Chapter Text
Jeongin felt the off-white walls of the hospital waiting room closing in on him. Bile threatened to make its way out of his throat and he wasn't even the one being tended to.
They landed in Sydney some time during the afternoon thanks to their red-eye flight. Despite their exhaustion and the scorching summer heat beating down on them with every step, the first thing Minho had insisted on them doing was check out the venue for their first sold-out show of their world tour. Chan was obligated to go, as per his duty of serving as the band's designated translator for the duration of their stay in Australia, and Jeongin and Jisung were forced to tag along after losing a heated game of rock-paper-scissors. One minute Jeongin had been sitting on the edge of the Metro Theatre's stage, swinging his feet and rolling his eyes as Seungmin gloated about how comfortable the hotel beds were over the phone. The next minute he heard a sickening crrrack and a pained wail escaping Jisung's mouth, and they found themselves at the hospital.
A hand gently placed itself on his left leg, stopping the bouncing he hadn't even realized it was doing. He turned to face Minho and tried to mirror the comforting smile his manager was giving him, but all he could muster was a wobbly one on the verge of collapsing.
"Jisung should hopefully be out soon. Thankfully the doctor let Chan go in with him instead of me, I would've spent more time racking my brain to find every English phrase I ever learned than actually explaining what happened." Minho let out a small laugh at the end but it sounded disingenuous, pure worry seeping through his mask of faux composure.
Jeongin let out a shaky breath and ran a hand through his short freshly-dyed ginger hair, suddenly finding the checkered floor more interesting to look at. "He was practicing his stage moves and I thought since he'd done them a million times before he'd be fine. If I had just paid attention, then maybe he wouldn't have…" He trailed off, trying to swallow down the sob threatening to leave his throat.
"You didn't know that those platforms were unstable. Neither did he." The hand on his leg moved to gently hold one of his hands. "Do you really think Jisung would ever blame you for something like this?"
Jeongin opened his mouth to retort but was interrupted by the slow creaking of a door. Jisung had walked out with red-rimmed eyes and his arm cradled in a white cast, not even sparing a single glance at the other two before walking towards the double doors. Jeongin could barely make out the hushed mutterings between Minho and Chan, who had just rejoined them; phrases like "not too severe" and "still needs rest" going in one ear and out the other while his eyes never left the man standing under the red exit sign.
The walk outside had only taken five minutes, but to Jeongin it had felt like an eternity. He never strayed more than a few inches away from Jisung, eyes burning holes into his back and his arms itching to reach out and make him listen to what he had to say. I'm sorry. I should've been looking out. It's my fault you're like this. I'd do anything if it meant you would forgive me. Each potential apology more desperate than the last, all of them demanding to pour from his lips and reach the ears of the one who needed to hear them the most, yet all of them blocked by Jeongin's tied tongue.
"You can touch me, y'know. S'not like I'm gonna break again."
Those were the first words Jisung spoke since their drive to the hospital. Jeongin had been sitting next to him on the front steps while waiting for Minho and Chan to get their rental car.
He jumped out of surprise, turning to look at the other boy who had been staring straight ahead. When he went to respond, Jisung had beat him to it. "And don't even think about apologizing and blaming yourself. Before you ask, you've been looking at me like a kicked puppy for the last ten minutes. I'm injured, not blind."
Jeongin's jaw dropped, disguising his gasp of shock as a scoff, "And how do you know that I wasn't secretly aiming for your eyes? For all you know, this could've been my master plan to get rid of you and become our bassist."
"One, because you're shit at bass. And two, because you're a good person, no matter how much your brain is telling you you aren't right now."
Jisung's eyes finally met Jeongin's, both equally watery. "Neither of us saw this coming," he softly thumbed away the stray tear falling down Jeongin's cheek. "Yeah, you could've watched me, but I also could've not jumped from those platforms in the first place. At worst, we were just being idiots." He punctuated the sentence with a watery laugh, one that Jeongin mirrored in response. "So let's not put the blame on one person and be idiots together, 'kay?"
Jeongin sniffled and nodded, leaning into the hand that hadn't left his face. From the corner of his eye, he could make out their rental car being parked closer to where they were sitting and Minho and Chan walking towards them. A car honk startled them and the two broke apart. To their surprise, another car had arrived in front of the hospital entrance. Seungmin, Hyunjin, and Changbin immediately stepped out and sprinted towards the rest of the band, barely waiting for the Uber driver to hit the breaks.
