Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Where are you headed?”

“The HSS Entertainment building—I have the address here.”

“Sure thing.” A pause. “You one of those idols? Should I know you?”

A short laugh. “No. Just a dancer. I’m, ah, working on my first choreography project with them. Sorry, you probably don’t really care about that sort of thing.”

“No, no. I like chatting with the people I drive—that’s half the fun.”

“Oh, good. I don’t want to bore you or anything.”

“As long as it’s not, I don’t know, data entry or something, it’s probably interesting enough. So what kind of—shit!”

The screech of tires on asphalt, the crunch of metal on glass. Searing pain in his right thigh. His head hits against something bouncy. Someone’s screaming.

Everything fades to blackness around him. He realizes that the screaming is coming from him.

Sure, Lee Chan is lucky to be alive after the taxi he was riding in was t-boned by a day-drinking scumbag in a minivan.

Sure, Lee Chan is lucky to have escaped with all his limbs and extremities still attached.

The problem is, Lee Chan doesn’t feel particularly lucky. No one’s told him definitively, but something deep inside the recesses of his mind is telling him that he may never dance again.

To some, that might be an odd thing to fixate on, but dancing is all that Chan has ever known. He’s been wiggling his little body to music as far back as he can remember, and once he discovered the joy of choreographed dancing he’d wanted nothing else to do with his life. He’d gone to an arts high school where he’d majored in dance and earned himself a scholarship to continue his studies in college, where he’d met Soonyoung, an upperclassman in the dance department with the most captivating stage presence Chan had ever seen.

The rest, as they say, is history: they became fast friends after Soonyoung complimented one of Chan’s routines he’d showed off in the first week of workshops and Chan asked Soonyoung for tips on facials during live performances. Soon enough, they were inseparable—spending hours outside of class practicing together and eventually spending hours not even dancing at all. Soonyoung joined a dance studio as an instructor shortly after graduation and worked as a backup dancer and choreographer on the side, bringing Chan along with him to as many jobs as Chan’s schedule would allow so he could build up his repertoire and make connections. By the time Chan graduated and joined the studio Soonyoung worked at, the two were well-known enough that people requested lessons from them by name. Two more years later, they decided to take the plunge and rent out a space to open up their own dance studio. Things weren’t easy: sleepless nights, shouting matches, and empty wallets were constant fixtures for a while, but they were persistent. Shining Diamond was—is—their baby.

And now, at the tender age of twenty-six, Chan’s lost everything.

The money isn’t the issue—according to Soonyoung, Chan should be getting fat stacks because of the accident (which Chan figures will probably be promptly swallowed up by his medical bills and paying their various rents and other recurring expenses, but still).

Chan just doesn’t know who he is without dance. Maybe he should’ve listened to his parents when they tried to encourage him to study something else in high school and college, just to make sure he’d have something else to fall back on. Maybe he should have taken his other classes more seriously, taken more care to pick things he might’ve actually been interested in instead of picking whatever was easiest. Maybe then he would’ve had a plan B instead of foolishly believing that a job based entirely around the condition of his physical body would be something he could sustain forever.

Focused, dedicated, tenacious, his old instructors called him. Stubborn, obstinate, single-minded, Chan wonders if they should’ve called him instead.

Even thinking this way is foreign to him. While he wouldn’t consider himself the most optimistic person in the world, he liked thinking on the bright side, looking for ways to improve himself and trying to make the best of difficult situations. It helped that he had classmates and friends to lean on, and always had dance as his guiding north.

Now…

Now, whenever he thinks about the future, all he sees is an empty, black void.

Chan doesn’t remember much of the accident or the week immediately following—just bits and pieces of excruciating pain, beeping hospital machines, an inconsolable tear-streaked Soonyoung, and mumbled assents to questions the hospital staff asked him all swirled up in a fog of pain medication. It’s probably for the best, he figures, hopes that it means he’ll spend less time dwelling on the circumstances that led up to this.

This being drugged up out of his mind with his bandaged and braced leg propped up on a pillow. He’d had three cracked ribs, a moderate concussion, a torn ACL, and a femur broken in three places. There’s a titanium rod in his leg now—he swears he can feel the ache where the screws connect to bone.

Soonyoung frets the entire time, camping out on the floor of Chan’s bedroom (Chan tried to bother him enough to make him go away, but was forced to relent after realizing that he lacked the coordination to do simple tasks like go to the bathroom by himself. Soonyoung holding him steady while he tries to piss is so much worse when they’re not drunk).

“This is the nicest you’ve ever been to me,” Chan tries to joke when Soonyoung brings him a tray of food in bed—homemade chicken juk that their friend Seokmin dropped off. “Maybe I should almost-die more often.”

The absolutely pained expression Soonyoung’s face slips into is enough for Chan to decide that perhaps Soonyoung is the wrong audience for this particular brand of gallows humor.

On Sunday evening, Soonyoung pops into his room and sits cross-legged next to Chan’s bed. This isn’t entirely abnormal, but something about his expression puts Chan a bit on edge.

“Channie,” Soonyoung says. His voice has gone soft, the way Chan’s heard it when Soonyoung has to have a serious talk with one of the nine year olds. Chan kind of hates it.

“What, hyung?” Chan asks, sitting up straighter against his pillows.

“I have to go back to work again,” Soonyoung says. They’ve never called it going to work before—in that phrase alone, Chan hears all the words Soonyoung’s trying to avoid: I’m going back to the studio we put everything into because I can’t let it run into the ground. I’m the only one left that can keep it going. You’re not helpful anymore. “But the doctors said you should still have someone around for a couple more weeks, to help you get around and stuff.”

“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” This is a stretch—Chan’s medication cocktail makes him prone to bouts of drowsiness and general disorientation, which doesn’t mix well with an uncooperative leg in a brace. He’d almost fallen on his ass while getting up after dinner two nights ago, and that was with a cane.

“Chan. Please.” Soonyoung rolls his eyes, but rests one of his hands on top of Chan’s. “You don’t need to put on the tough guy act.”

Chan lets out an indignant huff.

“I’ve asked one of my friends to stay over, just while I’m out. He works from home, anyway. He could use a change of scenery.”

“Hyung, you’re not making someone inconvenience themself for me, are you?” Chan’s stomach sinks at the idea of someone else having to take on the burden of taking care of him. It was hard enough for him to come to terms with needing Soonyoung to help him with everything—he’s not sure how he’ll manage swallowing his pride around a stranger.

“Wonwoo owes me, anyway.” Soonyoung shrugs. “Do you remember Wonwoo? He didn’t go to uni with us, but he was probably around after some of our performances and stuff. Tall, skinny, glasses.”

A few vague memories float through Chan’s mind, of a tall guy who Soonyoung clung to backstage every now and again, but nothing terribly concrete. If he didn’t go to their school, he probably didn’t go to any of their post-show hangouts, and Chan’s brain was usually more focused on potential improvements for their performances than his friends’ friends. He does feel a little bad about it, though, if he’s good enough friends with Soonyoung that he’d come all the way out to watch them dance. Maybe he should’ve paid more attention.

“Kind of.” Chan shrugs.

“Yeah, so, he’ll be over tomorrow morning. Don’t worry about him, he’s real self-sufficient. Quiet. Something like a cross between a cat and a potted plant.”

“Does he know you describe him this way?” Chan asks. Soonyoung waves him off.

“I’m gonna get some stuff done before I turn in for the night,” Soonyoung says as he rises to his feet. “G’night, if I don’t see you before you fall asleep!”

Soonyoung presses an exaggerated kiss to Chan’s cheek and tousles his hair; Chan sighs in mock indignation, leaning into the touch and returning the greeting as Soonyoung slips out the door.

Chan reaches for his bottles of medicine and water so he can take his evening doses. If this Wonwoo guy is as mellow as Soonyoung makes him out to be, maybe it won’t be so bad, Chan muses, swallowing his tiny mountain of pills one by one. He loves Soonyoung, but being cooped up in the apartment with only him for company is starting to drive him a little crazy. 

Oddly enough, he finds himself looking forward to the next day.

Soonyoung isn’t in the apartment the next morning, as promised—Chan is simultaneously relieved that the elder is going back to his normal life, but anxious that Soonyoung did actually make his friend come and take care of him.

There’s no one else in the living room when Chan limps his way out of his bedroom and into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. He leans against the counter as he waits for the water to boil, closing his eyes at the relief of shifting his weight entirely off of his injured leg.

His eyes shoot open, though, when he hears the sound of the front door lock turning. Briefly, he wonders if Soonyoung had come back early for some reason.

The door opens, revealing a tall, slim man in a blue hoodie and grey joggers with a backpack slung over his shoulder and silver, wire-rimmed glasses on his nose. Chan’s fingers inch in the direction of the boiling kettle—surely, this must be Wonwoo, especially if he had a key to open the door, but you can never be too careful.

“Hi,” the man says when he catches sight of Chan, “I’m Wonwoo. Soonyoung’s friend.”

“I figured,” Chan says, grabbing the kettle, but only to pour hot water into his mug. “I’m Chan.”

“I figured,” Wonwoo echoes, a hint of a smile on his lips. He takes off his shoes in the entryway, then walks to the kitchen table and sets his bag down on an empty chair.

“Do you mind if I set up here?” he asks. “I doubt Soonyoung has a spare desk lying around.”

Chan shakes his head, bringing his mug to his lips to take a sip of his tea. “Make yourself at home. It’s bad enough Soonyoung-hyung bullied you into coming over here in the first place, the least I can do is let you work at the only real table we have in this apartment.”

Wonwoo laughs, taking a rather hefty-looking laptop, tablet, and mouse out of his bag. “It’s no trouble at all, really. I could do with getting out of the house a bit more often.”

“Mm.” Chan lets the topic drop, watching Wonwoo set up his workstation in silence, still taking tiny sips of his tea.

“What’s the Wi-Fi?” Wonwoo asks, once he’s finished plugging everything in and turned his laptop on.

Chan swallows his mouthful of tea with a loud gulp. “It’s, uh, ‘TigerDino,’” he says, feeling warmth rise to his ears, “and the password is ‘TigerLove1234,’ capital T and L.” Not for the first time, he regrets letting Soonyoung pick the Wi-Fi information (but in his defense, if they picked anything even remotely more complicated than their old uni nicknames, Soonyoung would’ve forgotten it instantly).

Wonwoo, to his credit, simply looks amused as he dutifully types in the password. “Soonyoung?” he asks, and when Chan nods he gives the type of long-suffering sigh that comes with knowing someone for years. “Figures. Sometimes we joke that that’s why he and I became friends. He needed someone who could serve as 24/7 IT support.”

“Yeah,” Chan laughs, but there’s not much humor to the sound. “He had to email all the students and clients about my accident, and no joke, one of my first thoughts after I woke up was I hope he remembered to BCC everyone so we didn’t have a ‘reply all’ disaster.”

Wonwoo’s mouth tightens in a terse, close-lipped smile. “I’m aware. He called me at five in the morning in hysterics—he couldn’t be helped over the phone, so I just told him to give me the login information and I did it for him.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t that funny to start with, but it feels like all the humor’s been sucked out of the room. If Chan stays in the same area as Wonwoo for another second, he fears the tension might crush him alive.

“I’m just gonna,” Chan says, voice dropping off as he shuffles back to his room. Wonwoo makes a noncommittal noise of acknowledgement, and Chan closes the door with a click behind him.

Well. That was profoundly awkward. He wouldn’t say that Wonwoo was mean, but he wasn’t exactly expecting the brusqueness.

Chan boots up his laptop, deciding that he should probably check his studio work email since he hasn’t had the mental wherewithal to look through anything yet. Even though Soonyoung had let everyone know that he’d be out of commission for at least the near future, there were a couple of choreography projects he’d been working on prior to the accident that he needs to follow up on. There’s one in particular he’s dreading—a piece for a boy group comeback that he’d finished but now would most definitely not be able to teach.

When he opens up his email and sees the bright red 135 next to the inbox, he sighs, gearing himself up for a long morning.

Wonwoo’s eating a convenience store lunchbox when Chan emerges from his room around one, the need to quell his hunger no longer able to win out over his desire to hide away until Wonwoo leaves.

He acknowledges Wonwoo with a nod before pulling out a container of kimchi fried rice that Soonyoung had made a couple of days before. Chan scrapes out the rest of it into a bowl and pops it in the microwave, wondering if he can figure out a way to cook while sitting in a chair. He loves Soonyoung to death, but he needs a little more variety in his diet than Soonyoung’s cooking skills are able to provide. Maybe he can sweet-talk Seokmin into dropping some more food off for him.

He’s about to scurry back to his room before Wonwoo calls out to him, brow slightly pinched over his glasses.

“Sorry,” Wonwoo says, “about earlier. If I made you uncomfortable. I’m not really great with people. I promise I’m not mad or anything—I just don’t usually talk that much around people I’ve just met and my face just sort of looks like this.”

Okay, so maybe Chan was worried that Wonwoo hated him, but he doesn’t need to know that. “It’s fine, really.”

Wonwoo still looks oddly pained. “I don’t want us to get off to a bad start, especially if I’m going to be around for a little while. Better that we’re friendly, at the very least, right?”

Well, he can’t exactly argue with that logic. “I suppose you’re right.”

Wonwoo’s face finally softens. “Did you want to eat lunch together? You don’t have to, if you’d prefer to eat alone. It’s your house, anyway.”

“Sure,” Chan says. He’s a little surprised at himself, honestly, but Wonwoo’s trying to be nice and it’s only polite for him to respond in kind.

He makes his way over to the table; Wonwoo pulls out the chair a little bit for him, which is weirdly sweet of him. In any other context, maybe it would make his heart flutter a little bit.

(Maybe it does in this context, too.)

They eat in companionable silence for a while, Wonwoo scrolling on his phone while Chan pokes around at his own. There are a few chat messages that he should probably reply to, but he doesn’t know what to say to them—from one preview, it looks like Seungkwan’s all caught up on the details as of late, and Chan’s not ready to face Hurricane Boo.

“I think it’s fair to say,” Wonwoo eventually says, “that I probably know more about you than you know about me. Soonyoung talks about you a lot when we get a chance to catch up.”

Chan laughs. “Hyung likes to take any opportunity he can to poke fun at me, doesn’t he?”

Wonwoo shakes his head. “No, he’s generally very complimentary. Always talking about Channie this, Channie that, showing me videos from time to time. He sees you as the younger brother he never had.”

“We make a bit of a dysfunctional family,” Chan says, “but he’s a good hyung. It’s weird to think of him that way sometimes, because I’m the oldest at home. I’m not good at seeing myself as the youngest.”

“Same here.” Wonwoo nods in understanding. “My younger brother is around your age, I think.”

Chan thinks of his own brother—remembers how Geon used to idolize him as a kid, was considering becoming a dancer, too. He also remembers that he doesn’t remember when the last time he talked to Geon was, or his family at all for that matter. He assumes either Soonyoung or the hospital contacted them, but he’s been avoiding his text apps like the plague. God, he’s been an awful son.

Wonwoo looks at him curiously. “Ruminating on your life?”

“Something like that,” Chan answers with a shaky chuckle. “Just thinking about my brother. Haven’t seen him in a while. My family lives in Jeolla-do. Iksan.”

“I get it. I’m from even further down. Born in Changwon.”

