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The thing about loving Bang Chan was that you always knew where you stood. He wore his heart on his sleeve with everyone—his members, his fans, the staff who'd been with them since pre-debut. He gave and gave until he was running on fumes, and then he found some hidden reserve and gave a little more.
What took longer to learn was that he never asked for anything back.
You'd been dating for ten months when you started recognizing the pattern. The way he'd check in on everyone else before admitting he was tired. The way he'd deflect concern with a laugh and a hand on your cheek, murmuring I'm okay, really while his eyes said something else entirely.
You told yourself it was just who he was: the one who'd carried eight dreams on his back for so long that he'd forgotten how to set them down.
Then came the shoulder injury.
It happened on a Tuesday.
You'd stopped by the company gym to bring him dinner when you heard the sound. A sharp, involuntary exhale, the kind of sound a body made when instinct overrode pride.
You rounded the corner to find him on the bench, right arm cradled against his chest, face pale under the fluorescent lights. One of the trainers was already there, kneeling beside him, speaking low and urgent.
"Chris?"
His head snapped up. For just a second you saw it: fear, frustration…the not now that flashed across his face before he locked it down.
"Hey," he said, and his voice was perfectly even. "Didn't know you were coming by."
"What happened?"
"Just tweaked something." He tried to roll his shoulder and stopped immediately, jaw tightening. "No big deal."
The trainer was saying something about possible rotator cuff strain, about ice and rest and stopping by the medical office tomorrow. Chan was nodding along, but you could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way his good hand kept flexing and relaxing at his side that he wasn't listening to a word.
"Come on," you said, stepping forward. "Let's get you home."
"I still have—"
"Chris."
He looked at you then, really looked, and something in his expression softened.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Okay."
That was three days ago.
Since then, you'd watched him perfect the art of I'm fine until it became indistinguishable from the truth.
To the members, he was the same Chan—cracking jokes in the practice room, staying late to work on choreography, showing up to breakfast with his signature sleepy smile. When Changbin asked about the KT tape peeking out from under his sleeve, Chan just shrugged with his good shoulder and said he'd slept funny.
When Felix brought him coffee and noticed him wincing when he reached for it, Chan laughed it off. Old age, he said. Thirty's coming for me, Lix.
They believed him. Or maybe they wanted to believe him. It was easier that way.
But you saw the other things.
The way he kept his injured arm tucked close to his body, like he was protecting something fragile. The way his smile went tight around the edges when he had to reach above shoulder height. The way he started favoring his left side so subtly that no one else would notice, but you did—you'd memorized the way he moved, the particular rhythm of his body in space.
You noticed how he stopped sleeping through the night.
The first time, you'd woken at 2 AM to find his side of the bed empty, the sheets cool. You'd found him in the kitchen, quietly making tea with one hand, the other held carefully against his stomach.
"Couldn't sleep," he'd said before you could ask.
The second time, he was in the studio. You'd seen the light under the door at 4 AM and found him at his computer, headphones around his neck, scrolling through tracks he wouldn't be able to record for weeks.
"Just restless," he'd explained.
Last night, you hadn't woken up at all. You'd slept straight through until dawn, and when you found him at the breakfast table looking more exhausted than when he'd gone to bed, you realized he must have gotten better at being quiet.
That was what broke your heart. Not the injury it self, but the effort he was putting into hiding it.
Tonight, you wake to darkness.
The digital clock on the nightstand reads 3:12 AM in harsh red numbers. The space beside you is empty again, but this time you don't hear the telltale sounds of the kitchen or the studio. The apartment is silent in a way that feels wrong.
You pull on a sweatshirt and pad down the hallway, guided by the faint glow of the city lights through the windows.
You find him in the living room, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, medical supplies spread around him like he'd given up halfway through. The KT tape is half-unrolled in his lap. His shoulder shows angry red marks where he'd been trying to wrap it himself.
He looks up when you turn on the light, and for a moment you see him: the exhaustion, the pain he can't quite mask, and the desperation underneath it all.
"Hey," he says, and his voice is rough with sleep he hasn't been getting.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing." He tries to gather the tape, to hide the evidence, and his shoulder spasms. He freezes, breathing carefully through his nose. "Just... couldn't sleep. Wanted to fix this before morning."
"Chris."
"I've got it under control. I'm fine."
The words hit you like a physical blow, because of how easily he says them. Like it's automatic. Like I'm fine is just another language he speaks, one he's fluent in after years of practice.
"Christopher."
He flinches. You never use his full name.
You cross the room and kneel in front of him, ignoring the way he tries to angle his body away, to hide the injury like a shameful secret. You gently take the tape from his unresisting fingers and set it aside.
"Let me see,” you whisper.
"It's not—"
"Let me see." You pressed more firmly, glaring at him.
Something in him seems to collapse, just a little, and he lets you ease his arm away from his body. The bruising is worse than you expected—deep purple spreading from his shoulder down toward his elbow, the kind of color that speaks to real damage, not just a tweak.
"Have you been to the doctor?"
"Tomorrow," he admits. "I have an appointment."
"And you've been dealing with this alone for three days?"
"I didn't want—" He stops and closes his eyes. "I didn't want anyone to worry."
"So instead, you sit on the floor at three in the morning, hurting yourself more trying to hide it?"