"We started as soon as you called," Seungmin panted in between his words, eyes on Minho as he spoke.
Hyunjin's eyes dripped with concern, "How bad is it?"
"Thankfully just a hairline fracture," Minho said. "But he's still out of commision for three weeks."
Changbin swore under his breath and Jisung mumbled a shaky apology, eyes welling with tears. Jeongin let out a wounded sound, reaching for Jisung's free hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. Chan was quick to pull him into his arms right after and murmur sweet nothings into his ear, being careful with the cast. "No one's mad at you for this, baby. You resting and healing up is way more important to us."
"But," Jisung let out a sniffle, face half-buried into Chan's chest and linking pinkies with Jeongin, "what about our show?"
They all looked at each other with unease. There it was. The question that none of them had dared to ask since the fall, fearing the answers that would come with it.
The easy option was to cancel. It would come with extra time. It would come with a crutch to lean back on so that they could play a better show. It was easy. It was practical. But it would also come with breaking the hearts of their Australian fans, who had waited years for their first show in their country. It would come with hyping up their very first world tour only for it to start in the worst possible way. It would come with no happy ending for anyone.
It was easy. It was practical. But Stray Kids didn't do easy or practical.
After several minutes of silent contemplation, Minho straightened up with a small yet determined smile. "What other choice do we have? You all head back to the hotel room and brainstorm while I threaten to sue the shit out of that venue owner if he doesn't get those platforms fixed by Friday night." He handed Chan the keys to their rental car and walked away in the other direction. The rest of them made their way to the car, hoping that fate would miraculously be on their side.
⛧
Fate was not on their side. But it did a damn good job at getting everyone's hopes up.
Their bassist audition announcement was admittedly rushed, the previous post announcing Jisung's injury taking top priority. Hyunjin just barely managed to cobble together a halfway decent-looking poster through the power of Pro Tools, and all of the details in their social media captions were no more than a few sentences long. Truthfully, they expected maybe three people at best to show interest. So when they showed up to the audition building the next day and saw a couple dozen people lined up outside of said building, the band dared to believe that miracles could exist.
The candle of hope had been lit, and as the day trudged on, all that remained was a giant pool of nearly-hardened wax and a flame begging to be put out of its misery. Every wrong note and underconfident riff was like a gust of wind just barely strong enough to send the candle flickering, on the precipice of being snuffed out completely yet never enough to do the deed and get it over with.
The last auditionee for the day was packing his gear with hope in his eyes, blissfully unaware of the sharp daggers Seungmin was glaring into him. Chan kept his tone professional as he recited the same 'we'll give you a call and let you know' dialogue he had been spouting for the last three hours, but Jeongin could hear the tension in his voice. Every other little sound he heard felt heightened, from Jisung's harsh exhale through his nose to Seungmin's impatient drumming of fingertips against the long plastic table, each of them adding another layer of friction to the point of it clinging to all of them like sweat-soaked shirts on their backs.
Chan leaned back into his chair with a soft sigh once the auditionee had finally left the room, "That guy wasn't too bad, at least."
Changbin let out a scoff. "'Wasn't too bad?' He didn't even know what drop D tuning was! And he was one of the better ones we saw today!" He threw his arms up in the air in frustration.
Jisung tried speaking up, "Bin, calm down-"
"Just face it. If any of the people who show up tomorrow are on the same level as the ones we just had to sit through, we're fucked."
He abruptly stood up, muttering a gruff 'fuck this' before grabbing his jacket and walking towards the door.
Chan stopped him in his tracks, "And just where do you think you're going?"
"Out. Need to clear my head. Preferably with booze."
"What, you're just gonna venture into the streets of a city you've never been in by yourself?" Seungmin jumped up from his seat, voice growing harder with every word he spoke. "And you'll magically find a bar run by only Koreans so you don't have to pull out Google Translate and ask for 'orange whiskey' instead of an Old Fashioned?"
"Seung-"
"No! He doesn't get to just walk away from this while the rest of us pick up the pieces. We only have two days before our show, I'm not letting him get out of sitting through auditions because he has a hangover!"
"I'd rather suffer through a hangover than sit through more people fumbling a basic bassline," Changbin growled.
"And you don't think I feel the same? You think every note that was a half-step off didn't send me into a crisis and grate on my ears?"
"There you go again complaining about your stupid perfect pitch-"
"Enough! Both of you!"
Chan's yelling finally cut through the overbearing tension. Furrowed brows turned into forehead creases of shock. The impatient table-drumming and the anxious shaky legs finally came to a stop.