“How’d you and Soonyoung-hyung meet, then?” Chan asks. “He’s real proud of being from Namyangju—even yelled out the window at another car when we were passing by when the dance team was going on an MT retreat.”

Wonwoo’s head shakes in fond exasperation. “My family moved there for a few years, so I went to half of middle school and high school there,” he says. “Soonyoung was the class representative for the homeroom I transferred into, so I was stuck with him whether I liked it or not. Luckily for me, he’s not such an awful guy.” As he speaks, his gaze seems to soften slightly at the edges. “That being said, he was probably the cause of about eighty percent of my detentions while we were in school.”

“And the other twenty?”

Wonwoo’s lips curl up into a mischievous smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Chan rolls his eyes. Duh, he wants to say, that’s why I’m asking. But then a thought strikes him:

“Does it have anything to do with what Soonyoung-hyung has on you?”

“Pardon?”

“He said you owed him one,” Chan says, “so that’s why you’re stuck here with me.”

“I’m not stuck here with you,” Wonwoo replies. “And it’s not that I owe him anything. He just routinely blackmails me.”

Both of Chan’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “Blackmail?” Soonyoung’s prone to joking around a lot, but that seems like a bit much for him.

“There’s… a video,” Wonwoo says, “of me in middle school. Dancing really badly at our school’s talent show. Soonyoung routinely threatens to spread it around our greater friend group if I don’t do his bidding from time to time.”

That’s not at all what Chan was expecting, but relief washes over him, knowing that Soonyoung isn’t trying to manipulate his friends over darker secrets. Now that Wonwoo’s mentioned it, though, he’s curious how bad the video actually is.

“If I asked really nicely,” Chan hedges, “would you show it to me?”

He really wasn’t expecting Wonwoo to grab his laptop and open up his folder of videos, navigating through the different files like he knows exactly where it is, but that’s exactly what he does.

With a resigned sigh (ridiculous, Chan thinks, because Wonwoo could have said no at any point), Wonwoo turns the screen to face Chan and hits play.

There’s a small group of gangly boys on stage in matching black dress shirts, standing with their heads down as the music starts to play. It takes a moment for Chan to pick Wonwoo out from the group, but his features are easily recognizable once he steps into the center spotlight—he looked much the same back then as he does now, just thinner, and he had a shaggy mop on his head instead of his current closer-cropped hairdo. 

The dancing isn’t great, not by a long shot, although Chan’s definitely seen worse. But something about the grainy video of a stony-faced, stiff-limbed preteen Wonwoo dancing to Rainism sends mirth bubbling up through his chest, and soon enough he’s laughing so hard that he’s leaning heavily on Wonwoo’s shoulder for support, ignoring the way his ribs protest with every breath he takes.

Wonwoo, to his credit, seems amused that Chan is so amused, reaching out with a tentative hand to ruffle Chan’s hair. 

“Oh, man,” Chan wheezes, taking in a deep breath. “That was good. I mean I get why you might not necessarily want that getting out, but it was cute.”

“I’m glad you seem to be so charmed by it,” Wonwoo says as he closes the window. “Soonyoung’s single feat of technological mastery was figuring out how to save multiple copies of the video onto no fewer than three USB drives. So here we are.”

He shrugs, gesturing vaguely at his computer. “I have to get back to work. But it was nice to get to know you a little better, Chan.”

“Yeah, me too.” Chan grins, and Wonwoo responds in kind. The elder collects all the trash from his lunch to throw away, and grabs Chan’s empty dish to put in the sink before Chan has the chance to protest that he can do it on his own.

Chan rises to his feet, grabbing his cane from where he’d leaned it against the side of the table. Wonwoo watches him as he returns to his room—it doesn’t quite rise to the level of hovering that Soonyoung insisted on, but it’s an unfortunate reminder that Wonwoo’s basically here to make sure he doesn’t accidentally brain himself on the floor. 

Wonwoo knocks on Chan’s door around six, poking his head in when Chan makes a general grunt of acknowledgement from his bed.

“Soonyoung’s back,” Wonwoo says, “so I’ll be heading home now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Chan returns, “it was nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Wonwoo closes the door behind him. Chan hears dull murmurs of him and Soonyoung talking before Soonyoung pops his own head through the door.

“Hey!” He grins. “I brought dinner. Chinese, from one of Junhui’s recommendations. I asked Wonwoo if he wanted to stay but he said he had to go feed his cat.”

“Oh.” Wonwoo hadn’t mentioned that; a pang of guilt runs through Chan, knowing that Wonwoo had to leave his cat alone just to watch him.

Soonyoung’s smile shifts into a small pout. “Don’t look so glum, Channie. Miso’s an independent young lady—she tends to ignore Nonu for half the day anyway. If Wonwoo didn’t think it was a good idea, he could’ve said no.”

“I guess. I still feel bad, though. Maybe he could bring her over sometime.”

Soonyoung raises an eyebrow as Chan gets up to follow him out to the kitchen. “I thought you were afraid of cats.”

“You said she’s independent,” Chan says, “plus, I’m not that afraid of them. It’s mostly that I just don’t really know what to do with them. I kind of end up just looking at them from afar.”

Soonyoung shrugs. “Suit yourself. You can ask him about that tomorrow. Speaking of, how were things? I know Wonwoo can be a little stiff, but if he was mean then I’ll kick his ass.”

Chan reaches for a piece of braised chicken, pondering over the events of the day. “It was fine,” he settles on. “I think we’ll get along well.”

Soonyoung beams, all teeth. “I’m glad. My two best friends, being besties!”

Chan rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far. We don’t really have much in common that I’ve noticed.”

“Mark my words, Lee Chan. I’ve got an eye for this sort of thing.”

“Okay, hyung.”

That night, Chan finally opens up his text app—he still passes by Seungkwan’s, partly out of fear and partly because he knows it'll bother Seungkwan—but his thumb hovers over his family group chat, where he can see the preview of his mother’s message chan-ah, are you doing well

Swallowing dry, he taps on it, scrolling through the few messages that they’ve sent over the past week. It’s mostly some variation of his mom asking how he’s doing, telling him to text or call when he can. His dad sent him a fighting! sticker, and Geon sent a singular get better soon, which brings a metaphorical tear to Chan’s eye.

sorry mom, he types, i haven’t really opened my texts lately but i’m doing well with soonyoungie hyung ^^ don’t worry about me. love you ❤️

The next day and the days after pass by in much the same way: Wonwoo arrives around nine in the morning, he and Chan have a brief conversation over tea and coffee, and Wonwoo gets to work. Chan’s taken to sitting on the living room couch with his laptop or a book, whiling away the time—he hadn’t realized just how much time he spent on dance and dance-related topics until it was suddenly no longer an option, and now he has no idea what to fill the rest of his hours with.

“You could get a pet,” Wonwoo suggests, when Chan mentions it over lunch.

Chan shudders. “I don’t know. I’m kind of afraid I’ll accidentally kill it or it’ll end up hating me or something.”

“They’re not that difficult, especially if you adopt an older animal,” Wonwoo says. “My cat’s around ten, and she’s pretty tame. Mostly just likes to lie around in the sun until she decides she’s hungry or wants a little bit of attention.”

“Miso, right?” Chan asks. “Soonyoung-hyung mentioned her. I feel kind of bad you have to leave her at home alone.”

Wonwoo nods. “She’s okay. Probably happy she doesn’t have to see my face around all the time,” he chuckles. “But I could bring her over sometime, if you’d like to meet her.”

“That would be cool,” Chan says.

The warmth in Wonwoo’s responding smile surprises him—Chan can’t help but feel the same way.

(When Chan tells Soonyoung that Wonwoo might bring his cat over, Soonyoung proclaims, with a not insignificant amount of indignance, that it took me a whole month to convince Nonu to let me meet his cat! Where is the justice, Lee Chan!)

It’s not enough to distract him from what’s coming at the end of the week, though.

Follow-up with Dr. Park. Friday, 2:30pm.

Chan’s been dreading this appointment for as long as he’s known about it, staunchly avoiding looking at the reminder on his phone calendar. Wonwoo’s agreed to take him to it (well, more like Wonwoo and Soonyoung gang up on Chan and tell him in no uncertain terms that no, he is not going to take the subway with his crutches when Wonwoo has a perfectly functioning car), and while Chan is grateful that he doesn’t have to spend the journey to the doctor’s alone, he can’t escape the feeling of dread that settles in his stomach when they get to the hospital.

“Do you want me to come up with you?” Wonwoo asks.

Chan shakes his head. Truth be told, he’s scared out of his mind, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to hold it together with Wonwoo around—or worse, he doesn’t know if he could handle the possibility of breaking down in front of him. Soonyoung, maybe, since they’ve already seen each other at their worsts, but even though he and Wonwoo have gotten to know each other a little better there’s still a part of Chan that’s not ready to be that vulnerable around someone new.

So he gives an awkward scrunched-arm wave with his crutches wedged firmly beneath his armpits before entering the building, avoiding making eye contact with anyone as he heads to the elevator to take him up to the right floor. His palms are slick against the grips on his crutches, and he tries wiping them off on his shirt.

Mercifully, the doctor is able to see him soon after he arrives at the reception area, sparing him from sitting with his own thoughts for too long, but when one of the assistants leads him to an examination room, checks his vitals, and change into a gown everything starts to feel too real.

The doctor, when she arrives, is perfectly pleasant—she asks him all the regular questions about how things have been going (as well as can be expected), his pain level (about a six, manageable with the medication), and after having him bend his limbs in various configurations she declares that his healing progress is well on schedule and he can start tapering off of his pain medication. She prints out a referral for him to see a physical therapist now that he can move a little more freely, recommends a clinic that they frequently send patients to, and tells Chan that he should schedule a follow up appointment in a month. Chan nods along, until they reach a lull in the conversation topic. 

“Do you have any questions?” she asks. It’s a perfectly normal, even expected thing to ask during these appointments. It makes Chan’s leg feel like it’s made of lead, weighing him down, hyper-conscious of it.

"Doctor," he starts, "before this, I… I was a dancer." The words come out halting, as if his body wants to hold them back—if by speaking them, he can no longer face the truth of what the response might be. "Is there any chance that I…"

The thin line of her lips tells Chan everything he needs to know before she says a single word. "You sustained serious injuries to your leg," she says. Like he didn't already know. "While you will likely regain most of your former strength and mobility—probably over ninety percent, if you keep up with all your PT—I would strongly advise against significant amounts of weight-bearing activity, especially the kind of movement that would put frequent, changing stress on your leg.”

"Which includes dancing."

She nods. "I understand this is a big change for you. It's normal to have a lot of mixed feelings about this sort of situation. If you'd like, I can refer you to a psychologist—"

"Thank you," Chan cuts in. He knows she’s just doing her job, but he doesn’t know if he can stand to listen to anything else at the moment. "I'll keep that in mind."

The doctor rearranges Chan’s papers, clicks through a few tabs on the computer. "I've put in refills for all of your medications. Is there anything else you want to talk about today?"

He shakes his head, thanks her again. She gives a perfunctory bow and leaves the room. A piece of Chan leaves with her.

Chan changes out of the paper hospital gown and leaves the doctor’s office in a daze, making his way back to Wonwoo’s car by subconscious thought alone. When he opens the passenger side door, he’s barely able muster up the energy to nod in Wonwoo’s general direction before slumping back in the seat, eyes unfocused as his brain spins.

Wonwoo looks at him curiously as he starts up the car and pulls out of the parking garage. "How was your appointment?"

"Fine.”

There’s a pause, as if Wonwoo’s waiting for him to elaborate, but Chan doesn’t know what else to say. Wonwoo seems to pick up on it, pulling up a playlist on his phone; the soft, gentle voice of a female singer fills the space between them. 

The silence persists when they return to Chan and Soonyoung’s apartment. Wonwoo returns to his work at the kitchen table, but keeps sneaking glances at Chan when he thinks the younger isn’t looking. On some level, he’s thankful for the concern, but he also wishes that Wonwoo didn’t care—didn’t have to care. He wishes this would all just go away.

“The doctor said I’d probably never dance again,” Chan says to the empty air, tipping his head back against the arm of the sofa so he stares up at the ceiling. Something deep within him aches to verbalize it.

“Hm?” Wonwoo turns around in his chair, pulling out one of his earbuds. “Sorry, were you talking to me?”

Chan shakes his head. “Never mind, hyung. I was just talking to myself.”

Wonwoo purses his lips, regarding Chan with a slight tilt of his head. “I don’t think you were.”

A dull scoff puffs out through Chan’s nose. “You’re right.”

“Is this about the doctor’s appointment?” Wonwoo asks. “You’ve been a bit off since we got back.”

“I guess,” Chan sighs. “I asked the doctor about my leg and she basically confirmed that I’d never dance again. Like, I kind of already knew the answer, but having her actually say it in words made it more real.”

“Schrödinger's leg, I suppose,” Wonwoo says. When Chan shoots him an unimpressed look, he chuckles dryly. “It’s a physics paradox. There’s a cat in an enclosed box with a flask of poison, a radioactive substance, and a Geiger counter. If the Geiger counter detects radioactivity, the sensor goes off and knocks over the poison and kills the cat. But the radioactive substance might decay before the Geiger counter can detect it, so the cat might live. And of course, if you don't open the box at all then the cat dies from oxygen deprivation. Until you open the box, though, you don’t know if the cat is dead or alive, so it’s in a perpetual state of ambiguity.”

Chan gapes at him. “That’s kind of fucked up,” is all he can think to say.

“Yeah, well.” Wonwoo shrugs. “No one ever said STEM people were good with thinking about the emotional implications of their hypothetical scenarios. But anyway,” he says, “I… um. Do you… want a hug?”

Chan’s eyebrow raises, skeptical and confused. “Huh?”

“They’re supposed to be good for emotional healing—studies have shown that physical touch can help boost serotonin levels, which tends to lead to increases in positive feelings. Sorry, I’m not very good with this sort of thing.” Wonwoo scratches at the back of his neck, looking appropriately sheepish. “I usually leave it to Soonyoung.”

What the hell. It couldn’t hurt, Chan supposes. He shrugs, scooting over on the couch so Wonwoo has enough space to sit. 

The elder sits with one knee bent up on the cushions and the other leg off the edge, back against the arm of the couch. He reaches under Chan’s armpits and tugs him back gently so he’s resting against Wonwoo’s chest.

It’s a bit awkward, although Chan expected nothing less from what he can only describe as cuddling with a guy he barely knows.

Chan’s not uncomfortable with human touch—working as a dancer and dance instructor meant that he was constantly in a state of contact either in a piece or adjusting others, and the vast majority of his friends enjoy performing their best impersonations of leeches with alarming frequency. He’s long past the days when he used to flinch whenever Soonyoung’s arms threw themselves around him out of the blue.

Wonwoo never struck him as that type of guy. From what Chan’s seen so far, he tends to carry himself like a smaller human. Compared to someone like Soonyoung, who often likes to take up as much room and invade as much space as humanly possible, Wonwoo tends to slouch down, keeps his limbs to himself. It’s not the first time he’s touched Chan, either, but they’d all been rather brief instances—a guiding touch on the arm here, a light pat on the head there.

Maybe Chan’s just been starved for comfort, though, because he doesn’t brush it off with a laugh like he otherwise might. Wonwoo’s chest is surprisingly sturdy for someone who looks so slim, and he’s taken to threading his fingers gently through Chan’s hair, scratching softly at his scalp. He feels Wonwoo’s soft humming more than he hears it, vibrating through his back at an oddly soothing frequency. 

