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“Trust me, dude. She loves fun fairs. This is, like, a perfect date idea, I just know it.”
At the time, Felix was confident that his idea was in fact, excellent. He has it on good authority that Chloe adores funfairs - he overheard her at the lunch table last week, gushing about how excited she is for the summer to start.
So naturally, Felix asked her if she’d like to go to the one that’s been set up in the local park, sometime in the first week of summer vacation. And she’d agreed brightly, and Felix felt his heart float up into the sky as if lifted by a cupid with fluttering wings and throwing him hearts made of cotton candy-
Two hours later, and he’s not even sure how it started, but it had become a whole ordeal in the group chat and a dozen of his and Chloe’s friends had agreed they also wanted to tag along. Most of them are staying in the city for the summer vacation. Some, because they can’t be bothered going back home for just a couple of months; others, like Hyunjin, have already graduated and have ‘real jobs and rent to pay’ - whatever that means. Others, like Seungmin and Jeongin, have ‘gone on holiday with their families’ or something lame like that. Gross.
But at least it means Felix won’t have to put up with the painfully incessant flirting that occurs every time they’re within ten miles of each other; like, it’s so obvious they’re madly in love, so why can’t they see it?
Ordinarily, the prospect of an outing with Felix’s closest friends would be thrilling, and they have been talking about going to the funfair together for ages. But he’s supposed to be going with the girl he likes, and how is he gonna turn it from an outing into a date without a bunch of dumbasses cramping his style?
When the day arrives, it’s like all the deities from all the different pantheons have decided to bless Felix personally; the sky is a perfect crystal blue pane of glass, the sun gleaming in its polished centre. It’s already incredibly warm. A gentle breeze sways the grass and rustles the tree leaves, carrying the gentle scent of summer pollen and sunscreen and candyfloss.
So Felix wears blue jeans and a white sleeveless shirt, because it’s summery and not too casual. He runs a hand through his long blonde hair, then frowns and sticks a bucket hat on over the top because the ruffling was a bad idea and just made his hair stick up all funny.
Then he thinks he looks a bit like a fuckboy, so he changes his outfit for a loose-fitting grey t-shirt that he French-tucks into a pair of black jeans. But the shirt’s heavy and grey fabric is always susceptible to sweaty pit-stains, and the jeans have holes in the knees which do make him look a bit punk but also kind of scruffy.
Jisung just lies on Felix’s bed, scrolling through TikTok while Felix paces back and forth fretting about his outfit. He ends up trying so many outfits that he empties his closet. Half of his clothes end up on the floor - the other half ends up on top of Jisung.
“You need to stop thinking so hard,” says Jisung eventually, throwing a pair of Charizard-patterned socks at Felix’s head. “Just wear what you’re comfortable with. Be yourself. She knows you, she can tell if you’re trying too hard.”
“Easy for you to say,” Felix grumbles, casting a glare at Jisung. The brunette grins - he’s been insufferable since he started dating Minho. He can’t go a day without waxing poetic bullshit about relationships, about how love and romance is easy and intuitive or some other nonsense. Just because Minho treats Jisung like he’s the only man on the Earth; Felix has never seen such intense fondgazing in the entirety of his (admittedly reasonably brief) existence.
Felix eventually settles back on the white sleeveless shirt and blue jeans combo. Jisung waggles his eyebrows suggestively at the way the fabric clings to the shape of Felix’s torso and says that he hopes there’ll be a wet t-shirt contest at this funfair because that would definitely catch some eyes. Felix forgoes the hat, wetting his hair and trying his best to just flatten it down.
Then they get an irritated phone call from the taxi driver who’s been waiting far too long outside their shared apartment, and Felix has to scramble to find a pair of shoes before they finally get on their way.
He runs through his plan in his head as Jisung stares out the window, lost in some daydream or another. The group will spend a little bit of time together before splitting off. Everyone’s already agreed they’ll likely end up doing their own thing because this person loves fairground games but hates rides, and that person loves rides but hates the games, and those people are only coming along for the cotton candy and funnel cakes-
So Felix will steal Chloe away when everyone starts to split off from each other under the pretence of milkshakes and the Ferris Wheel.
Does she like milkshakes?
Who doesn’t like milkshakes, right?
What if she doesn’t like milkshakes? Or the Ferris Wheel? What if-
“Stop fussing, dumbass,” hisses Jisung, grabbing Felix’s hand and removing it from where it’s bundled in his shirt. Felix snaps back to reality and flushes; he hadn’t even realised he’d been fidgeting.
“I’m not fussing.”
“You are. You’re nervous, just calm down. You’re gonna be fine.”
“I’m not nervous. I am calm. I am so totally calm.”
“Really? Because you’re about to break my hand.” Felix looks down - and sure enough, he hasn’t let Jisung’s hand go and is squeezing so hard that Jisung’s fingers are turning purple. Felix makes a grumpy sort of nose at the back of his throat and loosens his grip - but doesn’t let go entirely.
“Okay, fine, I’m nervous,” he says. Jisung squeezes his hand comfortingly as the taxi pulls up at the entrance to the park. They can hear the sounds of music and cheers and screams behind the tree line the moment they step out of the car.
“You’re gonna be fine,” says Jisung, nudging Felix with his arm as they start to cross towards where they’ve said they’ll meet their friends. “I promise. Just be cool.”
“I just - I wanted to just take Chloe out, and now all of a sudden everyone’s gonna be here. Like, you guys are cool and all - but then it got put in the group chat, and I didn’t know how to say that I just wanted it to be the two of us without sounding awkward-”
“You need more confidence, Lix,” says Jisung, shaking his head. “You’re already really good friends. Just go to her and tell her that you like her. How hard can it be?”
“You say that like it’s so easy. We’re friends - do you know how hard it is to tell your friend that you like them? That you like them like them? When was the last time you told your friend you liked them and it all worked out?”
“Two months ago when I told Minho I liked him.”
Felix rolls his eyes and grumbles something about that not being the same thing because it was so obvious that Minho liked him back, and he’s got a great friendship with Chloe and he doesn’t want to fuck it up -
They’re still bickering with each other when they round the corner and come into full view of the festival and their assortment of waiting friends. Thanks to Felix’s fussing earlier, he and Jisung are the last to arrive.
Jisung detaches himself from Felix’s hand the moment they arrive, flings his arms Minho’s neck, and immediately attaches himself to the other man’s face. Via his face.
Felix coughs awkwardly and turns to the rest of the group, who are all looking away politely at their friends’ egregious display of public affection.
He does a quick once-over and realises that he and Jisung aren’t actually the last to arrive, which is fantastic because there’s nothing more embarrassing than making everyone else late. Hyunjin’s not here, and even though they’d agreed to meet at 1pm - a perfectly reasonable time - he’s probably still got caught up either watching TikToks or sitting around his house in his towel and forgetting that he’s, y’know, supposed to get changed after having a shower.
Felix turns around after fist-bumping Yeonjun and Soobin, and his heart leaps into his throat. Chloe’s standing near him, chattering away to Lisa. She looks so pretty today. She’s curled her long black hair, and her light pink dress is floaty in the breeze and has pretty puffy sleeves, and her lips are a nice shade of dusky rose and a little pouty and when she turns to greet Felix she has a big smile on her face-
“Hey, Chloe.” Felix mentally applauds himself for getting the words out in the right order. “How are you?” Brilliant question, Felix. 10/10. This conversation couldn’t be off to a better start.
“Hey, Lix! I’m good!” she says brightly. “I’m like, so excited for this - but, oh my god, we’ve been waiting for you for ages.”
“Yeah, I - sorry, that was my fault,” says Felix, laughing nervously. “I - I had to find something to wear.”
It must have been a funnier comment than Felix had realised, because Chloe laughs. Her voice is clear and high-pitched and when she laughs, it tinkles like a wind chime.
“I know that struggle,” she says, gently nudging Felix’s side. “You look nice.”
“Oh, thanks. You too. I like your dress.”
“Thank you! I actually got it on sale last week. It was 20% off, and look - it’s got pockets!” She beams as she does a little spin to showcase how the skirt flutters in the wind, and Felix can’t help but return it. Her enthusiasm is infectious.
He’s just trying to come up with another conversation point, maybe a compliment or maybe something vaguely flirtatious, when Chloe’s eyes go wide and she claps a hand to her mouth as if she’s forgotten something.
“Oh! I don’t think I’ve introduced you to Zoe, yet. She’s staying with me over the summer - ZoZo, come here!” The girl that she gestures to - presumably Zoe, standing stoically just a few steps away - is the polar opposite of Chloe’s pink frills and tinkling laugh. She’s got a very short crop of black hair that’s shaved on one side - she’s got an eyebrow piercing, and a lip piercing, and even in today’s blasting heat she’s dressed head-to-toe in black.
Felix smiles and gives a polite nod of the head. “Nice to meet you.”
In response, Zoe raises her hand lazily and waves. Her hand is covered in tattoos - tattoos that creep up over her wrist and disappear beneath the sleeve of her black hoodie.
“And you,” she says, smiling. She’s got very pointy teeth and a surprisingly soft voice. Like velvet. Felix thinks wildly that there’s every possibility she’s a vampire.
“Felix and Jisung are roommates,” explains Chloe.
“Uh, Jisung is the… uh-” Zoe says, peering around to where Jisung and Minho have finally come up for air, and are now chattering away to their friends. Jisung still has his hands looped around Minho’s neck.
“Yeah, the brunette,” says Chloe, giggling. Zoe smiles back with her eyebrow at Chloe in an expression that Felix just doesn’t quite know how to interpret.
“Well, technically we’re now flatmates,” says Felix pointedly. “We were roommates in college, but now we’ve got an actual apartment.”
“Ah. I see.” The look that Chloe and Zoe share only intensifies, and Felix would be confused, but -
“Hang on… Chloe and Zoe?”
Chloe giggles and wraps her arm around Zoe’s waist, resting her head on Zoe’s shoulder. Or rather, the top of Zoe’s bicep, because the other girl is, like, really tall.
“It’s funny, right?” says Chloe, beaming up at Zoe. “It’s like it must be destiny or something.”
Felix just smiles, unsure exactly what to say. It doesn’t help that Chloe’s exuberance is currently outshining the sun and every time she smiles at him like that he feels like his stomach’s about to spontaneously combust. Though it wouldn’t really be spontaneous combustion if he had a warning, so it’s more like a normal sort of combustion. An implosion. Or, an explosion - he’s never really been sure of the difference.
Thankfully, Jisung quickly comes to rescue him from his internal monologue with a text message displayed on his phone. Apparently, Hyunjin’s bringing a couple of friends with him and they’re running late because they’ve stopped off at McDonalds, and the rest of the guys should ‘just go in’. Felix rolls his eyes and grumbles that it would be nice of them to offer to pick something up for everyone else if they were gonna be late. But with that, they finally all turn around and amble towards the ticket booth.
The funfair is massive. Felix hadn’t really paid much attention as he’d arrived, too filled with worry about seeing Chloe - but it sprawls as far as Felix can see across the massive field of the park, bathed in the warm glow of the midday sun. The scent of candyfloss and popcorn and sizzling hot dogs carries on the breeze along with the sound of screams and cheers and laughter.
There are so many rides, stalls, activities… a huge Ferris wheel with brightly coloured swinging gondolas, whirling dodgems that zap and clash in sounds of neon, the carousel singing its song of jingly carnival music, the thing that Felix’s pretty sure is called a Waltzer, and so many, many more -
It’s not that he hates all rides; he kind of enjoys roller coasters. Sort of. If they don’t have any loops, and he keeps his eyes closed. But anything that spins, and anything that takes you up too high - ugh. Just the thought makes him want to remove his own spine. Those are the ones he can’t stand, and because this is a funfair and not an amusement park, there are a lot of rides that fit firmly into that ‘I’d rather remove my own spine’ category.
“Hm, it’s nice to do stuff like this as a group,” says Chloe, causing Felix to jump. He shakes himself out of the mental hole he’d been digging himself into, and turns a shaky smile in her direction.
“Oh yeah, definitely. I’ve missed you.”
“You saw me last week in class, dumbass,” says Chloe, nudging Felix in the side.
“No, I know that, but - like, I mean, I’ve missed just hanging out. For fun. Without lectures, or finals, or studying-”
“Oh! Yeah, no. I get you. Don’t worry, we’ll do loads of stuff this summer,” says Chloe. “Oh, and Zoe’s gonna be here all summer, so she can come with us, too!”
Great. There goes literally all of Felix’s plans.
Felix smiles. He hopes it doesn’t look as forced as it feels.
“So, how did you and Zoe meet?” Felix says, stabbing at an attempt at conversation.
“Well, we’ve known each other a little while, but only really got close last semester.”
“A mutual friend introduced us at the end of high school,” adds Zoe stoically. “Then we met up again on spring break this year-”
“And we, like, clicked so fast, and we started talking right away-”
The light chatter continues as they drift through the stalls, stopping occasionally to peer at a minigame or argue over which ride to go on. Felix stays firmly on the ground as several of their friends rush towards the Ferris Wheel. Jisung and Minho break off from the main group right afterwards - probably to go and exchange blowjobs in a bush, says Felix dryly, to which Chloe giggles. She says even if that is the case, it’s just so sweet to see two of her friends in love - and proudly reminds Felix that she’s the one who introduced them in the first place.
By the time Felix wanders over to the hook-a-duck minigame, he’s left in a trio with Chloe and Zoe. Which would be marvellous and all going exactly to plan, if it weren’t for the fact that Zoe is very much being a third wheel.
Felix casts a slightly bitter side-glance at the tall girl as they pass over money to the game’s attendant. She’s quite pretty underneath her strikingly dark appearance, piercings and sharp features aside. And she and Chloe are clearly very close - it would be a smart move to get Zoe on his side if he wants to - uh, woo Chloe. He hates that word. Woo.
Is there a better word? Court? No, that sounds too formal. Like he’s some noble bringing chests of gold and rare spices to the Princess from the neighbouring kingdom in an attempt to win her hand in marriage.
Then he manages to hook a duck, and yells in surprise when he sees that he’s caught a winner. He trades it in for a huge, fluffy black cat plushie and immediately hands it over to Chloe because that’s what a good guy does.
Then, they grab a stick of cotton candy that is exactly the same shade as Chloe’s dress, and Felix points this out, and Chloe laughs. She laughs a lot; she always does, finding joy in all the tiniest parts of the world. Then Zoe points out that Chloe has a little bit of pink in her hair, and carefully pulls it out, and Chloe laughs even louder, and Felix tries to come up with a way to tactfully get rid of Zoe, just for five minutes, or half an hour, or maybe the rest of the day, or the rest of the summer.
There are so many goddamn rides. Chloe ends up dragging Felix and Zoe over to one that she insists they go on. It looks like a see-through cylinder with a spot for people to stand around the perimeter; there are no seats but instead it’s rimmed with what looks almost like single-person cages; safety bars of some kind. And it’s one of those rides that spins, and while it spins it bucks up and down, and Felix absolutely does not want to go anywhere near the damn thing.
He absolutely refuses to join the queue. Chloe does her best sparkling puppy eyes to try and plead for him to go on it, and it nearly works. Maybe going on the ride next to Chloe might be a good way of showing her that he’s willing to - uh, put up with things he doesn’t like for her? Is that the right word? Maybe he could, on the ride, take her hand or something-
But just as he’s edging toward the decision, the ride starts another cycle, and as it starts to whirl faster and faster, Felix decides that no way in hell is he going to step foot on that thing. Just looking at it makes him feel like he’s about to pass out - he hates spinning rides, not in a million years is he going to step foot on that, not even for the love of his life.
Chloe pouts, but she eventually admits defeat and drags Zoe into the queue behind her. Felix, feeling marginally guilty but also still a little unstable, walks around to find a convenient patch of grass to sit down and wait on.
The queue isn’t miles long, and Chloe and Zoe (he’s never going to get over those goddamn rhyming names) pile on.
Ugh, just looking up at them grinning so joyfully makes him feel sick.
Not that they make him feel sick. It’s the ride that makes them feel sick.
Chloe takes her spot, and Felix can just about see her through the clear - plastic? Glass? Whatever material it is that makes the structure of the ride. He smiles and waves - but she doesn’t see, her attention too focused on Zoe next to her.
And then he realises that there’s a guy on Chloe’s other side, who is very obviously watching him. He flushes, drops his hand, and looks away - and then looks back just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things, and it makes it even worse because the guy is still looking at him. The guy casts a sideways glance at the inattentive Chloe, then back at Felix with a sorrowful look on his face.
Felix’s entire face feels like it’s on fire. He can almost hear a voice in his head - ‘Aw, she’s not paying you any attention? That’s a shame. How pitiful you look down there...’
The ride starts, and Chloe and Zoe and The Other Guy’s faces disappear into a blur as the ride starts to spin and rise up and down and Felix has to keep his gaze averted because even just watching the movement makes him feel sick.
“Lix?”
Felix looks. Then, his face splits into a grin as he sees Hyunjin standing nearby, with a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on his nose and his elegant black hair tied up in a half-ponytail, holding a milkshake in one hand and a scrunched-up McDonald’s bag in the other.
“Hyun! Crikey, there you are. I was starting to think you weren’t gonna make it.”
“Sorry,” says Hyunjin sheepishly, flopping down on the grass. “I slept in, and then we got delayed.” He takes a sip of his milkshake before starting and twisting around. “This is Changbin, by the way.” And he waves over to the guy who’s waiting patiently a few steps away.
Felix’s eyes go wide the second he sees the guy. He’s only wearing a loose black t-shirt and jeans, but he’s clearly got shoulders and pecs and biceps built like a Greek god, or a bodybuilder, or an actual tank. He’s so buff. Felix kind of wants to reach out and squeeze his shoulders to see if it’s all real and not an inflatable muscle suit. He settles instead for a friendly fist-bump as Changbin sits down next to him, before turning to address Hyunjin.
“So, how’d you know each other?”
“High school.” Hyunjin’s wearing sunglasses, but Felix knows his friend well enough to know how his eyes sparkle behind them. “We went to different colleges. But it’s been ages since we’ve seen each other...” And Hyunjin tilts his head and looks at Changbin in a Certain Type of Way, and Felix immediately understands.