"I know we're all frustrated. But yelling at each other isn't gonna make our problems go away, and neither is forcing ourselves to sit through something that we know won't work out." He softened his voice and focused his attention on Changbin. "I'm not trying to stop you from downing a couple of drinks," he tried keeping his voice as soft and gentle as possible. "But if that's your plan, then I'm going with you. It might've been a while since I've lived in Sydney, but I'd like to think I know the area fairly well, and the last thing we need right now is an injured and a missing member. But before we do that…" he trailed off and walked back over to the table, gesturing for Changbin to follow along.
"Okay, new plan. Clearly the auditions didn't go the way we wanted them to, and even if we somehow find our bassist tomorrow, we would only have one rehearsal with them, which isn't really ideal. How about instead we swap out some of the songs on our setlist for ones with easier basslines, and maybe one of us can do double duty?"
"I can do it!" Jeongin immediately offered. Jisung sent a look of surprise his way, one that he met with determination. "We're thinking about switching to easier basslines, right? I should be able to tackle those no matter how shitty my bass skills are. And Seungmin-hyung can take rhythm guitar instead. I insist."
Chan let out an amused grin, "Then it's settled."
They all discussed amongst themselves some more. Once they finished mapping out how they'll break the news of not holding auditions tomorrow and how they plan on letting Minho and Hyunjin know so they could make the social media posts, Chan and Changbin grabbed their jackets and headed out.
A tired sigh escaping Jisung's mouth had Jeongin turning to face him again. Jisung tried giving him a smile, but he could see all of the mixed emotions behind it. Beneath the gratitude lay a lingering sadness that hadn't quite gone away since the fall. Even after their talk on the hospital steps, after Jisung had put Jeongin's guilt before his own, Jeongin knew that it would take a little while for the light in his eyes to come back. He tried to rack his brain for any sort of reassurance, anything to placate his worries, but nothing he tried conjuring up seemed like the right thing to say.
Thankfully, Seungmin had him covered, walking over to Jisung with a tiny smirk. "Y'know, this would be a whole lot easier if you were worse at bass. We could've just taken the first guy who walked in and called it a day."
Jisung's attempted laughter sounded hollow. "Even if they were the next fuckin' Flea, it doesn't change the fact that they would be up there instead of me."
"Hey," Seungmin started, his face softening. "I know this isn't what we expected. And there's nothing all of us want more than for you to be on stage with us. But we'd rather have you ready to play once you're fully healed up than over-exert yourself and get hurt even worse. And the fans would say the same, you saw all their 'please rest well' messages under your injury announcement post, right? Even if they were sad about it, they'd be even sadder if you were pushing yourself too hard."
"Plus, you get to watch me fumble so badly at the bass that our fans will miss you more than ever," Jeongin interjected with a little laugh. "It'll prove that you're Stray Kids' irreplaceable bassist."
Jisung finally let out a genuine smile. "Irreplaceable, huh?"
Seungmin guffawed, "What, my wholesome spiel got nothing and Jeongin glazing you finally got you to stop moping?"
"He talked right after you! S'not like I wasn't grateful for what you said."
"Well you sure have a way of showing it!"
"Okay, okay," Jisung laughed and gave him an exaggerated bow from his seat. "O Great and Merciful Seungmin, what ever would I be without your words of wisdom. Please take my humble prayers and my sacrifice of the first shower once we get back to the hotel as tribute."
"Hm, good enough for me. Now get back up and let me draw on your cast."
"You're just gonna draw a dick on it!"
"I can't believe you'd think that lowly of me. Why would I stop at just one?"
⛧
The bar Chan and Changbin found had a relatively relaxed atmosphere, despite its larger than average-sized crowd. A World Cup match from one of the previous years was nothing but mere background noise as the rest of the patrons chatted amongst themselves, bare-bones commentary being drowned out by the sounds of clinking beer bottles and family gossip. The two of them were secretly grateful for being able to slip through and walk inside without anyone recognizing or approaching them. As much as they adored meeting fans in the wild, the events of the day had left them completely exhausted, and the last thing they needed was to put their masks back on when they finally had time to be free of them for a little while.
Even though Changbin had come in with the intention of getting drunk, his drinking had considerably slowed. He started the night off with a few shots only to switch to an Old Fashioned and barely getting halfway through it.
"I jus' feel kinda bad, y'know." There was only a hint of a slurring in his words, regret seeping through them more than the whiskey. Chan was still working on the espresso martini he ordered when they first walked in, his free hand rubbing soothing circles on Changbin's shoulder. "Didn' mean to get all loud and start yelling. Was just worried."