(And if he ends up falling asleep like this, waking up only to the sound of Soonyoung’s phone camera shutter and Wonwoo’s pained yell, he’ll pass it off as a fluke.)

Something shifts after that week—if Chan asked other people for their opinions, Hansol would say that Wonwoo’s vibe has gotten more chill, whatever that means. Seungkwan would say that Wonwoo’s finally decided to actually reveal his true personality, be careful Lee Chan because you cannot trust a two-faced bitch who doesn’t show you who they are when you first meet them, whatever that means.

Chan would say that something about the way Wonwoo holds himself has relaxed. Dancing for so long and paying close attention the way that the human body can express emotion means that he’s gotten pretty good at reading other people by the way they exist and move around others.

This week, Wonwoo’s shoulders no longer seem quite so tense, and his gestures and limbs have started extending a bit farther outside his previously tight personal bubble. He’s even taken to lounging on the sofa with Chan when he takes breaks from work instead of just sitting at the table. Chan supposes it’s a good sign that they’ve started to become more comfortable around each other.

What Chan can’t explain at all, though, is the plant.

The plant being a tiny potted thing that Wonwoo presents him with one morning, placing it delicately on the table before he takes out his usual work electronics. Chan leans over to peer at it—it’s shaped somewhat like a flower, with broad, flat leaf-petals that shift from blue-grey-green in the center to burgundy at the tips. 

"I passed by a plant shop the yesterday when I was grocery shopping—I thought you might like it. Something to take care of to pass the time.”

Chan pokes at one of the leaves curiously. “What is it?”

“It’s called echeveria,” he explains. “The shopkeeper said it was a good plant for a first-time owner. She said you just need to keep the soil slightly moist and make sure it gets direct sunlight from time to time.”

Wonwoo fidgets with the ends of his sleeves. It’s oddly endearing, and Chan wishes he could explain why. “Do you, ah, like it?”

It’s a bit of a ridiculous question, Chan thinks. “It’s one of the most thoughtful things anyone’s ever gotten for me. Thank you, hyung. I love it.”

Wonwoo exhales a loud sigh, closing his eyes as his lips curl into a relieved smile. “Oh, good. I’m glad.”

Chan can’t help but grin, too.

Chan’s first physical therapy appointment falls on a Wednesday afternoon; despite his attempts to convince them otherwise, Soonyoung and Wonwoo declare that he will be chauffeured to the clinic. It’s not located in a hospital, so Wonwoo’s forced to find street parking—he insists on accompanying Chan during the five minute walk to the clinic and apologizes to him no fewer than three times, and Chan has to threaten to whack him with his crutches get him to stop.

Chan checks in at the front desk, and the receptionist leads them to an examination room. He takes a seat on the exam table while Wonwoo sits in one of the extra chairs. The room is weirdly cold and poorly-lit, and Chan shivers. He’s never been one to be afraid of medical exams, but he’s starting to realize why people seem to have such an aversion to going to the doctor.

“Do you, um, want me to go?” Wonwoo asks. “I can wait in the waiting room, if you’d prefer.”

Chan shakes his head. “It’s okay, hyung.”

The corner of Wonwoo’s lip lifts up in a lopsided smile. “Is it just me, or does this room have vaguely creepy vibes? I don’t blame you for not wanting to be alone.”

A nervous chuckle bubbles up through Chan’s throat. “Yep.”

“Hi, I’m here for Chan—” the physical therapist says, poking his head into the room. “Wonwoo? Nice to see you get out of the house,” he laughs. “We’re still taking Miso this weekend, right?”

“Oh, hyung, I wasn’t expecting to see you at work.” Wonwoo’s eyes are wide in surprise, but his demeanor seems to warm. “And yeah, I’ll bring her by on Friday night.”

“Cool. Jihoonie’ll be happy—don’t tell him I told you, but I think he misses her. He refuses to admit it, of course, but I’ve been catching him looking at old pictures of her lately.”

“She’s perfect. Can you blame him?”

“Huh?” Chan looks at Wonwoo, who’s grasped onto the other man’s extended hand, leaning in to bump chest-to-chest as they chat.

The physical therapist’s ears turn a little red when he notices Chan staring at them. “Sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Choi Seungcheol, and I’ve been assigned to handle your physical therapy!” He grins, revealing dimples on the sides of his cheeks. “Wonwoo-yah and I went to uni together—ended up in the e-sports club together.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Seungcheol-ssi” Chan replies, bowing slightly. “I didn’t know any of Wonwoo-hyung’s other friends.”

“Call me hyung if you’re comfortable with it.” Seungcheol waves him off. “Calling me ssi feels so stiff! Especially since you’re one of Wonwoo’s friends.”

“Seungcheol-hyung,” Chan tries. 

Seungcheol’s responding smile is warm. “Alright. Let’s get started. First, I’ll ask you some questions about your health history and your goals, then we’ll get to your exercises.”

Chan nods, and Seungcheol pulls up his file.

“So you were in a car accident a few weeks ago where you sustained several injuries, most notably to your right thigh and knee,” Seungcheol says. “And you’re here for physical therapy related to that, correct?”

“Yeah.” All of the moisture in Chan’s mouth feels like it evaporated in an instant. It shouldn’t be bothering him so much to talk about this, especially since he’s been living with it for a few weeks already.

“Are you experiencing any symptoms that seem abnormal to you?”

Chan shakes his head. “It, um. It does hurt, still. And I can’t walk on it, obviously. But it’s not really swollen anymore or anything.”

“I see.” Seungcheol looks at Chan’s leg and frowns. “Shit, I’m sorry. The office should’ve told you to wear shorts, so I can get a better look at how things are going. Are you cool with taking your pants off?”

The request is so out of the blue that Chan can’t help but laugh, relieving some of his tension. “Yeah, sure. As long as I won’t be leaving the room.”

“Yeah, of course. Again, super sorry about that. We’ll just have Wonwoo turn around for modesty and all.” Seungcheol raises his eyebrows pointedly at Wonwoo, who flushes red and immediately turns to face the other wall.

Seungcheol’s touch is light against Chan’s skin as he touches his thigh and knee, gently manipulating the muscle with the pads of his fingers and examining the scar tissue from the surgery. 

“It looks like everything is healing well from what I can see,” Seungcheol says, sliding his stool to the sink in the room so he can wash his hands. “You can put your pants back on and we’ll start the actual physical therapy part of the appointment. Do you have any questions before we start?”

“Seungcheol-hyung.” Chan’s voice wavers, and he wishes it didn’t sound so much like he was begging. “The other doctor I went to—she said she didn’t think I’d be able to dance again. Do you…?”

The physical therapist purses his lips, arms crossed as he looks at Chan’s leg.

“Chan, I… I can’t make any promises,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of patients who had less severe injuries than yours still walk with pain and limps even years after their injuries. I’ve also had patients who completely rebound and are back to living their lives with little to no change from beforehand.” He shrugs. “You’re young and strong, which does work in your favor, but anything I tell you now would be a complete shot in the dark. All I can do is promise you that I’ll try my best to get you up and going again, and as long as you try your best, too, we can come up with some kind of solution that works.”

Seungcheol holds out his pinky towards Chan. It’s an extremely juvenile gesture—the only other times Chan’s made pinky-promises in recent memory were with the kids he’d taught or with Soonyoung—but the earnestness in Seungcheol’s eyes makes Chan want to believe in him.

He links his pinky with Seungcheol’s, who brings their thumbs up to touch. “It’s a promise. Don’t go breaking it, okay? You got this.”

“Thanks, hyung,” Chan says. He really does mean it—it’s cheesy as hell that he’s getting a pep talk from his physical therapist, but it’s kind of what he needs.

Seungcheol grins, letting go of Chan’s hand. “Alright. Wonwoo, you can turn around now, we might need your help at some point,” he says. “Chan, first we’ll have you do some seated exercises…”

He hates to admit it, but Soonyoung and Wonwoo were right—Chan’s definitely feeling a little more unstable on his feet than usual after his session’s over with Seungcheol, and he’s begrudgingly grateful for Wonwoo’s steadying presence as they leave the physical therapy clinic. Seungcheol had explained it was normal to experience soreness afterwards from both the injury itself and from stimulating his muscles since Chan hasn’t been actively using them the same ways as he used to, but that didn’t mean Chan liked the feeling.

His phone buzzes in his pocket as he and Wonwoo walk back to where he’d parked the car, startling him; he pretty much only has these types of notifications on for the most important messages, so he can’t help but pull his phone out to check. It’s an email notification from HSS, and despite the fact that they’re approaching the crosswalk and he has to juggle holding his crutches and his phone, Chan can't resist opening it. He’s surprised it managed to slip his mind for so long—it seemed like just yesterday Chan was glued to his email inbox, waiting impatiently for any response from the entertainment company. 

Thank you for your work, Lee Chan-ssi. We are sorry to hear about your accident, and hope that you make a full recovery. In the interim, we have asked your partner Kwon Soonyoung-ssi to take over teaching the choreography to LUCKY7.

Chan wonders why Soonyoung never mentioned it himself—he had to have known about it for some time. He realizes now why Soonyoung’s been coming home later and later at night, sometimes to the point where Chan doesn’t even see him at all. He supposes that asking Soonyoung to take over teaching it was the most rational choice, given that Soonyoung is the only other instructor at their studio and he’s familiar with the piece, having watched it plenty of times while Chan was putting it together, but it still stings nonetheless.

See? a nasty little voice in his head says, in the end, you weren’t that important after all. Soonyoung can do whatever you did, and probably better. See how easy it was for them to replace you? Did they even need you at all?

Only the sharp jerk of a hand around his bicep pulling him back and a loud Hey! snaps him out of it, feet stumbling back onto the sidewalk and hands clutching his crutches as cars start whizzing by less than a meter from where he’d been standing. Chan’s heart beats loud in his ears, a reminder of how easily it could have stopped mere seconds ago. For a split second, Chan genuinely doesn’t know which option he prefers. It terrifies him.

“Hey,” Wonwoo repeats, softer this time. “You good? You need to watch out—we don’t want a repeat, y’know?”

It’s not the way Wonwoo’s eyes dart down to Chan’s leg that makes hot tears start to prick beneath his eyelids, but it doesn’t help matters either.

“Whoa, too soon?” Wonwoo places his free hand on Chan’s other arm, tugging him so they’re facing each other. “I’m sorry.”

Chan shakes his head, eyes downcast. The Lightning McQueen sticker that Soonyoung insisted on affixing to Chan’s crutches mocks him. For a lightning fast recovery, Soonyoung had said. The guilt in his heart feels all the heavier, knowing that Soonyoung only ever wants what’s best for him and Chan’s selfish ass can’t even do the same. 

“It’s not that, hyung.”

“Then what is it?” Wonwoo asks.

Chan can’t answer. Not now. Not when he feels like uttering a single word will crack the armor he’s tried so hard to build around himself—force him to face a truth he’s never spoken aloud.

Wonwoo wraps one arm around Chan’s shoulder, pulling him in. It’s not quite a hug, but it’s close enough that Chan can hear the sound of Wonwoo breathing.

“Let’s go back home,” Wonwoo murmurs. “We can go to my place, if you’d prefer. I don’t know if Soonyoung’s back yet.”

Chan doesn’t know, either. He wonders when they started growing apart like this—he and Soonyoung used to know each other like the backs of their own hands.

“Yours,” Chan manages to eke out. Wonwoo nods, dropping his hand to the small of Chan’s back to guide him in the direction of the parking lot.

Wonwoo doesn’t push Chan to speak in the car, putting on his usual easy listening music as he drives. Chan stares out the window as the route turns unfamiliar, focusing on the different store names and street signs they pass by to try and distract himself.

About fifteen minutes later, Wonwoo pulls into a parking garage next to a high-rise building. Chan follows him to the elevators and up to the fifth floor, where Wonwoo unlocks the door to 517.

“Welcome to my apartment,” Wonwoo says, gesturing to the interior. It’s nicer than Chan and Soonyoung’s apartment by far—it looks like it’s been recently remodeled, with crisp white walls and dark wood accents. A large, sliding glass door on the far wall looks out onto the Han River, a far cry from what Chan’s used to. All of the windows at his place just face other buildings or the street. The perils of a performing arts salary, he supposes.

“It’s really nice,” is what Chan says. “Very minimalist millennial.”

Wonwoo laughs. “Yeah, I guess. My mom was more excited to look at apartments than I was—I just wanted something with a semi-nice view since I work from home all day.”

A light, tinkling jingle draws Chan’s attention to the floor; a fluffy grey and white cat walks up to them before sitting expectantly by Wonwoo’s feet, tail swishing.

Crouching down, Wonwoo extends the back of his index finger toward the cat. “Hey little lady,” he murmurs, rubbing the underside of the cat’s chin. “I missed you.”

He spends a full minute sweet-talking and petting the cat before he turns to look at Chan, eyes wide.

“Oh, shit. Sorry about that.” Wonwoo stands back up, scratching at the back of his neck sheepishly. “This is Miso, as you might’ve guessed. You can try and see if she’ll let you pet her if you want.”

Miso remains seated, turning her head to observe Chan with large blue eyes. He stares back at her, unsure of what to do.

“You can sit down on the couch,” Wonwoo says. “It’s probably more comfortable for you to have your stand-off when you’re sitting down.”

“I guess.”

Wonwoo’s couch is a soft espresso leather that feels expensive when Chan runs his fingers over the material. It’s a far cry from the one he and Soonyoung picked up when another unit in their building was having a moving-out giveaway—he suspects it was originally some random Gmarket purchase.

Miso leaps up onto the couch easily, eyeing Chan from a cushion away. He holds his finger out toward her the same way Wonwoo had, hoping the cat can’t sense how nervous he is, although he’s not exactly holding out hope—even he can tell his hand is shaking.

Slowly, she sniffs along the length of his finger, rough tongue licking at it a couple of times before looking up at him expectantly. Chan hopes he’s supposed to take this as a good sign, and runs his knuckle along her neck. Her fur is as soft as it looks, and Chan’s finger half-disappears in the length of it.

She sits there for a minute, allowing Chan to pet her before she abruptly draws back and jumps off the couch; Chan watches as she climbs up a wooden structure in the corner of the room and comes to rest in a bowl at the top of a tower, closing her eyes as her tail drapes around her.

“Don’t worry about it,” Wonwoo says, taking stock of Chan’s dismay. “She does that a lot. Cats will get bored of you pretty quickly—the fact that she was okay with you touching her at all means she likes you well enough. Seungcheol-hyung treated her a bit too much like a dog when they first met and she nearly clawed the shit out of his arm.” He chuckles at the memory. “Luckily, she calmed down pretty quickly around Jihoon. I swear she likes him more than she likes me.”

“Ah,” is all Chan can think to say. Cats are weird.

“So what’s up?” Wonwoo asks, sitting down in the spot Miso vacated. “You’re usually not so easily distracted.”

Chan exhales long and slow. How does he begin to explain when he doesn’t even know where to start? Hell, he’s not even sure how he feels about the whole thing, let alone how to word it to Wonwoo. Hey, so my choreography project baby got handed to Soonyoung, and I’m happy it’s getting used but it feels like the last thing connecting me to dance has been taken away. I wish it wasn’t him that was taking over for me, because it just reminds me how much better he is than I am.

