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Chan is certain Hyunjin and Jisung can't stand each other.
The reason? It surpasses him. He’ll figure it out one day, probably.
He knows there’s not something as a perfect team, or a perfect relationship per se, and ups and downs are to be expected. But this is different. The heated gazes, the snarky remarks, they are too real. Not like Seungmin's measured sharp tongue, not like Minho's quick empty threats. He feels the heat of it slowly rising under his skin.
Chan is meant to protect. But how does he protect them from each other when that’s not what he wants? They are not supposed to be cautious around the other, nor fight, or be separated like cats and dogs. But Chan doesn’t seem to figure it out, he can’t find an answer without unbalancing their already fragile coexistence. And he is just scared to make a wrong move.
All this is still too new. He can say for certain that he trusts these seven individuals, but that doesn’t mean he knows them like the pattern on his shields, yet. He knows Felix doesn’t like coffee, he doesn’t know why he chose to leave his hometown. He knows Minho has three cats, he doesn’t know why he has a scar on his stomach. They are all so distinctively different that Chan can’t just go around assuming he will say or do the right thing every time. On hero duty, sure. In any other situation, he doesn’t have that type of certitude.
Maybe if Jisung could give him an honest conversation.
Maybe if Hyunjin stopped running away from him.
Chan resolve lands on letting them be for a while. He can deal with the arguments, some that end without the need to step in, others that escalate to fights where he has to intervene. He deals with the encounters, when they get too close to each other, Chan can get in between every time. When he has to organize the patrol and mission schedules, he keeps in mind to not assign them alone together.
The tension is always present.
But most times it is just that. A constant ache in the back of his mind that he can ignore.
Until is not.
He should have seen it coming.
The ache turning into a full-blown migraine. Their collisions and fights became so constant that it was not only Chan intervening anymore. Their constant bickering yesterday, Hyunjin smacking Jisung away, Minho screaming at them this evening. Chan thought they were unusually hectic, but attributed it to the stress of being so close to becoming pro-heroes. All of them are under a lot of pressure.
And that must be why Chan thought nothing of it when, after their mission, Hyunjin and Jisung disappeared, just like Seungmin and Jeongin, somewhere in the area. It was just natural to think they all parted ways to unwind after a day packed with activity.
It’s only when people start screaming in the streets outside the agency building that the feeling in his gut turns to corrosive acid. Chan runs the entire way down, he is stepping out of the front doors when the emergency alarms start blaring over his head.
He doesn’t make it in time before someone gets hurt.
Their impact shakes the surrounding buildings, but cracks Chan’s mortal coil. The windows shatter, the shards of glass fly in every direction, ice spreads through the pavement. Chan raises shields over the area, covering the civilians that gathered at the spectacle from the collateral damage.
His power guides him like a natural instinct, to fill in the crevices, to keep everything where it belongs. Chan’s core strains. How does he stop a glacier force? How does he contain an intangible power?
When he can lower the defenses, the situation breaks into collective panic. People start running and screaming to get to safety. But with a pit in his stomach, Chan realizes the danger has succumbed under their own limits.
Jisung screams in pain, writhing on the ice-covered ground. Where his skin is not raw red, it is frostbitten purple and blue.
Hyunjin remains still, bizarrely unresponsive, even as people begin to surround him. Blood pools below his head on the floor.
The medical bay of the agency is close enough for the paramedics to arrive almost immediately.
One of the paramedics tells him to get out of the way, or something, Chan is not listening, but he interacts enough with the medical teams to know that that’s what it means. Chan steps back, not really knowing when he got so close. The paramedics have no reason to recognize a simple hero trainee, maybe if they knew, they would have let the leader stay close when he is so obviously yearning for it. But Chan doesn’t say anything, because he looks around and sees them.
For a second Chan considers surrounding them with his shields, hold them as if it were the safety of his hands. Spare them the view, and keep all the burden to himself. But as they step into the disarray, Chan painfully realizes that he will never be able to, because they are protectors too.
But even human shields need to be selfish sometimes, and drop the armor to preserve their own hearts.
Chan can almost physically see the moment all that training doesn't save them from the shock of a situation like this. He can't stand Jeongin and Felix's faces, the usual bubbly and cheerful members, contorted in fear and anguish.
Minho, with his always fastened ability to take action, quickly keeps Seungmin behind him and grips Felix's wrist when, in a panic, he tries to take off. Changbin stays in the sidelines, immediately pushing civilians back even when he can’t stop looking back to the center of the chaos. And Jeongin, Jeongin runs.
Chan has to leap to catch him. He cries in distress at being stopped, and they almost topple sideways when Chan pulls from the first thing he can reach of him. It’s all a desperate attempt to do something. Chan's conscience is burning, he screws his eyes shut. He is just thankful that Jeongin, in his frightened state, doesn’t have a mind to teleport away.