“Uh, Chloe’s got a friend who’s doing the same,” says Felix. Hyunjin nods wisely, his mouth twitching with the effort to keep the smirk off his face. He’s long known about Felix’s unrequited crush. It’s a good thing that he doesn’t say anything, at least, because the way he’s looking at Changbin gives away far more than Felix has ever given away about Chloe. Hyunjin might as well be twirling a lock of hair around his finger.
“Chan’s with us too, but he’s on that thing,” says Changbin, nodding over at the whirling tube of terror.
“Chan?”
“Our other friend.” Changbin shudders. “He’s insane. I hate rides.”
“Ugh, me too,” says Felix. “I mean, like, I don’t mind them, but the spinny ones make me feel sick.”
Changbin wrinkles his nose in distaste, and Felix decides it’s cute. “No, I hate all rides. Rollercoasters, spinning rides – those ones that bring you way up high and drop you? No way. I like having solid ground underneath my feet.”
“What about Dodgems?” says Felix teasingly. “Or a Ferris wheel? Are those too intense for you?”
Changbin raises his eyebrow, but a small, playful smile starts to pull at the corners of his lips. “Now, you listen here-”
“Oh, stop talking shit,” says Hyunjin, slapping Felix on the leg. “The Ferris wheel? Lix, you hate heights. You wouldn’t go on a Ferris wheel if we paid you to.”
“That’s not true! What about at the winter carnival? We went on a Ferris wheel then.”
“Yeah, and you had your eyes closed and were clinging to my arm and crying the whole time about how you wanted to get off.”
The ride slows to a halt before Hyunjin and Felix can really start bickering. Felix shoots him a withering look as he stands up, right as Chloe comes off the ride. Her curls have sprung free and fluffy in the wind and her cheeks are red, but her eyes glow and she looks like she’s just had the time of her life. Zoe follows behind her, hands in her pockets looking as nonchalant as ever.
“That was so fun! Lix, you should have come on it too!” she beams, shoving Felix’s arm playfully, then bounding over to Hyunjin to fling her arms around him in a hug. “Hey Hyun!”
They do the introductions – Chloe pulls Zoe over to Hyunjin and introduces her, and Hyunjin does the same with Changbin. Apparently Zoe can sense the same thing that Felix did a moment ago, because her eyes flicker to Hyunjin, to Changbin, and a small smile breaks out on her face.
“Oh, Lix, Chloe – this is Chan.” Felix turns around, his smile bright and ready to greet the mysterious Other Friend – and his smile freezes on his face, because Chan is apparently none other than the cocky, smirking… person who’d spotted Felix’s failed attempt at waving at Chloe.
The tips of Felix’s ears go red.
“Nice to meet you,” says Chan, holding out his hand as if to shake Felix’s. But his lips are quirked into a faint shadow of the same smirk that he’d had when he’d looked down at Felix from the ride. He’s got jet-black, slightly curly hair that’s a little wild from where the wind must have mussed it up on the ride, and it falls into dark eyes, and Felix has to stop himself from scowling as he returns the handshake.
“Hm. You too.”
“Isn’t this nice? All of us in a group like this?” says Chloe, popping up next to Felix and looping her arm through his (at the contact of her skin on his, Felix decides that he doesn’t ever want to wash that part of his arm again). And Chan can apparently read minds because, as they start walking, he’s looking at Felix with a twinkle in his eye.
Felix can feel Chan’s presence in the group like the encroaching front of a thunderstorm. A dark cloud lingering on his heels. He seems nice enough. Ish. Like, he’s joking around with Changbin and Hyunjin, and is clearly comfortable enough with the both of them to bicker and tease and banter, as he demonstrates by rolling his eyes and mimicking Hyunijn’s enthusiasm over going on the pirate ship ride. Felix just glowers and tries purposefully to not pay any attention to anything Chan is saying.
The small group sticks together for the rest of the day. Felix ends up behind Chan and next to Hyunjin in the four-person car of the rickety wooden cat-and-mouse rollercoaster, which is perfect because it doesn’t go too high up and Hyunjin lets Felix cling to his arm and squeeze his eyes shut on the rickety bumps. Zoe and Chloe end up going together in the next car.
Then Felix swallows his fear and gets on the Waltzer. It’s still a spinning ride, but it remains firmly on the ground rather than swinging about in midair, the brightly-coloured little pod - well, waltzing - around the track to the super loud techno music. He steadies a slightly dizzy Chloe as they get off the ride, even if his own knees are shaking, and turns around just in time to see Chan look away.
It also doesn’t escape Felix’s attention that the fluffy cat plushie has somehow found its way into Zoe’s arms. Felix tries to make a point of not sounding too offended when he points out that he got the plushie for Chloe specifically – and Chloe just smiles, shrugs, and says that Zoe actually has a fluffy black cat that looks exactly like the plushie, and thinks it suits her better. Felix supposes that it’s thoughtful enough that he’s not too mad.
His chance to speak to Chloe alone arrives after they exit the Dodgems. Chan’s whining and holding his neck and complaining that he’s got whiplash - Changbin and Hyunjin are both laughing at him. Zoe’s joining in, having already slotted right into place. Felix turns to Chloe while the others are distracted, and asks if she fancies a milkshake - they’ve slipped away amongst the stalls towards a sweet-treat-truck before anyone can notice they’ve gone.
Chloe orders a strawberry milkshake with whipped cream and sprinkles. Because of course she does. Felix grins, and is about to gently tease her about how pink and predictable she is, when she realises -
“A brownie milkshake? Really? And you’re telling me I’m predictable?”
“Hey, I like sweet things.” And it is sweet. It’s delicious, with thick velvety chocolate and topped with whipped cream and a dusting of chocolate chips.
“I guess that must be why you like me so much,” says Chloe, and Felix has to try really hard not to choke on his milkshake before turning to her with watery eyes. She really is very pretty, and he struggles to come up with a quick deflection because he knows damn well that she didn’t mean it like that-
“You’re having a nice day, yeah?” Oh, lame. Lame, lame, lame.
“Of course I am. I’m so glad it’s finally summer, you know. The last semester kicked my ass.” Chloe sighs contentedly. “It’s nice to finally just relax.”
“Fuck, tell me about it. I don’t think I slept properly for, like, three months.”
“I found you sleeping in the Library at least twice a week. And almost every single time we were in a lecture. I’m amazed you even passed the year.”
“Yeah, me too.” Felix takes another sip of his drink. “Say, how long did you say Zoe was staying?”
“Well… she’ll have to go back home once summer ends,” says Chloe. She looks a little crestfallen at the prospect. “Her family lives really far away, you see, and it’s easier for her to just stay with me temporarily before going back to college in the fall. But with any luck, she’ll be here all summer.”
“Ah.” Felix’s heart plummets. “That’s really cool. She seems like a cool girl.”
“She’s the best,” says Chloe, smiling fondly. “I like her so much. I’ll be sad when she goes.”
“Well, we should do plenty of stuff while she’s here,” Felix finds himself saying. “You know. It would be cool to get to know her a little better.”
“I’d like that. I’ve never had an entire free summer as a full adult yet - I wanna do, like, everything,” says Chloe, and she gets a misty sort of look in her eyes. “The beach, camping - did you know, they opened a brand-new water park? It’s a couple of hours away, but-”
“A water park? Oh, fuck yes. We can totally go. A hundred percent.”
“That sounds amazing,” says Chloe, clasping her hands to her chest. “Oh Lix, this summer’s going to be so good.”
“I hope so.” Then, because there’s gentle music floating on the wind and the angle of the sun is casting warmer late-afternoon light over the both of them and Chloe is so sparkly-eyed right now, his tongue is compelled to continue, and he says, “I’m happy as long as I’m spending it with you.” And it’s so cheesy he thinks he’s about to turn into a swiss fondue.
Chloe just rolls her eyes and hits him on the arm. “You’re so lame.”
Ask her. Do it now. Ask her out. On a date.
“Hey, Chloe?” Chloe looks at him. She’s got a light froth of milkshake on her lips.
“Yeah?”
“I - I was just wondering. Do you maybe, want to-”
Maybe it’s the universe’s fucked up way of intervening, but before he can come up with rest of his sentence, he sees a couple of figures out the corner of his eye making their way towards him.
Minho, to his credit, seems to catch on pretty quickly to what’s happening. He casts a sideways look to his boyfriend and tries to divert his attention elsewhere. Jisung instead casts his gaze in a wide berth and his eyes light up when he spots his friends. He bounds across like an overgrown puppy.
“Hey, lovebirds. We lost you,” he says as he pulls up, Minho following meekly on his tail. “How’s it going? Having fun?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” says Felix. We were doing great until you came along and interrupted me. “You know, just grabbing some milkshakes before we head home.” As if to punctuate his point, Felix holds up his milkshake. Minho just smiles sheepishly.
“That’s not a bad idea,” says Jisung. He turns his head to send a sunny smile backwards at his boyfriend, and Minho looks like he immediately melts. Felix gets it, honestly - kinda. If he were into guys, he’d definitely be into Jisung. But, like, in a ‘I can appreciate my bros’ kinda way and not an ‘I want to suck his dick’ kinda way. Not that he’s opposed to experimenting, and there’s been more than one night in their college dorm where things had got interesting, but-
“Have you guys got anything more to see before we go?” says Chloe. Felix blinks and comes back to Earth. Minho is still watching him over Jisung’s shoulder with an apologetic expression - Felix just shakes his head lightly. It’s okay. It’s not his only chance of the summer, after all. The plans are already forming in his brain - win over Zoe, get her blessing, and ask Chloe out. You have to have the best friend onside first, right?
They reluctantly re-find Chan, Changbin, Hyunjin, and Zoe near the dodgems. They’re at another minigame stall, the one that’s similar to beer pong, where you have to throw ping-pong balls into angled cups. Hyunjin and Zoe are watching intently as Chan and Changbin compete; Changbin’s good, but some of his throws are a little clumsy. Chan is a fucking machine, landing each of his five balls expertly in each of the cups. Changbin pouts, and Chan laughs, but he only teases Changbin for a moment before passing the prize - a fluffy pink bunny - over.
Ugh. So he’s an annoying dick, and he’s thoughtful about his friends. Ugh. Felix turns around to introduce Changbin to Jisung and Minho, and they shake hands and exchange pleasantries, and then he reluctantly includes that Chan’s part of that group as well.
They eventually start to make their way to the exit of the funfair, the day growing late, and Felix’s stomach starts to growl for something more substantial than cotton candy and milkshakes. But through some hideous trick of fate, or maybe it happens on purpose because the guy’s obviously just a massive dick, Chan ends up falling into step beside Felix in the middle of the group.
“Hey.”
“Oh. Hey.”
“We haven’t had a chance to talk.”
“Uh, no. I guess not.”
Chan lets out a low chuckle. “Today hasn’t gone your way, huh?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean - I’m just saying I saw you earlier, watching Chloe on the ride. Let me guess; you’ve liked her for ages, but she’s never given you the time of day, huh?”
Felix scoffs. “What’s it to you?”
“Ah, nothing. It’s just kind of cute.”
“Cute? You think - I’ve been- you-”
“Hey, there’s no need to get flustered. I just think it’s really sweet. I mean, it couldn’t be more obvious that you’re into this girl if you tried.”
“...and what the gives you the right to be a fucking dick about it?”
“...Hey, I’m not trying to be a dick,” Chan says, looking at Felix with a sideways look on his face. “I feel for you, I really do.” Then he leans into Felix’s ear. “If it were me - the milkshakes would have totally worked.”
Felix scoffs again, his cheeks burning, and shoves Chan away to stalk to the front of the group. He’s out here, suffering in the trenches of love, and this guy who he’s only just met, thinks he can just waltz in and make fun of him?
And to make it worse, Chan’s got a lilt to his voice. An accent, and a very recognisable one, and if it weren’t for the entire series of circumstances that had led up to this very moment, Felix would be jumping for joy at the fact he’s met another Aussie. Alas, Chan’s presence has trampled any joy that Felix may have otherwise felt at meeting a fellow countryman.
There’s an uncomfortable sort of squirming in his stomach as he falls in step beside Jisung, and he swears he can hear Chan laughing behind them.
“Hey, Lix. Why is your face so red?”
Felix just tells Jisung to mind his own business.
~
“But I don’t know what to wear!”
“You’re throwing a party, Chlo, not a royal ball. What about that cute blue dress you wore to Yeji’s birthday?”
“It’s different, Lix. For one, I can’t just wear the same dress I wore, like, two months ago, and two - this is a beach party. I want something that fits the theme.”
“...okay, fair enough. But the party isn’t for another few weeks. And Yeji won’t even be there, her family’s going to Japan.”
“Ugh, you don’t get it.”
Jisung looks up from where he’s sitting on the sofa. Or, rather, from where he’s sitting in Minho’s lap on the sofa. Chloe’s on speakerphone while Felix makes himself a bowl of ramen in the kitchenette.
Jisung makes a gesture at Felix, and tries to mouth something.
Felix mouths back ‘what?’ while Chloe moves on, and starts to talk about party preparations.
‘Ass her… oh hopping?’ Jisung shakes his head, and mouths it again.
“Oh, shit,” whispers Felix. He sends Jisung a thumbs-up - Jisung just rolls his eyes. “Hey, uh, Chloe?”
“Yeah?”
“Uh, if you want to get something for the party - uh, we can go shopping? Get you an outfit, maybe get some lunch or coffee, or… something?”
Chloe’s quiet on the other end of the phone for a moment, and Felix thinks maybe he’s royally fucked something up, but the quiet only lasts a moment.
“You know what, that’s actually - yeah, totally, oh my god thank you. Yeah, I really need to get some new shoes anyway, and - like, Zoe said she wanted to go to the Contemporary Art Museum tomorrow, but I’ve already been so many times - if she joins us for lunch, maybe, we could-”
“Maybe she could go with Hyunjin while we go shopping? You know he loves that place,” suggests Felix, trying to ignore the fact that Chloe has just invited Zoe along again and crossing his fingers (and toes and arms and legs and heartstrings) in a silent plea.
“...oh, that’s a good idea.”
“And, you know, maybe when they’ve done the museum - maybe we can meet up afterwards? Get some drinks or something?”
Felix hates that he’s suggesting it - but this is how he gets Chloe alone (actually alone this time) for a few hours, and it will hopefully keep him in both of their good graces-
There’s the sound of murmuring from the other side of the phone. Felix’s heart decides to do its best impression of Usain Bolt and starts to race at a pace until-now not known to mankind.
Then-
“Yeah, Zoe says that sounds great! Is tomorrow good for you?”
Felix punches the air silently. “Yeah, that’s great! I’ll pick you up at like, lunchtime?”
“Yeah, that sounds real good! Thanks, Lix.”
The conversation trickles to a close, and they say goodbye about half a dozen times before finally hanging up the phone. Felix waits after the call ends for a couple of seconds, just to make sure that it’s definitely finished, before letting out a huge whoop and punching the air again.
Jisung snorts. “You are such a fucking loser.”
“Hey, don’t be mean,” says Minho, squeezing Jisung’s sides and causing the younger man to yelp.
“Yeah, Jisung. Can you not be happy for me, for once?” says Felix, crossing the room and slumping into the armchair with his ramen on his lap. “Like, we’re actually going out tomorrow. Together.”
“Yeah, to go shopping. That’s hardly a date,” Jisung points out dryly. Minho slaps him on the knee.
“I told you, don’t be mean.”
“Since when did you care about not being mean to someone?”
“Since it’s Felix you’re being mean to.”
“...aw, thanks Minho.”
Minho smiles warmly. “Any time, Lixie.”
Jisung grumbles and makes an under-the-breath comment about how he’s Minho’s boyfriend, not Felix, and it’s not fair that Minho so obviously plays favourites. Felix just ignores him.
“I just, like…” Felix waves his chopsticks around in the air as if trying to articulate his point. “You know. We’re going to spend a few hours together, and get some coffee, and - you know, it’s the first real chance we’ll have to spend time together alone.”
“‘First real chance’ - you could have asked her on a date at any point over the last year,” says Jisung. “But you didn’t. You could have asked her out when you first met her. You could either be with her, or you’d have had time to move on from her when she inevitably rejected you-”
“Thanks Ji. Glad to see you have my back.”
~
The problem that Felix quickly encounters when he steps into the first shop with Chloe the following day, is that he has absolutely no idea how to go shopping for girl’s clothes. He’s overwhelmed the moment he steps through the big sliding doors of the first shop - there are dozens of displays, hundreds of patterns, more colours than he even knew existed – and he really doesn’t know where the hell he’s supposed to begin.
He’s about as much use as an umbrella made of cotton candy in a thunderstorm, mostly trundling behind Chloe and offering half-assed hums of assertion as she picks through the racks.
Like, he has sisters. Two of them, in fact. And he prides himself on his sensitivity when it comes to majorly girl-based-issues - things like periods, and hormones, and listening to them endlessly lament about which guy they have crushes on. But shopping…? He can shop for himself just fine. And yes, he likes fashion - men’s fashion. But there’s a difference between looking at the men’s spring/summer editorials, and traipsing around a huge fucking department store.
The first thing Chloe tries on is a pink dress that comes down to her knees with a little lace detail over her shoulders. It’s adorable, it’s so cute, and it compliments the little green frog clips in her hair. Felix is about to nod enthusiastically, if only so they can get out of the shop and actually go spend some time in a coffee shop together-
But then a rogue thought enters his brain. Is he really going to be the guy who just sits, waiting, for his girlfriend to be done with her shopping and not actually pay any attention? His sisters would be fucking furious, his older sister especially. He can almost hear her now, bitching in his ear about how she raised him better than this - their mother be damned, apparently.
“It’s very ‘daytime’,” says Felix eventually. “You know? Like, it’s cute, and you could totally get it and wear it to the beach - but it doesn’t scream ‘party’.”
Chloe nods. “That’s kind of what I thought too. But, I thought it was too cute to not at least try it on.”
