his ass in front of everybody, which leads a protective San over to bodily shield Felix from a second smack as Minho gets the last of his hair out. At some point, Peniel swoops in to lift a protesting San out of the way and Wooyoung swoops in with glee, smacking Felix’s ass a second time before running out of retaliation range.
Felix is laughing laughing laughing, and he reaches out to grab San and yank him in to hug the boy out of gratitude, playfully kicking out sideways at Wooyoung for his stunt. There’s a burning, happy feeling in his chest as he nuzzles into San’s neck, and it only grows as he reaches back a hand to Minho and pulls him close against his back, creating joyful little Felix-sandwich, cocooning him in affection and the feeling of friends. Even if he does have to take the playful bite Minho gives to the side of his head in return.
He’s so sweaty. He’s so content.
Sometimes he feels like this kind of moment is the actual culmination of all his training and work here in Korea. Of course, so is a live concert—Felix thrives in concerts, where the energy of the audience gets refracted back toward him in a thousand rays of prism-lit delight—but something about these more private moments, off-camera, off-stage, fill him with a sense of wholeness that he’s been learning to hold just as close.
During the pandemic especially, he’s learned to rewire his brain: to find the joy of the concert crowd in smaller, more intimate encounters, to reimagine dancing with one person as full of the same emotional force as dancing with a thousand. To receive the gentle touch of a hand against his forehead, a touch against his cheek, an arm around his shoulder, and be filled with lasting content.
It used to make him nervous, allowing this intensity to occupy the small spaces of his everyday friendships. He used to sense the too-casual energy of other people when he was with them, the way they would laugh sometimes at his requests to keep hanging out when they were originally supposed to leave, to cuddle more, to share the more vulnerable parts of their midnight thoughts. Even when this casualness was natural without being malicious, Felix would hit it like a wall and draw himself back, pull himself inwards, and try hard to match the other’s no-big-deal posture so that they wouldn’t reject him outright for feeling too much, too obviously.
He remembers the night, under the warm-blue covers with Chan, his forehead resting against Chan’s cheek, when he whispered that he felt wrong.
“Wrong?” Chan had murmured, bringing his fingers up to shift through the fine hairs at the base of his head, while his other hand gripped at Felix’s knee beneath the sheets. He felt Chan’s gentle breathing on his forehead, his comfortingly large nose pressed against his bangs, as he waited in the moon-dark for Felix to speak again.
“I hold people too . . . too much,” Felix mumbled. “Too close.”
Chan had exhaled a bit, his fingers moving in small circles against the sensitive skin on the back of Felix’s knee, that thin and vulnerable place. Sometimes Felix felt like his whole body was just like that: vulnerable, too-soft, as if the wrong touch could slice him open and bleed him out.
Chan, though. Chan had never touched him too harshly, had never even thought to. He tends to touch Felix in ways that are only ever gentle: fingers scritching at his neck when he’s upset, the lightest hand on his lower back when he’s too hyper, the careful sweep of his hair out of his eyes when he’s just woken up in the morning and can’t quite adjust to the sun coming in through the window, right across Chan’s pillow. It’s Chan waiting, always waiting, for him to focus on him and return his gaze before he tells him good morning in that croak of a morning voice and sits up to stretch and leave—even on the days it takes minutes on minutes of stroking through Felix’s hair and tracing the freckles around his eyes as he waits for Felix to orient himself back into awareness. Minutes they often don’t have but minutes Chan sacrifices anyway to lead Felix back into wakefulness as gently as he knows how.
Felix had sighed. “I can see it in their eyes sometimes. When they look at me and I wanna . . . I don’t know, be closer, and they seem . . . polite. Like they’re pulling away.”
“Some people don’t know how to handle your light.”
Felix scoffed a bit wetly. “Light?”
“Mn, yeah. Your love is a kind of light, Lixxie.” He pauses to think.
“Just cause there’s more of it than other people sometimes . . . doesn’t make it wrong.”
There was a long pause while Chan thumbed at a freckle at the outer corner of Felix’s right eye. He pressed it gently, the one he’s told Felix disappears when he smiles at him, barefaced, in the dorms at night.
