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Chan had always thought that the exhaustion would eventually become easier to carry. He imagined that one day he would wake up and discover that he had finally grown into the version of himself that everyone believed already existed — the dependable one, the steady one, the one who never doubted himself and somehow always knew what to do: the leader. Instead, the years had only taught him how to conceal the weight better. The burden of leadership remained unchanged. It followed him through sleepless nights and early mornings, settled into the space between his shoulder blades, lingered in the quiet moments when no one was looking close enough to notice the strain. Sometimes, when the city had gone dark, when Changbin and Jisung had both gone home, leaving the studio empty except for the glow of computer screens, he would sit alone and feel every year of it pressing down on his chest. On those nights he found himself twisting the sleeve of the same black hoodie around his hand, grounding himself in the familiar sensation of worn fabric while his thoughts wandered somewhere they probably shouldn’t — his mind slipping somewhere he did not let himself go very often.
It hadn’t been a dramatic thing — not the way he had imagined love to be. There had been no singular moment of realisation, no sudden shift that divided his life into before and after. Being in love with Felix had happened so gradually that sometimes he struggled to know when his feelings had morphed themselves into something deeper. It had settled into him quietly and naturally, becoming part of him before he even had a chance to fully recognise what it was. He had noticed the small things first — the instinctive need to search for Felix whenever he entered a room, the relief that washed over him when he heard his sunshine laughter, the strange ache in his chest when he caught sight of exhaustion behind his smile. Those moments eventually accumulated into something impossible to ignore. Somewhere, in the last eight years, Felix had become the person against whom Chan unconsciously measured every version of happiness.
Perhaps that was why seeing him hurt felt so unbearable. Felix carried sadness differently than most people, such was the case for people like them. His anguish forced to appear only in brief flashes — visible for a moment before disappearing beneath practiced warmth and laughter. The shift was so slight that most people wouldn’t notice, but Chan always did. He saw it in the way Felix withdrew into himself on particularly difficult days, in the moments when his expression softened into something vulnerable and tired when the cameras weren’t pointed at him. There was a loneliness there that Chan recognised because it resembled his own — the shape of it was familiar. The loneliness of someone who spent so much time caring for other people that they had forgotten how to ask for the same care in return. The realisation settled heavily in Chan’s ribs every time he witnessed it, because he understood exactly how easy it was to become fluent in giving and completely incapable of receiving.
And the longer Chan loved Felix, the more helpless that realisation made him feel. There were so many things in this world — in this industry — that he wanted to protect Felix from, and yet some things existed beyond the reach of protection. No amount of love could erase Felix’s fears, or change the bitter truth that their lives were forever changed by the career they had built for themselves. But Chan’s instinct was always to fix things, to shoulder the burdens before they could crush his kids beneath their own weight. Yet every time he saw Felix carrying his own grief, he was forced to reconcile with the fact that loving someone did not mean saving them. Sometimes it simply meant remaining beside them whilst they learned to survive it, or lending a hand and trusting that the other person would take it.
There were evenings when that trust came easily, and there were evenings when it felt impossible. On the difficult nights, when anxiety coiled itself around his heart and every unfinished responsibility seemed to demand all of his attention at once, Chan felt as though he was becoming untethered from himself. The expectations were relentless. There was always a decision to make, a problem to solve, someone looking to him for reassurance. Whilst he rarely resented it, the exhaustion that came with the responsibility was impossible to ignore. In those moments he felt like a house with every light turned on, every door wide open, every room occupied with someone else's needs. There were moments where he wondered what remained of him beneath all the things he provided for other people.
It was during those moments that his thoughts returned to Felix the most. Not because Felix expected anything from him, but because he never did.
There was a profound comfort in that. When he was around Felix, Chan never felt like he had to perform — no pressure to transform every fear into fake confidence before allowing it to be seen. Somehow, through nothing more than patience and understanding, Felix had created a space where vulnerability didn’t feel like failure. Chan didn’t know whether Felix understood the extent of that gift, but he suspected he didn’t. Felix moved through life with such instinctive kindness that he rarely seemed aware of the impact he had on the people around him.