“Anything you wear is cute, Chloe,” says Felix, trying his best to make it sound like a flirty compliment and not just a plain regular-ass compliment. Chloe just rolls her eyes and slaps Felix lightly on the arm, but she’s smiling when she walks back into the changing room. She tries on a couple more outfits - a floor-length lime green maxi dress, a baby blue jumpsuit with bows on the sleeves, but none of them feel quite right…
Then she steps out in something that makes Felix sit up a little straighter. A two-piece set, in sunflower yellow which Felix wouldn’t have thought was her colour - she usually sticks to pastels - but the vibrancy brings out the slight tan of her skin, the white of her teeth. The top is a bandeau with off-the-shoulder sleeves that fit snug to her arms, and a long flowing skirt with a slit on the front of her left thigh. She looks a little bit like a contemporary, summery version of Belle from the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast.
That would make Felix the beast. He’s not sure how to feel about that.
“That’s the one,” he says the second she steps out from behind the curtain. “That’s it. It’s perfect.”
“Are you sure? I wasn’t too sure about the colour.”
“I’m so sure. It’s actually… hold on, let me just-” Felix stands up and moves to stand behind her. He rotates her gently, careful that his hands don’t touch the bare skin on her waist so she can look at herself in the mirror.
“It’s perfect. You look stunning.” Then, hands shaking, he brushes her long, dark hair behind her shoulders to reveal her collarbones. “Get a necklace, some crazy earrings. You’ll be the most stunning girl there.”
“Stop it, Lix,” says Chloe, ducking her head shyly. “You’re going to make me blush.”
“I’m just being honest.”
Chloe giggles quietly, and lifts her head to look at herself again in the mirror.
She locks eyes with Felix. His breath stops in his throat.
“You really are the best, Lix,” she says, standing on her toes and placing a kiss on his cheek. “I didn’t think you had a knack for this. I’m glad I was wrong.”
“Ah, you know. I’m a guy of many talents,” says Felix lightly, trying really hard not to pass out from the fact that she just kissed him on the cheek-
Then she shoos him out of the changing room so she can get her own clothes back on, and the magic from the moment shatters.
They spend a little bit of time shopping around the accessories category for… well, accessories. He helps her pick out a matching set of earrings and a necklace that look like they’re made from shards of amber and turquoise sea glass, then Chloe announces that she’s feeling thirsty and they decide to head to a coffee shop.
The day is going stunningly well. Felix orders them a coffee each, and a slice of red velvet cake to share. He sets them down at a table for two tucked in the back corner of the café – he pulls Chloe’s chair out for her, and is just about to sit down when he hears a grating, irritating voice just behind his left ear.
“Well, fancy seeing you guys here.”
Felix scowls. He might have only heard that voice for a handful of minutes the other day at the funfair, but that silky smooth sarcastic stupid tone, not to mention the telltale accent that’s just far too familiar, has already been seared into his brain well enough that he immediately gets a stomach ache. Chloe, ever the glowing sunshine that she is, looks up at the person behind Felix and beams.
“Oh, Chan! Fancy seeing you here! Come, why don’t you join us for a bit?”
“Thanks Chloe. Don’t mind if I do,“ says Chan, sliding a nearby seat across the floor and sitting down. “It’s good to see you guys. How are you doing? What have you been up to?”
“Oh, we’re doing super well,” says Chloe, wrapping her hands around her iced vanilla latte. “Lix and I were just out to do some shopping. I needed to get a new outfit for a party I’m throwing soon.”
“Oh, really?” says Chan, glancing sideways at Felix with a glimmer in his eye. “That’s fun!”
“Yeah. Lix’s actually got an eye for this stuff, he helped me choose something really really cute.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He dresses really well,” says Chan, tugging at Felix’s denim jacket. Felix bats his hand away irritably.
“Say, Chan - how long are you in town for? If you’re still about, you’re totally invited to the party. It’s down on the beach, a couple of weeks before college starts again.”
Felix has to do everything in his power to not kick Chloe under the table for making the suggestion. Does she really want this annoying fucking dick hanging around for the rest of the summer? And at her really important summer party?
It’s almost as if Chan can hear the protest going on inside Felix’s brain, because he looks sideways at Felix again before smiling widely. Then, the bastard reaches for the dessert spoon on the table, and digs it into the cake’s cream cheese icing.
Prick. That’s the best part of the whole damn thing.
“That sounds really cool,” says Chan around a mouthful of icing. Chloe doesn’t seem to care that this bastard’s helped himself to her and Felix’s cake. “When is it?”
“Well, I’ve only just started planning it, so I haven’t got an exact date…”
“Well, I haven’t got any other plans this summer. I can work remotely, and I’m sure Hyunjin won’t mind if I stick with him - so yeah, I’ll probably still be around. That’s really nice of you, thanks.”
Felix curses internally. He’s trying so hard to not let the look of dismay - and annoyance, and frustration - appear on his face, but apparently he’s not doing a very good job because Chloe glances over at him, and her brow furrows.
“Are you okay, Lix?”
“Oh - yeah, I’m fine,“ stutters Felix, attempting to arrange his face into an approximation of a pleasant smile. “Coffee was a bit hot.”
Chloe frowns. “Your iced Americano was too hot?”
“Oh. Yeah… I meant, uh, cold. Sorry, uh - brain freeze.”
Chloe just lets out a giggle. “You’re an idiot.”
Chan also lets out a giggle, a high-pitched one with a little wheeze. “Well poor Felix’s chilled little brain aside,” he says, and Felix wants to shove him down the nearest flight of stairs. “A beach party sounds like a load of fun. Actually, I can’t hang around today, I need to get going. But, I kinda wanted to ask you guys; some of the girls that I know from Hyunjin’s old dorm are throwing a birthday party tonight, and they’ve hired out the top floor of the Hydrangea Club. They were asking if we knew anybody who might like to come.”
Felix raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t the Hydrangea a gay bar?”
“Yes, I know. And yes I am, before you ask. You couldn’t tell?”
“I, uh I mean – I didn’t-”
Chan laughs and pats Felix comfortingly on the thigh. “I’m just teasing, Lixie. Don’t get too flustered.” He pauses. “Or do. It’s cute.” And he pinches Felix’s cheek.
Chloe looks absolutely delighted with whatever the hell is currently happening, and Felix wants the Earth to swallow him alive and crush him under the weight of billions of tonnes of rocks. Or roast him alive from the heat of the magma in the core. He’s not fussy.
“Did you say that’s tonight?” Felix says, desperately trying to keep some of his embarrassment buried down before it literally kills him.
“That’s right. And of course, you can bring any friends that you think would enjoy it - here, Felix, give me your number and I can text you the details.”
Oh fuck.
Well, Felix can’t exactly say no, can he? He wants to – he wants to spit in this stupid, conniving, flirty idiot’s face and tell him to go fuck himself for ruining his day out with Chloe – but then he’d probably look like the bad guy. So he begrudgingly takes Chan’s phone and types his phone number into the keypad.
Chan immediately texts an emoji over.
Unknown number
<3
Felix contemplates leaving the cafe and going to the store to get himself an entirely new phone.
“Well that settles it then,” says Chan, pushing himself backwards from the table. “Chloe, let me know when your party is. I’ll see you both tonight. Make sure you’re not late!”
Chloe waves happily as Chan makes his way towards the exit of the coffee shop. He raises his hand in farewell - but he stops just before he reaches the door. He looks over his shoulder - and blows a kiss before walking out with a sunny grin on his face.
Felix turns around, scowling. “I don’t like him.”
“What? Oh, don’t be ridiculous, he’s such a sweetheart. It’s so nice of us to invite us to that party.” Chloe pats Felix on the arm. “And you know, he seems to really like you. I mean, he’s right - you are a cutie.”
The compliment does stand to make Felix feel just a little bit better – if only a little bit.
“Well… sure, but he doesn’t have to be so smug about everything.”
Stupid Chan. Coming in and ruining his day like this. Felix just sighs and stabs the spoon into the slice of red velvet cake in front of him. The same spoon, he realises, that Chan used to steal some of that precious cream cheese icing.
Asshole.
Chloe waggles her eyebrows knowingly and picks up her own spoon. “Say, it’s still kind of early. How about we go and get you an outfit for tonight, and then you can come back to my place, and we can get ready and have some drinks together before we go. Does that sound good?“
Felix perks up a little bit at the suggestion, straightens his back, and nods. Maybe the prospect of going to a party at - well, a gay bar - won’t be so bad if he’s got Chloe with him.
~
Felix ends up at Chloe's house after she convinces him to buy a new jacket, pair of jeans, and new boots for that night, despite the protests from his already-bare bank account. They pick up Hyunjin and Zoe from the museum, and head to the grocery store to pick up some drinks to have before they head out to the club that evening.
Chloe ends up spending a good hour getting ready in her bedroom while Felix, Hyunjin, and Zoe end up playing drinking games in the living room. Felix texts Jisung and Minho, who arrive within what feels like seconds.
When Chloe does finally step out of her room, she does so in a beautiful sparkly navy blue mini dress; her hair is curled again, and her heels are so high she might be breathing in a different biome of the atmosphere. Her makeup is stunning; glittery eyeshadow, big lashes, deep red lips – Felix feels himself bristle a little bit. She’s just so goddamn pretty - and yeah, a million miles out of his league. But that won’t stop him from trying.
“Wow! Look at you,” he says, sitting up twisting around from where he’s sat on the sofa. “I love the dress. And your makeup is gorgeous.”
Chloe beams and does a little pirouette.
“I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t too sure about this dress, actually, and I didn’t know if the make up was too much…“
“Oh my God, no, Chloe - it’s perfect.”
“Thank you!” says Chloe. Then, she tilts her head and looks at Felix as if contemplating something. “Say, I could do yours too. If you wanted.”
Felix blinks. “My outfit? You already did.”
Chloe laughs. “No, silly. Your makeup.”
“My makeup?”
“Yeah, exactly. You’ve never tried to wear makeup before?”
Felix laughs nervously and shakes his head. “No. It’s not really my thing.”
“Are you sure? We are going to the Hydrangea, after all. I could make you look absolutely smoking hot. A bit of eyeliner would really suit you…”
Felix opens his mouth for an immediate rebuttal - but then, sitting next to him, Hyunjin sniggers. Felix casts a sideways glance at him, and he just makes an innocent ‘hey, don’t mind me’ kind of expression, and Chloe is looking at him expectantly…
Oh, what the hell.
“Yeah okay. Sure. Lead on.”
Chloe grins and gestures with her head for Felix to follow her. He downs the rest of the booze in his cup for a last boost of liquid courage, and follows her towards her bedroom. Behind him, Jisung makes a comment under his breath to the rest of the room, and they erupt in giggles.
Chloe’s room is about everything Felix had imagined it would be
Like, of course it is. This isn’t the first time he’s been to Chloe’s house – they’ve been friends for a year at this point, and they’ve spent a nearly countless number of nights during college getting ready for nights out and house parties. But he’s only ever glanced inside, and it still so intrinsically her – Polaroid pictures hung up on pegs on the wall, fairy lights over the bed, a trillion potted plants on the windowsill and on her desk, dozens of plush toys squashed onto the shelves – and clothes and make up and trinkets and books scattered on just about every visible surface.
The remnants of Chloe’s now half-empty makeup kit are scattered all across her desk and the floor in front of the full-length mirror. A pair of black heels and a single silver sandal are lying on her pillow.
“Okay. You, sit down here,” directs Chloe, putting her hand on Felix’s chest and forcing him backwards to sit on her bed. “Do you know what sort of look you’d like?”
“I don’t know, Chlo. You offered, it’s - y’know. Your choice.”
“Hmm. I think… I wanna make you look like a rockstar. You’ve got this new jacket, like - and I’m thinking, full blown mid 2000’s, boys in black eyeliner, the emo hair…”
Felix’s heart leaps up into his throat. Maybe he should have had one more drink. “Uh, yeah, sure. I guess. Do your worst.”
Chloe just laughs and, after taking a second to rummage inside her makeup box, stands up and walks towards Felix with a pointy looking black stick.
It, blessedly, doesn’t end up being as painful as Felix had anticipated. Not that he’d really expected it to be painful, but there’s something really intimidating about all the tools and implements and different coloured powders and potions. Chloe dabs a little bit of something on his cheeks, sprays something that smells fruity through his hair and does something to ruffle it, and then approaches his eyes with some brushes and pencils and her fingertips and a couple of industrial level weapons and Felix has no idea what the fuck any of them are.
It doesn’t take long for Chloe to step back and announce that she’s done. But, Felix isn’t allowed to open his eyes until she has directed him to stand in front of the mirror with his eyes closed, and he manages it while clutching onto her hand (and kind of hoping that he’s never going to have to let go), but not without tripping over several of the pieces of clutter lying on her bedroom floor.
“Okay you’re ready. Open in three, two, one…” Felix opens his eyes.
The person that looks back at him is not someone that he recognises. Realistically, Chloe hasn’t done that much - she’s dabbed a little bit of glittery eyeshadow on his lids, smeared some liner around the eye and smudged it out, and added a little bit of tint to his lips. She’s ruffled his hair so that, rather than soft and floppy and bouncy, it’s tousled and pushed back slightly.
He looks significantly cooler than he ever has looked in his life.
He looks pretty.
“Whoa,” he says, turning his head this way and that to catch himself in the light. He looks completely different - and in a good way. “That’s… I kinda like it. I look cool.”
“Yeah, you do,” beams Chloe, coming up behind him and resting her chin on his shoulder. Felix’s heart misses a beat. “Now you look extra hot and ready to chat up Chan later tonight, yeah?”
Felix’s heart misses another beat, and this one’s stronger and significantly more violent. In fact, it’s not so much that his heart skipped a beat, but more as if his entire nervous system has restarted because now it feels like there are multiple bodily functions going at a million miles an hour, not in the least limited to his pounding heart and squirming stomach.
“Whoa, wait, what? I’m not going to - what are you even saying? I’m not going to chat him up. He’s not my type at all.”
In hindsight, Felix maybe should have said that he doesn’t even like guys - or at least, he’s never considered it. But even if he did, Chan would definitely be his very last choice. But Chloe just laughs, pats Felix on the shoulder like she doesn’t believe him (!) and turns to leave the room.
“Chloe, wait.”
She stops.
He wants to set things straight. That there aren’t even a hint of positive feelings towards Chan: the guy’s a massive ass who’s apparently decided to make it his personal mission to ruin Felix’s life - and that it’s Chloe he likes, Chloe he’s liked all along.
He opens his mouth. The confession is there right on the tip of his tongue –
But it doesn’t come out. It’s caught there somewhere in the back of his throat, and even the heat of the drinks he’s had so far rushing through his veins isn’t enough to compel it out of him.
“I look really cool. Thanks again.” Chloe smiles, and then continues on her way downstairs.
Felix groans and buries his head in his hands.
Coward.
Fucking coward.
Why is it so difficult? They’ve had such a nice day together (barring the Chan incident). He shouldn’t be freezing up like this.
Maybe it’s the stupid makeup. He looks so different, like he’s looking out through someone else’s eye entirely. He looks like somebody who is cool, confident…
Pretty.
He does, he looks pretty.
Huh. That’s a new feeling. And not an entirely unpleasant one.
He turns his body sideways and looks at himself in the mirror.
Chloe helped pick his outfit. Slim grey jeans and a vibrant graphic-graffiti-print sleeveless shirt. His new boots and jacket. And for all intents and purposes, with the makeup and the outfit, he does kinda sorta maybe look like a rockstar.
But like, a really pretty one.
What did Chloe mean by that? That he’s ready to ‘chat up’ Chan? She can’t possibly think that he’s like that, right? Not that he’s got any issues with his gay friends, obviously, none at all - but he likes girls. He’s had girlfriends. And it’s perfectly normal to be curious about, or even experiment with guys, right? That doesn’t mean anything.
But he’s not curious about Chan, though.
There’s a strange, warm, bubbly feeling in his stomach that he can’t quite identify. But before he can spend too much longer staring at himself and trying to work out what that feeling is, Jisung yells up the stairs for Felix to hurry up; he pulls himself out of his trance and darts out of Chloe’s bedroom.
~
The issue with being a pretty boy in a gay club is that you learn, very quickly, that the girls aren’t interested in you romantically. The reason Felix has been there before, therefore, is simple; it’s a very cheap night out. That’s exactly why dozens of other college students turned this place into a regular haunt, particularly during the first few months of college, when nobody had any money and all of Felix’s friends were gay and single. They didn’t even mind bringing Felix as the token ‘not-gay’ friend (even if Jisung had thought otherwise at first, which had led to some interesting conversations).
But all that to say, Felix is familiar with the place. Even if he is often left on his own while his friends make out with pretty boys. Floundering without anyone to flirt with, having to awkwardly turn down the guys that hit on him - he’s not interested, he’s just here with his friends.
But with his makeup done, Felix gets more attention from girls than he’s ever had in his entire life within the first 10 minutes of entering the Hydrangea. And it absolutely does not escape his notice that the attention isn’t because the girls are attracted to him; it’s because he is a boy in a gay club wearing sparkly eyeliner.
The main floor of the club is huge and sprawling, but the top floor, the one that’s been hired out, isn’t anything fancy. It’s little more than a dance floor with a bar on one end, an assortment of booths around the edges, and a positive waterfall of sparkling rainbow lights hanging from the walls. But no matter which floor of the Hydrangea you’re on, they always play good music – not the stupid top 40 club hits which grace the stereos of the other major clubs in town, but bangers from all across queer history. And the person whose birthday it is - a girl with a huge tiara and a giant ‘birthday queen’ badge pinned to her violently violet dress - has done a good job of dressing up the place to make it nice and festive. Assortments of multicoloured balloons are tied in bunches to the ceiling and are bouncing across the dance floor, there are sparkling banners across the walls, and each booth has a collection of red cups, beers, and Smirnoff ices on them.
Jisung apparently knows the birthday girl queen, because he bounces over to her as soon as they enter the room to kiss her on the cheek and bestow a last-minute gift of vodka with a gaudy gold bow on the neck. Felix hovers as everyone else splits off - not by choice, but because a couple of the birthday queen’s friends spot him and immediately compliment his makeup and outfit, and he quickly makes the aforementioned realisation about boys in eyeliner in a gay club.