He wraps Jeongin in his arms, holding him back and angling them so the scene is out of his line of vision. Jeongin's voice breaks as he desperately cries, hyung-hyung, they— they are, hyung, over and over, shocked to his core. And Chan can only level his voice, whispering to deaf ears that everything will be fine.
There’s nothing to do, the damage is done. He won't be able to erase the image of two of his best friends bloodied bodies from his youngest member's memory. He won’t forget.
Neither will Chan.
He won’t forget how Jisung is put under sedatives as the paramedics start to treat his mauled skin.
Or how there’s a cervical collar around Hyunjin’s neck as they lift him off the ground like a rag doll.
Chan can only squeeze Jeongin in his embrace as he silently promises that he will protect them, the seven of them. Staring, unblinking, as they raise Hyunjin and Jisung to the ambulances. Swear with his life that something like this will not happen again.
Because if it does, Chan will not be able to call himself their leader anymore.
“”
The next couple of hours pass in a blur. Chan has not been able to slow down for a single second. From ambulances, to answering medical questions, to picking up calls. By the time Hyunjin and Jisung are both stabilized, the clock marks three in the morning.
Chan is not scared of hospitals, he feels pretty indifferent about them. But he hates that his dream job makes him come in every other day. Most times it's not even him receiving the attention, yet still, it's him circling the same halls with knots in his stomach each time.
Chan looks out of the window at the dark streets below. He thinks about what he will have to do tomorrow, or in a couple hours, actually.
He can’t allow himself to be uncommunicated; that's the only reason why he hasn’t turned his phone off. But the yellow press and the nonstop notifications entering it are giving him a migraine.
He just has to breathe. Breathe through it as the doctors tell him about Hyunjin and Jisung's injuries, the consequences, and following treatment, he nods at the incomprehensible words. Breath as he answers his phone and tells a room number to his agent that he actually can’t recall.
Breathe in.
Blink every five seconds.
Breathe out.
His body is beginning to shake, he notices. His limbs feel tingly. The brain fog surrounds him protectively, he will remember everything tomorrow, when he goes back to the agency and fixes all this.
For now he lets his body work in automatic.
“Hyung.” It's Minho’s voice echoing in the empty halls, he doesn’t move. Chan told all of them to go home and rest. The mission today had been really strenuous. He doesn’t know why Minho is still here. “Are you okay?”
Blink once, twice.
Breathe on manual.
Or, how was it?
Chan slowly spins on his heels. He finally focuses back on the present and looks at Minho.
“I am okay. I'm not the one lying on a hospital bed.” He answers, because it’s the truth. He is standing on his own feet. He is not confined to bed rest, unable to answer what year is it? And he is definitely not covered in bandages and heavily sedated.
“That's not what I asked.” Minho says. His expression changes, slightly frowning, his eyes sharpen.
Chan vaguely remembers whispers in the agency rooms about a certain dangerous trainee. Chan doesn’t believe them. But as Minho stares at him, like something has knocked him off. He knows why he used to be cautious before. Maybe he still is.
If that certain trainee decided to bash out on him right now… Well, Chan resources to make fake-up scenarios are completely unoperational. Maybe the physical pain of a good punch would reboot him back to reality.
Minho will not leave, he knows. He is thankful in the back of his mind, because he doesn’t know what he will do when Hyunjin wakes up and realizes he is in a hospital. Chan hopes Minho has a better shot keeping him at ease while Chan stays with Jisung. On the other hand, he just doesn’t have the care of pretending to stay under Minho's attentive gaze too.
Yes, he could use the punch.
“It'll be okay.”
“”
Chan knows Hyunjin and Jisung can’t stand each other.
There’s no room for doubt now, the sharp pieces of the collision are still piercing into his feet as he tries to stand tall.
The next time he arrives at the agency, the building is cordoned off, right in front of the front doors is still ice melting and blood sprawled on the pavement. Chan almost runs inside at the sight of it. Almost.
His posture is straight, and his face unreadable as camera flashes and microphones invade his personal space.
It’s indescribably hard to look at them. Chan can’t fathom that they could do something like this. It’s pure disbelief, even betrayal. Because after all the differences, he thought he had settled down the limits of what was enough.
Now as they sit across the stygian room, Chan wonders what are they actually capable of?
Is this the cut-off point of their aggression, or have they just opened Pandora’s box, and this is just the starting line of a greater disaster?
If that’s the case, Chan is honestly terrified. If he couldn’t prevent this from happening the first time, his chances of stopping another fight, of containing the imminent destruction, are plummeting down right in front of his eyes.
Next time when he is not around…
When they cross the line, Chan might lose them. If he doesn’t do something, they will—
Chan breathes slowly, in and out, before he spirals too far away to a reality that does not exist.
His fists are closed tightly under the table as he listens, unable to do anything, just watch as Hyunjin and Jisung's faces turn white as his agent's menacing voice says, if something remotely similar happens again, you are out. It hits them like a dry punch. Jisung's eyes fill with tears, Hyunjin’s head hangs low, Chan’s heart falls to his stomach.