“But then why do I feel like I don’t match everybody else,” Felix said sadly, pressing back on where he knew Chan had a lone freckle right next to his nose. He pressed again, right on the nose itself, just to see if it would make him feel better. It kind of did.
Chan had sighed, not minding Felix’s squishing, content to receive it in the way he always does.
“When they don’t match you, it’s not about you, little one. It’s about what they . . . want or need to do. For themselves.”
He brought Felix’s hand down so he could look him in the eye.
“And sometimes it takes people longer to choose us. Longer than it takes us to choose them.”
He paused. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t match you one day. And even if they don’t choose us in the end . . .” (an old remembered sadness had flickered here in Chan’s eyes) “even if you never match . . . I don’t know, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be honest anyway. For yourself. For your own sake.”
Felix had turned Chan’s words over in his head that day, thinking and thinking. About matching, about not matching. About doing right by himself regardless.
(And if that meant he was more honest in trying to express, at least a little bit, the huge and unnameable feelings he held in his core for Chan himself—well, that was something that Chan had not intended but had happened nonetheless).
~
Here, surrounded by tens of his closest friends, and acquaintances he’s admired from afar but hasn’t quite gotten to know, Felix feels okay. Okay about the way he clings, okay about being gently made to let go sometimes.
He dances anyway, tacky with affection. The synth playing overhead is straight out of the 80s, something his mom might have listened to on sun-drenched car rides to and from the community pool on November days back in Sydney.
Felix moves under the magenta light, hips swaying, laughing, handed off from one person to the next. And when he gets thirsty, or tired, he retreats, endlessly, back to Chan—Chan, who always already has somehow procured an ice water for Felix, who has it in hand, it seems, the second Felix turns his way. As if he’d been watching and waiting for the moment Felix would shift focus back again, when he would come over, when he moved to nestle back against his side.
At this very moment, Chan is trying to guide the straw into a laughing Felix’s mouth, and Felix is saying that he can do it himself, hands batting at his—but eventually, he moves to accept it anyway (the same way he accepts Changbin’s outstretched chopsticks at restaurants or Minho’s wooden cooking spoon held out to taste). Chan watches him drink with eyes squinted in fondness, and Felix knows he will ask if he needs anything else. And Felix will shake his head and squeeze at Chan’s forearm (his leg, his knee) and bound off again at the opening notes of a good song, fall back into the flow. Like this, he eases into a rhythm of wild momentum and steady rest, a catch and release of adrenaline and comfort.
And he thinks—he thinks —he can feel Chan’s gaze on him while he dances, and even though he never turns to check for sure, he puts more flair into his dancing for Chan anyway, heart beating strong with even the possibility that he will look over and see him under these lights. He hopes Chan knows that even though Felix performs for so many people in so many ways (here, on stage, on camera, in life), right now Felix is performing for him. And so Felix throws his ass back with more finesse, reaches arms above his head with more grace, smiles with more confidence. Whether or not Chan’s actually looking matters less than the way the thought of him looking makes Felix feel : joyful, safe. Because Chan always looks at him as if he wants Felix to be these things, as if he’ll personally make sure of it.
Minutes pass like this, maybe hours, until the time Felix finally wanes, drawn like a ship to harbor back to Chan’s couch.
“‘m all sweaty,” Felix complains when Chan reaches an arm out to welcome him back, Felix sitting down and shifting a bit self-consciously as the sticky leather of the couch adheres to the back of his own leather pants.
“I don’t mind,” Chan says, holding an inexplicably new glass of water up to Felix to drink. Felix takes this one into his own hands, and when he’s finished gulping it down, he slides down, boneless, into the dip of the couch.
“Is our Lixxie finally all tired out?” Chan reaches out to thumb absentmindedly at the sweat just above Felix’s lips, and Felix wrinkles his nose and pulls his head away in disgust.
“Thank you, but I promise you don’t have to touch it.”
Chan just snorts and pokes his forehead for rejecting his help before offering him a napkin and letting him dab away the rest himself.