He eventually manages to shake the girls after politely declining their offer to introduce him to their cute friend (they point to a guy leaning coolly near a booth, and Felix has to hastily tell them he’s already interested in someone). He slips away to the bar, orders the strongest drink on the menu (something pink and fizzy called a Glitter Bomb which has four different types of liquor in it) then returns to try and find the people he actually knows.
He spots them eventually, sitting at a circular booth near the entrance. The only spot left is next to Jisung. Who is next to Minho. And they’re making out.
Felix sighs and slides into the booth beside the lovebirds. Chloe and Zoe are there too, nestled closely together and talking with each other opposite Felix. Chloe doesn’t even realise that Felix has arrived. Nor do Jisung and Minho.
A pair of lovebirds on his left, a seemingly unattainable crush opposite him, and Lady Gaga’s Poker Face blaring as he sips on a concoction of vodka and chambord and triple sec and something else and glitter.
He sits in silence, ignored by everyone around him, for a long, long moment.
He’d had plenty of drinks before they left to get a good buzz on for the party – but. Meh. He doesn’t know. Maybe it’s the music, or the strangers, but he doesn’t feel All There. Maybe it’s the makeup and the immediate assumptions that everyone’s made about him because of it.
Maybe it’s the girl of his dreams that’s sitting opposite him and doesn’t even seem to know that he’s here.
He’s about to get up, not bothering to excuse himself because nobody’s even noticed his presence in the first place, maybe to get another drink – when there’s a tap on his shoulder.
He looks up into Hyunjin’s bright smiling face.
“Sorry that took so long,” he says, placing a tray of shots on the table to a chorus of interested ‘ooooh!’s. “It took Changbin ages to queue up for the cloakroom.”
“Why did you go to the cloak room? They’ve hired the whole floor. You could just leave your jacket in a booth,” says Felix, glancing at where the other man is approaching meekly. Or as meekly as he can with a chest and arms as broad as his.
“Don’t you fucking start,” he says, pointing a finger at Felix. “And it’s not even my fault, it took Hyunjin 20 minutes just to decide what type of shot he wanted to get.”
“It wouldn’t have taken me that long if you didn’t get stuck in the goddamn cloakroom.”
“I told you that you didn’t have to wait for me.”
Crikey. The sexual tension between the two is sharp enough to cut with the edge of a spoon. Hyunjin can’t have possibly made his move yet, because if he had - well, Felix would probably need something to bleach his fucking eyes.
Then, he hears a chuckle. “Why don’t we just blame both of you and call it a night?”
Felix glares at the assortment of shot glasses on the table as Chan appears besides him. Across the table, he can see Chloe gesturing enthusiastically – he glances up, just barely, and when she catches his eye she tilts her head as if pointing in Chan’s direction.
Felix frowns. Chloe gestures more eagerly. Felix pulls a face, shakes his head, and reaches for a shot glass.
He down the contents (tequila, ugh), stands up to go get another drink, when something interesting happens.
When he finds himself face to face with Chan, the other man doesn’t say anything.
Like, nothing.
Felix stands up, finds himself standing right next to Chan - and isn’t met with a snarky comment, nor a sly, annoying little tease - Felix literally braces himself when he meets Chan’s eyes… but nothing.
Chan looks at Felix. Then looks down at his outfit. Then back up again. And the expression on his face isn’t one of disgust, or an infuriating smirk.
His mouth hangs open a little bit, just for a few scant moments, before it snaps shut again. He’s staring.
And then he looks away like he’s embarrassed.
Felix just makes his way over to the bar, confused beyond all that’s holy.
Was Chan checking him out? Or was he just, like, looking?
Felix glances over his shoulder at Chan. And he’s sure he sees Chan quickly look away. Like he’d been caught staring again.
That is so weird.
Did Felix have a spill on his shirt? Was his nipple poking out? Did he rip his jeans?
He looks over again. Chan looks… okay, he guesses. He’s wearing a leather jacket. His black curls have been straightened. He’s got some kind of rockstar thing going on for him, too.
By the time he gets back with another drink (for Chloe as well as himself, because he noticed her glass was getting empty), things have moved around. For one, Jisung and Minho have disappeared and their spaces taken over by Hyunjin and Changbin. Hyunjin does that thing where he flips his hair and giggles and hell, it makes Felix’s tummy feel all funny with butterflies, so god knows what effect it has on men who are actually, you know, interested in men. Chloe’s standing, her arm around Zoe’s waist as the taller girl speaks into her ear.
Felix doesn’t miss the way Chan’s eyes drag across him as he returns. It’s a prickle at the back of his neck, bugs skittering up and down his spine, and it makes Felix’s stomach flutter for some reason-
He shakes himself and taps Chloe on the shoulder.
She looks up, and beams.
“Hey, Lix. All good?”
“Yeah, fine. I got you this, I saw your drink was empty-”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you! Thanks, Lix.” Chloe takes the glass in both hands graciously. “You didn’t get anything for Chan?”
Felix bites back a sigh. “Don’t be silly. Of course not.”
“Why not? You looked back at him just now, I thought you-”
“Do you wanna dance?” Felix interrupts before Chloe can continue off on her weird, and totally uncalled for, ‘Chan actually likes you and you should flirt’ agenda. Chloe stops mid-ramble, looking sufficiently surprised to have been interrupted, then regains her composure and nods. “Great. Come on, I love this song.”
Which, in fairness, he does - Boys Keep Swinging by David Bowie, and it’s a banger. Chloe nods and Felix grabs her hand to pull her along towards the dance floor.
He can’t shake how aware he is of Chan - as if he’s the firefly in a pitch dark field, a single candle burning, a bonfire in an endless plain of ice.
He’s annoyed, mostly. Annoyed at how easily this smarmy asshat has managed to worm his way under Felix’s skin.
Whatever.
Drinks in hand, the condensation beading up beneath sweaty palms and careful so that the moving bodies don’t jostle the glasses out of their grips and onto the floor, Felix raises Chloe’s hand high to direct her into a little spin. She obliges, laughing, and twirls on the spot like a nighttime disco ball. Felix really needs to start getting better at metaphors.
The song changes - Tell Your Girlfriend by Robyn, and there are more bodies filling up the dance floor now - and he’s no longer so acutely aware of Chan’s presence in the booth -
He’s with Chloe. Dancing, in a club, with drink coursing a fire through his veins and he’s in an outfit that makes him feel so different and it’s good, and he’s dancing with Chloe. He doesn’t need to be thinking about Chan.
Maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s just the way Chloe’s smiling face makes him feel. Maybe it’s the lingering feeling of something that had brewed as soon as he’d caught sight of himself in the mirror. But the jittering bugs down the back of his neck fade away, and the night starts to blur as trips are made back and forth from the bar, drinks are refilled and the songs all start to sound the same.
Felix is hit on. By a random guy. He’s just coming out of the bathroom when someone (who, as far as guys go, is actually kind of attractive) steals his attention with a flirty smile and a gentle touch of the hand. Felix has to explain through a stammer (he’s not flustered, okay, he just was taken by surprise) that whilst he appreciates it, he’s not interested.
Goes back to that whole thing about being a pretty boy in makeup in a gay club.
He even tells Chloe about it when he gets back, and she just does that Knowing Expression that she does with her eyebrows, except how the hell is Felix supposed to know what she means by that?
Jisung has joined them, and so has Zoe, and -
-Hyunjin is dancing with Changbin, and now Minho is coming over with three drinks in his hands, and gives one to Felix.
Felix has been dancing again for three seconds when a body bumps into him. He turns around to apologise to the person, only to see Chan looking back at him, looking equally apologetic. That is, until he realised it’s Felix he’s bumped into, and there’s those raised eyebrows and that smirk and the roiling of nerves in Felix’s stomach again. All traces of that embarrassment from being caught looking - or at least, that’s what Felix thinks it was - from earlier is gone.
Chan doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t speak, though his gaze drags impossibly slowly away as if drawn through sticky toffee, and he’s moving into a space underneath the flashing neon, and he’s dancing.
Oh boy. He can dance.
Unfortunately for Chan, so can Felix. Sure, Chan’s lips pull into that smirk as he begins to move his hips around in a circle, and maybe several guys nearby all zero in on him like a homing beacon-
But Felix is better. He doesn’t jump in time to the music; he becomes it. He raises his arms and smiles to himself, closing his eyes because he doesn’t care if Chan is looking at him. Because he can dance - he’s an enchantress or maybe a siren, and he knows it damn well. He spins - has to open his eyes because he doesn’t want to crash into everyone, and realises that several eyes are on him as well. He can’t help the sticky feeling of pride that bubbles throughout his chest. Chloe is nearby - she catches his eye, and her own eyes are wide, and that sends another thrill through Felix’s body.
Then he turns again and realises Chan is right next to him.
Chan’s tight leather pants look good over his hips and ass and thighs. Or maybe they’re not leather, or maybe it doesn’t matter. His limbs are liquid, and his shirt rides up a bit to reveal a flash of his hip bone, and the pulsating lights flicker over his sharp jaw, highlighting his lips which Felix releases are ridiculous.
Then Chan’s eyes snap over again, and Felix looks away quickly because he’s been staring.
No, not staring. Just watching.
He can almost hear the delighted laughter, the flirty tease coming already.
Bastard.
~
“But I just… I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” says Felix mournfully. “What am I doing wrong, Jisung? Tell me!”
“Can’t you just tell her you like her?” Felix tears his lamenting gaze away from the ceiling to glare at where Jisung is perched at the head of his bed. His head is in Minho’s lap. Minho rolls his eyes and flicks his boyfriend on the nose.
“Be nice.”
“What? I’m right! He needs to just freaking tell her.”
“But that’s haaaaard,” whines Felix, rolling over onto his belly. “Last night, I nearly told her, I did - but then I just clammed up, and it’s like the words run away, and I just can’t, and I don’t know why!”
“If you really liked her that much, you’d know that’s just a bullshit excuse.”
“Sungie,” scolds Minho, slapping his boyfriend on the thigh. “Don’t be so damn rude.” Jisung just grumbles something about ‘well, it’s true’ and something else about Minho ‘liking Felix more than him’ and Felix decides not to argue because the last thing he needs is a goddamn domestic when he’s nursing a hangover. It doesn’t help that, as soon as Felix had trudged into Jisung’s room to complain, Minho had turned up looking as fresh as a flower with a bubble tea and breakfast, and Felix’s stomach is rumbling (or churning) and he just feels a bit sorry for himself.
Chloe had disappeared at some point last night. Felix had ended up dancing with a group of random girls, which was really cool and all because a couple of them were really pretty, but the niggling sensation of ‘boy in gay club’ kept echoing in his mind and he hadn’t really thought it appropriate to flirt more with any of them. Besides, Chloe’s the one for him.
Even if she had disappeared.
She texted him that morning to say she was okay, and sorry for dipping, but she didn’t want to interrupt and that she’ll see him at the beach tomorrow.
Apparently they’re going to the beach tomorrow. That’s news to Felix.
Come to think of it, he does vaguely remember overhearing a conversation taking place. But all he’d heard through the thick layer of drink and loud music were the words ‘tomorrow’, ‘car’, and ‘bitch’ (which could have been ‘beach’, but at the time he just thought Jisung was ranting about someone he didn’t like.)
“What about you, Lix?”
Felix jumps suddenly. He hadn’t realised he’d been falling asleep, even if he is squished up in a ball next to Jisung’s feet - the narrow half-double bed is absolutely not big enough for three people. Ugh, his head hurts - his stomach rumbles way too loudly, and a second later a croissant in a paper bag has been gently laid next to his head. Felix blinks up at Minho - who’s watching him with the concern and care of a mother duck in his eyes - mumbles his thanks and pulls the bag open, blinking blearily at whichever of them asked the question.
“What about me?”
“Are you coming tomorrow?”
“Coming where?”
Jisung sighs. “The beach.”
Oh. Yeah. That.
“Who’s going?”
“Does it matter?”
Yes. “Not really, no. I was just curious.”
“But you’re not doing anything tomorrow, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So you’re free to come to the beach?”
“…sure.”
Jisung smiles, stretches, and slumps back into his boyfriend’s lap.
~
The annoying thing about Jisung is that he’s attractive and he knows it. The other annoying thing about Jisung is that he’s right, and Felix knows it. Yeah, he can be a bit harsh - calling Felix’s anxiety around just being straight up with Chloe ‘an excuse’ hurt, but even as Felix trudges around his room feeling sorry for himself, he can’t deny that he’s got a goddamn point.
Because he’s not nervous about Chloe. He just - can’t seem to tell her. No matter how close the confession might be to coming out.
So in all, he’s kind of looking forward to getting to the beach and just spending time with his friends. Maybe he can regroup and replan.
Minho picks Felix and Jisung up the next morning, and even has a bagel from Felix’s favourite bagel place waiting in the backseat for him.
While being perpetually saturated with the lovebirds’ constant gooey-eyes and kissing faces does a number on Felix’s poor lonely psyche, Jisung’s relationship definitely benefits Felix more than hinders him. The food is a key point; if it’s not snacks, it’s the fact that Minho’s a fantastic chef and will always make a portion for Felix whenever he makes Jisung dinner - it’s like having another mother, except this one is basically the same age as them and occasionally scars poor Felix’s eardrums for life when he and Jisung are being too loud in the other room.
Minho’s car is great for the journey to the beach - and any long journey on a sunny day, really - because it’s a convertible. An old, slightly clunky convertible that rattles if he tries to take it up a hill with more than a 6 degree incline, but it’s got four seats and speakers in the back.
And, it’s a goddamn convertible.
Felix settles in the back with his sunglasses on and lets the lovebirds in the front concentrate on navigating. It’s an incredibly hot day - he’s been in the sun for three minutes and already can feel sweat beading in his hairline.
He loves the beach. It’s one of his happy places - given half a chance he would spend his entire life at the beach; splashing in the shallows, swimming in the depths, snorkelling and getting dumped on his ass by the waves, building sandcastles and blinking heavily from the saltwater in his eyes. Maybe he was a mermaid in a past life, born among the seafoam and coral.
Minho has packed enough supplies for two weeks in Cabo. A tote bag the size of a hippo sits on the beige leather seat next to Felix in the back. There are snacks, sunscreen, aloe vera, moisturiser, sandals, spare towels, a sun umbrella-
Felix comments that he wishes he’d grabbed a drink from the fridge for the journey - Jisung turns around and proudly proclaims that Minho’s brought a cooler, and Felix is welcome to help himself. Felix blinks, then realises that Jisung is talking about the esky hiding beneath the towel. Then Jisung asks what the fuck is an esky, and Felix tells him it’s the Australian word for a cooler, and Jisung looks like he wants to throw Felix out of the car.
It doesn’t take long to drive to the beach - a little over forty minutes, the scenery transforming quickly from suburban to windy semi-rural roads, speeding along bumpy tarmac with wind rustling in their hair. It’s a bit off the beaten track, so the parking lot over the ridge from the beach proper isn’t busy at all. It’s edged on all sides by dusty grass that creeps onto the corners of sun-beaten concrete, and a small cafe sits at the top of the winding path that takes them down to the sand. The beach itself isn’t exactly the miles-long stretches of gold that he would find back home in Australia, but the sand is soft and white, the sea is a deep, rich blue.
Felix hops over the car door rather than opening it - partially because he’s always wanted to do it, partially because if he falls flat on his face there’s nobody else around to see him do it. Jisung just rolls his eyes.
Felix kicks off his shoes as soon as they reach the point where stone steps become sand. He sighs contentedly, blinking slowly beneath his sunglasses as the sea breeze plays with his hair. He can hear music. There are a group of people already lying in the sand just a few minutes’ walk away.
It seems like they’ve put Changbin in charge of the music. He’s sitting down cross-legged, not even on a towel and definitely not bothered about the sand that’s getting in his shorts, with his phone in one hand and a portable speaker in the other. Hyunjin is next to him, looking like he’s halfway between drooling, trying to undress Changbin with his eyes, and trying to disguise what is likely a prominent boner in his shorts. A few of their other friends are here, too. And kneeling next to another cooler (esky) with his sunglasses perched on his head-
“Seungmin!” Felix beams. Seungmin looks up, squinting in the brightness of the sun.
“Hey, Felix. How’s it going?”
“Good, good,” says Felix, falling down on the sand and dropping his tote bag next to him. “How was- uh, where was it you went again?”
“Borneo,” provides Jeongin helpfully, popping up suddenly from behind Seungmin (Felix could have sworn he hadn’t been there a second ago).
They spend a moment catching up about the couple’s friends’ holiday, and Felix fills them in on the awful lot of nothing that’s happened since the school year ended, save for moving into his and Jisung’s new accommodation.
Seungmin is halfway through telling a story about leaving Jeongin to be eaten by a giant anaconda in the jungle (aren’t anacondas only found in the Amazon?) when he stops and looks over Felix’s shoulder.
“Chloe! Hi!”
Sure enough, here comes Chloe, in a long white flowy skirt and a pink bikini top, and a ridiculously large hat with tiny white flowers around the brim. Naturally (and Felix’s not sure why he’s surprised at this point), Zoe is next to her in short black denim shorts and a ripped-up band tee - Zoe’s got dozens of tattoos, all over her upper arms, her chest, her legs - and surprisingly, there’s a lot more colour in them than Felix would have guessed. He’d pegged her for a ‘grayscale illustration of raven skulls’ kinda girl - definitely not the sort of person to have a vibrant orange rendering of a foxes’ head in a field of red and pink and blue flowers.
They’re both carrying ice-creams.Chloe bounds forwards across the sand to throw her arms around Seungmin and Jeongin in turn.
“I’ve missed you two! How are you? How was Borneo? Did you see any anacondas?” She misses, or chooses not to hear, how Jeongin mutters under his breath about the Amazon.
She introduces Zoe, then realises she totally didn’t see Felix and kisses him on the cheek in apology, and Felix just smiles and waves it off.