If this doesn’t close the casket, who knows what else will. The threat of losing the most valuable thing, what they have been training for all their life, might be sufficient to bound them back until there’s a better way to deal with it.
Chan will be the leader his agent wants him to be, he will keep it under control.
By the end of the night he has carved half crescents on the palms of his hands.
His trust remains shattered for a while after that tragic night. But Hyunjin and Jisung don’t go that far ever again. They might flip each other off, and on the worst days, push the other out of the way. It doesn’t get worse than that.
Chan never imagined this is how they would reach the big leagues. Putting on the perfect mask of a team like family and hiding riddles behind closed doors.
But it’s how it, sadly, happened.
At least he still has the eight of them together, Chan thinks that’s enough.
He will fix it one day, he has to. That day might not be today, their wounds are still too fresh, and Chan has so much on his plate already.
But this cannot be their forever bitter axis.
“”
Chan is not so certain about what's going on with Hyunjin and Jisung anymore.
Or he does, it's just that it might be too good to be true. And Chan can’t give himself hopeless expectations.
Expectations are the last thing he can have with his pair.
Chan is just a mere bystander in their story, maybe a victim, maybe a driver. Something at least.
Some nights he wonders if he was who implanted the breaking point. Perhaps it was that day that, after a mission, he cornered Jisung in his office, and borderline forced him to talk. It didn’t go well.
Nothing was the same after that.
It actually seemed like things were changing for good for a while, like the balance and harmony he was yearning for so long was finally about to snap into place. But, oh, so cruelly, was stripped away from him— from them, from Hyunjin and Jisung. How could he be this selfish? Chan was not even inside when that building was reduced to ashes. The whole team got caught in the collateral damage that time. Especially when they had to learn how to fight without one of their members.
Chan genuinely thought destiny was just playing with him, testing him, after that. Like any deity above was just pulling on his strings to see how much he could take.
When the weird tension came back, but this time without the aggression and violence. Hyunjin was all fake impassiveness, Jisung was destructive quietness. Chan couldn’t recognize them when they were around the other.
Another hurried trip to the hospital. Jisung’s life on the line, the only thing keeping him on this plane a soft layer of frost.
A new mission where one of his pro-heroes was proclaimed missing, and had Chan taking a flight to a foreign city to look for Hyunjin, and instead he found him bloodied and battered in Jisung’s arms.
Somehow all that leads to the present, where he tries to recopilate every single detail, even when most of the information is not for him to obtain. But Chan needs it to convince himself that this is real. That he can finally put his guard down and nothing bad will happen like it did before.
Until then he will keep the benefit of the doubt.
He doesn’t want to be the stick in the mud. This is what he wanted. The fights stopped, the arguments subdued, and Hyunjin and Jisung finally started to act like teammates. And then the subtle touches and quiet gazes took place. Chan finds himself looking away sometimes, when he feels like a trespasser. He might jinx it if he says it out loud, but he has caught the others staring too. Felix's smile was so big once, after a long day when the three of them decided to sit down and just chat. Jisung's arm ended around Hyunjin’s shoulders as they just continued laughing. They looked so comfortable. Or the time they paired against Changbin and Seungmin, and teased them to oblivion, mocking them about how they had screamed for reinforcements for a false alarm. It was brutal, and Changbin and Seungmin were beet red by the end of it. But not even Minho intervened in the raid to spare them some dignity, he watched from the side, his eyes were so soft.
It’s so clear that not only they have overcome whatever barrier there was between them, but also, made the jump to dive into something deeper. So out of sight and at the same time so obvious.
Chan will let them lead the way. His team is happy and safe, and their bonds become stronger every day.
Even with him. Jisung has been shining around him, bringing warmth and thrill, illuminating his cloudy days. And Hyunjin's orbit gets closer to his the more the earth spins, drawing galaxies on his dark nights.
That’s what matters. Right?
He can move on.
But he stays behind. He watches everyone from afar, because if things go south again…
Who else will?
“”
Nothing is inherently wrong.
Just that he barely slept last night because he arrived well past midnight when he went to pick Seungmin from the hospital after he had a minor injury on his patrol.
Just that he is anxious about Minho and Jeongin leaving for a mission out of town in two days.
Just that he worried all day about Felix and his fever that doesn’t seem to break since yesterday. Felix insists it's fine, but Chan knows how bad his fevers can get.
Just that—
“Stop fighting.”
It comes out automatically, like an old habit that never died. The words taste weird in his mouth after so long without muttering them.