Even the thought alone makes Chan sound like a selfish bastard.

He opts for telling a half-truth. “I got an email about one of my choreo projects. It just kind of sucked to be reminded that I can’t dance anymore.”

“Mm.” 

Chan looks at his hands, playing with the ring on his middle finger. He’d bought it for himself with his first paycheck as a dancer—it wasn’t anything terribly nice or fancy, but he was proud to have something tangible that he’d bought with his own hard-earned money. It feels like so long ago, now.

“Have you considered,” Wonwoo’s tone is carefully measured when he speaks again, “a change of scenery? You’ve been cooped up in your apartment for a while.”

Chan raises an eyebrow at the sudden topic divergence. “Where am I supposed to go?” he asks. “I can’t go anywhere when I can barely walk for five minutes at a time.”

“I’m actually going to see my family in Changwon this weekend,” Wonwoo says, not entirely ignoring Chan but not exactly answering his question, either. “The beach might be good for you.”

“Hyung, I can’t just interrupt your family get together,” Chan sighs. 

“You wouldn’t be interrupting,” Wonwoo replies. “My mom’s always getting after me for not having enough friends. Besides, it would be nice to have a bit of a buffer from only having to talk about myself the whole time.”

Chan chews on the inside of his cheek, mulling it over. His knee-jerk sense of pride wants to refuse, because he doesn’t want Wonwoo doing nice things for him out of pity or some misguided sense of duty. At the same time, Wonwoo doesn’t strike him as the type of person who’d offer to do something he didn’t actually want to do, especially something like this. And he does have a point—Chan’s pretty much only left the house to go to his doctor’s appointments, and the idea of getting some sun does sound tempting...

“Ah, fuck it,” Chan mutters to himself. “Sure,” he says out loud. “Thanks, hyung.”

Wonwoo smiles widely, nose scrunching up a bit as his eyes curve up behind his glasses. You’d think Chan was the one doing him a favor. “No problem, Chan-ah.”

“Vacation. You’re going on vacation with my best friend!” Soonyoung wails when they tell him. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to convince him to go anywhere with me?”

“Soonyoung, when we first met each other we weren’t old enough to go on trips on our own.” Wonwoo rolls his eyes. “And by the time we were adults, we were at different schools and most of your free time was spent on dance stuff.”

Soonyoung ignores him in favor of swooning dramatically onto the sofa, the back of his hand touched against his forehead. “I’ve been forsaken!”

“I’ll bring you back a keychain, hyung,” Chan laughs.

“No need, Chan. Just make sure Wonwoo remembers to bring me some of his mom’s homemade kimchi.”

Wonwoo sighs. “She already has a jar ready for me to bring back. Sometimes I think she likes you more than her own sons.”

Soonyoung perks up at that. “Oh, awesome! I can’t wait to see her again—she makes the best kimchi fried rice. Channie, make sure you try her kimchi fried rice.”

"You’re not even invited," Wonwoo points out, "what are you talking about, seeing her again?" 

Soonyoung ignores him, looking expectantly at Chan.

“Okay?” Chan doesn’t think he actually has any say in what Wonwoo’s mom cooks, but Soonyoung seems particularly passionate about this.

Wonwoo sighs, louder this time. Soonyoung just grins.

The drive from Seoul to Changwon takes about five hours if all the traffic lines up in your favor.

This means that Wonwoo comes to pick Chan up at the ungodly hour of seven on Saturday morning. Soonyoung sends them off with sleepy eyes, murmuring don’t forget the kimchi, Jeon-san as he closes the door.

Chan raises an eyebrow. Wonwoo just shrugs.

During the first hour and a half, Chan ends up taking a nap. He doesn’t mean to, and he feels guilty about it when he wakes up and remembers that he’s not in his bed, but in a Hyundai Sonata that Wonwoo’s driving down the Jungbu Naeryuk Expressway at a hundred kilometers an hour, but Wonwoo just chuckles, greeting him with a soft good morning. 

“Years of training myself to be a morning person, gone in weeks,” Chan grumbles, rubbing at his eyes. He pulls the visor mirror down, sighing as he tries to straighten out his hair.

“I just power through on coffee, honestly,” Wonwoo says, holding up a cup in one hand before taking a long drink. “Plus, it helps when your commute is thirty seconds long.”

Chan nods, groaning as he twists his torso as much as he can, trying to stretch out the stiffness in his back. “Ugh. I feel like if I lean back, I might fall back asleep. Are you a silence in the car kind of guy, or are you okay with talking?”

“I usually drive alone, which means I’m usually a ‘silence in the car’ guy by default,” Wonwoo says, “but we can talk. It might help keep me from getting drowsy, too. It’s a pretty long stretch of straight driving at the same speed—sometimes it’s a little hard to not drift off.”

“It probably doesn’t help that you play really soft music in the car.” Chan pokes at Wonwoo’s phone screen, trying to see if the artist pops up. “You really like this singer, don’t you? You play her music all the time, but I don’t really listen to a lot of music that’s not danceable. I probably should branch out more, though.”

Wonwoo nods. “IU. I find her music calming, and her lyrics have a certain poetry to them that I appreciate.”

“Do you have a favorite song?” Chan asks.

“Yeah. I’ll play it for you later though, sometime. It’s not well-suited for a morning freeway drive.”

Chan gets it—after going to school with a bunch of art kids, you learn to respect people’s insistence on what music fits what mood. “Whatever you say, hyung.”

The conversation lapses for another song; Wonwoo clears his throat awkwardly once it finishes.

“Sorry,” he says, “have I mentioned I’m not always a great conversation partner?”

“It’s fine, hyung. You’re just introverted.” Chan shrugs.

It’s hard to tell from the side, but Chan swears that Wonwoo looks relieved to hear Chan say that.

“If you just want to talk in general, we could share random things about ourselves,” Chan suggests. “We used to have to do these as bonding exercises during dance camps and MT retreats and stuff. It’s a little uncomfortable sometimes, but a good way to pass the time if you’re okay with it.”

“What the hell,” Wonwoo chuckles. “It’s not like I can do any better. Sure, why not.”

“I can start. I have a different name on my family register,” Chan says. “My family passes down the word Jung in our names, but for some reason my parents wanted to give me and my brother single-syllable names. So legally I’m Chan, but in the family history records I’m Jungchan.”

“Jungchan.” Wonwoo rolls the name experimentally off his tongue. “It’s cute.”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Okay, Jungchannie, whatever you say.” Wonwoo rolls his eyes, but his smile is fond. “I guess I’ll go next. I auditioned to be an idol at one point,” Wonwoo says. “Well, Soonyoung wanted to, and I sort of got dragged along. Obviously, nothing happened there. I’m an okay singer at best, and you’ve seen how I dance.”

Chan tries to picture present-day Wonwoo in a flashy idol outfit dancing to Rainism and has to aggressively fight the urge to laugh. Then he envisions how Wonwoo might look dancing to choreo that he created, teaching him one-on-one, and has to aggressively fight those thoughts away before the blood starts rushing to his face.

They swap more random facts—Chan learns that Wonwoo dabbled in poetry in high school, but got talked into computer programming by his parents when he learned how little money people usually made in the arts (“honestly, even though we knew if anyone would make it, it would be Soonyoung, we were all really concerned for him”), one of his dream vacation destinations is Aoshima, Japan, an island inhabited by an insane number of cats, and he hates seafood, despite growing up in a coastal town.

At the mention of Wonwoo’s hometown, Chan has a sudden realization. “I never asked what the point of the trip was,” he says. “There aren’t any holidays in July, are there?”

Wonwoo coughs dryly. “Oh. It’s, uh, my birthday this weekend. On the seventeenth. I didn’t visit last year, so my mom basically said she’d disown me if I didn’t visit. I love her, but she’s a little terrifying. Completely soft for Soonyoung, though, which is totally unfair.”

“Hyung!” Chan whines. “I’m crashing your birthday vacation? Why didn’t you tell me! I would’ve gotten you something.”

“This is why I didn’t say anything,” Wonwoo replies, tone amused. “I didn’t want you to feel obligated to do anything. Is it cheesy to say your presence alone is a gift?”

Chan mimes a retching sound, and Wonwoo laughs.

“Really, hyung,” Chan says, “you’ve done so much for me lately. I feel like I should do something.”

“Mm.” Wonwoo flips on the turn signal, looking over his shoulder before shifting into another lane. “I guess I can think of something. If you insist.”

“I do insist, hyung.”

“Alright, Jungchannie.”

“…I never should’ve told you that.”

They take a short break at a rest stop halfway through; Wonwoo takes a few minutes to walk around while Chan sits at one of the benches to stretch out his legs from sitting in a car for three hours straight.

“Do you want any snacks?” Wonwoo asks when he gets back from the bathroom. “I’m gonna get another coffee.”

Chan’s stomach growls pitifully, reminding him that he’s been awake for hours with no food. “Maybe just some kind of bread if they have it. I don’t think I can eat anything heavy right now.”

Wonwoo nods, heading inside the rest stop building and emerging about ten minutes later with a cup of coffee in one hand and a plastic bag with bread rolls in the other.

“Yours is on top,” Wonwoo says, holding out the bag to Chan. 

Chan, too hungry to ask what it is, unwraps it and takes a bite—he’s pleasantly surprised by the taste of chocolate custard.

“This one’s my favorite,” Chan says once he’s swallowed. “How’d you know?”

Wonwoo coughs. “Soonyoung mentioned you liked chocolate,” he mumbles.

Chan beams. “Thanks for remembering that, hyung.”

“Don’t mention it.” Wonwoo looks very much like he would like Chan to not mention it.

They don’t say much when they get back on the expressway, generally occupied with their food. After they finish, cellophane wrappers shoved into the unoccupied cupholder, Chan clears his throat.

“Did you, uh, want to keep talking?” he asks. “We’re probably more awake now, so if you don’t want to, that’s fine.”

Wonwoo lets out a short hum. “Eh, why not? Well, since you know my birthday, when’s yours?”

“It passed already—it’s in February. The eleventh.”

“Ah. I’ll be sure to remember that for next year.”

“Hyung!” Chan sighs. “Okay, um…” He wracks his brain trying to think of a good question to ask. “Who was your… first crush?” Not his finest attempt, but it’s a thing people ask each other, right?

Wonwoo pulls a face. “I think there was probably a girl in elementary school that I thought was cute at some point, but the unfortunate truth is it was Soonyoung.” He lets out a long, regretful sigh. “It was a weird mutual thing, actually. High school was a confusing time for both of us, and since we were best friends and ended up both being somewhere on the queer spectrum, we thought the next step was trying to date each other. It was extremely short-lived, though, because we kept fighting all the time and realized we just didn’t make much sense as a couple. We were each other’s first kisses, though, which was very weird. Fifteen and didn’t know jack shit.”

Chan cringes—he’s glad his teen years weren’t so bad, although… “I almost feel like it’s a requirement to have something with Soonyoung if you become close enough,” Chan jokes. “We, ah, hooked up a few times in college. You know how those things go.”

Wonwoo laughs. “Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of inter-dating and whatnot amongst friend groups. But it can help you figure out what your feelings actually mean.”

Chan nods in agreement, gesturing to Wonwoo to ask his question. Wonwoo purses his lips as he thinks.

“I feel like I already know the answer to this one,” Wonwoo hedges, “since I haven’t seen hide nor hair of any individual of the sort. But are you… seeing anyone?”

Chan thinks about his miserable dating life over the past decade and laughs, startling Wonwoo. “No. Extremely single. I can’t even remember the last time I went out on a date—you’d think I would’ve tried while I was in school, but I was always too busy with dance stuff. Maybe I should’ve lived a little more.”

“It’s admirable to dedicate yourself to pursuits that you’re passionate about,” Wonwoo replies. It’s probably the nicest way Chan’s ever heard someone tell him that he’s a dance freak.

“What about you?” Chan asks. “I’m sure if you had someone they’d probably be annoyed by you spending all your time with me instead of them.”

Wonwoo shakes his head. “Nope. My last relationship ended a couple of years ago,” he explains. “He said I didn’t make enough time for him. Which is fair, I guess, but he also wasn’t very understanding of my needs for my own personal space. The relationship didn’t last very long, for obvious reasons.”

“Oh.” Chan stares out of the front window. “That sucks.”

Wonwoo shrugs. “I guess. I wasn’t very attached, anyway, which probably didn’t help.” 

“For what it’s worth,” Chan says, “I think you’d make a great boyfriend.”

A sharp cough draws Chan’s attention—Wonwoo has one hand lifted up to his mouth, his chest heaving as he takes deep, raspy breaths.

“Hyung?” Chan asks, concerned.

“Just—ah—breathed in my saliva or something.” Wonwoo’s voice is a little rough around the edges. “I’m good. But, uh, thanks.”

Chan doesn’t think he’s imagining the way Wonwoo’s ears seem to be turning alarmingly red, but he can’t figure out why.

They finally get to the hotel around one; Wonwoo handles the bags despite Chan’s protests, and they head up to their room after checking in.

It’s a nice enough room—fairly standard hotel accommodations with a sofa, coffee table, television, and a bed in the middle of the room. It’s a decently sized one, a queen if Chan had to guess, but a singular bed nonetheless.

Wonwoo groans, taking his glasses off and rubbing at the bridge of his nose between his eyes. “Shit. I’m sorry, Chan-ah, I called them and asked them to change the room to one with two beds, but it looks like they didn’t. Let me go down and ask.”

Wonwoo’s out the door before Chan even has the chance to open his mouth to say anything at all.

Sighing, Chan opts to sit down on the sofa and pass the time on his phone, figuring if they’re going to switch rooms there’s no point in unpacking anything. He scrolls through Instagram, double-tapping on a picture of Seungkwan and Vernon’s latest lunch date and ignoring the way his stomach churns when he likes a video of an old classmate’s choreography practice without watching it.

Wonwoo returns about ten minutes later, mouth pressed in a thin line as he takes off his shoes and leans against the television stand opposite from Chan.

“So,” he says, “I’ve got some bad news.”

Chan puts his phone down on the coffee table. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”

Wonwoo shrugs. “They didn’t have any other vacant rooms with two beds in this price range, so that’s why they didn’t change my reservation,” he explains. “They do have more rooms with two beds, but they’re the nicer suites and the cheapest upgrade is an extra 249,000 won. For that much extra money, I’m fine sleeping on the couch for a night.”

“Hyung, no,” Chan protests, “I’m the one crashing your vacation. Plus, you’re taller. I don’t think you’ll fit. Take the bed.”

“Yeah, no,” Wonwoo counter-protests, “you need to make sure your leg is straightened out properly when you sleep.”

Evidently, neither of them plan on backing down, but someone’s going to have to—Chan doesn’t have the strength to physically force Wonwoo to take the bed, so he’s going to have to figure out a way to compromise. 

“I guess,” Chan says, “we could both sleep on the bed, if you don’t hate the idea of sleeping next to me. It looks like it’ll probably fit both of us.”

Wonwoo regards Chan with inscrutable blankness. Chan’s not sure if he should take back the offer, wondering if it made Wonwoo uncomfortable, but before he has the chance to say anything, Wonwoo speaks.

“No, Chan-ah,” he says. “I don’t hate the idea of it. I just wasn’t sure if you’d be okay with it or not.”