“It’s okay. Where did you get the ice cream?”
“Oh, there’s a bar and a cafe about ten minutes that way,” says Chloe, pointing behind her. “It’s new. Kinda far, but the ice cream is super good.”
“What flavour?”
“Strawberry.”
Felix scoffs. “Obviously.”
Chloe flicks him on the nose. “Obviously. Don’t be mean. You want to try some?”
And Felix says yes, he’d love to, and takes a lick from one of the lesser-touched sides, and even he’s not that intro strawberry ice cream - she’s right, it’s really goddamn good.
“Stealing other people’s treats? Rude boy.”
It’s a lovely hot day. The sun is beaming, the waves are lapping, and the music is musicing. And the second he hears that fucking voice, a cold chill runs down Felix’s spine. He turns his head to peer over Chloe’s shoulder - and who else, but Chan, has appeared behind her with that infuriating stupid smirk.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too,” says Chan. “I was invited, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Obviously he was fucking invited. Felix isn’t that goddamn stupid. He clearly didn’t just turn up out of the blue if nobody wanted him here - and Felix is about to roll his eyes and retort when Chan holds out his hand.
He’s carrying an ice cream cone (albeit looking slightly melted) with chunks of chocolate and something doughy mixed in. He’s holding it out to Felix.
“I had to lick the edges a bit because it melted. Sorry,” says Chan, watching the suddenly very-still Felix, and there’s presumably a glint in his eyes, but it’s impossible to tell because he’s wearing sunglasses. “Brownie. I heard you have a penchant. And I promise I don’t have cooties.”
And Felix’s stupid betraying hand reaches out of its own accord to accept the cone.
Chan grins. “Enjoy, pretty boy.” And he moves around Felix to say hello to the rest of the new arrivals.
Felix feels more than just a little bit gobsmacked. Chan got him ice cream? He looks over his shoulder to check - yeah, Chan’s holding a cone of his own, and his own ice cream is a pale beige which could be honeycomb or vanilla or caramel. Which means that Chan went out of his way to buy Felix an ice cream cone.
Felix takes a tentative lick.
It tastes divine.
Hold on, how the fuck did Chan know about Felix’s love of brownies?
He turns around again to ask the slippery bastard what the hell’s going on, only to come face-to-face with Seungmin. Seungmin is looking at Felix with a peculiar expression - halfway curious, halfway suspicious, and all-the-way like he’s just uncovered a particularly juicy secret and is about to start taking notes.
“Who was that?” He pounces before Felix can even collect his thoughts.
“Oh, uh- that, he’s - he’s just some friend of Hyunjin’s. Visiting for the summer.”
“‘Just some friend of Hyunjin’s’?”
“Yeah.” Felix frowns. There was something in Seungmin’s tone. “Why? Is there a problem with that?”
“Oh, not at all,” says Seungmin, way too quickly. “You - you’re past the thing you had for Chloe, then?”
“Huh?”
“I’m just saying, you managed to actually say hi to her without blushing. And you completely forgot she was even here when that guy turned up. I’m guessing she’s old news now?”
Felix blinks, then glances around. Sure enough, Chloe and Zoe are both gone - disappeared with the stealth of the world’s sneakiest ninjas and are now laying out their beach towels.
How had he not noticed Chloe leaving?
Seungmin’s wrong. Felix’s not ‘over his crush’ - he’s actually proud of himself for making leaps and bounds in his personal confidence and being able to actually be a normal human around Chloe.
He also hasn’t thought about her once this entire morning.
His cheeks feel warm. He needs to put sunscreen on, he remembers - he doesn’t burn easily, but that doesn’t mean he can avoid it on hot days like this. That’s why his cheeks are warm, probably. He takes another lick of his ice cream and asks if Seungmin can get the back of his neck.
Honestly, as soon as he reaches the end of the cone, he’s tempted to take that walk along the beach to get another one. It was just that good. But he doesn’t right away - he sits on his towel, pulls a pear cider from the cooler, and takes a deep breath of salty sea air.
He loves this beach. It was one of his own finds a couple of years back, several miles up the coast from the main beach that most people visit. Maybe it is a little wild, deserted, barely maintained - an elderly couple walks along the waterfront with their dog, and a family with two small children splash in the shallows back up towards the cafe. There’s nobody else here.
A small slice of undisturbed paradise, and it belongs to them. It belongs to Jisung and the way he’s eagerly munching on a slice of watermelon, juice dribbling down his chin. It belongs to Minho who fusses about his boyfriend wearing enough sunscreen, and to Seungmin who’s started building a sandcastle wall around the ditch that Wooyoung’s digging and it belongs to Yeonjun who’s started to pile sand on top of Wooyoung, giggling.
It belongs to Chloe in her flowy skirt, excitedly pointing out where she’s going to assemble everything for the party she’s throwing - where the bonfire is going to go, where she’s going to dig tiki torches into the sand, where she’s going to arrange cushions and blankets atop a tarpaulin for them to curl up at the end of the night and watch the sunrise together.
She is so thoughtful. And kind. And so goddamn sweet - the caramel sauce and candied strawberries on a froyo, the crystallised sugar at the end of a bag of cotton candy.
And Felix hasn’t thought about her once this morning.
He shakes himself, takes a deep breath, and stands up to join in the party plans.
He finds himself roped into being in charge of providing snacks for the night, and Jisung’s been allocated something called ‘jungle juice’. Chloe had been deep in conversation with Jurin about what they were going to drink - Chloe had to be gently talked down from hiring actual bartenders. Then someone had mentioned jungle juice, and showed them a TikTok of what it even is; a concoction of liquors and fruit and juices served in a 10 gallon clear plastic crate, and Felix had paled and said he’ll bake some cookies or something instead, if it’s all the same to them. Jisung swears and calls Felix a traitor, because how is he supposed to supply the juice himself, and Felix tells him that it’s his problem to solve.
The day ticks on. The sun grows higher, and Felix’s sweat begins to stick his shirt to his sides. So he strips it off and flings it with the rest of his stuff, and pulls out another cold pear cider.
Then Chloe, red-cheeked, plops down on the sand next to him.
“Hey, don’t forget to do your back.” For a second, Felix hasn’t got a fucking clue what she’s talking about. Then he processes that she’s holding a bottle of sunscreen. He’s about to tell her that it’s okay, because he’s already put some on - but then-
“Oh. Sure. Uh - could you do it? I can’t reach.” It’s a very, very risky question - one that he isn’t certain isn’t going to come with fluster-inducing consequences- but Chloe just smiles and scoots around behind him.
“Sure, but only if you do mine.”
Felix’s voice gets stuck in his throat for a hot second. “Yeah. Okay.”
He barely even registers the feeling of her soft hands gently caressing his back (mostly because he’s concentrating really hard on not doing something embarrassing like popping a boner - not that he ever has around her, but this is different). Then she’s sitting in front of him, scooping her hair out of the way and presenting her bare back to Felix.
Her shoulders are already turning red. He sweeps a lost strand of hair out of the way, and starts to spray the sunscreen on her skin. He can almost hear Jisung rolling his eyes. But heart doesn’t pound as erratically as he’d expected, and he carefully rubs the sunscreen over her shoulders, careful to not be too harsh or to let his fingers trail somewhere they shouldn’t. She giggles as he spreads it under her bikini strap (after asking permission, of course), saying that it tickles.
“Thanks, Lix,” she beams, kissing him on the cheek again. Then she settles back in her towel, and Felix’s cheeks prickle with warmth.
And his arms. And legs.
Then, a rush of annoyance hits him.
Not at Chloe. At himself. Because no matter what he’s done this summer, no matter how sweet and kind and flirty he’s been, he’s not yet plucked up the courage to fucking say anything, and as a result, he’s digging himself deeper and deeper into ‘just friends’ territory, and soon he’s not going to be able to climb out.
Coward.
He huffs and pulls himself to his feet, loudly announcing that he wants to go for a swim. Changbin says he’ll join, and Hyunjin instantly jumps to his feet. Nobody else seems particularly interested. Except-
“Yeah, I’m down. Count me in.”
Felix wishes he could socially say to Chan ‘no, not you, anybody but you’, but he can’t, and Chan is already heaving himself to his feet. He’s still in his shirt and (presumably) swim shorts, his sandals dug into the sand next to him.
Felix bites his smarmy comment back as Chan dusts the sand off his thighs and bends to pick up his towel (he’s not going to need it, it’ll be here when they get back for fuck’s sake) and turns to see if anyone else wants to come. Wooyoung is too busy with his hole - it’s nearly thigh-deep. Everyone else is either chatting, drinking, laughing - Chloe’s eyes have fluttered closed as she’s curled up on her blanket. Jisung is too busy giggling and painting sunscreen patterns on Minho’s legs, and Minho is just watching him fondly. So Felix resigns himself to his fate and turns to join Hyunjin, only to realise that the man’s jaw is literally on the floor as Changbin is pulling off his shirt.
And, holy shit, Felix’s first assessment of the guy being a bodybuilder or a Greek god can’t have been far off - the man is shredded. He has thick arms and a thick chest and nicely defined abs that aren’t so chiselled that they’re obnoxious, as everything is covered with a healthy layer of chub makes Felix want to sink his teeth into them.
Or, he would. If he was into that. Which he’s not. Definitely not. Even so, Felix allows himself to look for a moment, under the pretence that he is simply admiring a fellow man’s physique, because holy damn.
Hyunjin’s own appreciation, however, has clearly gone far beyond mere aesthetics. He’s not even moved, and he’s not even ashamed at how blatantly he’s staring at his ‘friend’, and Changbin seems to notice this and a blush spreads across his own cheeks. And the fact Hyunjin is now firmly stuck in Changbin-land, and that means that Felix is stuck walking to the water with…
Chan chuckles, and falls into step with Felix as he starts to head to the water.
He huffs. Chan keeps up easily.
They walk in silence for a minute, until the sounds of music are distant behind them, when Chan finally speaks.
“You don’t like me.”
It’s not a question.
Felix feels his cheeks go hot. “I never said that.”
“You don’t have to. I know you don’t like me. That’s okay, you know. I’m not offended.”
“...you are kind of a dick.” Chan laughs. The sound is higher pitched than Felix had expected. “Like, when we first met, I mean. At the carnival. You didn’t have to make fun of me.”
“I mean, that’s fair. But I just couldn’t help it. You looked so lonely down there on the grass.”
“Fuck you.”
“And you’re so fun to tease,” teases Chan, reaching over to pinch at Felix’s cheek. “Your cheeks go all pink. And you stutter. It’s so cute.”
God, he is so infuriating. Luckily they’ve reached the shoreline, which means that Felix can stomp forward brazenly into the water - then yelps loudly and jumps about twenty feet in the air because holy shit it’s goddamn cold.
He hears a huge hoot of laughter behind him, and he turns angrily to pick up the nearest rock and launch it at Chan, when he stops.
Chan has stopped a few metres away from where the water laps at the sand, doubled over in laughter and clutching his sides. At some point while Felix was storming away, he must’ve laid his towel down, because his T-shirt is bunched up neatly beside it, along with his sunglasses.
He’s buff. Like, he clearly makes good use of his gym membership; his arms are thick, veined, sculpted. His torso narrows into a sharply defined waist, his washboard abs crisp and defined, and his chest - god, his chest - Felix has dated girls with smaller chests than Chan. He looks like he belongs on the cover of a magazine, like he was the inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s own anatomical studies.
Felix feels like a shovel hits him upside the head with the realisation that Chan is, objectively, incredibly, mouthwateringly hot.
Objectively. It doesn’t actually mean anything.
Then Chan straightens up and catches Felix looking. He’s squinting in the sunlight, and his curly black hair is windswept, and he’s got a wide, defined nose and plush lips and-
Felix swallows and looks away. “It’s not even that cold,” he grumbles, taking another shot at stepping into the water and holding his curses when the Baltic temperatures wash over him. He’s not immediately certain that his toes aren’t going to drop off from frostbite as he ventures a little further into the water.
Then he hears a hiss behind him, and what sounds like a low swear, and grins.
“Not even cold, my ass,” comes Chan’s voice. “Fuck me, it’s so hot today. How come the ocean is like, minus a billion degrees?”
“Ocean currents,” supplies Felix. “The water’s warm when it comes from the equator; like, tropical regions. I guess today the current comes straight from Hades’ freezer itself.”
Chan chuckles. “Smartass.”
“Oh, sorry for fucking knowing something,” says Felix, turning around. He’s thigh deep in the water now, and his teeth are chattering. “I might not look like it, but I got a full ride scholarship to college. Grades and taekwondo. And they paid for me to move here. I’m not a moron.”
“I know you’re not a moron, Lix.”
The use of the nickname brushes over Felix’s shoulders and makes his hair stand on end. Or maybe that’s just a splash of saltwater.
“You sure don’t act like it.”
“No, I think you’re cute. And maybe a bit of a dork. I definitely don’t think you’re dumb, though.”
The water’s feeling warmer now, or Felix’s just acclimatising. In fact, it’s verging on pleasant. And the compliment - cringey as it is to hear Chan call him cute, especially when he knows he’s just teasing - doesn’t cause Felix’s skin to prickle as much.
“You’re Australian, aren’t you?” asks Chan eventually, raising an eyebrow.
“Hm? Oh. Sure. Yeah. Why do you care?”
“You really have to ask? I am too.”
Felix pauses. They’ve drifted deeper into the surf, and the next wave nearly brushes his chin. “Oh. I see.”
“You couldn’t tell? Never picked up the accent? I caught yours straight away.”
Felix shrugs. Yeah, he noticed. Of course he did, but it’s not like he could really bring himself to care about it.
Chan’s eyes twinkle. “Wow. I knew you didn’t like me.”
Felix opens his mouth to snap back, but a wave smacks him full in the face, and instead he ends up swallowing a mouthful of water. He sputters violently, coughing and wiping salt from his eyes, while Chan absolutely loses it. He laughs so hard that he, too, gets caught up in another violent wave and is almost carried back to shore and dumped on his ass.
He stands up, still laughing, and begins to wade back out towards Felix. Felix swims a little closer to shore, towards Chan, but it’s only because he’s trying to stay afloat and get his feet back on the ground. The current is a little rough, and he’s swam in enough of Australia’s ocean to know how to stay safe in the water. Chan meets him halfway, water curling around his waist, sunlight catching the droplets on his skin.
“I fucking hate you,” spits Felix, folding his arms.
But Chan’s looking at him in some kind of way that removes anything else from his tongue. It’s a strange look, all thick lashes and a raised eyebrow, slightly pursed lips but it’s not a pout nor a smile. Contemplative. And Felix doesn’t have a desire to grumble and storm away.
In fact, the way Chan’s looking at him makes the place where his heart is feel funny, like it’s not there for a second.
Chan has a crinkle above his eyebrows, knitted into an almost-frown like he’s trying to solve a particularly tricky equation.
Then he grins, and splashes Felix.
All at once the strange moment is broken, and Felix shrieks as the cold water splashes his torso, and then he’s swearing as Chan cackles and darts away from him - as best he can in chest-deep water, anyway. And Felix goes after him, moving just as unsteadily and sends a huge splash in revenge after Chan, who yells, and spins-
And before they know it another wave is washing over their heads, but this one doesn’t cause them to cough and splutter, instead joy is bubbling in Felix’s chest, and Chan is laughing as he gets closer to Felix to try and trip him up - Felix stumbles and is picked up by a wave and swept a few feet back to shore, but not before he’s hit in the face with a mouthful of salt water. He swears and climbs to his feet, and launches himself at Chan who’s too busy enjoying watching Felix get dumped on his ass by the ocean to defend himself.
And the Felix’s hands are around Chan’s sculpted waist, and he’s using all his weight to launch Chan into the water - but Chan’ as strong as he looks, and he barely stumbles before he grabs Felix back, and then they’re both splashing and fighting and wrestling-
And Felix launches back, but he stumbles a little too far and catches his foot on something - pain ricochets through the sole of his foot and up his leg. He swears loudly.
Chan’s face drops. And before Felix can stumble over, unable to put his foot down from the sheer pain suddenly coursing through it, Chan reaches out to brace his arm around Felix’s waist.
“Whoa, hey, careful. What happened?”
“Fuck, I fucking - stood on a rock, or coral, or - fuck, a Lego or something. Fuck!”
“A Lego? In the ocean?”
“Fuck you, of course not actually a Lego - it fucking hurts, okay?” spits Felix, glaring up - Chan is smiling. He looks faintly amused.
He’s just teasing.
Duh. Of course he is.
He’s teasing Felix as his hands are on Felix’s waist and he’s asking if Felix is okay.
He’s got remarkably pretty eyes. Dark, crinkled into half-moon smiles.
Felix’s foot hurts like hell. He tries to take a step towards the shore, and buckles immediately when steps on the sand - Chan’s arm redoubles its position around Felix’s waist to make sure he doesn’t fall over.
“Okay, come on, you. Let’s get you back.”
Chan slings Felix’s arm over his shoulder, and wraps his own arm fully around Felix’s waist. It’s really unnecessary, thinks Felix as he hops along - he can manage just fine, if only he sucked it up and wasn’t a giant baby about it. But then clearly Chan decides that Felix can’t actually walk at all, because in one fell swoop he scoops Felix bridal-style into his arms.
“Oi!”
“Oi yourself. Stop fussing. You’re injured.”
And you know what? It’s kind of nice knowing someone cares enough to not just help him hobble back, but is also strong enough to pick Felix up as easily as if he were a rag doll. Even if that someone is someone as annoying as Chan.
Minho sits up sharply as soon as they’re within view of the small camp.
“Felix? Are you okay? What happened?”
“He stood on something.” Chan gently lowers Felix down onto his beach towel, and he doesn’t even seem to have broken a sweat.
“I’m fine, really,” says Felix, even as Chan kneels down in front of him and takes his foot in his hand. “I just bruised it on a rock or something-”
Chan lifts his hand. It’s covered in blood.
As it turns out, the sole of Felix’s feet is badly scratched up, and it’s unclear how deep the cuts run. It stings like a motherfucker. Chan theorises that Felix caught and dragged his foot along the surface of a coral.