Hyunjin and Jisung stiffen. Eyes wide as they look back at him. And Chan is just as surprised as them. He didn’t mean to sound so jarring. God. He knows they are not actually fighting, they were at best roughhousing. Their giggles and laughter increasing in volume, Jisung calling Hyunjin a cheater as he was pinned to the couch with his long legs. That sight is something that he would have never imagined just a couple months ago. It becomes a casual occurrence the more Hyunjin visits their department. But Chan can’t help to feel wary when their play fight escalates to something pushing on aggressive bickering.
And, suddenly, Chan sees bruised skin and bloody fingernails.
It's just the flash of a twisted image, not even a memory. It is not real. But it doesn’t matter when it makes his pulse skyrocket and his respiratory system malfunction in mere seconds. The words are punched out of him, echoing in his ears.
When he blinks and the blood disappears, there’s just Hyunjin's chary expression. Now that he has separated from Jisung, he sits awkwardly on the edge of the cushion like he doesn’t know what to do. And Jisung, still lying where Hyunjin left him, stares at him confusedly.
Chan swallows the remains of nausea to clear his throat. His mouth is so dry suddenly that he can’t even apologize for the nonsense act he just performed, so he walks away in silence.
The hallway to his room feels eternal, the click of his door sounds like a shotgun behind him, and by the time he reaches the window the sky is so dark the lightning outside is the only thing illuminating his dark room from time to time.
Chan has been standing in the same spot for too long now, he doesn’t know when it started to rain, but the sound of it hitting the glass and ceiling of his bedroom lulls his thoughts to a quiet turbulence.
Everything is okay, he tells himself when his chest feels too tight to continue breathing.
Chan sees white and can’t help but jump at the loud strike of thunder. His phone screen lights the room dimly, when he picks it up with shaky hands, and he realizes it has stopped charging. He doesn’t know when he connected it, it must mean there’s no power in the building because of the storm.
But he notices he has an unread message from Jisung that says, we’re going for a walk brb, received hours ago.
They are outside…
He tries to shake the fog surrounding him, make a neat line of thoughts, but he feels underwater. The letters blur on his screen. He needs to call Jisung.
Because, because—
He throws the door open and doesn’t hear the slam. The inside of the apartment is so quiet, the thunder outside is too loud.
I have to find them.
He doesn't know where his phone went, everything is so dark.
I’m meant to— to…
The same long hall that doesn't end, it has his head spinning. The vertigo overtakes him, and he holds onto the walls.
Hyung.
It's one foot in front of the other over the cold tiles below. Hyung. And he finally enters the empty kitchen. There are shoes missing at the front door and half-finished glasses of water on the counter.
“Chan-hyung?”
Chan can feel it through the shield that materializes around him. Why it snapped in place? He doesn't know. But when someone's hand reaches his personal space they get rejected backwards. And Chan gets startled when he hears Hyunjin hissing like he's been burned.
Hyunjin jumps, and the distinct high clattering of broken glass echoes in the kitchen.
“Hah!” Hyunjin yelps with surprise, raising his hands quickly from the counter. But Chan only sees red.
Red liquid dripping on the surface of the marble.
Red as it seeps through Hyunjin’s fingers pressing on his injured hand.
“Hyunjin—”
This is not happening. Chan moves hysterically, tumbling as he reaches for the paper towels over the isle with trembling hands.
“I… didn’t see the cup.” The giggle of embarrassment in Hyunjin’s voice stabs through his heart. I didn’t want to hurt you, he wants to say, he can only hear his teeth rattling together instead. I'm meant to protect you.
From myself.
Chan can’t breathe.
“Hyung, it’s okay! It was an accide—” Hyunjin’s animated voice cuts suddenly at the sight in front of him. Chan trembles, with handfuls of paper tissues tightly fisted between his fingers. His world blurs, but he has to move forward. Hyunjin gasps, quickly closing the distance when Chan sways, he struggles to hold him upright with his uninjured hand and accidentally smears blood on Chan’s upper arm and clothes. Hyunjin doesn’t know what's happening, but hearing Chan hyperventilate against his shoulder sends his alarms ablaze. Hyunjin shifts his stance and turns his head to the hall. “Jisung!”
Even if Hyunjin turned away so he didn’t scream directly in Chan’s ear, the loud sound reverberates over the small apartment. Chan flinches, forgetting about the tissues, he grips Hyunjin's clothes instead. When hurried steps get closer, Chan's panic grows. A new shield surrounds them, Jisung stops abruptly just outside of it.
“Hyung—” Hyunjin says, but Chan can barely hear him. Something cold rests over his shoulders, and he holds Hyunjin for dear life. “It’s okay, it’s just Jisung.”
It's both of them, they are safe.
The moment Chan lets go of the shield his knees give up under him. There’s not much Hyunjin can do when Chan has an iron grip on his clothes, and both of them end on the floor. Jisung is immediately kneeling beside them.
“Hyung, it’s okay. You are here with us.” Jisung tries, voice soothing. Hyunjin lets him take the lead, between the two of them, he is more experienced dealing with this type of situation, on top of being, Hyunjin assumes, who Chan will be more comfortable helping him. Jisung softly untangles Chan’s fingers from Hyunjin's shirt and places Chan’s hand over his own chest. “Breathe with me, yes?”