"You don't understand." He sounded so tired. "If I say something, then everyone stops. The members start watching me instead of themselves. The schedule gets complicated. People have to rearrange things, make accommodations, and it's just—" He shakes his head. "It's just a shoulder. It'll heal. But the comeback won't wait. The fans won't wait. Everyone's counting on me to be ready."
"And what about what you're counting on?"
He opens his eyes and looks at you like he doesn't understand the question.
"Chris." You reach out, carefully, and cup his cheek, skin warm against your palm. "When did you decide that your pain doesn't count?"
Something cracks in his expression. Just a hairline fracture, but you see it, the way his mouth tightens, the way his eyes go bright with emotion he's been holding back for days.
"I just..." He swallows. "If I'm the one who's hurt, then everyone has to worry about me. And I don't want that. I don't want to be..."
"A burden?"
He doesn’t answer but the tick in his jaw does it for him.
You shift closer, careful of his shoulder, and settle beside him on the floor. The tile is cold through your sweatpants, but you don't care. You take his good hand in both of yours and hold it tight.
"You don't get to decide that you're a burden just because you're hurting," you say quietly. "That's not how this works. That's not how love works."
He starts to protest but you cut him off.
"You take care of everyone else. I know. I see it every day. You carry so much, Chris, and you make it look easy, but it's not. And you don't have to carry it alone." You squeeze his hand. "You are allowed to need help. You are allowed to be the one who gets taken care of sometimes."
You see the tears tracking down his cheeks, the way he turns his head away like he can hide them. You reach up and gently turn his face back to you, thumb brushing the wetness away.
"I just wanted to fix it myself," he whispers. "Like I always do."
"I know."
"If I ask for help, then I'm..." He searches for the word. "Then I'm not enough. For them. For you."
The confession hits you. This man—this beautiful, selfless, impossibly stubborn man—actually believes that needing care makes him less worthy of it.
"Listen to me," you say, and you make your voice firm because he needs to hear it.. "You are enough. You are enough when you're strong and when you're hurt. You're enough when you're leading the group and when you're sitting on the floor at 3 AM because you can't sleep through the pain. Your worth isn't tied to how much you can endure alone, Chris. It never was."
"I don't know how," he admits, muffled against your neck. "To let someone else... I don't know how."
"Then I'll show you," you promise. "Starting now."
You get him to bed.
It takes twenty minutes to convince him to let you help him up, another ten to get him to the bedroom. You settle him against the pillows and retrieve the ice pack from the freezer, wrapping it carefully before pressing it to his shoulder.
He hisses at the cold, then slowly relaxes into it.
You sit beside him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, watching the tension slowly drain from his face.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs after a while.
"For what?"
"For waking you. For hiding it. For..." He gestures vaguely with his good hand. "All of it."
"Don't apologize for being human."
He laughs, wet and broken. "That sounds like something I'd say."
"Maybe I'm stealing your lines." You press a kiss to his forehead. "Someone has to use them on you."
He closes his eyes, and for a moment he just breathes. When he speaks again, his voice is smaller than you've ever heard it.
"I was scared," he admits. "If I stopped, even for a second... what if I couldn't start again? What if I let everyone down?"
"You won't," you say with certainty. "You're Bang Chan. You don't know how to let people down. But you also don't have to destroy yourself to prove you're worthy of your place."
He opens his eyes. Looks at you with something like wonder.
"When did you get so wise?"
"I've been learning from the best." You adjust the ice pack, checking that it's not too cold against his skin. "Now get some sleep. You're going to the doctor tomorrow, and you're going to tell them everything, and you're going to follow their instructions. No more hiding."
"Yes ma'am."
"And you're going to tell the members. Not all at once if you're not ready, but you can't keep carrying this secret. They love you too, Chris."
He nods slowly, like he's processing it. Like the idea is foreign but not unwelcome.
"Okay," he says finally. "I'll try."
"That's all I ask."
You settle in beside him, careful not to jostle his shoulder, and pull the blanket up over both of you. He turns his head on the pillow to look at you, and in the dim light of the bedroom, he looks young. Younger than his years. The weight of leadership temporarily set aside.
“Babe?”
"Yeah?"
"Thank you." He says it simply, like a fact. Like gravity. "For finding me. For not believing me when I said I was fine."
"Anytime." You reach for his hand under the covers and interlace your fingers with his. "Next time you're hurt, you tell me."
"Okay."
"Immediately."
He hesitates. You see the smile starting at the corner of his mouth, the familiar stubbornness sparking back to life.
"Okay."
"No 'I'm fine.'"
That earns you a quiet laugh. He shifts closer, resting his head against the pillow as his eyes begin to drift shut. “I think…” He pauses, searching for the words. “I think maybe I can be fine without pretending I'm fine.”
Your chest aches. You lean over and press a kiss to his forehead. “Yeah,” you whisper. “You can.”
His fingers tighten around yours. For the first time in three days, he lets himself stop. No schedules. No studio. No pretending. Just you, the quiet room, and the steady warmth of someone who wasn't going anywhere.
His breathing eventually evens out, and you watch the tension leave his face piece by piece. Tomorrow, there would be a doctor and conversations with the members. There would be schedules to rearrange and people to disappoint and things that couldn't be fixed simply by saying I'm fine.
But tomorrow could wait.
Tonight, he was allowed to rest.