Then Hyunjin appears, soaking wet and out-of-breath from sprinting back up the beach (Felix hadn’t even noticed him and Changbin in the water) and rushes to pull out a small first-aid kit. It’s Chan who takes it.
He has a surprisingly gentle touch. He dabs at the wound with an antibacterial wipe that quickly turns pink with blood. Felix tries his best not to squirm, but it fucking tickles. Then Chan applies a salve, and it’s all Felix can do to not kick him in the teeth because the tickling is driving him mad - and finally, Chan wraps his foot in a bandage.
“I think we might need to take you to the hospital,” Chan says, frowning as he scrunches up the used wipes into a plastic bag. “There was a lot of blood.”
“I thought you said it was just a scratch. It’ll be fine.”
“Maybe. Just to be on the safe side - I’ve done what I can, but if it was poisonous - or there could be dirt in it - I knew someone who got their foot trapped in a coral once, and it turned septic and they nearly lost their leg-”
“Okay, but that’s not going to happen to me,” says Felix stubbornly. “I’ll be fine. Look, we’re not in Australia. It’s not like there’s stonefish out here or anything. It was just a rock, alright? I’ll be fine.”
Chan doesn’t look convinced. Worry knits his eyebrows together, and his lips are pulled into a little frown, and his eyes are wide shine with concern, and overall the look is actually quite cute.
Not cute. Touching. It’s touching that Chan is looking after Felix and cares about him. That’s all. He’s definitely not cute or anything.
Eventually, with enough bargaining and assurances, Chan is convinced that he doesn’t need to rush Felix to the hospital right away - on two conditions. One, Felix doesn’t move a muscle or put any weight on his foot for the rest of the day, and he definitely doesn’t go back in the water. Two, Chan checks the wound as they all get back into their cars at the end of the trip, and they go straight to the ER if Chan is at all concerned.
And hell, Felix isn’t mad at all about being instructed to stay sitting down and be waited on for the rest of the day. Minho, predictably, takes on the role of disdainful mother, makes it his duty to ensure Felix is stocked up with drinks and snacks, and Hyunjin darts back and forth from his ‘play with Changbin’ duty - which as far as Felix can tell mostly just involves giggling and tossing his hair and gasping over Changbin’s positively edible physique - to keep Felix entertained with TikToks and Instagram reels.
Wooyoung’s pit (it’s easily transformed from a hole into a pit) is now big enough to fit three people in it, and it’s become a team effort with Seungmin and Jeongin working on a pseudo-aqueduct all the way down to the shore to eventually flood it with water. Zoe’s also joined in, sculpting neat little towers around the wall that surrounds the pit, while occasionally flinging handfuls of sand in a disgruntled Jisung’s direction.
It’s an adage as old as time; put a group of men (and Zoe) on a beach and they will dig a hole.
Chloe’s looking at Felix.
Chloe’s been looking at him since she spotted Chan walking back up the beach with Felix in his arms.
He knows what she wants to say. He knows why her eyebrows fly into her hairline when Chan returns with another ice cream, and why she smiles knowingly when he makes sure that Felix has enough sunscreen on his shoulders.
He knows. And so he ignores her. It doesn’t mean anything, after all. Chan’s just keeping an eye on him because of his hurt foot - that’s all.
That’s all.
~
The bad news is, Felix’s going to have to keep his foot bandaged for at least a week. The good news is, it’s not going to interfere with the trip to the water park that Chloe keeps going on about - unless it gets infected. And because Chan had insisted they swing by the hospital after the beach trip to doubly make sure Felix’s foot is going to be fine, they’re pretty confident about the whole infection thing not being a problem.
The other bad news is, Chan is now kind of Felix’s friend. Kind of. Not on purpose, not at all, and he’s still a bit of a dick who makes lighthearted teases at Felix that make him feel all grumbly - but he’s doing Nice Things, too. Like texting Felix in the morning to make sure his foot was okay. Evidently, it’s hard to share a moment of patching up a coral-mangled foot without something healing.
It’s bad news, because literally everyone (and by everyone he means Jisung) has decided they’ve got a bone to pick with him regarding his ‘treatment’ of Chan.
“I mean, you were the one with a problem for no reason,” says Jisung one evening. They’re sitting in the living room scrambling over which track to play on Mario Kart. Minho is sitting politely to the side while the roommates bicker.
“It wasn’t ‘no reason’. He was an ass.”
“He was just teasing you. It wasn’t malicious, and he definitely wasn’t mean.”
“He was so mean. The first time I saw him, he sussed out right away what was happening with Chloe, and he was a big old meanie because of it.”
“...A ‘big old meanie’? Really? You’re not five years old, you don’t need to pull his pigtails on the playground because you like him.”
“…he doesn’t have pigtails. And, I don’t like him,” Felix counters, frowning. “Besides. If anything, he was the one pulling my pigtails.”
Jisung just raises his eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”
Minho sighs loudly and turns to them. “As riveting as this argument is, can we please decide what track we’re going to play? We’ve been staring at this screen for ten minutes now.” Jisung ducks his head apologetically, and tells Felix to choose, and then swears as Felix chooses the first Rainbow Road he comes across.
“So. What’s the latest development with Chloe, then?” asks Minho as the starting music plays.
“What do you mean?”
“I thought this was the big summer you were going to ask her out. You’ve still not made any progress, or you’d be celebrating like an idiot.”
“Ah,” says Felix delicately. His heart leaps up into his throat - he keeps his eyes very deliberately trained on the TV screen. “Well, you know. It is what it is.”
“…are you giving up?”
“What? No!” Felix’s protest is punctuated by his ass getting handed to him by a green shell of all things. “Of course not, I’m - regrouping. Trying to think of what the hell I’m supposed to do now.”
“Call her and tell her you like her and you want to take her on a date.”
“Anything but that.”
Minho just rolls his eyes and launches a bomb at Jisung.
(In the game, obviously.)
“Babe! Not cool!”
“Sorry, Sungie!”
They play a couple more tracks - Minho is decent. Felix is better. Jisung is enthusiastic, but still manages to finish in fifth.
Jisung grumbles that it’s not fair and stands to get a drink of water.
“Anyway, about Chloe-” says Minho again.
“I know you’re just being nice, but can you please just leave it alone? I know, okay?”
“…I was going to ask if you’re going to the water park with her this weekend.”
“…oh.”
“Exactly. Oh. You don’t need to get defensive.”
“I mean… yeah, I said I would. She really wants to.”
“You’re not worried about your foot?”
“This thing?” says Felix, waggling his still-bandaged foot from where it rests atop a pile of cushions. Keep it iced and elevated, the doctor had said. “Nah, it’ll be fine. I’ll be able to walk on it by the time the weekend comes around.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Course I am.”
“Hm. I don't know if we’re going to go.”
“What? Why not?”
“…honestly, I’m just kinda tired of doing stuff,” says Minho, stretching. “It’s been a busy ass summer already. I’ve spent so much time with you guys.”
“We’ve done like, three things.”
“Well-”
“It’s because it’s a water park,” says Jisung, returning with his glass of water and a bag of seaweed chips. “Felix, you know neither of us can swim.”
“You realise that most of the pools are like, waist deep, right? You don’t have to know how to swim?”
“Sure, but it sure makes it easier.”
“And,” says Minho, the tips of his ears slightly pink, “I also think it would be nice to just spend some time with the two of us.” Jisung smiles, and leans across to give Minho the sweetest of kisses. Felix mimes throwing up.
“We can go another time,” Minho adds. “It’s not going anywhere. We’ll stay in this weekend and have a movie marathon.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Oh, I get it. You just want to take the chance to fuck on every surface while I’m out the house?” says Felix. Jisung smiles innocently. “Ugh. Just clean up when you’re done.”
~
It seems that a lot of people have the same idea about the water park that weekend, in that they’ve spent a lot of time with each other (see; a carnival and a beach trip) as a group, and lots of people have other plans coming up now that they’re a few weeks into vacation.
Jeongin, Seungmin, Hyunjin, and Changbin all say they’re down. Chloe and Zoe, obviously. A couple others. Not many more.
For some reason, Felix finds himself asking if Chan’s coming, too.
“He is,” says Hyunjin on the phone the day before they leave, and Felix can’t tell if the feeling that the answer elicits is good or bad.
When the morning of the trip arrives, Felix is thoroughly regretting agreeing to go. Not because he doesn’t want to - he is genuinely looking forward to it - but because they’ve decided to book bus tickets to take them there as opposed to just driving themselves, but the stupid thing leaves at half past seven in the goddamn morning.
Which means they have to be at the bus station by 7:15.
Which means Felix has to wake up at 6am in order to get up, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, and make his way to the bus station. Which, in the middle of summer vacation, feels like it should be illegal.
Hopefully he can sleep on the bus, he thinks to himself, swaying back and forth on the spot. Seungmin and Jeongin were both there when Felix arrived; the former looking significantly more awake than the latter.
Chloe and Zoe pull up next. It’s the first time Felix’s even seen Zoe look anything less than cool and dark and stoic and gothic, because her eyes look bloodshot and her short hair is scruffy, and she’s swamped in a gigantic graffiti-print hoodie.
“She’s not a morning person, bless,” says Chloe, squeezing her friend’s hand. She looks only marginally more awake; her hair loose and definitely only partially-brushed, and Felix can see the ties of her pink swimsuit around her neck beneath a giant pastel-green kimono-style dress.
“Yeah, I feel that.” Felix has to stifle a yawn.
Hyunjin, Changbin, and Chan all arrive just moments before the bus is due to start boarding, and tumble out of their taxi in varying states of disarray. Changbin looks somewhat alert between the yawns. Hyunjin looks like absolute hell, and he blinks at Felix as if he doesn’t know who he is for a few seconds.
“This better be - the best fucking water park in the world,” he directs to nobody in particular, but Chloe’s the one who responds with a sympathetic nod.
Chan looks somewhere between Hyunjin and Changbin in terms of sleepiness. His eyes are heavy-lidded, and he has to stifle a couple of yawns, but he looks contentedly soft in the violent morning sunlight, in swim shorts and a black tank top, a rucksack flung over his shoulder.
“How’s the foot?” is the first thing he asks, sliding into place next to Felix as they line up in front of the bus door.
“Hm? Oh, it’s - it’s okay,” says Felix, struggling through another yawn. He sticks his foot out, clad in a sneaker, as if to illustrate his point. “Still kind of sore. I’ve got a huge bandage thing on the bottom. I hope the lifeguards aren’t going to be annoying about it.”
“They won’t be,” says Chan confidently. “What are they doing, checking the soles of your feet before you get on? That would be weird.”
Felix, despite himself, chuckles. “I guess. It’s basically healed anyway.”
“That’s good.” Despite Felix’s assurance, Chan still offers a hand to him up the steep bus stairs - Felix just bats the hand away irritably, saying he’s more than capable of climbing three stairs, thank you very much. And believe it or not, he doesn’t actually trip over and stack it embarrassingly shortly after.
Chloe’s already taken the seat next to Zoe. Because of course she has. There’s a small prickle of annoyance as Felix slides into the seat behind them; Zoe’s head is already drooping onto the window, and Chloe twists around in her seat to give Felix one of those resigned sort of looks - ‘oh, would you look at this silly girl’ type things.
He’s two seconds away from asking Chloe if she’d like Felix’s window seat instead - he knows she prefers them, and he’ll happily give up that comfort for her - but it’s too late, and Chan has arrived and taken the seat next to Felix.
Chloe’s eyes twinkle at Felix before she turns back around. He’s not sure why.
A few moments later they’re pulling off, out of the bus station, and trundling down the road to the water park. Hyunjin and Changbin are across the aisle - Hyunjin in the window seat, and he’s snoring two seconds after the engine starts. Changbin just rolls his eyes, and leans across to catch Chan in conversation about the latest football game or some other.
Jeongin and Seungmin are sitting in front of them, and trying their best to look like they’re not holding hands.
Felix smiles to himself. Dorks.
They try so hard to pretend that they’re not totally obsessed with each other. But it’s so obvious - Felix isn’t even sure if they’ve confirmed to anyone that they’re dating yet, despite the fact that they just went away on vacation with each other for two weeks. As friends. Yeah, right.
It’s kind of funny. They insisted from the start that they didn’t even like each other - at all, and certainly not like that. They even got into fights with each other. Felix isn’t entirely sure when the switch happened, when they turned around and suddenly were like this. When Felix walked in on them ‘kissing’ at a house party (it was definitely just kissing and not a blowjob. Felix has blocked that memory from his brain), they’d still been enemies. As far as Felix had been aware.
Cuties.
There’s obviously something stopping them from going public with it. Homophobia? But they must know that their friends don’t care - they’ve seen Minho and Jisung all over each other. Maybe there’s something else. Maybe they’re childhood exes that reconnected or something super romantic like that.
The bus trundles onto the highway. Felix pulls the curtains shut; the morning sun is blasting into his eyes, and he can already feel his skin crisping up. He pulls out his phone to plug on a travel playlist, but before he can put it away, a tinkle of curiosity enters his brain and he pulls up the webpage for the water park.
His body immediately floods with a wave of bubbling excitement.
Man, he fucking loves a water park. Even if Chloe hadn’t been coming along today, or at all this summer, he still probably would have tried to find the time to come himself, anyway.
Felix loves the water. He loves the beach, the pool, the ocean, the way water feels on his skin. And while he’s not the biggest fan of rides, slides are a different matter. There are no loops, very few spins, and none of them go up too high. Or, at least that was Felix’s first thought. Because as he scrolls through the list of rides, a mild sense of trepidation begins to creep up his spine.
Most of the slides look great. A few racers, a couple of fun wriggly snake looking ones, a massive toilet bowl style contraption that dumps you into an eight foot plunge at the bottom. And then he clicks on the ‘extreme’ tab, and the page on Felix’s phone is quickly filled with images of twisting and turning and writhing contraptions that begin look like a toddler has been let loose on a piece of paper with a 48-pack of crayons. Brightly coloured corkscrews, inflatable tubes launched halfway up the sides of mile-high chutes, something that appears to drop riders right into the sun - oh hell no, they have looping slides?!
Felix swallows and shuts his phone. There are enough slides advertised that he will certainly manage to get plenty of ride time in without sacrificing the structural integrity of his torso. They have a wave pool, and a lazy river, and a crazy river, and plenty of other things that make perfect sense and don’t include him getting launching into the stratosphere with nothing but a rubber tube and handles to keep him safe. He’s supposed to relax and have fun…
He doesn’t even realise that Chan has asked him a question until he receives a sharp jab in the ribs. Felix jumps, and yelps, and turns to Chan, affronted.
“Ow! What the hell was that for?”
“You were a million miles away, you know. I called your name, like, three times,” says Chan. Then he grins. “You were all wide-eyed and dopey, staring into nothing. Very cute.”
And Felix doesn’t have the energy or the bite to react, so he just huffs and turns to glare out the window.
Chan hesitates for a moment.“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Come on. You’ve been dead silent this entire trip. Where’s the dramatic little trouble that I’ve come to know?”
“Who the hell are you calling dramatic?” spits Felix, twisting back around to direct his glare at Chan. “You’re the trouble, you’re the one who-”
“Guys.” Felix stops. Chloe’s looking over her shoulder at them. “Stop teasing him, Chan. He gets grumpy when he’s tired.”
“Ah. I see.” Chan bows his head, just slightly. “My apologies, your highness.”
“Fuck off.”
“...okay, point taken. Sorry.”
Felix huffs again, and nods, and turns around again to look out the window. And he fully intends on staying in his huff for the rest of the journey - until he feels a gentle poke in the side, and turns his head to see Chan offering him a bag of candies.
The little ones in red and white striped wrappers. Strawberries and cream.
And Chan is looking at him softly, apologetically - Felix’s shoulders lose a bit of their tension and he accepts a handful of the candies.
They taste like nostalgia.
Soon, though, all too soon, they’re pulling into the water park. It’s themed somewhat like a jungle - large wood and bamboo arches decorate the entrance, with the park’s name etched in what could be vines twisted to form letters. There’s already a short queue out the front - slowly, the group of friends unload themselves from the bus and trail towards the entrance. Changbin leads the way. Zoe, despite having passed out almost the moment her ass hit the seat, complains loudly that she’s too tired to be outside.
Then they’re through the gates. Felix is immediately hit in the face with the redolent scent of chlorine, of water and sunscreen; there’s music playing over the speakers - the sort of chill beats that you’d expect on a hip beach bar. And even if it’s early, there are still already dozens of people about the place; at the lockers, the sunbeds, or heading towards rides.
If Felix thought the rides were intimidating on the phone screen, it’s nothing compared to what they look like in real life. One of them, with red and yellow stripes, is right near the entrance, and has what looks like a free fall drop tall enough to send a man flying to the moon if he fell off.
They walk through the park towards the sun loungers and changing rooms, and Felix finds himself halting at the foot of a group of slides; he watches a girl, who can’t be older than 12, come shooting out of a tunnel at half a million miles an hour, hit the water with a thunderous slap, and two seconds later she stands up, laughing hysterically.
Okay. This place might be a bit more intense than he'd bargained for.’
“What’s wrong, Lix?”
A small, soft hand slips into his. Felix blinks, tears his gaze away from the Child Launching Tunnel Of Death, and looks down at Chloe.
“Ah.” She’s holding his hand. “It’s - ah. No, I’m okay.”
“No you’re not.” She squeezes his hand. “Come on. What’s wrong?”
“Ah.” His voice feels like it’s not even coming out properly. “It’s - well. Some of those slides look… pretty intense.”
“They do?” asks Chloe, turning her head to scan the various wiggling shapes on the horizon. “I mean, sure, I guess. But that's fun! They all look perfectly safe!”
“Yeah, I know, I just - I - I didn’t think, that - well, I don’t really - you know I don’t really...”
He’s cut off mid-pathetic ramble (which is because Chloe’s holding his hand, not abject terror, honest) by her high-pitched, tinkly laugh.
“Oh no, you’re not getting out of this that easily.”
“…so you just want me to die?”