Chan's lungs are not cooperating, and it seriously hurts when he tries to follow Jisung's pace. He shakes his head when he starts coughing. Hyunjin and Jisung look at each other, mirroring the worry in their expressions. Hyunjin decides to put his hand over the one still holding to him, and the other gently guides Chan to raise his head from where he's been pressing it against his chest. Chan's eyes are watery and lost when he looks at them, but his choked breaths stabilize a bit at seeing Hyunjin and Jisung synchronize for him. So Chan tries to follow.
“Good. You are okay.” Jisung reassures him, not stopping with the breathing exercises until Chan’s chest stops hissing. He shakes, holding onto them like a vice. Fear still clouds his senses, and he doesn't want to let them go any time soon. “We are here.”
They stay still, waiting. And Chan feels so stupid. He is relieved they are here, safe, or, with him, but not in a million years would he have wanted them to see him like this.
“We should get out of the floor. Can you stand up, hyung?” Hyunjin asks him. It’s Chan's pure unwillingness to be babied that gives him the strength to stand on jelly legs.
Hyunjin and Jisung help him back up and guide him to his room, the power hasn’t come back yet, so it's barely lit up from the open curtains. Chan sits on the bed against the headboard, they stand close, but he cannot look at them.
He doesn’t have the power to tell them to leave, even though that’s the last thing he wants. He doesn’t want to be seen, their presence is heavy as they remain awkwardly still by the side of the bed, and he's just closed off.
Another strike of thunder makes the room white.
The three of them startle. Hyunjin’s hands fly to his ears, eyes shut. Chan is not scared of loud noises, he is unusually jumpy tonight. Jisung recovers instantly, like Chan normally would, he shakes the natural feeling of fright easily and locks his attention on Hyunjin. He holds him softly in a comforting touch, just waiting until Hyunjin decides to move on his own. Chan can hear the rush of his blood in his ears, he stares in awe, so happy for them, and so… envious.
He almost jumps again when Jisung's worried eyes drift to him instantly, checking on him too. Jisung hesitates as Chan tries to fix his expression, like he's deciding how to divide his priority between the two of them. Him, him, always put him first, Chan's inner voice begs, after everything, he wouldn’t want it any other way. He feels so small because Hyunjin notices, he can see it, his emotions always clear on his face like an open book, he exhales the air he was holding in a slow sigh.
“Should I leave?” Hyunjin whispers so quietly to Jisung. Chan shouldn't say anything. It's a them thing, their decision, even if Chan is directly connected to it.
He cannot think of one time it was not the other way around. Them asking their leader for guidance, for his opinion even in the most trivial situations. Right now Hyunjin looks for Jisung, maybe because he is the closest to Chan, or probably because Chan is not stable enough to decide for himself.
What a joke of a leader he feels.
Guilt kicks him hard in the stomach, and he is stuttering a response at the implications of Hyunjin's question.
“No-no, stay, please.” Chan pleads, and both of them look at him carefully. His face burns in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your night.”
Jisung huffs with aggressive indignation, his eyebrows crease. He looks just like when he was going to snap back at Hyunjin not many moons ago. Chan has to remind himself that he doesn’t have to prepare for the raid anymore.
“Don’t say that. You haven’t ruined anything.” Jisung's voice echoes harshly in the night. His anger is not directed at Chan, it's more driven by the feeling of powerlessness to help. He's blindly falling on a rampage. Thankfully, Hyunjin can see right through him and grabs him by the arm before Jisung starts pacing like he knows he will. Hyunjin shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and Jisung looks at him. And Chan, Chan feels so out of place in his own room. Jisung gazes back at Chan at last and sighs, his voice is a tad more gentle the next time he speaks. “I’ll be right back.”
Jisung leaves the room with quick steps, the sound of his own door opening echoes in the hall.
It’s all in the past, but as Hyunjin stands there, hair disheveled and stains of red on his white t-shirt, he feels a couple years younger.
Chan realizes how terrified he actually was.
How on edge he was the next couple of months, and he could not have Hyunjin and Jisung out of sight, borderline paranoid, scared that they would fight again. The last time it had happened so fast, he feared he might blink and blood would stain the pavement again. He felt so guilty when he had to call Minho and Changbin, and ask them if they could help him keep Hyunjin and Jisung under their watch. Chan didn’t want to lend any responsibilities to them, he was supposed to be able to handle his members, but he could not risk it.
How scared he was when he thought his stars were finally starting to align, Hyunjin came into his office one day and said, I don't know if I can keep doing this, hyung. And they lost him, Chan tried to show his support even with his throat wrapped in thorns, but he lost Hyunjin for a couple months. Chan laid awake the entire night, and the next, wondering where he went wrong. Or, in fact, when he let things get so bad that one of his members felt like he was unable to commit to the thing he was very obviously born to do.