They sit together in comfortable silence for a bit.
“You looked beautiful out there,” Chan says suddenly, quiet enough that he wasn’t sure Chan had meant to say it out loud at all. Felix’s eyes, which had drifted shut, fly open at this, and his heart is suddenly pounding out of his chest.
“Beautiful?” he asks.
Chan lets out a small, awkward laugh, looking a bit like he regretted his words. Felix watches him fiddle with one of the thin bracelets around his wrist. “Yeah. Beautiful. Best dancer out there, for sure.”
He reaches out to fuss with Felix’s hair then, seemingly out of awkwardness, and tucks the blond strands back out of Felix’s eyes and securely behind his ears.
Felix looks up at Chan’s averted eyes and finds the confidence to reach back, tuck Chan’s own short curls behind his ear too. They spring back almost as soon as Felix tries, but the careful reciprocation soothes both of them anyway.
“You could dance with me too, you know.”
Chan startles a bit. “Me? Oh, no, I’d just look like a dork, you know that—”
Suddenly a bit desperate, Felix catches his hand. “What? I don’t think you look dorky. And besides, even if you did, I wouldn’t care—I just wanna dance with you. Please, Chris?”
Chan looks between Felix and the dance floor, and then back again, tracing the freckles around Felix’s eyes with a long look, and swallows. Brings a section of Felix’s hair forward so that it drapes nicely over his shoulder. Says, “Yeah. Okay.”
“Okay.” Felix smiles gently, and stands up, holding a hand out. And Chan takes it.
~
They end up not in the middle of the floor but somewhere near the side, partially hidden enough behind a pillar that when Chan wraps an arm all the way around his waist, Felix feels unselfconscious about stepping closer. Chan’s lost the jacket he wore coming in, and Felix relishes in the solid shape of him beneath where he’s resting his arms along Chan’s shoulders. It reminds him of those nights when Chan would pull Felix close whenever Felix made him laugh, giggling hushed into the pillow and squeezing Felix into his chest like he’s said the best thing Chan’s ever heard.
They sway a bit goofily at first, Chan taking the opportunity to twirl him outwards, forgetting like he always does what the proper direction is and nearly twisting Felix’s arm out of its socket—but it’s worth it for the way he’s snorting at Felix’s yelps of outrage, arms coming back around Felix in apology, for the way he gets looser and easier as their dance goes on.
Chan is laughing softly against the side of his head at one point, before he’s dipping Felix so far down that he thinks the ends of his hair must have brushed against the drink-sticky ground. But Felix goes, happy to move wherever Chan decides his body must, and when Chan pulls him back up, he leans his forehead against his.
In a tone more suited for a confessional than a club, Chan says, “This hair looks so good on you.”
Felix’s eyes snap up to meet his. “Really? You like it?”
Chan nods slowly against Felix’s forehead, a hand drifting down from the top of Felix’s scalp to the ends of his hair resting lightly against his lower back. He tugs softly, a gentle pressure that sends shivers up Felix’s spine.
“Makes you look . . . ethereal. Unreal somehow. Like I shouldn’t be allowed to hold you at all.”
Felix tightens his arms around Chan and pushes his nose gently against the side of Chan’s own.
“Well,” Felix responds softly, with more courage than he feels, “I had the extensions done for you. So you gotta be allowed.”
Something darkens in Chan’s eyes at this, and its the same look Felix thinks he had when he first walked in and saw Felix on the floor with Wooyoung, the same look that flashed in the corner of Felix’s eyes during promotions all those weeks ago. It’s raw, this look, and unguarded. It has nothing of the politeness of on-camera professionalism and everything of their remembered and intimate spaces: the dark car ride home, the shadowed evening walk, the touch of hands backstage—the longing space between the bedcovers and Chan’s night-hot skin.
“That’s too powerful a thing to give me.”
Felix raises his chin, as if in challenge. “And yet.”
Chan grips hard at Felix’s waist and shoulder and spins them both around. The move is fast, startling a small yip out of Felix, but the way he maneuvers Felix back against the pillar behind them is slow, until Felix thunks only very softly against the brick.