Chan shrugs. “I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve had to share a bed with anyone. Probably not since some of our dance competitions in uni.” Simpler times, Chan thinks. Back then, Chan remembers begging Minghao to trade beds with him because he’d drawn Junhui in their random straw lots and Junhui had a bad habit of sleep-mumbling, but for some reason wouldn’t do it when sharing a bed with Minghao. Anything you want, hyung, please! he’d said. Minghao had laughed at him, telling him to endure it for just one night, and then maybe Chan could do him a favor.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Chan approaches the bed, pressing his palm against the mattress. “It’s nicer than the cheap motels we used to stay at in uni though, that’s for sure. Are you sure you don’t want me to split the cost with you or anything?”

Wonwoo sighs, walking up next to Chan and ruffling his hair. “I told you, I invited you. That means you don’t pay.”

“At least let me buy you dinner or something,” Chan insists. 

Evidently, that was the wrong thing to say, if the mischievous smile that spreads across Wonwoo’s face is anything to go by. “Lee Jungchan, at least take me out before you ask to get into bed with me! I’m a man of class.”

“You—Jeon Wonwoo!”

Chan badgers Wonwoo into letting him pay for lunch (decidedly average kimbap and jjigae from whatever restaurant they ran into first) before they decide to hit the beach for a little while. It’s difficult to find a spot—it’s a summer weekend, after all—but they manage to find a tiny patch of sand near the top of the beach where they can lay down their blanket.

Once they’re settled, Wonwoo pulls off his t-shirt, and Chan tries his best not to gawk. He knows that Wonwoo is fairly muscular, since he’s seen Wonwoo in a tank top before and Soonyoung complains occasionally when they go work out together, but seeing him without a shirt entirely is a different story.

Wonwoo's frame is lithe and lean, muscles sculpted perfectly to match; his lats flex as he rolls his shoulders, and Chan’s eyes trail down to where they narrow to a slim, tapered waist. He has a six-pack, Chan notes with some envy. He’s never really been a fan of weightlifting—he went once with Soonyoung and regretted the way it made his legs feel the next day, even though Soonyoung told him that that feeling would go away the more he exercised—but dancing always kept him fit. He wouldn’t say he’s gained much weight since the accident, but he’s certainly lost most of the muscle tone he used to have. And he’d definitely lose when compared to Wonwoo. Not that anyone’s comparing them besides him, but he’d lose if there was.

He looks away so Wonwoo can’t see him staring, but he ends up fixating on the dark scars on his knee, exposed by his board shorts. He’s gotten used to seeing them every day when he changes his clothes or showers, but having them out in the open like this turns his stomach a little. He’s not used to feeling quite so ugly.

“Do you want to take your shirt off?” Wonwoo asks, oblivious to Chan’s inner turmoil. “I can put sunscreen on for you, if you want.”

Chan shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Wonwoo asks, raising an eyebrow. “Vitamin D is good for your immune system, mood, and general well-being. You might be deficient, especially since you’ve been inside a lot lately.”

Chan suppresses the urge to make a thoroughly juvenile Vitamin D joke, fingers rubbing at the hem of his shirt. Now that Wonwoo’s made a logical argument, he can’t really argue without coming across like a complete idiot. With a sigh, he pulls it off his head, dropping it against his side.

“Not to be a creep,” Wonwoo says, tossing Chan the bottle of sunscreen, “but Soonyoung was right. You do have good ratios.”

“Huh?” Chan is thoroughly perplexed.

Wonwoo makes a slightly strangled noise. “He, uh, mentioned that you have a good body ratio. Broad shoulders, small waist. The ‘dorito look,’ as some might call it.” He cringes at the term. “When we’d go lift, he’d tell me how jealous he was that you didn’t have to work out extra to get the way you are.”

Chan laughs. “Hyung’s pretty ridiculous. Besides, I’m definitely not in my prime anymore. I used to have abs.” He pokes at his stomach for emphasis.

Wonwoo catches Chan’s hand with his own, halting his movement. “Chan-ah. You look fine. Really.”

Suddenly, uttering even a single word feels like a monumental task. “Um. Thanks,” he manages to choke out.

“Can you help me do my back?” Wonwoo asks, gesturing to the bottle of sunscreen. “I can do yours, too.”

“Oh.” Chan hopes his voice doesn’t squeak. “Sure, hyung.”

At least the summer heat means that Chan’s flushed cheeks can be explained away by the weather. Chan squirts sunscreen onto his palm and Wonwoo’s back, telling himself that the burning in his fingertips (and the feeling of Wonwoo’s hands on his own skin when he returns the favor) is just because of the sun.

They leave for Wonwoo’s parents’ place around five; according to the GPS, it’s about forty-five minutes away.

“You don’t have to answer this if there’s some kind of deep dark reason behind it,” Chan asks, “but why the hotel? Usually I just stay at my parents’ house when I go back home to visit.”

Wonwoo laughs. “No, there’s no secret reason. They just moved into a smaller apartment when they moved back to Changwon, because at that point both me and my brother were out of the house. It’s a two-bedroom and the other bedroom isn’t really a bedroom. And not that you asked, but I wanted to stay in a hotel by the beach for the ambiance instead of in a more residential area.”

“That makes sense.”

Wonwoo’s parents live in a rather nondescript neighborhood; Wonwoo parks in one of the guest spots in the garage, and Chan follows him inside the building.

“Oh, fuck,” Chan curses. “Should I have brought them a gift?”

“Chan, it’s fine,” Wonwoo stresses. “Don’t worry about it.”

Wonwoo’s parents are obviously expecting him, because he hasn’t even rung the doorbell when the door opens, revealing a middle-aged woman with a warm smile.

“Oh, Wonwoo-yah, it’s good to see you again,” she says, embracing him. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks, mom.” He lets go of her and gestures to Chan. “This is my friend I was telling you about. Lee Chan.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Chan says, bowing as deeply as he can with his crutches.

“Aigo,” Wonwoo’s mother frets. “Don’t worry about things like that, Chan-ah. Come in, sit down. I’m almost finished setting everything up. Wonwoo-yah, your father’s in the living room.”

Chan follows Wonwoo further into the apartment; as she said, Wonwoo’s father is on the couch in the living room, watching some sports game on the television.

“Ah, my son.” Wonwoo’s father gets up from the couch to hug him. “Welcome back.”

“It’s good to be back, dad,” Wonwoo replies. “This is my friend, Chan.”

“Oh, don’t bother with bowing! Sit down,” Wonwoo’s father says, and if they were close, Chan suspects that Wonwoo’s father would have attempted to bodily force him to the couch. As it is, he simply gestures to a lounge chair that Chan settles down in, leaning his crutches against the side. Wonwoo and his father watch the baseball game, occasionally commenting to each other but otherwise generally remaining quiet. Chan thinks it’s pretty clear where Wonwoo got his temperament from. 

About fifteen minutes later, Wonwoo’s mother calls for Wonwoo and his father to set the table; Chan’s attempt at offering help is immediately squashed, and he’s directed to sit at the dining table and stay there. Briefly, Chan wonders who the guest of honor is actually supposed to be.

They bring out several dishes—small plates of banchan, a steaming pot of galbijjim, and a platter of kimchi fried rice—and settle them around the small dining table.

“Your brother’s not coming?” Chan asks, noticing the table’s only been set for four.

“He had some school club thing he couldn’t get out of,” Wonwoo’s mother says. “A shame, really. We haven’t had everyone together since last Chuseok.”

“The hazards of growing up and moving to the big city,” Wonwoo’s father adds. “Every child has to leave the nest.”

“Where are your parents from, Chan-ah?” Wonwoo’s mother asks, piling some beef ribs and vegetables onto his plate. 

Flustered, Chan thanks her profusely before he answers. “I’m from Iksan, in Jeolla-do. I moved to Seoul for college.”

“They always do,” Wonwoo’s mother says. “How is it there? I don’t think I’ve ever been.”

“It’s… quaint,” he settles on. His hometown isn’t particularly exciting, and he suspects she knows.

She turns her attention to Wonwoo after that, asking questions about his job and how that’s going, scolding him for playing too many video games and not going outside enough. Chan laughs when Wonwoo makes a face at him across the table, and Wonwoo’s father shares a few stories about how Wonwoo was as a child. Chan wonders if Wonwoo told them ahead of time that certain topics were off the table, because they don’t ask what he does for a living or why he’s on crutches, instead asking him mostly about his family and friends and his opinions on other topics that they bring up first.

Chan’s never really been looked out for like this before. Part of him feels bad that Wonwoo’s once again gone out of his way to try and make sure Chan’s comfort and well-being is taken into account, but the more time Chan spends around Wonwoo, the more he suspects that this might just be the way that the elder shows that he cares.

When Wonwoo’s parents leave the table so they can clear off some of the extra dishes and bring out the cake, Chan takes the opportunity to lean a little closer to Wonwoo, resting his hand on Wonwoo’s forearm to get his attention.

“Hm?” Wonwoo turns to look at him. “Did you need something?”

“Just wanted to say thanks, hyung.” Chan smiles. “Your parents are really nice.”

Wonwoo chuckles. “It’s no problem, Chan-ah. I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

Wonwoo and Chan stay until just before nine; Wonwoo’s parents send them off with several containers of leftovers, Soonyoung’s requested jar of kimchi, warm hugs, and veiled threats to visit more often.

When they get back to the hotel room, they put the extra food in the minifridge (the kimchi jar is a tight fit—Soonyoung better be happy about it, Wonwoo grumbles), and Chan’s about to start turning in for the night when Wonwoo clears his throat, standing hesitantly in the middle of the room.

“Would you, uh, come to the beach with me?” 

“Now?” Chan looks up from his phone. “It’s like, ten. At night.”

“Yeah.” Wonwoo shrugs. “I wanted to show you something. Also, this can be your birthday gift to me.”

Peculiar. “Hyung, don’t use your birthday wish on this,” Chan protests as he pulls on a hoodie. “I’d come with you anyway.”

Wonwoo holds out his crutches for him. “It’s my birthday wish. I can use it however I want.”

The beach, as Chan would expect, is deserted at night—the only other occupants are a few stray flocks of birds. Like they did earlier in the morning, Wonwoo holds out his hand for Chan to hold once they get to the sand, keeping him steady as they walk closer to the ocean.

Wonwoo stops them about halfway between the ocean and the road, throwing the blanket open and lying down on one side, gesturing for Chan to take the other. Chan sits with his legs out straight in front of him, leaning back against his hands. When he looks up at the sky, it’s sprinkled with stars—he can’t remember the last time he’s seen them. The moon, half-lit, hangs low in the sky.

“Sometimes, when things feel overwhelming,” Wonwoo says, “I like to sit outside and look at the sky. It’s not this clear in Seoul because of all the lights, but there’s something calming about it regardless. Knowing that there’s so much out there in the universe puts my existence in perspective.”

“Mm.” The vastness is a little terrifying, in Chan’s opinion—to be so insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. Chan has spent nearly his entire life trying to become someone who stood out from others, worrying himself to the bone when he couldn’t reach his goals. But perhaps Wonwoo has a point. If all that you are is a blip in the entire timeline of the universe, how much does the minutiae of your own worries really matter?

“I told you there was a song I wanted to show you,” Wonwoo says, pulling out his phone. “It’s called ‘Through The Night.’ It’s a bit like a love letter to someone you used to love, but I’ll let you listen to it.”

He presses play, setting his phone between them. The sound quality is a little tinny from the speaker, but it does little to mar the singer’s calm, clear voice, punctuated by sparse acoustic guitar.

How can I be so lucky to have met a blessing like you. If we were together now, how great it would be, she sings, Just like letters on the sand where waves washed, I feel you’ll disappear somewhere far away. I always miss you.

Chan’s mind starts to drift as the lyrics swirl around in the air around them. It’s a bit ironic, he thinks, that Wonwoo’s chosen a song about a long lost love; it’s impossible for Chan to ignore the parallels, how dance was his blessing that disappeared with the crashing waves. Part of him wants to wish on the millions of stars in the sky in the hopes that he might be able to have it back. The other part of him knows it’s long gone, no matter how much he hopes and yearns. Time heals all wounds, he’s been told, but he wishes he knew how much time it would take to heal this one.

He wonders if he’ll ever be able to look back on his life and not miss dance. His heart aches at the thought as the ending notes of the guitar fade out into the night.

“What did you think?” Wonwoo asks.

“It’s a good song,” Chan says honestly. “I liked it a lot. Made me think a lot about things.”

“Mm.” Wonwoo pockets his phone. “I’m glad. It’s my favorite song.”

Wonwoo doesn’t ask him to elaborate, which Chan appreciates—he’s not sure if he wants to bare his soul so deeply. If he were to do so, though, he thinks Wonwoo might not be such a bad person to show it to. 

“The sky remind me a lot of this song, too,” Wonwoo says. “The thought that people might be seeing the same moon and the same stars is a sort of connection, too.”

“It’s a bit of a romantic thought, isn’t it?” Chan muses. 

“I suppose,” Wonwoo murmurs. “I guess I’m a bit of a romantic when it comes to this sort of thing.”

Chan shifts down off his elbows so he’s lying down on the blanket, then gestures up at the sky. “Do you know how to recognize any of the stars? I’ve heard that’s a thing that some people pay attention to.”

He hears Wonwoo’s head shake no against the blanket. “I took an astronomy class in my sophomore year for gen ed credit, but I could never for the life of me pick out different stars in the sky. Ask me to memorize the names and shapes of the constellations themselves, sure, but if I’m going to be honest, all the stars sort of look the same to me.” 

“You know how they used to use stars as a form of navigation back in the day?” He turns to look at Chan, who nods. “They say the North Star is supposed to be the brightest star in the sky, but maybe my eyesight is too bad because I couldn’t tell you a fucking thing. We all would’ve died if I ever had to navigate a boat before modern technology.”

Chan bursts out laughing, cutting through the silence of the night—a few meters away, a flock of seagulls take flight into the night, the fluttering sound of wings momentarily drowning him out.

Next to him, Wonwoo laughs too, holding a hand up to his mouth as his body shakes.

“Ah, what will I do with you, Lee Jungchan,” Wonwoo manages to say. “Just disturbing the birds on a peaceful night like this.”

“Oh, hush,” Chan huffs, but there’s no bite to it.

A gentle touch tugs at Chan’s palm, fingers linking between his own. Wonwoo’s hand is colder than his, but the contact sends warmth through his veins, curling around his heart.

“Chan,” Wonwoo says, so softly that Chan almost doesn’t hear him. “I—”

Chan turns his head to look at him. They’re closer than he thought they were—he can almost feel Wonwoo’s breath against his lips. “Hyung?”

“I—” Wonwoo repeats, turning to face Chan as well. The light from the moon and stars reflects off the lenses of his glasses, rendering his eyes unreadable.

No one speaks, but the sound of the waves breaking against the sand is deafening. Wonwoo swallows heavily, lips parted ever-so-slightly. His grip tightens infinitesimally, and just when Chan’s about to ask him what’s going on again, Wonwoo sighs, turning to look at the sky.

“The moon is bright tonight, isn’t it?”

“Y-yeah, hyung.” Chan tilts his head up towards the moon, the hemisphere glowing pale white. “It is.”

(It’s only after they’ve gone to bed, Wonwoo fast asleep next to him, that Chan wonders if Wonwoo was trying to kiss him.

If Wonwoo had tried, Chan thinks he would have let him.)