Chan never felt more like a failure. He saw it in everyone's faces when he had to give them the news. He stomached it in the slow passage of the months their unit was incomplete.
The fact that Hyunjin came back doesn't erase the way Chan felt like what he worked so hard for, the things he achieved, and the people he kept beside him, where not granted.
It meant years of sleepless nights, wasted youth, try and error sacrifices could be pointless, because he could not do something as simple as keep his team together. The people he loved the most in the world, Chan had defended literally with his shields on the battlefield and with more than just his conviction out of it, and yet, it was not good enough.
It all started to crack, and a regressing count was put over his head.
Chan feels in debt with them. Not only would he not have been able to do all this on his own, he would never want to do it by himself.
If he loosens his grip over the withheld control, all this unnecessary damage he could not prevent will come out of his nightmares to leave him here all alone. If something happens to them, there will be nobody else to blame.
He is too young for all this.
It seems like tonight is the night the count reaches zero. It takes one blink for the tears to burn the way down his face.
Hyunjin's knee touches the bedding, and as soon as it happens, he jumps back, surprised by his own audacity. He awkwardly stays, figuratively, frozen in place, lost. Chan notices immediately. He sniffs and wipes at his face, trying to put himself together.
“It’s okay.” Chan whispers, making Hyunjin's eyes jump to him. “You can come closer, love.”
Hyunjin's worried expression shifts to surprise, and a warm flush colors his cheeks. The pet name doesn’t even sound foreign, it's not the first time Chan tries it, but it feels so much more intimate when it's just them in the quiet dark of his room.
At Hyunjin’s hesitation, Chan decides to move first. It is not until he reaches the middle of the bed and taps in front of him that Hyunjin drops his knees slowly on the bedding, and that seems to break the barrier he put in between them. He cautiously, measured and concentrated like he is about to paint the finest details on Chan’s face, brings the fabric of his sleeve forward and cleans the moisture under Chan’s eyes with it. It makes Chan self-conscious of the attention, but he accepts it, for once. He lets himself have this, it's easier when Hyunjin’s cold hand feels heavenly over his feverish cheeks.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” There’s no bite in Hyunjin’s voice, just the softest underneath to lie into. This close, Chan can focus back on the small smears of blood on Hyunjin’s shirt and how he subconsciously holds his other hand still on his lap. Under Hyunjin’s curious gaze, Chan moves quickly and brings the wet wipes from the side table with him on the way back. Hyunjin is shaking his head before he gets to take one out of the package. “Hyung, you don’t have to.”
“I want to.” Chan says simply. He extends his hand and lets Hyunjin decide if he wants this too.
There’s a small crease in Hyunjin’s eyebrow, but he drops his hand over Chan’s, and he can feel his heart pounding in his chest when the dimples in Chan’s cheeks deepen because of it.
Chan wipes carefully around the cuts. They are only two small lines, one on his pinkie and the other on the side of his hand, from when he accidentally tipped the cup over the counter and smashed it too for good measure. Jisung often says when you are out of hero duty, you are very clumsy, Hyunjin denies it every time, but he knows it's true, alas, Jisung is just as clumsy. Even if the amount of blood was a bit dramatic at first, since hands have a lot of blood vessels. He is pretty sure they will have to clean the counter and floor tomorrow. The cuts stopped bleeding long ago, but Chan goes around them cautiously, picking the dry blood off Hyunjin’s skin in slow movements.
“I didn’t want to scare you.” Chan admits suddenly.
Hyunjin chuckles softly, raising an eyebrow at him.
“You don’t scare me.” He sounds so certain it has Chan staring at him yearningly. Hyunjin looks to the side, remembering he has said these same words to somebody else before.
When he met Chan, he could say he was, to say the least, very intimidating. Dressing in all black, with far more experience and skills than any of them. But that was exactly what made Hyunjin want to stay in this team. He wanted to fight with him. He has never regretted his decision.
“I was scared for you.”
“You don’t need to be.” It’s Chan’s answer that causes a small pull on the corner of Hyunjin’s mouth.
“I want to.” Hyunjin says, and makes Chan suck air between his teeth like he's been stabbed. Hyunjin just raises his eyebrows at him. It’s his turn to grab a wet wipe, and he still feels like he is overstepping when he coaxes Chan to move his arm, but it’s the least that he can do.
“Hyunjin, uhm… You and Jisung, you know, are…?” Chan starts with uncertainty. Hyunjin stops where he's been cleaning the blood he accidentally smeared on Chan’s arm before.
Hyunjin hums softly, it is not an answer.
“I’m happy for you.” He says because it’s the truth, no matter what it is. But it has Hyunjin frowning. Chan doesn’t know how, but Hyunjin waits for him to keep talking. “I just… don’t know how we ended up here.”