Chan fits his hand against the back of Felix’s neck and leans in, and in, and in, until Felix’s eyes are fluttering shut and Chan’s connecting their mouths together, the soft plush of Chan’s lips firm without being demanding, pulling away and pressing back, again and again, lipping at Felix’s surprised, then eager, mouth until Felix can’t hear the music at all, not when the world has narrowed down to this new rhythm. It doesn’t help that Chan has moved his hands up against his face, one over each of Felix’s ears, so that everything else really does fall away, muffled by Chan’s body, his hands, his lips, the warmth of a jean-clad thigh pressed up against the inside of his thigh. Chan moves a hand down Felix’s arm, caressing, before moving back and up against his shoulder blade until he's wedging it between Felix and the pillar behind him. It’s only distantly that Felix thinks he’s probably doing it for him, so that the brick doesn’t dig in quite so hard.
Chan exhales as he finally pulls back—changes his mind, comes back to press one more kiss against Felix’s soft mouth, accepts Felix’s small, impulsive lick to the corner of his—and pulls back again. As he does, he moves his other hand down and uncovers Felix’s ear, letting the rush of the world back in.
Felix smiles dopily up at him. Reaches up to trace an eyebrow as gentle as he knows how.
“Trying to one-up everybody else who just got a dance?”
Chan huffs a laugh and leans his forehead back against Felix’s. He shakes his head thoughtfully from side to side, warmth still zinging between them, and takes an unexpected length of time to respond.
“No. Believe or not . . .” Chan pauses and Felix pulls back to look up at him in question. “I actually really loved watching you dance with everybody else.”
“Loved it?” Felix says softly. He cocks his head. “Why?”
“Watching you with everybody . . . well, I guess it’s kind of embarrassing to put it like this, but it’s one of my favorite versions of you. Your love for people. The way you brighten when you hold them and look so happy when they hold you back. Reminds me, just every time, of why—” Chan clears his throat a bit self-consciously. “Why I love you like I do.”
He continues, a bit more rushed than before, “I just see so much light around you when you’re with the people you care about, and I see them lit up by it too, and gosh! Gosh. I don’t know, it makes me feel good, somehow, watching you happy like that. Watching you spread that joy. Seeing other people see you even a little bit like how I see you. Makes me feel nice. Happy too.”
Felix can feel tears stinging and reaches a hand up to Chan’s ear, rubbing his thumb gently along it like Chan always does to him.
“Yeah?” he whispers, barely audible over the track that’s been playing without either of them really noticing. He smiles back at Felix. “Yeah. Watched you dance all night. Was all I needed, really.”
He leans into Felix’s ear, “Although kissing you was better than anything, I’ll be honest.”
“Well,” Felix laughed, “thank you for being honest.”
Chan reaches a sudden hand up and grazes the back of his knuckles down Felix’s face, slowly, as if too harsh of a movement would make Felix disappear.
“Of course,” he says with more seriousness than Felix expects. “I’m working on that. Being honest, I mean.”
“Ah. Me too, actually,” Felix says, catching Chan’s fingers as they come to his chin. “Somebody pretty wise once told me it was good to be honest—even if it’s only for myself. For my own sake.”
Chan’s mouth crooked into a grin and squeezed Felix’s hand. “Sounds like good advice.”
Felix brings Chan’s hand up to his mouth and presses a lingering kiss to the palm of Chan’s warm hand. “It was.”
The song overhead chooses that moment to fade and the lights change once more, a final time, transporting Chan and Felix from their dim-lit bubble of soft magenta privacy into a powerful, ambient gold. Its brilliance sweeps through the venue space, illuminating everybody—their colleagues on the dancefloor, their members by the couches, their staff at the bar, their friends waving them over—jolting them from their late-night trance with a sudden, sun-bright warmth. The light winds around and through them all like a mighty river-rush of morning light: soft in hue but potent with force—a heartrending kind of beauty that you count yourself lucky to see, even if only once, even if only for tonight. And as another song takes off into the newly golden air, Chan and Felix move forward into the flow.