“Felix, they’re slides. You go to the top, and slide down. It’s hardly anything crazy.” But as if to negate her point, at that very moment a person (a grown adult this time) comes launching out of the death tunnel, crashes into the water, and stands up, laughing, a few seconds later. The water comes to his chest.
It’s Seungmin.
Felix spins around, surprised, only to see that apparently, the rest of the group has already claimed a group of loungers and split off into the rest of the park. Felix has no idea how Seungmin managed to get onto the slide so quickly, and without him noticing; a second later, Jeongin also comes shooting out.
Zoe’s lying down, her eyes closed, on a lounger. Hyunjin is rubbing sunscreen into Changbin’s shoulders.
And Chan is hovering a few steps away and watching Felix and Chloe with a strange expression on his face. His eyes flicker to where Chloe is still holding onto Felix’s hand.
Felix flushes suddenly, and drops Chloe’s hand as if it were a white-hot poker.
“I - I’ll, uh- well, if that’s-”
“Oh, come on, you big baby,” says Chan suddenly, and that strange expression is gone. “Look, for those big ones they have couples’ rings. And I think there’s some where you go as fours. We can hold your hand. Keep you from falling off.”
And, in a strangely jittery kind of way, like he’s buffering or maybe his FPS has dropped, Chan gently squeezes Felix’s fingers.
He lets go almost immediately, of course. But this time, it does feel like a white-hot poker. A lingering burn.
And there it is again, that funny feeling he felt on the beach, like his heart isn’t quite there for a second.
Then Chan is walking towards the sun loungers to deposit his bag, and Felix’s left feeling a little off-kilter. Chloe just smiles, touches his shoulder with a featherlight brush of reassurance, and follows.
Both of them had touched his hand. Chloe had willingly taken his hand. But she’s not the reason his heart is pounding out of his chest.
No, shut up. His heart isn’t pounding. He’s just scared of these goddamn slides - and even his friends’ reassurance isn’t enough to quell that awful nausea.
He, reluctantly, follows his friends to the sun loungers.
He tests his foot on the bare floor when he gets his sneakers off. He replaced the bandage with a huge, ‘water-proof’ - well, a bandaid isn’t the right name for it, because it covers the entire sole of his foot, but at least he’s not hobbling around looking like he forgot to take off one sock when getting ready that morning.
“So, why did you come to a waterpark if you hate the slides?” Felix looks up, his t-shirt halfway around his neck, to see Chan watching him from the sun lounger next to him with a tilted head.
“Mind your own business.”
“Hey. I’m just curious.”
Felix sighs. “I don't hate slides. I love a water park. Some of them here just look a bit crazy, that's all.”
“Aw.”
“Plus, Chloe really wanted to come, and I wanted to be with her.”
“Aw. That’s cute.”
“What about you? Why are you here? You some sort of water-slide aficionado?”
“Because you said you were going.”
Felix waits a moment for the punchline - for the tease, for the ‘I came to see you piss yourself/make fun of you/etc’ - but it never comes.
And then Felix realises, all of a sudden, that maybe Chan is being serious.
“Oh.” He coughs. “I see.”
Chan just smiles and turns his attention to applying sunscreen.
He’s got nice hands. Long fingers, broad nails, well looked-after. Vascular. A silver chain is fastened around one wrist, which he deftly unclasps and tucks into his rucksack.
Then Felix snaps himself out of staring at Chan’s hands and hurriedly finishes stripping off his outer layer of clothes so he can go shove his bag in a locker.
By the time he gets back, Hyunjin and Changbin have disappeared - the only people remaining aside from Chan are Zoe, who is still lying on her lounger, and Chloe, who is trying (seemingly unsuccessfully) to pull Zoe off it.
“You’re such a buzzkill,” she huffs eventually, pouting and perching her hands on her hips.
“I literally just… I just need like, five minutes, babe,” says Zoe, muffling her yawn with the back of her hand. “I - literally just five minutes, that’s all.”
“You said that fifteen minutes ago!”
“I know, I just - I’m just so tired-”
“Surely the water will wake you up?” says Chan, sitting on the edge of Zoe’s lounger and poking her calf. Zoe grumbles.
“Come on, ZoZo. We’re literally not gonna get on anything if you just stay here all day.”
“Ah, fuck– fine.” And Zoe heaves herself into an upright position, and rubs her knuckles into her eyes. She blinks, hard, and looks up resentfully - her face softens a little when her eyes settle on Chloe. “You’re hard to resist. You know?”
Chloe giggles. “Yeah, I know.” And she bats Zoe playfully on the leg. “Come on, I need you to braid my hair. It’s gonna go all frizzy otherwise.”
“I need to get changed!”
“Why didn’t you travel here in your swimsuit?”
“...I forgot, okay?”
Felix chuckles at the two friends, bickering away like an old married couple. Such an odd pair, too; pink and black, cute and gothic, fire and ice, yin and yang. Chloe just rolls her eyes at Zoe as she starts to pull her swimsuit out of her bag, and turns to Chan.
“Chan, can you braid my hair for me?”
Chan’s eyes blow wide. “Uh, I’m not-”
“Don’t you dare tell me you can’t braid.”
“I - well, I’ve never tried.”
Chloe looks, in all honesty, shocked. “Really?”
“...yes, really? Why is that surprising? Ask Lix, he’s got long hair. I bet he knows what he’s doing.”
“But you’re like, gay. I thought that meant you knew hair.”
“How the hell does that mean I know how to do hair?”
“I just thought - that because you’re - oh, nevermind.”
“Here, I can do it,” says Felix. His pulse feels weak in his throat. “I have sisters, after all.” Chloe’s shoulders deflate in relief.
Felix perches on the lounger and manoeuvres Chloe into sitting at the end, and his deft fingers quickly weave her hair into two pretty braids, one down each side of her head.
And then it’s time to get going. Zoe still doesn’t look all there, still blinking heavily in the sunlight after changing into her swimsuit. Chloe hooks her arm through Zoe’s and starts to drag her through the park, Felix and Chan on their heels, passing by several of the small slides that decorated the entrance - including the child launcher, Felix realises, which is by no means the tallest or most dangerous looking thing in the park. Not by a long shot.
He realises, maybe a bit too late, she’s heading straight towards something that looks like it’s been torn directly from one of Felix’s nightmares. A huge, red-yellow striped funnel yawns ominously into a receiving pool where a red-suited lifeguard waits - it's the moon launcher that Felix spotted earlier. As Chloe leads them towards the stone-hewn steps, a giant inflatable raft with four people clinging onto it for dear life, comes shooting out of the funnel and into the receiving pool - every single one of the people on the raft of them looks exhilarated. But Felix then looks up, at the slide itself, and sees a sheer vertical wall of red and yellow, and another raft goes careening up it, and Felix watches as a poor girl almost falls out.
“Nope. No. Not a chance - nope, I ain’t-” He’s stopped walking before he’s even realised it, his feet glued to the floor, and honestly, he might just piss himself just looking at the damn thing.
Chloe stops and looks at him.
“What? Why not? It doesn’t even look that bad.”
The raft comes shooting out, and the girl that had almost fallen off rolls off into the water, shrieking. Maybe with fear, maybe with excitement - but Felix doesn’t really care.
“That looks - terrifying. Actually terrifying - what if we fall out? What if we hurt ourselves? What if-”
A cool hand finds its way to his shoulder.
“Whoa there, little one. Calm down. It’s okay.” Chan’s voice is low, and soothing. Felix takes a deep breath, trying to quash down the nausea that wells inside him-
“Come on, Lix,” says Chloe, letting go of Zoe to grab Felix’s hand in both of hers, and blinking up at him with her big, dark eyes. “It’s going to be totally fine, I promise.”
“Nope. Not a chance - no way. I am not even-”
“Don’t try to convince him, Chloe,” comes Chan’s voice again. “He’s a total scaredy-cat. You guys go on - I’ll take him to the kiddy pool.”
Hold on, what?
“Hang on, what?” Felix echoes the thought in his mind, looking into Chan’s face with a frown. Chan’s mouth is a straight line, his expression sincere - but there, in those eyes, is a twinkle.
“I mean, this is clearly too much for you,” Chan continues, nodding towards the red-and-yellow contraption of terror. “It’s okay. Nothing to be ashamed of. The girls can go on it, and we’ll go splash under the mushroom-fountains.”
“It’s not too much for me-”
“Of course it is. You hate rides.”
“I do not!” protests Felix. Even if it is a half-lie.
“Sure you do. As I remember, you were scared even on a ferris wheel.”
Oh, that little-
Felix shrugs Chan’s hand off his shoulder. He knows damn well that Chan is only goading him, and he shouldn’t rise to it - he stalks past a highly-amused looking Chloe and towards the stone steps up the ride.
It’s early in the day, but still the queue is quite long. They stop at the top with a good fifty people in front of them - by the time they get all the way to the entrance, the annoyance in Felix’s abdomen has receded and the horrifying bubbling of fear creeps up again.
Oh no, this is a terrible idea. He feels sick. God, he feels so sick-
He can’t go back down - he’ll look like an absolute pussy - he cranes his neck behind him, and catches a glimpse of Jeongin and Seungmin several people behind him in the queue. Yeah, he definitely can’t go back down. Chloe might let him forget about pussying out of the ride - but those two sure won’t.
Oh boy. Oh no. Oh shit.
They’re next up.
The slide attendant places a raft - a giant mutant monstrosity of an inflatable ring, shaped kind of like a four-leafed clover - on the mouth of the giant slide. Zoe and Chloe hop into their spots eagerly at the attendant’s behest - Chan steps forward, then turns around to look at Felix.
“Come on, scaredy-cat. I got you.” He grabs Felix’s hand and tugs him towards the raft.
Felix can’t feel his legs as he sits down. He hisses quietly - the water beneath the ring touches his ass, and it’s ice cold through his swim shorts - his heart is hammering in his chest, and it’ll be a miracle if he makes it to the bottom of the slide without passing out.
Chloe’s on his right. Chan’s on his left. Zoe’s in front of him, grinning. All their feet are piled on top of each other in the centre of the raft. Felix’s clenching the hand holds so hard he might snap them.
The lifeguard pushes. Felix wants to warp out of the raft and on to literally any other place on earth.
And then they’re moving and it’s quite fast, but it’s not too bad, and it opens out into the sunshine and turns a corner-
And all of a sudden the raft swings halfway up the wall and Felix’s heart falls out of his ass and he’s sure it’s been left behind and then they’re speeding and there’s water everywhere and Chloe’s laughing delightedly and Felix might be screaming and they turn another corner and this time they go even higher up and oh shit the ring’s turning and oh no Felix’s going backwards oh god please help he’s going to fall this is awful help god please help-
And then Chan lets go of his own handhold and latches onto Felix’s hand. And squeezes tight and holds on for all he’s worth.
And then they’re down past the awful corner and Felix hasn’t fallen out of the raft or broken his neck, and Chan is looking sideways at him with twinkling eyes, and he hasn’t let go of Felix’s hand.
Felix is sure he’s about to break Chan’s fingers for how tightly he’s holding on, and he tries to take a giant gulp of air before they’re sent wildly around the next corner, and he nearly falls out again but this time Chan is holding on to him, and he might actually not be screaming, he might be laughing-
The next thing he knows, the raft is being deposited out of the funnel, into the receiving pool with a tremendous splash of water. The lifeguard waiting there pulls them over, and -
Felix’s heart is beating so fast he can’t hear anything but the blood in his head. But that was…
Fun.
He laughs. Then again, delighted, and throws his head back and he’s cackling like a lunatic, and he can hear his friends laughing too, and holy shit, he’s alive.
They scramble out of the raft, shivering slightly from the ice-cold water but it’s not even that bad now that they’re in the sun, and wade back towards the path.
“That was so good!” Chloe’s saying, hanging on to Zoe’s arm. Zoe looks far more awake, her own dark eyes sparkling and her short black hair plastered comically across her forehead.
“Wasn’t it? Scary, though. I was sure you were going to fall out, like, a million times.”
“Nah, I was fine. You wouldn’t have let me fall!”
“Well, of course not, but-”
“So, how was that?” murmurs Chan into Felix’s ear, making him jump as the two bickering girls pull ahead of them.
“Oh! Uh, you - well, yeah, it was okay, I guess.”
Chan grins. “Don’t lie. You loved it.”
Felix is about to protest, to tell Chan no, it was awful, he hated it - but he can’t help the smile that creeps onto his face, painted there by the remnants of adrenaline still within him, and he laughs.
“Yeah, I guess. It was alright.”
“See? I told you it wasn’t as bad as you expected.”
“...You didn’t, actually, you goaded me into it by calling me a baby.”
“...Well, I was still right. Technically.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“I know.” Chan grins, and squeezes Felix’s hand. “Come on. Which one do you wanna go on next?”
Which is the part where Felix realises that Chan is still holding on to his hand.
They’re walking through the water park while holding hands.
Felix snatches his hand away, and immediately tries to cover up the movement by pushing his wet hair out of his eyes. His palm is tingling. Chan doesn’t look offended - he’s smirking. Felix’s heart is beating very, very fast - a remnant from the water slide, he’s sure.
“Uh, I don’t know,” he stammers, looking around. “Maybe - maybe something not quite as crazy?”
Chan chuckles. “Sounds good. Let’s find a map.”
And that’s how Felix and Chan end up spending the entire day together at the park. They lose Chloe and Zoe immediately, and rather than waste time trying to find them, Chan suggests that they just roam around together until they potentially run into someone else. They go on another raft slide, one that’s just built for two people that’s significantly less terrifying. Then they go on a solo-ringed slide, and Chan insists that Felix goes first (‘I won’t have you running away once I go down!’) despite Felix’s protestations that that won’t happen. And this one is more Felix’s speed, something fully enclosed and not a million miles in the sky so he manages just fine. The inside of the tube is almost pitch black and decorated with flashing lights that make it feel a bit like he’s going through a wormhole in space.
There are a couple of body slides, but those are pretty tame.
Then there’s a ten foot tall diving board into a ten foot deep pool, and Felix watches a tiny girl launch herself off with absolute reckless abandon.
Felix looks at the pool. Then at Chan. Chan looks at him.
A minute later, in what might be an incredibly stupid decision, Felix is standing ten feet in the air and staring down at the depths of the water below him. Chan’s laughing, goading him, and Felix’s heart is in his chest - then he gathers all his courage and cannonballs into the water.
He comes up with water up his nose, spluttering and eyes streaming, but laughter and joy bubbles in his chest and he throws two thumbs up to Chan as he treads the deep water and feeling much more at home than he thought he ever would.
Lunch is a giant slice of pizza and ice cold cola. They meet up again with Changbin and Hyunjin; the former clearly very much enjoying himself with wet curls plastered to his forehead, and the latter looking somewhat shellshocked. Felix gets the four of them to take a selfie.
They team up for a while, and Chan convinces them to try one of the other four-person rides, and Felix is determined this time to not seem like a total scaredy-cat. Even if this one does look worse than the first. His pride is a little hurt, after all - but it heals when Hyunjin turns a stark shade of white when they reach the top.
“It looks so - steep,” he says faintly, looking down the mouth of the tunnel. This one’s a vibrant turquoise.
“It’ll be fine!” says Felix, confidently (falsely so) sitting down on the raft.
“Come on, Hyune. Don’t be the one to make the walk of shame back down.” Changbin’s eyes twinkle. “Here. I’ll even hold your hand.”
Which does convince Hyunjin to sit down on the ride, which would have been all fine if not for the realisation that this means Felix goes down the first drop fucking backwards.
Chan can’t stop laughing at Felix’s shriek long after they get off. He’d held Felix’s hand through the slide, yes, fair enough, but come on.
And as much as Felix might hate to admit it, he’s a little bit disappointed when Chan lets go.
They end up in the wave pool, clinging desperately to a couple of inflatable rings as they’re tossed about the water like a bouncy wall in a front-loading washing machine. Or something. But it’s fun; there’s a photographer on the side, and Felix grins up at him and flashes a peace sign at the camera.
The afternoon comes around too quickly. Before they know it they’ve spotted the clock on the wall over the entrance, and realised they’ve got only about forty minutes to get the bus home.
“One more?” says Chan, casting a glance over the map at the entrance. “Then we can get changed?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure,” says Felix.
“You’re sure I can’t convince you to do the looping rockets?”
“I’d rather impale myself on a rusty fence post.”
“Ow. Gruesome.”
“Waterslides should not have fucking loops. It’s a fundamental design flaw.”
They’d spotted them earlier. Capsules where the rider goes into a little enclosed compartment, the lid shuts over them, and a second later the floor drops out from beneath them and sends them shooting like a bajillion feet straight down and into an inclined loop.
Safe to say there’s lots of things Felix would much prefer to do.
“Here, let’s go on this one,” says Chan, stabbing his finger at an aerial view of what looks like a snake.
“Okay, sure. Let’s go.”
When they reach the slide in question, it looks kind of innocent at first. Black and red and white stripes give the illusion of snake scales, and the slide twists and turns for a bit, in a way that looks almost tame. Until the slide widens and ends in a sheer, almost completely vertical drop and continues up the other side in a gravity-defying half-pipe.
Felix stops in his tracks.
“Not a fucking chance.”
Chan pauses and looks around. “What?”
“You think I’m getting on that? No way. Not in a million fucking years. How high is that fucking drop?!”
Chan glances up at the half-pipe. “I mean, it’s not that much higher than the first slide we went on.”
“Bullshit. That is - how - how is that even legal? That’s like, a hundred feet straight up.”
“It’s definitely not that high. Twenty, at most.”
“I can’t - no way, that’s ridiculous, I - how are people even going on that? How do you not fall out?! I’m gonna flip out and break my neck and people are going to laugh at me and-”
“Whoa, hey, Felix-”
But Felix is gone now, and he’s panicking, and it’s way too high, he can’t get on there, it’s too much-
“Hey, Lix,” says Chan, his voice uncharacteristically soft and he places his hands on Felix’s waist to steady him. “If you don’t feel up to it, it’s cool. I’ll go alone. Look, they have solo rings.”
Chan’s voice is soft, gentle, as if he’s trying to talk to a young child, or maybe an injured animal. His hands are warm, firm on Felix’s hips.