Here, filling what used to be slighting screams with quiet peace. Here, with them sharing their comfort with him.
“I don’t think I have an answer for that. I guess realizing we were just young and stupid, with a demanding career path. And,” Hyunjin’s voice is so soft, he continues to clean him slowly. Chan wonders how many memories he is reliving. “well… You know things were not as simple.”
Does he actually know?
He was right there, he knows. He knows exactly what Hyunjin and Jisung decided he could know, he helped when they wanted it, he was there for them when they allowed him near. So, maybe, just maybe, he should just stop digging. If Hyunjin, one of the two people snarled up in this situation, is completely unfazed at the lack of an answer, Chan should be able to let it go. If they can grow beside each other after all they endured, because what is important to them is the present and not all the mistakes they committed in the past. Then Chan can move on too. For them, and for himself.
For the first time he is okay being an ignorant.
Hyunjin stretches to throw the dirty wipes in the trash can next to Chan's desk. When he sits down again, he combs a hand through his hair, the dampness makes it stick together.
Chan gasps softly, surprising Hyunjin.
“You are wet.” He emphasizes, like Hyunjin didn’t know. Chan holds Hyunjin's hands once more, then pats his shoulders over his clothes and his hair carefully in a quick motion, confirming that he is damp all over. “Aren’t you cold?”
It’s a bit ironic because he is, very much, cold after running back to the apartment under an autumn rain. If he were a normal person, he would surely be shivering.
“Uhm, no?” Hyunjin chuckles softly, a bit endeared by the eldest's concern. He is used to unfavorable reactions, so it's pleasant to find that Chan stares at him with amusement.
Before Chan can start moving, Jisung pushes the door open. He has different clothes on and a big towel in his arms.
“Sorry, the mud got me a bit occupied.” Jisung's eyes shine at seeing them together and a little less tense. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Chan answers when Hyunjin doesn’t say anything and instead looks at him too.
Jisung gets close to the bed and leaves a casual touch over the brownish dots on Hyunjin’s shirt, he eyes his now clean hand too. None of them like the sight of blood, obviously. But Chan has noticed how Jisung has a particular aversion to it. He feels the need to apologize again, Jisung runs over whatever he was going to say before he has the chance.
“Hyung, do you mind if we borrow some clothes? I think yours would fit Hyunjin more comfortably than mine.” Jisung comments as he drags the towel over Hyunjin's long locks before he can say anything. Because both of them know Jisung's clothes fit him just fine.
“Sure.” Chan answers without missing a beat.
He lends a set for Hyunjin that includes the largest pair of pants he owns, and to no one's surprise, everything is black. Hyunjin thanks him and leaves the room to change his clothes.
“Are you sure you are okay?” Jisung asks again now that they are alone. Chan nods slowly. He is better, definitely. Jisung doesn’t look convinced, if the way he just sighs and half-smiles gives anything up. “I’ll assume you haven’t eaten, right? Let’s see what we can do about it.”
“”
It is in the small interlude of searching something suitable to eat that the power finally comes back. It makes it easier to heat everything when they take some of Changbin's prepped meals from the fridge. They’ll have to make it up to him, even if they know he would never get mad at something like this.
When Hyunjin comes out of the bathroom and sits down with them, Chan can’t help but stare. He doesn’t know why, sharing is something common between all of them, but Hyunjin, with his hair softly blow out, dressed in his clothes and having dinner at god knows what hour with them, feels entirely too intimate, too domestic.
They eat accompanied by the quiet thrumming of rain and soft-spoken conversations. Hyunjin and Jisung go back and forth, both in the squabble of their thread of weird occurrences and their ways in and out of the kitchen. They laugh and move so easily in the tiny space, Chan can only look at them, since he is not allowed to move from his seat on the sofa—The kitchen is too dirty, to say the least, to eat there.— And he feels at ease, the pressure in his chest lifting. He has been considering for a wile now, this feeling that keeps growing, he knows it’s right now.
He wants their company on empty hours like this, he wants to share their duty anecdotes when they come back home, he wants to hear their pointless bickering now that he knows that’s just another part of what makes their strong connection theirs.
Chan wants them, together and with him.
“Hyung?” Jisung's voice suddenly stops his train of thoughts.
“Sorry, you were saying?” He answers casually, as if his perspective has not been turned around so fast it gives him whiplash.
Their plates are finished. Hyunjin's and Jisung's faces have lost the cheerfulness from before, and it makes Chan uneasy.
“About earlier, uhm, do you want to talk about it?” Jisung asks cautiously.
Chan does not.
And here he thought he was doing a good job pretending. He should have known that they would not let it go so easily. Both stubborn as shit, probably one of the reasons they used to drive each other up the wall. They can help.
Maybe Chan can’t know what was there before, but they can know what is happening right now.
It’s not as simple.
“I have a lot on my mind, that’s it.”