Chan wakes up holding onto something.

This isn’t generally abnormal—he likes sleeping with stuffed animals (yeah, he’s a grown man who sleeps with stuffed animals, so what), and often ends up holding one in his sleep.

What is abnormal is the fact that whatever he’s holding feels absolutely nothing like the stuffed tiger that Soonyoung got him for his birthday a few years ago.

As a matter of fact, it feels a lot like…

“Oh, you’re up.”

Chan’s eyes shoot open, pulling his arms away from Wonwoo’s arm as he scoots as close to the other side of the bed as he can.

“Sorry.” Chan’s heart is beating a thousand miles a minute. “I’m so sorry, I’m just used to sleeping with stuffed animals and I guess I, um, held onto you instead.”

“It’s okay,” Wonwoo murmurs, sitting up. Something about the set of his brow doesn’t look okay to Chan, but he’s also not wearing his glasses and he’s presumably woken up pretty recently, so there’s a possibility that he’s just tired. Maybe he just needs his morning coffee.

After they freshen up, they pack up their things and check out. Wonwoo makes a brief stop at a local bakery for coffee and food, and then they’re back on the expressway to head home.

Despite the coffee, things don’t change much on the ride back; Wonwoo’s put his IU playlist on, and Chan doesn’t want to bother Wonwoo if he doesn’t want to talk. He notices, though, that Wonwoo’s hands are gripping tighter than usual around the steering wheel, veins popping out on the back of his hand.

“Hey, hyung?” Chan says.

“Nn?” Wonwoo doesn’t take his eyes off the road.

“I, ah, just wanted to say thanks. For inviting me. I had a good time.” Chan hopes Wonwoo understands what he’s trying to say—it’s okay. We’re okay. You can breathe.

Wonwoo’s shoulders relax ever-so-slightly, and Chan breathes an internal sigh of relief. “I’m glad, Chan. I had a good time with you, too.”

They settle into silence once again, but it’s comfortable this time.

Soonyoung is thrilled with the two-liter jar of kimchi Wonwoo presents him with when they get back, smacking a loud kiss on Wonwoo’s cheek. Chan watches the exchange with a raised eyebrow—Soonyoung makes no secret of his love for the food, but isn’t kissing your friend a bit of an extreme reaction?

“Ah, your mom’s kimchi is the best! Well, next to my family’s, but I’m sure she’d understand.”

“She certainly would,” Wonwoo grumbles, wiping at his face with his sleeve.

“Did you have a good birthday, Nonu-yah?” Soonyoung asks as he puts the jar in the fridge.

Wonwoo glances at Chan, smiling softly when their eyes meet.

“Yeah. It was good.”

Life goes on.

Chan’s days settle into a routine—he wakes up, Wonwoo comes over, they co-exist until the afternoon when Chan does his at-home physical therapy exercises and additional stretching when he doesn’t have an appointment and Wonwoo takes him to Seungcheol when he does. He waters his echeveria plant once a week, rotating it so each part of the plant gets the same amount of paltry sunlight from the kitchen windowsill. 

The monotony of his daily life makes things both easier and harder at the same time. Easier, because when the days blend into each other, they pass by more quickly and Chan doesn’t focus so much on how many days it’s been since his accident. Harder, because every day feels like a repeat of the last and Chan doesn’t know how much longer he can take the drudgery.

Since one of the things that Chan’s gotten used to is Wonwoo’s morning entrances, he usually doesn’t pay much attention when he hears the door open. Today, though, he can’t help but stare, open-mouthed.

Wonwoo’s dressed in a crisp navy suit, hair gelled off of his forehead instead of lying softly over his eyebrows or tucked into a beanie. Chan always knew Wonwoo was tall, but his legs look insanely long now that Chan can actually see where his waistline is, accentuated by the white dress shirt tucked into his pants. He’s seen Wonwoo shirtless, so he knows what the man looks like, but the suit accentuates his figure in an entirely different way. He looks like a model—the only thing that breaks the illusion is the cat-printed socks that Chan notices after Wonwoo takes his shoes off. 

“Hyung,” Chan says when he’s able to find words again, “what’s up with the suit?”

“Oh,” Wonwoo scratches at the back of his neck, looking profoundly uncomfortable. “I got coerced into giving a presentation today, which means putting on the monkey suit. I’m just glad I only have to wear it a few times a year instead of every day.”

“Well, you look good anyway.” The words come tumbling out before Chan realizes how they come across. “I mean, the suit looks good on you. You’ve got a good frame for that kind of thing, I just look weird when I wear suits.” Jesus, Chan, shut the fuck up!

Wonwoo, to his credit, doesn’t appear weirded out in the slightest. He laughs, a full-bodied sound, clapping his hands together. It’s an odd sight, Chan thinks, to see his hands not half-covered by sweatshirt sleeves. 

“Thanks,” he eventually says, voice still tinged with mirth. “I’m sure you look fine in suits, Chan.”

Wonwoo sets up his computer on the other side of the table so his back is to the wall this time. He spends a few minutes fiddling with the angle of his laptop screen before he eventually sighs, lifting up his hands to rake through his hair until he remembers that he’d styled it, clenching his hands uselessly on top of the table.

“My presentation is at eleven,” he says to Chan. “You can, um, stay in the living room if you want, you just can’t make any noise for about twenty minutes. My part will be over then, so I can put my microphone on mute.”

Chan nods. “I’ll probably just hang out in my room,” he says. “I don’t want to cause any accidents.”

“Oh, okay.” Chan doesn’t think he’s imagining the relief on Wonwoo’s face—he had a feeling that the elder probably wouldn’t want any additional audience members around.

At 10:45, Chan retreats to his room, whispering fighting, hyung! and holding up his fist with an encouraging smile. Wonwoo smiles back and nods in acknowledgement before turning back to his computer, where Chan assumes he’s making sure everything is ready.

The wall and the distance between them makes it difficult for Chan to hear exactly what Wonwoo’s saying (and honestly, Chan doesn’t think he’d be able to make heads or tails of it all anyway), but he can tell that Wonwoo’s voice sounds different. It’s gone slightly deeper, more authoritative—a far cry from Wonwoo’s usual soft-spoken manner. Something about the low, muffled sound and confident delivery settles low in Chan’s core in a way he’s not sure he’s entirely ready to confront. 

He decides to busy himself with a book in the interim, something he’d asked Wonwoo to pick for him at random, but the words on the page seem to swim around in circles instead of actually processing in Chan’s brain. He still tries, anyway, just to say that he did.

Wonwoo knocks twice before opening the door to Chan’s room around twelve.

“God,” Wonwoo says, “I’m glad that’s over with. You want to get delivery for lunch? My treat.”

They end up getting burgers, because Wonwoo had a craving—right after he’s placed the order, though, Wonwoo has a small crisis about the possibility of getting burger sauce on his dress shirt. He sighs in dismay, but makes no effort to cancel the order.

“It’s a little odd,” Chan says when Wonwoo mentions it, “you really got all dressed up to come over here. Not that it looks bad or anything, but it’s kind of a lot of work, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” Wonwoo says, looking down at his suit as if he’s only now realizing that he got fully dressed in formalwear to attend a video meeting that he absolutely could have done in his own home. “I… didn’t realize it, honestly. I guess coming here just became a habit.”

He tugs at the collar of his shirt, popping open the first two buttons. Chan tries not to stare at his neck. “Honestly, you probably don’t need me to stick around anymore.” Wonwoo’s cheeks flush slightly, and his gaze stays fixed toward the table. “You’re doing much better now. Besides, you’ve probably seen enough of me to last a lifetime,” he tries to joke, but his tone falls flat.

“No, hyung!” Chan blurts out. Wonwoo’s head snaps up, brow furrowed over his glasses.

Chan coughs to clear his throat. “I mean. You don’t have to come over anymore if you don’t want to. But I like your company. It’d be pretty lonely here otherwise. I mean!” Chan sputters when Wonwoo tilts his head to the side in question. “I don’t just want you around to not be lonely. You’re a cool person, hyung. I like spending time with you.”

Well now you’ve done it, Lee Chan. Now he probably thinks you’re a weirdo.

“Oh.” Wonwoo seems startled by this, eyes widened and eyebrows raised. “Well. Um. If that’s the case, I guess I’ll keep coming over, then.”

Chan laughs softly. “Sounds great, hyung.”

(Chan thought he hated monotony, but when Wonwoo shows up the next day in his usual hoodie and track pants, Chan mentally breathes a sigh of relief.

Some things, he decides, might be better off staying the same. For his own sanity.)

Unfortunately, Chan’s learned that for everything good that happens in life, there’s always something bad that happens to counteract it.

Try as he might, he still feels slightly off-kilter, despite trying to fill his time with other things. There’s a phantom ache in his heart where dance used to be, and he can’t quite figure out how to fix or fill it.

It is something like a breakup, Chan thinks, or a death of a loved one. While he’s making progress with his healing, he’s nowhere near ready to do anything as basic as walk without crutches or a cane, let alone dance even the simplest of footwork. He tries to stay optimistic, especially with Seungcheol’s frequent and enthusiastic encouragement, but when he can’t stand on his own two feet for longer than ten seconds unassisted, he wants to scream.

“I know it sucks,” Seungcheol says, resting an ice pack on Chan’s knee, “but you’ve made so much progress over the past month, even if it doesn’t feel that way.”

Chan’s only response is a dark, hollow laugh.

That night, he's browsing on his phone before he goes to bed, when he gets a notification that he’s been tagged in something on Instagram—it’s from the studio’s account.

A little confused, he taps on the bubble, which brings him to a photo of Soonyoung with the members of LUCKY7 in the practice room, huddled together and throwing up peace signs at the camera. When he swipes left, a thumbnail of a clip of a music stage show pops up.

congratulations LUCKY7 on your successful comeback! it was an honor to work with you 🐯🦖

choreography credit: @dancingdino

Soonyoung must have had Junhui post for him—Chan doesn’t think Soonyoung knows how to upload posts with more than one image or video in them at a time, and while he’s learned how to download videos from streaming websites, he certainly isn’t good enough at video editing to cut a clip himself. 

It hits him, suddenly, that he’s never actually seen the final version of his work—he’d stopped keeping tabs on it after finding out that Soonyoung was taking over, too depressed and angry whenever he thought about how it should’ve been him. Soonyoung hadn’t mentioned that the song had come out, either.

He taps play, chewing nervously on his lip as the video starts.

The song opens with the two members in the middle back to back while the other five form a circle around them, bent over with their hands on the back of the person next to them. Chan watches with sharp eyes as they transition into two lines, checking that the angles of their arms all match at a perfect forty-five degrees. Pride swells in his chest at seeing his creation come to life—dance is a performing art, after all, meant to be seen by others. He knows what to expect, but it looks so different when it’s performed as it was intended to be instead of just Chan by himself in the studio at three in the morning.

But as they transition into the second verse, Chan notices something different. He’d left the rapper’s part fairly simple, since he’d been concerned that the rapper wouldn’t be able to keep up with more intense choreography while delivering his signature fast-paced rap. Instead, the camera pans to a close-up on his face as he snarls into the camera, crawling on the floor.

It’s not a particularly jarring change. From an objective standpoint, Chan kind of has to admit that it’s more dynamic than what he’d originally planned, and makes for a great camera moment.

The problem is that this change has Soonyoung written all over it: Soonyoung’s always favored a more fluid, sensual style than Chan, whose specialty was sharp, powerful movements. 

Jaw clenched, Chan types out you’ve worked hard, everyone! your performance is great, i wish i could’ve been there with you. thanks again for teaching, soonyoung-hyung ^^, presses send, and locks his phone.

Is nothing I do ever good enough on my own?

Chan’s foul mood persists into the next morning, and although he’s tried taking up meditation under Minghao’s suggestion, it does little to improve things. He doesn’t even get to vent about it with Wonwoo, either, because he had other plans that day, and Chan doesn’t want to dump a bunch of long text messages on him. Which is completely fine, because Wonwoo has his own life and his own friends and he shouldn’t be shaping everything he does around what Chan wants, but it does mean that Chan’s avenues for releasing his frustration have diminished once again—his two preferred pastimes of dancing or drinking the aggression out have been off the table for months now. 

When Soonyoung comes home that evening with fried chicken, Chan wonders if things might be looking up, but something in the set of Soonyoung’s jaw tells him otherwise.

Chan eyes the bag with mild skepticism when Soonyoung sets it down on the kitchen table, but the thought is quickly abandoned at the sight of the shiny yangnyeom and honey glazes. Soonyoung takes out a can of beer for himself and cola for Chan, and they tuck in almost as quickly as the table is set.

Soonyoung launches into an anecdote about a small child walking a large dog he saw walking down the street earlier that afternoon, how the dog was almost as big as the kid, Chan! I was afraid the dog would start running and drag the kid with it. But he’s not meeting Chan’s eyes, keeps tripping over his words and Chan knows that Soonyoung’s stalling for time—he just doesn’t know what for.

Eventually, Soonyoung tires of describing the dog’s fur, taking a gulp of his beer and twisting his lips into what Chan recognizes as his “thinking face.”

“How do you feel about holding auditions?”

Chan’s chopsticks pause halfway to his mouth. “Auditions?”

“Yeah.” Soonyoung looks away, down at his plate as he pushes around his chicken. “I’m thinking about hiring another instructor or two.”

“Ah.” Suddenly, Chan’s appetite is gone.

Logically, he knows this is the right move to make. Their studio had been just fine with the two of them teaching, but losing him meant that they could only hold so many classes, accept so many students, and take on so many choreography projects which in turn meant making only so much money. Soonyoung’s been stretched too thin, trying to make up for Chan’s lost classes and finish up the remainder of his unfinished projects as best as he could, but there’s only so much extra physical labor he can do. Chan feels guilty enough that Soonyoung’s still trying to give him a cut of the money when Chan hasn’t been doing a goddamn thing.

“You should,” Chan says. “You’re too tired, hyung. It makes sense to have more instructors. We probably should’ve had more from the get-go.”

Soonyoung reaches out, places one hand over Chan’s. “We should, Channie. It’s our studio. That means you have a say in what happens, too.”

The scoff comes out before Chan realizes it. “It’s not like I’m doing anything, hyung. You don’t need to include me in these things just because you feel bad for me.”

“What?” Soonyoung’s eyes widen. “Chan, I’m not doing anything because I feel bad for you, I’m doing them because that’s how this whole partnership thing works. I can’t just make decisions without you.”

“What kind of decisions am I supposed to be a part of?” Chan asks. “You’re going to be the one working with them. Besides, everyone always takes your opinions more seriously. It doesn’t matter what I think about them, anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter?” Soonyoung repeats, incredulous. “Of course it matters! Your opinion has always been important to me, Chan.”

“You don’t have to lie about it. I know HSS asked you to take over my choreo because they didn’t think mine was good enough as it was.”

“They didn’t think—Chan, they asked me to teach the group because you couldn’t teach it! I didn’t change a damn thing.”

“Really? Because I saw a clip of the comeback performance and there’s a move in it that I didn’t include. The floor crawl? That’s a you thing.”

Soonyoung swears under his breath. “I didn’t do that. One of their dance coaches wanted to tweak something, and what was I supposed to tell them?”

Chan doesn’t know what to say. The look Soonyoung sends him says enough.