The older Chan grew, the more he thought of himself as a wolf who had wandered too far into the wilderness to remember why he had once been afraid of it. There had been a time when he had been so driven by hunger — hunger for achievement, for validation, for proof that every sacrifice had been worthwhile. That version of him had been sharp-edged and relentless, always chasing the next goal, the next impossible thing. Jeongin still teased him about it sometimes. You were so scary, hyung, he would say in jest, unaware of how the reminder made his skin crawl. But somewhere along the way, that ambition had lost its urgency. He no longer cared about winning in the way he once had. What mattered now felt infinitely softer and much more frightening. What mattered now was watching Felix smile without having to force it — hearing his genuine laughter instead of something performed.
Chan supposed that, in a sense, the wolf metaphor still felt appropriate, but he was no longer the creature people imagined when they thought of wolves — fierce and dangerous and perpetually hungry. These days he felt like an aging one, marked by old battles and fur matted from long winters, exhausted by years in survival mode. He had lost the taste for blood. What remained instead was a profound yearning for companionship, for warmth, for the kind of closeness that made the world feel less lonely.
And if Chan was the wolf, then Felix was the moon.
The moon did not banish darkness, it simply illuminated enough of the path for one to be able to navigate through it. Even on days when Chan had felt overwhelmed with responsibility, even when the anxiety settled heavily in his chest and every decision made felt impossibly large, Felix possessed an uncanny ability to make everything feel manageable again. His presence didn’t solve every problem — but it didn’t need to. Simply knowing he was there was enough. The comfort existed in the certainty of him — in the knowledge that no matter how chaotic their lives had become, there would always be someone there who understood.
This realisation hit him hard one evening after a particularly demanding month. Weeks of promo shoots and more all-nighters than Chan could reasonably justify, the two of them sat quietly on the couch in Felix and Seungmin’s dorm. They sat close enough that their shoulders brushed occasionally when one of them shifted. Every few minutes Felix would turn his phone and show Chan some ridiculous TikTok, bold and exuberant laughter the sweetest sound to Chan’s tired senses. As the hours passed, the anime on the TV they had both watched ten times over fading into the background, the small distance between them disappeared almost subconsciously. Felix eventually leaned against him — exhaustion outweighing any concern for personal space — and Chan felt something inside his chest ache with such tenderness that he had to close his eyes for a moment.
For so long, Chan had felt as though he had been howling into the night.
The howling lived in every song he bled himself into, woven between melodies and lingering in the tempo. It lived in every quiet act of love offered without expectation, in every moment he chose devotion over self-preservation. It lived in the way his gaze sought out Felix from across crowded rooms, just to reassure himself that he was smiling. It lived in the prayers he never admitted to making, the silent offerings whispered into the dark, each one revolving around the same simple wish: make sure he is happy. Make sure he is safe. Let him know how loved he is.
And maybe that was what surprised Chan the most when he finally dared to name what had been growing inside of him all along. Love, he discovered, was not the monster he had always feared it might be. It did not arrive with claws and teeth — the beast had been far more gentle. Less like lightning splitting open the sky and more like a glimmer of light in the distance after wandering through darkness for so long that you had forgotten what direction looked like. Love did not demand anything from him. It simply existed — steady and enduring.
The thought lingered long after that evening ended, gradually transforming into the belief that healing was possible. The belief that love did not have to be tragic and loud to be meaningful.
Sometimes, when Chan looked at Felix beneath the silver glow of Seoul’s lights, he thought about all the nights he had spent silently loving him. All the words left unsaid and all the pieces of himself he had carved off and put into songs. It felt like how the moon orbits the earth — remaining close enough to be guided by its gravity even with the weight of the universe behind it. Because the moon had never been something distant and unreachable, it had been beside him all along.
And as Felix slept against his shoulder while rain traced silver paths down the window, Chan found himself believing that perhaps the future did not have to be something endured. Perhaps it could be something shared — something built slowly, and carefully, from quiet evenings and mutual understanding and the kind of love that asked for nothing in return. The thought settled warmly inside him, softening years of fear and loneliness into something gentler.
Outside, the clouds drifted apart, revealing the moon.
Inside, Chan finally felt as though he had found his way home.