"I know, Bin, but at least we figured something out. And I promise no one's holding anything against you, least of all Seungmin. You could shit yourself in public and that boy would still look at you as if you hung all the stars in the sky."
The two of them giggled softly before falling into a brief comfortable silence. Changbin traced the rim of his glass with his finger, "D'you think they'd let us order drinks to-go?"
"Bin, we're at a bar, not a restaurant."
"Can't we at least ask for some Budweisers or something? I don't wanna go home empty-handed."
"I feel like Hyune and Innie would rather you come home empty-handed than come back with beer."
"Then we can get some wine bottles instead!" Changbin's voice grew whinier as the effects of the alcohol grew stronger.
"You think we have the budget for that now after paying those hospital bills? We're already pushing it with these drinks."
"Consider them on the house," a new voice interrupted their conversation, pushing two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon towards them. "Your conversation has been the one thing keeping this night from being a total slog, its the least I can do."
Chan and Changbin turn around, their breaths hitching. When they first walked in, their bartender was a man who looked to be in his mid-40s, serving their drinks with a grunt and barely saying a word to them. He must have left at some point during their conversation, as a different man now stood in his place. Not only did he look much younger, probably just a year or two younger than themselves, but the difference in demeanor was practically night and day. Replacing blank green eyes and half-hearted grunts were warm baby blues and a smile radiant enough to give the two of them sunburn. That smile only grew when the man realized that their mouths were slightly ajar.
Chan caught wind of it and cleared his throat, trying his best to will away the redness at the tips of his ears. "You can speak Korean?" He fought the urge to cringe at his unexpected voice crack and the question with an all-too obvious answer.
Thankfully, the pretty bartender didn't seem to mind, grin never leaving his face. "Yeah, my parents came here before my siblings and I were born," he switched tongues, the thick Aussie accent fully slipping through and providing a stark contrast to the faintly-accented Korean he had spoken in before. "They make it a habit to mainly talk to me and my sisters in Korean so we could pick it up easier, and so far I'd say its working pretty well."
He gestured to the wine, switching back to Korean. "Were you two being serious about these bottles? Or is there something else I can get for you?"
"Yeah, a defibrillator to check if I died and went to heaven."
Changbin immediately clamped a hand over his mouth, his face turning scarlet.
The bartender's smile shifted into something more devious at the sight of both men being unable to make proper eye contact with him. He pushed the bottles aside and reached for Changbin's free hand.
"We could probably check the hospital a couple blocks away for one of those," his smirk grew wider as he felt the quickening of Changbin's pulse underneath where his thumb was resting. "But based on what I'm feelin' right now, I think you're doing just fine, cutie." He didn't know what he enjoyed most of all: the way the hot man in front of him was starting to rival tomatoes in terms of hue, the way the other hot man was eyeing the two of them with a delicious mix of jealousy and desire, or how both of them were wrapped around his finger just the way he liked best.
A crate of bottles being slammed onto the counter snapped everyone out of the moment. The same grizzled bartender from earlier shot Chan and Changbin a dirty look. "Bar's about to close, we have a no loitering policy. So either buy another drink or fuck off. You," he turned to the pretty bartender. "You're on restock duty now. New shipment arrived, and there's no fuckin' way I'm letting Aiden anywhere near it. Meet me at the back pronto."
The pretty bartender muttered out a half-hearted agreement, promptly rolling his eyes once the older man left. He shot an apologetic look towards Chan and Changbin before turning to leave, only for Chan to reach forward and grasp his hand.
"We, uh, we may end up taking the wine after all." Chan gestured to himself and Changbin while holding up his credit card, "And maybe once you're done, you can share it with us…" he scans the bartender's uniform, eyes lighting up once he spots the nametag. "Felix."
Felix chuckled, his lip ring shining underneath the fluorescent lights. "I told you they were on the house. What my manager doesn't know won't hurt him." He kept hold of Chan's hand when it started to loosen its grip and used his free hand to reach for Changbin's once more. "My shift ends in about an hour. I'll let you pretty boys know if I take you up on that offer."
And as they watched him walk away, Chan and Changbin couldn't help but linger on the feeling of his hand holding each of theirs. If they thought long and hard enough, they could still remember its natural warmth, the thin sheen of sweat that coated his palm, and the firm calluses on his fingers that felt oh so foreign yet oh so familiar at the same damn time.