At the sight of their unsatisfied faces, Chan picks up the dishes and heads to the kitchen sink, purposely ignoring the mess around. He hears Hyunjin and Jisung move right after him.
“You know we are here, right? You can share some of the burden with us.” Jisung approaches the counter, face scrunching at the state of it.
“It’s just work stress, you don’t need to worry about it.”
“But you do?” Jisung says borderline snarling, because it’s their work stress.
Chan stops scrubbing the dishes and turns around to look at them, defeated. Jisung suspends stained shards of glass in the air beside him to shortly after put them on a trash bag, allowing Hyunjin to spray the surface of the marble with a soapy liquid and remove the dry blood. They make erase mistakes seem so easy.
“I promised I would protect you, and that’s what I’ll do.” Chan says firmly.
There it goes again, that unreachable goal. He is closing in on himself once more. Jisung's shoulders drop, he says nothing, because that has been Chan’s motif since day one.
Hyunjin's eyes sharpen, and he looks so similar to Minho suddenly.
“Maybe we shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep.” Sometimes he sounds like him too.
Jisung's breath hitches beside him, the words are not for him, yet his heart pangs inside his chest knowing that this is something that they, between tears and blood, learned before. Hyunjin swallows back the regret because he genuinely thinks this is what Chan needs to hear.
The ability to protect a former hero will not be fulfilled by the sheer power of will. No matter what they do, they are never completely safe. The pressure that Chan has put over his back, or other people have put over him, is too much for one man to bear. And it’s completely unrealistic.
Hyunjin hates it, he just never dared to say it.
“Look at us, hyung. It’s not easy to take us out, if we were, Jisung and I would have killed each other that night.” Hyunjin's blunt words are sharp, dangerous if misinterpreted. The night of the incident is a sensible topic for the eight of them, it has never been brought back, pushed under the rug of their pretending. No one has the guts to push it to the light, but if anyone has the liberty to do so, are, in fact, Hyunjin and Jisung. Chan closes his eyes painfully for a second. “We are not made of glass. We are heroes.”
Chan knows.
He is, oh, so painfully aware.
“Anyway, this is not only about hero-duty. We want to know if Bang Chan, the superhero, is healthy and in shape to guard this city, of course. But,” Hyunjin drops the towel he was using without any care, and brings Jisung with him when he starts walking in Chan’s direction. “what is more important to us is if our Chan is safe and happy when he comes back home.”
Jisung grabs his hand firmly, Chan has no option but to reach his eyes.
“We know we can’t stop you from wanting to look out for us. So at least you are gonna let us take care of you.” Jisung smiles to him. Hyunjin grabs his other hand.
“You don’t have to do anything, we will give you space when you want it. Just don’t shut us away, please.”
It sounds nice. It didn’t sound like he had much of a choice either. He has already come to the conclusion he wants them near, all of them. There will be nothing to regret if he takes the first step, there will be nothing to lose. He had too many lonely nights before.
“I can try.”
“”
“I told you he wasn't scared of you.” Jisung whispers. Chan's breath hitches, making Jisung smirk mischievously.
Chan huffs, remembering that late-night talk they had not long ago, insomnia trapping him like usual, he doesn’t really know why Jisung was up too. They ended up lying in this same bed, just talking as the sun rose behind the curtains.
Since he seemed to be getting closer to Hyunjin, Chan gathered the courage to ask Jisung what had been taunting him.
Jisung just laughed, yawning into his hand. With a sleepy voice, he said, you are overthinking it, hyung. why would he be scared of you? The smile in his voice was so clear, so confident, that Chan should have believed him.
Especially now that after dinner, with red cheeks, Chan invited them to sleep in his room. Even if they barely fit in the mattress, and Jisung’s room is right there, neither of them complained. They jumped in, surrounding Chan effortlessly with delight. Time idles as they fill it with leisure, like it is the most common thing between them. Chan wishes it to become a constant. But that was hours ago, now Hyunjin is sleeping right next to him, his cold presence weirdly comforting. And Jisung is on his other side, quietly staring at him in the darkness prior to this.
“You were listening.” Chan mutters, it's not even a question. Jisung looks to the side casually with fake innocence.
“I was passing by. And I knew you needed the time to talk.”
Chan could say so much at that. Like, ask Jisung how did he knew? Or push for his opinion about what does this mean for the three of them, or something. But he doesn’t. He brings Jisung closer, his worry that he might get hot in his sleep completely erased when Hyunjin reminds him of his cooling existence under the covers by snuggling against him in his sleep. Jisung throws an arm over him, holding onto Hyunjin too, and rests his head on Chan’s shoulder.
“Thank you.” It’s Chan’s answer.
Minutes pass, and he thinks both of them are asleep until Jisung sighs softly.
“Hyung.” Jisung slurs out, barely delaying his loss of consciousness. Chan hums. “We love you.”
Chan’s eyes sting, and this time it’s pure happiness blooming in his chest.