“Look, I know things are hard for you right now, but I’m trying to be a good friend and include you in stuff but it’s really fucking hard to do that when you’re too busy having a one-man pity party for yourself all the goddamn time!”

Soonyoung’s chest is heaving, brows furrowed in anger. A frigid chill runs down Chan’s spine, and all he knows is he can’t be in the same room as Soonyoung for a single second longer.

He grabs his phone off the table and bolts for the door on autopilot, wrenching it open and slamming it behind him; he only makes it about three meters down the hallway before leaning against the wall, heart pounding and leg throbbing. He’d forgotten to grab his cane in his haste, and even though he’s gotten used to walking a certain way to take the weight off of his bad leg it’s still not enough when there’s nothing else to support him. Every pulse of pain reminds him how stupid he is, how he can’t even do a simple task like walking anymore without completely fucking it up.

Soonyoung doesn’t follow after him, even though he would’ve been able to catch up easily. Chan’s not sure if it’s better this way, that Soonyoung knows him well enough to know they need time apart to cool down, or worse, because what if Soonyoung doesn’t care about him anymore and wouldn’t want to talk to him again anyway?

Before he realizes it, he’s pulled out his phone and opened up Wonwoo’s chatlog, the elder’s most recent message of enjoy your chicken still on his screen.

hyung are you home

yeah? what’s up

can i come over

now?

yeah

did something happen? i thought you and soonyoung were having dinner

i’ll tell you about it later

do you need me to pick you up?

no im gonna take a taxi

chan do you even know where i live?
are you sure i shouldn’t come get you

pls just send me your address

[Wonwoo-hyung has sent their location.]

Hazily, Chan manages to call a taxi. He doesn’t know how he manages to get to the elevator or leave the building, but at some point he ends up in the car and gets out at Wonwoo’s apartment building.

buzz me in, he texts; the front entrance opens for him a few moments later. He swears he can feel every pulse of blood in his thigh as he limps to the elevator. The sharp corners of the metal handrail inside the lift bite into his palm, but even that pain barely registers.

An eternity later, he drags himself in front of 517, pressing the doorbell on the side. 

“Oh, Christ,” Wonwoo mutters when he opens the door, taking one look at Chan and his obvious limp and immediately picking him up to fucking bridal carry him to the sofa. If Chan were of sound mind, he’d make a weak protest just to say he did while marveling at Wonwoo’s strength and ignore the way that being swept off his feet sends his heart beating double-time. As it stands, Chan doesn’t have the energy in him to do anything of the sort, so he lets Wonwoo deposit him on the couch like a gentle sack of potatoes.

“Are you okay?” Wonwoo asks. “I mean, you’re clearly not, but is there anything pressing I should attend to?”

“Just the leg,” Chan mumbles. Wonwoo grabs him an ice pack to put on his leg and a couple of ibuprofen capsules and a glass of water, which he swallows around the lump in his throat. Wonwoo watches him, gaze heavy with concern as he fidgets with the ends of his sleeves. Chan wants to tell him not to worry, but knows that it’d fall on deaf ears. He’s grateful enough that Wonwoo isn’t verbally fretting over him—he’s not sure if he’d be able to cope with that.

“Soonyoung texted while you were coming over,” Wonwoo says, “I told him you were with me.”

Chan lets out a noncommittal grunt in response. Some of the tension smooths out from his shoulders, knowing that Soonyoung does genuinely care about him even after they argued, but the idea of being accountable to anyone for any reason at all makes him want to crawl completely out of his skin.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Wonwoo asks, taking a seat at the other end of the couch.

Chan purses his lips, looking down at his hands. He kind of doesn’t want to talk about it, but he figures he probably owes Wonwoo some sort of explanation after essentially inviting himself over into his apartment in this state. He fidgets with his ring in a futile attempt to work through some of his anxious energy before dropping his hands with a sigh.

“Did hyung tell you anything?” he asks, trying to gauge what Wonwoo might already know.

Wonwoo shakes his head. “Just that you argued.”

“Hyung said we should hold auditions for new instructors. For the studio.”

Wonwoo nods. 

“I know we need to do it,” Chan sighs, “but it makes everything feel so concrete. I’m being replaced because I can’t do the fucking job anymore, but I didn’t expect it to feel so awful.”

“When something so integral to your sense of self gets taken away,” Wonwoo’s words come out slowly, as if he needs time to think between each one, “it’s natural to feel strongly about it. The dance studio is important to you—dance is important to you.”

Chan doesn’t know if Wonwoo’s use of the present tense makes it better or worse.

“I told Soonyoung-hyung it would be better if he replaced me. That everyone likes him better than me anyway, even though dance was my whole fucking life and he just picked it up on a whim.”

Wonwoo’s lips press into a concerned line; his hands twitch, but stay folded in his lap. “Chan, that’s not true.”

“You don’t know that,” Chan sniffs. When did his nose start running? “You weren’t there when we were in school. Hyung was always first place, and I was always second. Hyung got scouted right out of graduation to join a studio as an instructor, and he had to beg them to take me on after I graduated. Whenever we posted videos on Instagram, his always got more likes and views than mine did. It’s not his fault—I don’t hate him for it, and he’s never been anything but supportive, but it made me feel like shit for years and I thought I was over it but I wasn’t. I never wanted to be jealous of my best friend.”

A tissue is tucked into Chan’s fist; Wonwoo’s palm settles on Chan’s shoulder, feather-light. “It’s okay to be upset about that sort of thing. You’re in a really competitive field, and even though you’re friends it can be hard to see someone do better than you when you’re trying so hard, too.”

Chan dabs at his nose, takes a shuddering breath. “Right before my accident, I got an email from an entertainment company. They wanted me to choreograph something for one of their groups. Me, not me and hyung, just me. I was in the fucking taxi going to the company building to start practice with the group when I got hit. And they still used it, but hyung was the one to teach it to them and I know I should be happy that they used it at all but I can’t watch the performance without feeling like everything’s over for me.”

He gestures uselessly into the air. “I—I’m—just—” he groans, letting his face fall into his hands. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I wish everything would just go back to the way it used to be, but it can’t and it pisses me off. And now I’m pissing other people off because I can’t get a hold of myself and I’m just dumping my feelings everywhere.”

Wonwoo doesn’t speak at first, smoothing his palm down until it rests on the small of Chan’s back. Something about the touch helps keep Chan tethered; he closes his eyes, trying to fix his attention on it so his thoughts don’t spiral off.

“You’re not pissing me off, Chan. You’ve been through a lot recently—more than anyone should ever have to go through,” he eventually says, voice low and even. “I don’t know how to fix all of your problems. What I do know is that you’re one of the most dedicated, resilient people I have ever had the privilege to know, and you will be fine no matter what ends up happening. Things will be okay eventually, even though they may not seem so now.”

Chan wants to believe him so badly. Why is it so hard?

“Not to get all philosophical,” Wonwoo says, “but the ancient Greeks introduced the concept of what later became known as gestalt—the idea that at times, the combination of things is not just equivalent to the same things that have been combined, but more. Simply put, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. You’re more than just what you can do—the fact you simply are is enough.”

If Chan’s going to be honest with himself, he only understands about half of what Wonwoo’s trying to say. “Ah,” he murmurs, hoping that he at least sounds like he agrees.

Wonwoo chuckles, sliding his hand up to the nape of Chan’s neck, rubbing his thumb just behind Chan’s ear. “What I’m trying to get at is that you’re more than just a guy who dances, even if that was what you shaped your life around until now. You might not know what else you’re made of yet, but I’m sure you will.”

Miso, who’d previously been content to watch the exchange from one of Wonwoo’s wall shelves, leaps down and approaches the sofa, jumping up onto the cushions easily and placing her head very deliberately on Chan’s thigh. His hand instinctively moves to scratch between her ears, and she closes her eyes, purring against his leg. Chan doesn’t know a lot about how animal instincts work, but he’d like to think she’s trying to comfort him, too.

Wonwoo reaches over Chan to rub Miso’s back; she shivers involuntarily, inching up further onto Chan’s lap so she’s closer to Wonwoo’s touch.

“Also,” Wonwoo says, “we both know Soonyoung isn’t the type to hold grudges. I’m sure he’s already forgiven you.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so. I think it would take a lot more than that for Soonyoung to let you go. He loves you, you know.”

Chan sniffles again. Wonwoo hands him another tissue.

They end up on Wonwoo’s balcony; the elder has a small table and a chair out there, and drags another one from his kitchen table so he can sit with Chan. Wonwoo makes them each a cup of tea, and Chan’s grateful to have something to hold onto to ground him. 

For a while, the air is punctuated only by the dull rumble of traffic below them and the occasional beep of a horn. Chan’s not usually one for just sitting with his thoughts—especially not recently, when he feared his mind would take him to places he didn’t want to go—but something about Wonwoo’s company, even silent, helps quiet the noise in his head.

It’s strange, this effect that Wonwoo has on him. Wonwoo’s only been in his life for a few months, but there’s a bond forged between them that Chan doesn’t think he could have made it this far without. 

Chan takes a sip of his tea, shivering at the warmth it sends down his throat. Wonwoo’s apartment looks out onto the Han River, clustered by other high-rise buildings. The sky is a hazy navy blue, illuminated by the Yanghwa Bridge and the buildings and boats that surround it, but when Chan tilts his head up higher he can see the moon, full and white against the inky darkness.

It’s a lot noisier, but something about staring up in the sky reminds Chan of the beach in Changwon, lying next to Wonwoo with their hands linked. The air is balmy with late-summer humidity, but it’s thick with a feeling that Chan wishes he could name.

“The moon is bright tonight, isn’t it?” Wonwoo muses.

He’s not looking at the moon. 

“Hm?” Chan lowers his gaze to look at Wonwoo directly; when he does, the elder looks down at his own cup of tea, rubbing his thumb around the lip of the mug.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m only saying this because you’re emotionally vulnerable right now,” Wonwoo says. “I actually don’t know if this is the right time at all. But you’re here, and I don’t know if I can keep it to myself anymore.”

“Hyung?” Chan has a faint inkling of what Wonwoo might be getting at, but it’s something he’s never known how to put into any sort of corporeal form. Maybe it was another reality he was too scared to face.

“Chan, I’m not… good with putting my emotions into words in this kind of way.”

Wonwoo lets out a shaky chuckle, finally lifting his head up to meet Chan’s eyes. The moonlight reflects off of the frames of his glasses, casts shadows across his cheekbones. Wonwoo has always been an objectively attractive man, but the pale moon glow casts him ethereal. Chan’s breath catches in his throat.

“Saying ‘I like you’ seems so inadequate,” he says, “but I suppose it’ll have to do. Chan-ah, I know things have been difficult for you lately, and while I certainly don’t know everything you’ve gone through, I want to be someone you can rely on. I want to be someone you can turn to when everything seems dark. When I first met you, I wasn’t expecting to fall for you. Yet here I am.” He shrugs, a faint, hopeful smile on his lips. 

“But this isn’t about me,” Wonwoo murmurs. “What do you want?” He’s close enough that Chan could count his individual eyelashes, if he wanted to.

The prospect should be daunting. Chan's spent the past few months mired in uncertainty, trying to figure out what he wants out of life when life itself was something he wasn’t even sure if he wanted. Wonwoo came into the picture when Chan was at his lowest, trying to claw his way back up and out of what felt like an unending chasm of the unknown.

But Wonwoo never asked for anything more than Chan to be himself, in whatever form that took—he embraced Chan’s harsh edges, rather than trying to smooth them out, accepted Chan for all of his imperfections instead of trying to fix him.

There are a lot of things in life Chan’s still uncertain about, but this isn’t one of them.

“I want you,” Chan whispers, leaning in to meet Wonwoo halfway.

The kiss feels like a promise.

When Chan wakes up, it’s to the sensation of an arm laid across his abdomen and something furry tickling his foot.

He shifts slightly, adjusting his leg; the arm tightens momentarily, followed by a muffled groan.

“Ngh?” Wonwoo pokes his head up slightly, blinking at Chan before dropping back down to the pillow again, cheek pressed against the pillow so he can look in Chan’s direction. “Hi,” he says. One corner of his lips quirks up in a smile, his eyelids still heavy with sleep and his hair sticking up in odd directions.

“Hi,” Chan repeats. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“Mm-mm.” Wonwoo shakes his head. “S’okay.”

He curls up closer, tucking his chin against Chan’ shoulder. Some deep instinct drives Chan to reach up and run his fingers through Wonwoo’s hair; Wonwoo lets out a pleased hum in response, nuzzling against Chan.

“Feels good. Don’t stop.”

Chan chuckles softly. “Okay, hyung.”

He wasn’t planning to, anyway.

Eventually, Chan’s stomach rumbling forces them to get out of bed; Wonwoo gives Chan a spare toothbrush and Chan tries not to think about how horrifyingly domestic it is for them to be brushing their teeth side-by-side (well, Wonwoo’s standing in front of the sink and Chan’s sitting on the closed toilet seat lid, but semantics, really) after spending the morning cuddling. 

When they’re finished, they head to the kitchen, where Wonwoo opens the fridge and stands in front of the mostly-empty shelves, hand resting contemplatively on his chin.

“I can offer you your choice of microwavable rice, ramyun, or toast, with your choice of either fried or boiled egg.”

“You sure know the way to a guy’s heart,” Chan says, peering around Wonwoo into the fridge, as if adding his stare would cause more food to spontaneously appear inside.

Wonwoo grimaces, draping an arm around Chan’s waist. “Sorry. As you’ve probably seen, I tend to eat a lot of pre-packed food, and I was planning to go grocery shopping tomorrow.”

“Ah.” Chan squints at the carton of eggs. The fridge remains as barren as ever. “I’ll take ramyun with boiled egg, then.”

“An excellent choice,” Wonwoo declares, grabbing the carton out of the fridge. “Only the finest for my dear Jungchan.”

Chan rolls his eyes. “Have you always been this dramatic?”

Wonwoo doesn’t answer, instead opting to steer Chan to one of his barstools, firmly rebuffing all of Chan’s efforts to try and be of any assistance.

“It’s just ramyun,” Wonwoo says, as he puts a pot of water on to boil, “you literally don’t need to do anything.”

“But—”

A finger presses against Chan’s lips; Wonwoo’s leaned over the counter, smiling gently.

“We have all the time in the world for us to be kitchen disasters together in the future. For now, I’d like to make my new boyfriend some instant noodles. Is that alright?”

New boyfriend. How does Wonwoo say these things so casually? Chan feels his cheeks burning, and he buries his head in his arms with a groan. Apparently satisfied, Wonwoo’s footsteps retreat to the stove; Chan peeks up to watch Wonwoo rip open three packets of ramyun and dump them into the pot. The tank top he’d slept in emphasizes the width of his shoulders and the lean outline of his biceps and Chan drops his head onto his arms again. The whole thing is surreal.

A few minutes later, Wonwoo sets the pot of ramyun on the counter, along with two bowls and pairs of chopsticks. 

“Nothing but the finest Shin Black,” he jokes. “Hopefully you don’t find it terribly offensive.”

Chan waves him off. “It’s instant noodles, hyung. You’d have to be especially bad at cooking to mess it up.”

The noodles are exceedingly average, which Chan counts as a win. He usually doesn’t eat ramyun for breakfast, but he can’t deny that there’s something strangely satisfying about eating salty, spicy, starchy food in the morning, especially when combined with a soft-cooked egg yolk.

