Work Text:
Lee Chan has had his life figured out since he was still a kid, swinging his little legs back and forth, holding tightly into his best friend’s hand. In this big vast world, he thought, all you needed was a little luck. He would grow up to be someone big and important and Boo Seungkwan would, too.
He has never known loneliness, not truly, has only felt it in place of Seungkwan. He’s grateful for it every damned day of his life.
But Hansol does understand. Loneliness, he means. Chan doesn’t know how, but he can tell. In those wide eyes, he manages to be both sad and sneaky, lax and lost. It makes all the difference. When they meet for the first time, he doesn’t give him a lot. Just a small nod and a shrug. Not even a double take. No twitching of the mouth or nose scrunching. It was almost unbearable.
That’s new. People have always looked, if nothing else—Seungkwan who shone bright, gilded gold, and Chan who preferred to be painted silver.
I don’t need anyone else to know me; not when I’ve got you.
“So,” Hansol says, unforgiving even then, and definitely not one to readily make Chan’s life easier, “you see color, huh.”
(He thinks that he’s never been more afraid of anything as he was then. He’s never needed—never wanted—anyone to look at him like that, like they could peel off his layers with a single calculated look.)
Chwe Hansol is not his soulmate, but Chan notices him all the same. He's a trainee in the same place Seungkwan and Chan are, and where no one is beautiful when you're only just growing into yourself, Hansol is .
His hands are slim and slender, pale as moonlight; his smile is rare and only done when in a particularly good humor; his mind a tactician’s playground. For some reason, he’s never asked why Chan was able to see color or who his soulmate was even when he’s guessed it right from the start, but he stays by Chan’s side as a faithful, silent shade.
He tells him that it was obvious, though. That doesn’t make sense; at least, not to Chan. Hansol only waves it off. “Seungkwan says you dyed your hair again. Why, when no one else can see?”
Here’s the thing with Chan: he’s never really felt the need to explain himself, and has never really needed to. Usually, just the mere act of saying something vague is enough to throw people off his trail, but Hansol looks at him, waiting, and Chan is tempted to actually tell him, however stupid the actual reason was—tell him everything he keeps locked in his airtight little heart, with all the free space in his atriums and ventricles.
He wonders if Hansol would even want it. If he’d take it if Chan offered him the key, brandishing the thing like it was worth something.
Chan wants to tell him all of it. He wonders if Hansol would be interested, if he’d tilt his head and listen, really listen; if he’d pick up on everything Chan doesn’t wanna say. If he’d like to hear about his grandmother, or his little brother, or just about Seungkwan—
“I dunno,” he deflects instead. Hansol hums, nonchalant, not one to be ruffled by such things. “I just felt like it, I guess. I like having something for myself.”
Lee Chan doesn’t need it. He knows that having a soulmate preordained for you at birth means that he is not meant to have things that are only for him. He’s never needed anyone to know him, anyway. Just Seungkwan—blustering, annoying, too-full-of-himself Seungkwan—is more than enough already.
Still, he wants. He wants so badly.
Hansol is not his soulmate. That much is obvious. He doesn’t want him to be, either. He doesn’t think it could be anyone but Seungkwan.
Still, he wants—desperately, agonizingly, quietly. Their shoulders brush and Chan grows weak in the knees. Their fingers touch and there’s a live wire pulsing in his veins. It’s uncomfortable, almost, but he thinks it’s how Seungkwan feels when he brings people home to introduce them to his parents—the useless sort of affection that fills him full of hope.
He knows it isn’t worth the risk. Chan’s used to grand gestures. He’s used to signs from the universe, a declaration that he was meant for greater things. Love was supposed to feel like that, wasn’t it? Like—like—
Hansol isn’t one to waste his energy on things that won’t last. That much he knows as he watches him move—shoulders pulled tight and taut, movements sluggish and lazy. That much he knows as he watches him make conversation—voice deep and stern, giving himself an allowance, expressions nonchalant and unchanging.
There will be nothing extraordinary to serve at his table. There is only at much he knows, but he knows that loving Hansol… while it may be nice, it wouldn’t be anything—
Jeonghan spots him resting against the wall as they take their break, wiping the sweat off of his forehead. He hands him a water bottle like an offering.
“Keep your eyes forward,” he reminds him, the corners of his eyes crinkling in what Chan thinks is mirthful amusement, “and it’s probably not as bad as you think.”
That much he knows, but it’s still difficult for him to keep his mind off of him. Hansol meets his gaze from across the studio. Chan looks away.
(Seungcheol sighs from the sidelines; Jeonghan only smiles.
“Let them be,” he says. “These things need time, after all.”)
“Hey. Chan.” They’re walking home together because the members are little shits and Seungkwan even more so, throwing a damned wink his way as he packed up and left like lightning. “What does color look like?”
He might be wrong, but Chan is pretty sure your soulmate’s emotions distort how you see them. He’s never asked Seungkwan, because he would never give him a proper answer, but it always distorts things. Their home has never been anything but warm—it’s a happy place, bustling with sun-soaked memories and childhood photographs pinned on the refrigerator with magnets and a wall dedicated to all their awards. It was a messy shoe rack and a hearty dinner and a good old fashioned fight with his dongsaeng that their grandmother would yell at them for.
Sometimes though, it changes.
When Seungkwan was angry, Chan’d see scarlet at the corner of his eyes, turning everything into a breathing living heartbeat. When Seungkwan was sad, he always woke up with blue tinting his vision, leaving him to deal with a migraine. When Seungkwan was happy—well, those were the best times. The rush was a whole ‘nother experience.
“It’s one of those things you gotta experience to know, I think.”
Hansol shrugs, fixing the straps of his backpack. “’Kay,” he concedes, easily. “Wanna stop for ice pops?”
