Work Text:
How one single text message can feel so devastating truly should be studied—at least if you ask Chan. It looks so innocent, harmless even. In its simplicity. Black lettering on a yellow background. Grey text underneath confirming the status.
Read.
It's been read, and there is no response. Not even a typing bubble that then stopped. Just “read.” It's actually devastating and world-shattering, and Chan wants to hide and never be seen again.
"Oh, come on, it's barely even been a minute." Felix’s calm voice—traitorous, by the way—pulls Chan out of his spiraling.
"This is all your fault, by the way. So jot that down." Chan can barely be heard, his face absolutely mushed into Imposter Berry—thank you, Felix, for making such a horrible name stick to his lovely, adorable, and absolutely fantastic stuffed dog. The fact that it does, in fact, resemble Berry is neither here nor there.
"Thank me later—actually, make me your best man when this all works out and becomes a sickeningly cute memory." The bastard even has the nerve to look smug about it, as if it's a sure thing or something equally preposterous. The confidence is both unnerving and somehow reassuring.
It's been a grand total of six days since Chan last saw Hyunjin. Not even a full week. Yet somehow that has been enough for him to whine about it to his best friend. In turn, Felix made the great suggestion: "Just tell him you miss him." And now here they were—waiting for the world to implode and swallow Chan whole.
"You're more likely to be reading my obituary at this rate," comes his mumbled response as Chan keeps staring at his phone.
Still nothing, by the way.
"And people call me dramatic." Felix is clearly rolling his eyes; Chan doesn’t need to see it to know. "Bro, come on! You've been seeing each other for how many weeks now? Three? There is no way he's gonna leave you hanging. Dude’s probably having a moment just like you."
"And what if he's not? What then, oh wise one?" Chan shoots the blonde a quick glare for the sake of appearances. He has a reputation to uphold—or something.
When he looks back down at his phone, he can’t believe what he’s actually seeing.
From Hyunjinnie 💕
How about I come spend the night? Then neither one of us would have to miss the other 😉
"Damn. Dude has game." When Felix speaks up, he's halfway over Chan's shoulder, reading the text with absolutely no regard for privacy. "Respect."
Chan's face is positively on fire when he slowly turns to look at Felix.
"I need you to get out of the apartment tonight."
"You're kicking me out?" In Chan's defense, Felix actually sounds delighted about this turn of events.
"Dude."
"Bro."
"Get the fuck out of here."
"Awfully presumptuous of you to think you're gonna get laid."
Felix has barely finished the sentence before Chan is lunging for him. His hands end up grabbing nothing more than rumpled sheets, as the little shit is faster than he looks, already halfway out the door cackling like a maniac on his way out.
"And clean up your takeout!" Chan ends up yelling after him as he scans the room, reality slowly starting to set in.
He needs to clean. Fast. And shower—just seeing his own reflection in the window tells him as much. But first, he needs to reply to Hyunjin. As he grabs his phone to write back, Felix’s blonde head peeks in through the open door.
"Want me to bring Imposter Berry to Jisung’s?" The bastard has the nerve to look smug as he says it.
Apparently, the glare is enough to send Felix retreating again before Chan even properly responds.
"Cunt!" he yells after him, just for good measure.
About fifteen minutes later, the two roommates exchange quick goodbyes (and Felix has the nerve to add a “good luck”) before Felix heads out to spend the night at his boyfriend’s place. At least the blonde took the takeout containers with him. Small victories and all that.
For the next thirty minutes, Chan runs around stress-cleaning the apartment to the best of his abilities—which is to say, it looks pretty good by normal standards, but not Chan’s. Felix would probably say it is clean enough, which Chan tells himself will have to do as he hurries through a shower.
By the time he’s staring into his closet with pure dread, a towel around his hips, reality really starts to settle in. In about ten minutes—give or take—Hyunjin will be in his apartment. With the intention of spending the night. Here. In his home. In his bed. The bed he usually sleeps in the middle of. Without four pillows and one blanket. Butt naked, save for a bonnet, hugging Imposter Berry to keep the nightmares and insomnia at arm’s length.
At least he has enough pillows for the both of them. Silver lining, or something.
A distracted glance toward the bed has Chan instead focusing on his nightstand. Did he even have condoms? Wait—was he actually being as presumptuous as Felix implied?
Cold dread and spiraling thoughts make the time pass much faster than expected, because when the doorbell rings, Chan is still just in a towel (and the bonnet he had intended not to wear—but habits die hard).
Almost tripping over himself in his rush to get dressed and let Hyunjin in, Chan has just barely pulled a clean T-shirt over his head when he opens the door, bonnet stuck between his neck and the collar in all his haste.
"Hi." If he sounds out of breath… no, he doesn’t.
Hyunjin is positively beaming from the other side of the threshold, endeared amusement radiating off him as he takes in the state of Chan—eyes traveling up and down before landing on the bonnet.
"Cute. Mine is blue."
Chan would be damned before admitting Felix ever had a point, and that he’d been dramatic all for nothing. And if he ended up with the best sleep he'd had in years… well, it was worth kicking Felix out for it.