“So,” Chan says, pulling some noodles out of the pot and into his bowl, “we are… boyfriends.” The word feels strange in his mouth, dusty from going unused for so long.

“Yes. Um,” Wonwoo pokes at the noodles in his own bowl. “I realize we didn’t exactly talk about where we’d like things to go. Obviously, we don’t have to go straight into dating—we can take things at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.”

“We sort of skipped all the ‘dating’ parts, to be honest,” Chan points out. “We pretty much jumped straight to spending long hours of the day together and going on trips and meeting the family. I don’t think we’ve ever really ‘gone out’ in that sense of the term.”

Wonwoo chuckles. “You’re right. When you feel up to it, I’ll take you out on a real date.”

“When I figure out what a ‘real date’ is, I’ll be sure to let you know what I want to do.” Chan laughs. “Don’t feel like you need to pull out all the stops on my account.”

“Too late for that,” Wonwoo sighs. “I want to do something nice for you.”

Chan reaches across the table so he can hold onto Wonwoo’s hand; the elder’s eyes widen, but a pleased smile makes its way across his face.

“You just being with me is something nice, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Wonwoo looks thoroughly dejected. “Mark my words, though. I’ll figure something out.”

“I look forward to it. Boyfriend.”

Perhaps it’s a little sadistic the way Chan likes how Wonwoo’s ears turn bright red when Chan says the word. 

They finish up their ramyun, and Wonwoo shoos Chan off to the couch again while he washes off the pot. Maybe it’s because they’d already been spending so much time together, but there’s no real new-relationship awkwardness that Chan had expected to come, save for the negotiation of what the relationship actually means. Leaning back on Wonwoo’s sofa and picking up a book from the coffee table feels almost like being at his own apartment, not like he’s at his new significant other’s house and he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

The only real difference is that Wonwoo’s suddenly gotten a lot touchier, and not even in a suggestive manner, either—whatever was holding Wonwoo back before seems to have vanished overnight. Wonwoo doesn’t even ask Chan to move over on the sofa before he sits down, one of his hands coming to rest casually on Chan’s knee. Chan ends up sitting sideways, legs across Wonwoo’s lap while Miso sits on his stomach; Wonwoo’s hand runs along Chan’s leg absentmindedly while he scrolls through his phone and Chan pets Miso on the head.

As much as Chan wants to bask in the moment, though, his thoughts drift back to the other events of the night before, preventing him from truly relaxing. 

“We should go back to my place,” Chan says after a while, slightly regretful that he has to bother Wonwoo to take him back (and disturb Miso from her apparent comfortable resting place). “I kind of don’t want to move, but need to apologize to Soonyoung-hyung.”

Wonwoo nods. “I get it. We can go in a sec—do you need anything to get ready?”

“Probably just changing my clothes.”

Gently, Wonwoo scoops Miso off of Chan; she glares at the two of them, but prances off to curl up in a sliver of sunlight casting onto the living room floor. Before Chan has a chance to protest otherwise, Wonwoo leans over to scoop him up too, much like he did the previous night. This time, Chan allows himself enjoy the experience, even if it is still a bit strange to him.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re incredibly dramatic?” Chan asks as Wonwoo carries him to the bedroom. “Because you really are.”

“You may have mentioned it once or twice,” Wonwoo says offhandedly, setting Chan down gently on the bed. “Anyway, you can borrow something of mine, if you don’t want to wear the same clothes from yesterday. The pants will be a little long, though.”

“I can just wear the same pants,” Chan says, but accepts Wonwoo’s offering of a black graphic-printed hoodie. When he puts it on, the scent of Wonwoo’s laundry detergent and a hint of his cologne sends something fluttering warm in his heart. It’s a bit absurd, but it helps set him at ease—and right now, Chan will take anything he can get.

Chan would like to let it be known that he spent the whole car ride back mentally crafting an apology speech, trying to envision how the situation might go in his head and come up with strategies in case Soonyoung decides to come at him with a baseball bat.

What ends up happening, however, is none of those things.

“I’m sorry,” Chan ends up saying the moment the door to their apartment shuts behind him and Wonwoo. Soonyoung’s lying on the sofa, evidently waiting for his return. “I blew up at you because I was mad and frustrated and I took it out on you because it was easy. You didn’t deserve that, hyung, I’m so sorry.”

Immediately, Soonyoung gets up and throws his arms around Chan, so tight Chan almost forgets to breathe. Despite it, the knot in Chan’s chest loosens—something about being hugged by Soonyoung has always comforted him.

When he lets go, holding Chan by the shoulders, Chan can see that his face is red and splotchy, eyelids swollen.

“Never run away from me again,” Soonyoung sniffles. “You’re my bestest dongsaeng, Lee Chan, and that means you’re stuck with me in the good times and the bad. We’re here for each other, understand?”

“Yes, hyung,” Chan says dutifully, but tears prick at the corners of his eyes and he dabs at them with the ends of his sleeves to try and stop them before they get worse.

“I mean it,” Soonyoung insists. “Hyung’s sorry too, for not paying enough attention to you. I should’ve been there for your emotional support.”

Chan shakes his head. “Ah, hyung, you were really busy trying to keep everything together, and I didn’t say anything about it to you until I just exploded. It’s not your fault.”

Soonyoung sighs, pulling Chan in close again. “It’s not right without both of us, Chan-ah. We’re like dried anchovies and kelp. You can make broth with just one, and it’s fine. Most people probably couldn’t even tell the difference. But it’s not quite right. Not balanced like it should be.”

Soonyoung and his food metaphors. Chan raises an eyebrow. “Doesn’t the flavor get messed up if the proportion changes?”

Soonyoung shrugs. “Yeah, but who’s to say it’s not better? Plus, sometimes recipes need a change-up every now and again.”

“I don’t suppose I fit into this hypothetical soup anywhere,” Wonwoo jokes from the entryway. To be honest, Chan kind of forgot he was there. A bit rude of him, given the events of the past twenty-four hours, but he’s been through a lot. He’d probably be forgiven for it.

“You… you’re the ramyun soup packet.” Soonyoung considers this carefully, stroking at his chin. “You’re what college students use to make their kimchi jjigae taste good because they haven’t mastered how to actually cook things. Tasty, but it doesn’t compare to the touch of a mother.”

Wonwoo swats at Soonyoung with his overlong hoodie sleeve; Soonyoung ducks, sticking his tongue out. Chan wonders if he’s actually the youngest between the three of them.

“I think hyung might be more like tofu,” Chan says. “Some people think it’s kind of bland on its own, but it absorbs the flavor of whatever it’s in really well. And it’s an important part of the dish.”

“I’ve eaten plenty of jjigae without tofu and it's just fine," Soonyoung argues, indignant.

"Yeah, because you're just a kimchi freak," Wonwoo laughs. "It's okay. I know I'm the optional part of the Soonyoung and Chan stew."

"I don't think you're optional," Chan blurts out, mind running two times faster than his mouth.

Soonyoung looks at him, then at Wonwoo, then back at him. Chan would sort of really like to die.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" Soonyoung asks. “I feel like I'm missing something.”

"Yeah, Jungchan," Wonwoo adds, smile placid and guileless. Chan’s going to kill him later—he can’t believe Wonwoo’s already throwing him under the bus. It’s got to be too early in the relationship for this. “You know how Soonyoungie is.”

"You know," Chan hems, wondering if they would notice him edging very slowly towards the door, "sometimes, things just happen, y’know?”

“Oh, no.” Soonyoung grabs Chan’s wrist. “You’re not running away again. What happened with you guys?”

Chan takes a deep breath. “We’re kind of… together now.”

Wonwoo clutches a hand over his heart, staggering back two steps. “Kind of? You wound me, Chan.”

“Hey!” Chan pouts. “You’re the one who made me say it!”

Soonyoung blinks between the two of them with wide eyes. “Seriously? You’re not making shit up, are you?”

Wonwoo walks up to stand behind Chan, wrapping his arms around Chan’s waist and dropping his chin onto the younger’s shoulder. “Nope,” he says. “We smooched and everything.”

“Smooched?” Chan mutters, looking at Wonwoo out of the corner of his eye. “That’s what you’re calling it?”

Wonwoo shrugs. “What else should I call it?”

“Oh, absolutely disgusting,” Soonyoung groans, but he can’t hide his smile. “I never should’ve introduced you two. Who would’ve thought that my two best friends would get together without me!”

“You know there’s always room in my heart for you, too,” Wonwoo says, voice dripping with sarcasm as he reaches out to grab Soonyoung’s arm. “Just say the word and you can join us.”

Soonyoung grimaces, but allows himself to be pulled into Wonwoo’s grasp, his body tucking easily against Chan’s. “I’ve seen your penis, Jeon Wonwoo, and I never want to see it again. Yours too, Lee Chan. No offense.”

“None taken,” Chan replies.

“Offense fully taken,” Wonwoo huffs. “I have an excellent penis.”

Chan chokes on his own spit.

They hold auditions two weeks later. 

“How’re you feeling?” Wonwoo asks. They’re sitting in his car a couple of buildings away from the studio—Soonyoung still had classes to teach in the morning, and Wonwoo insisted that it made more sense for Chan to go when it was time for auditions instead of hanging around the studio for hours without much to do. Chan suspects it was mostly an excuse for Wonwoo to have extra time to sleep in and cuddle him in bed, but he’s not upset with the outcome at all.

“A bit weird. Nervous, I guess,” Chan says. “I’ve been away for so long, and I haven’t really watched anyone dance in a while, either. Not sure how it’ll make me feel.”

Wonwoo hums in assent, reaching out to take Chan’s hand and run his thumb along his knuckles soothingly. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Just let Soonyoung know if you ever need a moment, okay?”

Chan nods, but he hopes it doesn’t get to that point. He doesn’t think it will, either—there’s something bittersweet, knowing that he’s essentially screening his replacement, but the thought doesn’t hurt as much as it would have months or even weeks ago. Progress is progress, he supposes.

Wonwoo brushes Chan’s bangs off his forehead to press a soft kiss there. Chan swears his skin tingles after Wonwoo pushes his hair back into place.

“See you after?” Wonwoo asks.

Chan nods, squeezing the elder’s hand before letting go to get out of the car.

Standing in front of Shining Diamond for the first time in months is… odd. At one point in his life, he never would’ve imagined taking even a few days away from the studio—hell, there were times he and Soonyoung ended up falling asleep in the practice rooms when they had to finish a choreography project before a tight deadline.

It’s something akin to going back to your parents’ house after moving out, he thinks, hand gripping the doorknob so tightly his knuckles turn white. He feels a little off-kilter walking through the doorway; something about it almost feels like he’s walking through someone else’s memories. The feeling fades, though, once the vibrating thrum of music shakes through the walls and into his bones—he’s heard Soonyoung play it from his room these past few weeks—and the memories become his own once again. 

No matter how much time he spends away, Shining Diamond will always be his home.

“Channie-ssaem!”

A couple of kids he recognizes from his beginner tween class wave excitedly at him, broad grins on their faces. He waves back, hoping he doesn’t look as startled as he feels. They bound over to him, gym bags clutched tightly in hand.

“How’re you doing, Channie-ssaem?” Junghyeon asks. Beside her, Sungyeon looks up at him expectantly.

“I’m doing well,” he replies. For once, it doesn’t feel like a lie. “I’ve been resting a lot these days.”

“That’s good.” Junghyeon nods, as if the answer satisfies her. “We missed having classes with you. Soonie-ssaem is great, but it’s not the same, y’know? Don’t tell him I said that, though!”

Chan smiles, patting her on the shoulder. “Your secret’s safe with me. I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner Junghyeon-ah, Sungyeon-ah, even if it was just to visit all of you.”

“It’s okay,” Sungyeon says. “You needed to take care of yourself, ssaem.”

Kids these days. Chan wonders when his twelve-year-olds learned this sort of wisdom.

More kids file out of one of the studio rooms; Soonyoung leans against the doorframe, watching with a fond smile as the kids crowd around Chan to greet him. Chan tries his best to say hello to everyone, but they all vy for his attention in the way kids are wont to do and he’s out of practice dealing with crowds.

“Now, now,” Soonyoung calls, voice set fully in teacher-mode; they all turn to face him. “I know you’re all excited to see Channie-ssaem again, but I need him for some important adult business. I’m sure he’ll be back again soon to visit.”

He looks pointedly at Chan—Chan looks pointedly back. There’s probably a conversation they ought to have about this, but that can come later. He’s trying to take things one step at a time.

So he waves goodbye to the kids and follows Soonyoung into the office so the elder can grab the application forms from the people auditioning today. Even though Chan read the application emails as they came in, there’s a larger stack than he anticipated—it’s nothing huge, but he certainly wasn’t expecting more than five people to be interested in joining their humble operation.

“Don’t sell us short,” Soonyoung huffs when Chan expresses this, changing out of his sweaty tracksuit and wiping off his face with a damp paper towel. “We may not be the biggest studio in the world, but we have enough passion to make up for three!”

Chan laughs, flipping through the stack—there’s at least twenty. “Whatever you say, hyung.”

“Damn straight.”

A small crowd waits for them in the lobby once Soonyoung’s finally deemed himself freshened up enough; Soonyoung greets them enthusiastically, introducing himself and handing out name tag stickers and markers. Chan follows him a little less exuberantly, but finds it hard not to get swept up in the energy of the room—the nervous excitement before an audition is contagious, and even though Chan’s on the other side of the table for once, he’s certainly no stranger to how it feels.

Soonyoung holds out a snapback with little slips of paper in it, instructing people to grab one.

“We’ll give you fifteen minutes to warm up and get ready, then we’ll call you in groups of four,” Soonyoung says, “the rest of you can wait in the lobby or use the empty room to practice in.”

“Good luck,” Chan adds, “I look forward to seeing what you’ve prepared for us.” He genuinely means it.

He and Soonyoung enter the second, smaller room, where Soonyoung’s set up a folding table, a couple of chairs, and a laptop.

“You’re going to need to handle the music,” Soonyoung says as he plops down in one of the chairs, “I don’t trust myself to not play the wrong songs for each person.”

“I’m here to serve,” Chan jokes, rubbing his finger on the touchpad to wake the screen up. He’d compiled the song clips that the applicants had sent into a folder, and named each file with the person’s name—Wonwoo said it should be Soonyoung-proof, but none of them particularly want to leave it up to chance. 

“Remember when we used to have to do this?” Soonyoung asks. “Auditioning for pieces at school, and then when we were trying to find jobs after graduation.”

Chan groans. “I’m so glad that’s behind us.”

“Yeah,” Soonyoung chuckles. “I mean, it was fun spending all-nighters trying to nail down the choreo and hit up the twenty-four hour noodle shop after, but I definitely don’t miss the stress.”

They watch the clock on the wall count down; when the fifteen minutes have passed, Soonyoung grips his hand, a little clammy, and suddenly Chan’s eighteen years old again, skin buzzing with anticipation before auditioning for the dance department’s end of the year showcase that freshmen almost never get into. “Are you ready?”

Chan takes a deep breath in, holds it for an eight-count, and lets it out slowly. This is where he is now—twenty-six, in the studio he and Soonyoung built from the ground up. He’s exactly where he’s supposed to be. Where he wants to be. “I am.”

“Awesome.” Soonyoung grins, letting go of Chan so he can get up and poke his head out the door. 

“Can we have the first four come in?”