He doesn’t know how else to say that love scares him, that feelings aren’t something he’s good at. Seungkwan’s the surefooted one—when he loves, he loves wholly, truthfully, undeniably. It shows in how he performs—ambitious and determined and so completely. Chan’s much better at second guessing himself, at overthinking things.
So, to reiterate: Chwe Hansol is not his soulmate, but he finds his heart coated in his hues, in his every poignant truth and folly. Chwe Hansol is not his soulmate, but he still wants to love him and that—
That’s scary all by itself.
“Sure,” he agrees. Hansol makes a little noise of acknowledgement. They go get popsicles—violet stains Hansol’s lips and it’s almost painful, the way the colors that have nothing to do with Hansol make Chan so breathless.
Hansol seems to notice, because in the middle of pulling out his tangled earbuds from his pocket, he reproaches him.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” he asks, knowing yet unknowable.
You have my attention , Chan wants to say. You have all of it. Take it. Instead, he shrugs.
“I’m not,” he denies. Maybe Seungkwan’s right. Maybe he really is a coward sometimes. “Can I share?”
Hansol shrugs, handing him the other earbud. The song is something Chan doesn’t recognize, and he says as much.
“It’s an anime OST,” Hansol says, looking almost embarrassed. “Don’t ask questions.”
Chan doesn’t know why he can’t stop smiling.
Hansol never sleeps. It’s one of the things that makes up his personality—he’s lax and lackadaisical, blunt and adaptable. He likes scrolling through memes and laughing (small, soft little chuckles like his happiness comes at a price and he’s a cheap motherfucker) at the stupid shit he finds on YouTube. He texts Chan periodically, something silly, something shady.
It turns Chan’s heart to something like putty. Seungkwan rolls his eyes.
Hansol is not his soulmate. They’re not meant for grand gestures or illusions of grandeur, but that’s fine. Chan finds love in the spaces between his fingers, the stitches on his oversized hoodie, the random emojis in the sparse texts he sends.
Seungkwan notices, because of course he does. “Hey, Channie. Are you in love with him or something?”
“No,” Chan replies instantly.
Seungkwan looks at him. Chuckles. “You can’t lie to me, y’know. Do something ‘bout it already. When I get back from youth camp, you better have sucked face by then.”
“You don’t even have anyone right now,” Chan replies, petty. But Seungkwan is not listening to him anymore, muttering loudly to himself about something or another, and Chan is forced to ruminate.
“Sorry for intruding,” Hansol bows now, a low one as he is clutching his overnight bag. His eyes scan the room beyond Chan’s shoulder, a precise, flitting look, before he turns his gaze to Chan. “Hi.”
“Hello,” Chan smiles. He moves aside as to let him through. “Come in.”
He’s being opportunistic, asking Hansol to stay the night at his house for a sleepover. It’s not like they had much between them aside from being members on the same group.
Still, Hansol takes the offer graciously—perhaps even a little too nonchalantly. He shoots back an ‘kay, gonna ask my parents . In thirty minutes (and Chan knows this because he counted) he’s been granted permission. It was fine, he said, nothing better to do . Chan curses himself for feeling this happy about it.
Dinner is fine—a little awkward, but fine. Hansol doesn’t talk much, but he compliments the food and answers all the questions and always has something fun to say about his sister and his parents.
That night, Hansol drapes himself over the newly laundered sheets on his bed as Chan deliberately ignores Seungkwan’s messages on LINE.
Hansol is not his soulmate. Even so—
“Can I?” Hansol queries, taking out a vape pen from his bag.
It’s not a surprise. He’s heard from Seungkwan that he runs into Hansol sometimes when he goes behind the company building to vape before practice, and it’s not like Seungcheol-hyung doesn’t do this every other night with the window open to get the smoke out when he comes over. Bad habit, he always says, one I have to quit.
“M’okay. Just do it by the window—drag that chair over there so you can sit while you do.”
Hansol nods before doing exactly that; he folds his knees to his chest and takes a deep puff from the vape pen. It takes him a few inhales and exhales before he speaks again.
“Your soulmate’s Seungkwan, right?” he asks, sounding mellowed out now. Chan did not think he was tense before, but the difference is palpable. He supposes even Hansol can get nervous. “Why don’t you tell anyone?”
He doesn’t know a world without Seungkwan, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t know a world where he could, possibly, find someone in this world who’d mean as much to him as his best friend.
“I’m scared,” he tells him instead. The words sound familiar—with a start, he realizes that’s because it’s Seungkwan’s, a grating voice in his head; nothing like his.
(Sometimes, he thinks, sometimes, Seungkwan really does understand him better than he does himself, even when he hates the implications of it.)
“Are you,” Hansol replies, his tone level. He looks like he already knows, how frightened Chan is with the possibility of being known. Loving Hansol wasn’t finding a soulmate nor was it a union the fates decreed would be unstoppable. Unlike everything else in Chan’s far too colorful life, a future with Hansol would be ordinary.
He’s not used to it. He doesn’t know what to do. He thinks of Seungkwan; of the partners Seungkwan has had, how happy he looks every single time even when he knows the stars had no say in this—that there was no divinity in the love they offered.
“I like you.”
This time, Hansol spares him a glance; his ears are growing pink, and his lips twitch. That’s when it clicks. Oh , he thinks, oh . This is it. He thinks he’d find rights in every wrong the world tried to point out if it meant staying with Hansol. “Do you?”
“I do,” he says. Then, he repeats, softly, seriously, “I really do.”
Hansol smiles. It spreads slow and wide and beautiful. “About time,” and when he reaches out, Chan meets him halfway; there are fingers digging into his hair, pulling him closer. He tastes like strawberries and smoke. “I like you, too.”