He’s an incredibly handsome man. A sharp jaw and dark eyes that never seem to stop shining. Plush lips and sharp cheekbones and that sinfully sculpted torso. Felix isn’t dumb to the amount of eyes that have hung out on stalks every time Chan has walked past, isn’t dumb to the people who, even now, can’t keep their eyes away from him as they walk past.
No, not just him. Them. Both of them. Chan’s thumb is rubbing circles on the skin of Felix’s waist.
They’re standing almost nose-to-nose in a waterpark with Chan’s hands on Felix’s waist. They’ve been here before, or somewhere similar. On the beach, when Chan caught him after he hurt his foot.
Felix’s heart starts to do that thing where it starts stuttering erratically, and he’s not entirely sure it’s down to the fear of the ride.
Chan’s eyes trail across Felix’s face as if searching for something.
Felix doesn’t like Chan. Not at all. He’s a dick - he teases, he’s rude, and he gets Felix all embarrassed and flustered.
And he’s got strong hands and bought Felix ice cream and held his hands on waterslides when he got scared-
And Chan has an Australian accent and smells of sunscreen and it hits Felix all at once that he smells and sounds like some version of home that he hasn’t had in a long time-
There are butterflies in Felix’s stomach.
Oh.
“Are you gonna wait for me then?”
It takes Felix a second to process that Chan’s asking him about waiting at the bottom of the slide, and not something else entirely.
“No, it’s fine. Uh - I will - uh, I’ll come on the - and we can-”
“Hey. I’ll hold your hand again, if you want.”
Felix scowls. And then nods. And he had fully meant for Chan to hold his hand on the ride to stop him from falling out, but for some reason, Chan takes his hand and starts to pull him up the stairs towards the queue, and then they’re two boys holding hands in a waterpark and Felix doesn’t actually want him to let go.
In a way, it’s a good thing that the slide starts off reasonably tame. If they were standing on the precipice of the half pipe drop, Felix might just faint.
They get in; Felix at the front, Chan at the back. The attendant tells them to hold on tight. Felix might be about to shit himself - Chan has to let go to take his own handles on the tube, and Felix laments the loss, and then they’re moving down the slide, and Felix realises what a horrible idea it was to sit at the front.
They’re approaching the lip of the half pipe. The drop looks even taller than it did from the ground. Felix screws his eyes shut and holds on for dear life. And then, an awful swoop, and he’s in freefall and he’s screaming his lungs out, and Chan’s cackling behind him like a maniac and then they’re going up again, and back down and it might never stop and he’s being sprayed with water and-
The ring comes to a slow halt, and Felix is finally brave enough to open his eyes.
He survived.
He heaves himself out of the tube and immediately falls over because his legs have decided to turn to jelly. He slips on his knees, and then he feels Chan’s hand again hoisting him to his feet. He stumbles sideways, and his shoulder meets Chan’s chest, and they’re walking off the slide.
“I hate you,” Felix manages to gasp out as his feet hit the concrete. “I - so much, I hate you so much. That was awful.”
Chan just laughs. “Aw, but you were so brave! Even if you did scream like a little baby.”
“Asshole.”
It's a quick shower in the changing rooms to rinse off the chlorine, and they pull their clothes back on, and make it outside with fifteen minutes to spare. Everyone else is already packed and ready to go - Jeongin looks particularly sunburned - and evidently impatiently waiting for Felix and Chan.
“God, there you are,” sighs Hyunjin, bending to pick up his bag. “Come on. We’re gonna miss the bus.”
Chan checks his phone. “No, we’re not. We’ve got fifteen minutes. And I wanna go look at the photographs.”
“But-”
“Five minutes. Max. I promise. Lix, you coming?”
“Uh… yeah, sure.” Felix doesn’t quite see the look of surprise - and glee - on his friends’ faces as he follows Chan to the photo stand.
Most of the pictures have already been printed off, and are hanging in rows along a display wall, sorted by which ride they were from. Felix can’t find any at first - there are way too many people - and then Chan taps him on the shoulder, grinning.
“Look here - look at Zoe’s face!”
And sure enough, there’s a photo from the very first slide, of the four of them coming down on the raft. The camera’s angle has caught Chan’s profile, but Zoe looks like she might have been possessed - Felix’s clearly screaming in fear, and Chloe’s head is thrown back and she could be laughing.
Chan picks the photo off the shelf. Then he finds another photo; this time, of him and Felix on another slide. Then another. And another.
“Are you getting all of these?” says Felix, bewildered, as he watches Chan head up to the counter with a stack of photos in his hand.
“Well, yeah. Of course.” He pays for the photos. Then, he hands a couple of them to Felix. “Here. For you.”
“What?”
“So you can remember our date.” Felix looks; he’s been handed the photo of them in the wave pool, and the photo of them coming down the very last slide - his face scrunched up, screaming as they come down the slide, and Chan laughing in delight. He doesn’t actually process what Chan said about their date until they’re halfway towards the bus.
He surely meant ‘day’, right? Not date? This wasn’t a date. Right?
Before they can clamber onto the bus, Chloe taps Felix on the back.
“Oh. Chloe. Hey.”
“Hey, Lix,” says Chloe, lowering her voice and looping her arm through Felix’s. She pulls him to the side, leaving space for everyone to climb aboard.
“So? What’s the tea?” she whispers.
“Tea? What tea?”
Chloe scoffs. “Don’t be like that. Chan. You’ve not left his side all day.”
“Uh - yeah, of course I was? Like, you guys basically abandoned us.”
“And, you were holding hands.”
“I was - y’know. Scared of the rides.”
“Sure. And I guess the fact that you spent all your time with him today meant-”
“Look, I don’t know what you think is going on,” starts Felix, feeling a prickle of annoyance start to climb up his spine. “But I know what you’re suggesting, and it’s nothing like that.”
“So guy friends just hold hands now, do they?”
“Why not? Girls hold hands all the time. He’s just - I don’t know, being supportive or whatever.”
Chloe rolls her eyes. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Just drop it, okay? You’re just - you’re imagining things.”
“But-”
“Get on the bus, Chlo. It’s about to leave.”
Chloe mutters something under her breath that Felix doesn’t quite catch, but he’s got a point - the queue to get on the bus has died down, and it’s one minute until their departure time. Felix climbs on in a hurry, that annoyance still prickling at him.
He makes his way down the aisle of the bus as the engine starts. Chan lifts his hand, and stands up.
“Hey. I saved you the window seat.”
Felix can feel Chloe’s eyes on the back of his head as he sits down, burning, and tries to ignore the fluttering in his stomach.
~
Felix doesn’t actually see any of Chan over the next week and a bit, which is a good thing. It gives him time to get over those weird goddamn fluttering feelings that he’s been… well, feeling.
Jisung and Felix go out for lunch. Chloe calls him to make sure that he’s all ready for the beach party next week. Hyunjin drags him to the gym with the excuse of ‘actually doing some exercise this summer’, but really it’s just to ogle Changbin on the bench press. They catch Seungmin and Jeongin making out in the locker room, and this is the second time that it’s happened now.
He doesn’t run into Chan. And he doesn’t make any plans to meet up with him, or anything. Because he’s not at all into him, like Chloe was suggesting. Sure, they text a bit. Chan tells Felix about his college course, and Felix tells Chan about his. They discuss the trailer for a new action film that’s due to come out. Felix learns that Chan’s really into Genshin Impact, and practically hounds him for them to play together one night.
Chan’s just easy to talk to.
Like, really easy to talk to.
He doesn’t even realise when it turns from texts to phone calls until he’s lying on his bed one day, halfway through a rant about the different colours of butterfly wings and how different wings look different in UV light (Chan just sits and listens politely). And then they’re calling two, three, four times a day. Chan calls Felix to talk about recipes while he’s cooking dinner. Felix calls Chan when he finds a new song or musician that he likes.
And after a few days, despite knowing good and well that Chloe was just reading into something that isn’t really there, Felix finds himself checking his phone every time he receives a message or a phone call - and being disappointed if it’s from someone else.
It doesn’t mean anything. And the strange warm feeling inside him whenever Chan does call or message him doesn’t mean anything, either. They’ve just become friends, now. And friends call each other all the time.
But he really liked holding Chan’s hand.
Felix groans and rolls onto his back on his bed, throwing his phone across the room.
Chan’s been on his brain almost constantly. And it’s really starting to annoy him.
It annoys him that Chan seems to know exactly what buttons to press to get him riled up, and then exactly how to calm him down afterwards. He’s like a goddamn piece of putty in the guy’s hands - and he’s still not entirely sure how Chan got him to go on that many slides at the waterpark. Insistence and bullying, maybe, but there was a little of something else. It’s not that he wanted to prove to Chan that he isn’t the scaredy cat that he saw on the grass at the carnival (well, not entirely).
Chan is on his mind because Chloe put the idea in his head. Obviously.
He should call Chloe. Ask her out on that date he’s been meaning to ask her on all this time.
He climbs off his bed and towards where his phone had landed in a pile of dirty laundry.
Where are they gonna go? What are they gonna do?
Chloe loves Japanese food, particularly desserts. She loves collecting stationary, and she can’t keep a potted plant alive to save her life. She has a bunny rabbit back at her parent’s house. She loves romcoms and really cheap, shitty horror films.
Felix knows so much about her. He’s had a crush on her for so long, after all, and on top of that they’re still really good friends - of course he knows what her favourite food is.
And then Felix remembers that Chan also really likes Japanese food, and all at once he finds his knees collapsing underneath his body and he ends up sinking to the floor with his heart racing.
Chan likes video games - not as much as Felix does, of course, but he mains Wriothesley in Genshin Impact and will happily listen to Felix venting about League of Legends. He’s a complete wimp when it comes to horror films and has to hide behind the sofa if ever his roommates put one on. He has two siblings and a family dog whom he would give the world if he could. He can’t handle spicy food. He only wears black clothes. He loves the gym, and he loves music, and he loves people.
Felix’s not sure when he realised that all this knowledge about Chan entered his brain, or when all these thoughts started happening about him and not Chloe - but they are. And maybe they have been for a while.
So he lies there on his floor. And thinks. And thinks some more. And the more he thinks, the more the uncertainty, uncomfortable feeling grows within him. He pulls out his phone and looks at Chloe’s Instagram feed. There’s a new one there, one of Zoe kissing Chloe on the cheek - cute - and Felix feels his heart flutter at how pretty Chloe looks.
He feels his heart flutter.
Come on, heart. Flutter, dammit.
Please, heart.
He closes her Instagram profile with shaky hands. And sits up to look at his desk. He finds the picture of him and Chan in the water park, in the wave pool - Felix throwing a peace sign at the camera. His other hand is reaching across to Chan’s inflatable ring, holding the handle so they don’t drift apart in the chaos of the waves. Chan’s hand is over Felix’s. He’s not looking at the camera - he’s smiling at Felix.
Felix’s heart flutters.
For real, this time.
In the Netflix series ‘Heartstopper’, there’s a scene where one of the characters takes an online test to see if he’s gay or not. When Felix had watched it with Jisung, he’d snorted - of course it’s easy to know if you’re gay or not, and besides, it’s not as if an online quiz is gonna tell you that.
But now Felix isn’t so sure.
He turns the photo over, face down on the desk. He sits back down on his bed, and pulls out his phone.
“Hey, Lix!”
“Hey, Chan.”
He’s got no reason to be anxious about calling Chan. None at all. They’ve called a bunch of times over the last week or so - he doesn’t have a goddamn crush on the guy, and he’s going to prove it.
“What’s up?”
“I - well, you know. The sky?”
Chan cackles down the phone - an explosive, sudden burst of laughter, and Felix closes his eyes and swears at himself internally, because what the fuck was that?
“You’re calling me just to make dumb jokes now?”
“Um, no, I - that’s not the only reason, no.”
“Oh? Oh, I get it - you missed me and just wanted to hear my sweet voice, right?”
“Ha, no, of course not,” says Felix weakly. “Uh, I was just - you know. Wanted to see about your plans for Chloe’s party on Friday.”
“Oh, cool - yes, the plans. Well, she’s asked me and ‘Bin to sort the music, and Hyunjin - hell, I think he’s just going to stand there and look pretty. I’m gonna drive everyone there and back - what about you?”
“Well, Minho’s driving us there - I assume he’ll drive us back, if he’s not wasted. But Chloe’s also got some crazy idea about camping on the beach.”
“I’m sure there’ll be room on my lap if you need it.”
“Ha. Or, you know. The spare seat.”
“You’re no fun.”
“But, apart from that - uh, I’ve got some baking to do. I’m thinking some brownies, some cookies- I need to get started on that soon, really.”
“Do you want me to take you to the grocery store? We can do some baking? It feels like it’s been too long since I’ve seen you.”
“It’s been a week.”
“Exactly. Too long. What do you say?”
“Uh, sure? When?”
“This afternoon. I’ll pick you up.”
And the line goes dead.
It takes a couple of seconds for Felix to process what’s actually happened.
The original mission: have a normal conversation with Chan.
Felix presses his palms to his cheeks. They feel like they’re on fire. And he’s not even going to begin to consider the way his heart did That Thing when Chan suggested he sit on his lap.
And now he’s going shopping with Chan in a handful of hours, and he’s not even sure how that happened.
How is he supposed to dress for a trip to go grocery shopping? He’s still wearing his blue and grey chequered pyjama pants and a faded old band t-shirt. Are jeans okay? Can he wear sweatpants? A button-down?
He leans forward and thuds his forehead against the leg of his desk. Get it together, Felix. It’s a grocery store, not the Met Gala. He pulls his favourite black jeans from the pile of clean clothing on his desk chair and his favourite red-check flannel, and tries to convince himself that he doesn’t have to fuss about his hair.
He finds himself waiting on the side of the road long before Chan has even texted to say that he’s on his way, the soles of his feet feeling like they’re filled with bees.
Why is he nervous to see Chan?
He’s not, is the answer. Obviously.
Eventually Chan pulls up, honking the horn and making Felix jump out of his skin. The window rolls down, and Chan peers out.
“Taxi for a cutie?”
He has got to stop doing shit like that.
“Hey,” says Felix, climbing into the passenger seat with unsteady knees.
Chan glances over, eyes crinkling in a soft smile. “Hey.” He looks comfortable today. Baggy jeans that hang loose on his hips and an oversized hoodie with a faded white text print that reads ‘CEEBS’.
He looks soft.
“Alright,” Chan says, glancing over with that now-familiar look in his eye. “What’s on the shopping list today?”
“Uh,” says Felix, helpfully. “Well, I’ve got a few things I’d like to make, and a list of ingredients. Usual stuff like flour, sugar, butter-”
“What are you making?”
“Well - cookies. Brownies, too-”
“Obviously.”
Felix rolls his eyes. “And maybe some rice krispie treats, and some fruit skewers. And I was thinking about trying to make some matcha shortbread, too.”
“That is… a hell of a lot of treats,” says Chan, his face slightly pale. “Are you going to be able to afford all of that? Or… the time to make it?”
“I mean, it’s not that much,” says Felix, shrugging. “Not really, anyway.”
“Lix, you’re talking about bring five sets of treats for, like, dozens of people. You’re going to spend the next couple of days making hundreds of things.”
“...well, when you put it like that-”
“Cut it down to three,” says Chan, turning a corner. “Three things, and you’re limited to one tray of each.”
“That is nowhere near enough!”
“Other people are bringing stuff too, right? You don’t need to provide for the whole party.”
“...I guess.”
“Exactly.” Chan eyes Felix from the corner of his eye. “So. Cookies. Brownies. And… matcha shortbread?”
“But the krispie treats-”
“-you can buy big packs of them for dirt cheap. If you’re going to go to the trouble of making something, make sure it’s not just something you can buy in any old supermarket. What flavour of cookie?”
“Chocolate chip? It’s a classic.”
“But again, you could just buy some. Why not do something different?”
“Well what do you suggest, then?”
“...How about white chocolate and macadamia?”
Felix, despite himself, feels a small smile grow on his lips. “Oh, I get it. You’re asking me to make that for you, aren’t you?”
“Well. It’s been a while.” Chan pauses. “We can get macadamia nuts over here, but it’s not the same. Whenever I go home I get a bag to bring back with me.”
“I have some, I think. Mum sends me care packages all the time - more than I need. I’ve still got a pack of TimTams left.”
Chan shoots him a sparkling sort of look. “Oh, I am so coming to yours afterwards. Those TimTams are mine.”
Felix just laughs and goes to shove Chan in the side.
The sun is on a mid-afternoon trajectory by the time they pull into the parking lot; bright, still high in the sky, but the shadows are just starting to stretch across the tarmac. Chan jumps out and grabs a shopping cart - then they’re inside.
The store stretches out before them, a massive almost-warehouse with towering shelves and exposed concrete flooring and fluorescent lights hanging from an industrial cross-barred ceiling. It’s huge.
“Come on, trouble,” says Chan, materialising next to Felix with a cart. “Get in. I’ll push you down the aisles.”
“Huh? Oh, hell no. We’re gonna get in so much trouble.”
“Boo. You’re no fun.”
Felix’s stomach is in knots as Chan starts down one of the aisles. He doesn’t think he’s eaten anything that disagrees with him, so he’s not sure why he feels so jittery, a charged wire ready to zap anything that comes too close to him. It’s not like he hasn’t even been here before to stock up on the bulk-buy ramen, but right now, everything just feels way too big, and way too intimidating.
Chan turns, noticing Felix lagging behind, and gestures for him to follow. “Come here, trouble. I need that shopping list.”
As it turns out, when Chan had said ‘I’ll help you’, what he really meant by that was ‘I’ll do all the work for you’. He takes one glance at Felix’s shopping list, and then he’s off across the many aisles of the supermarket like he’s been equipped with a homing beacon.
They end up in the baking aisle and Chan barely needs to glance at the list before he’s throwing bags of flour and sugar with a reckless sort of abandon. He doesn’t even stop to ask Felix’s opinion on what type of chocolate he needs, and even manages to find a pot of reasonably nice matcha for the shortbread.
Then Felix spots a sparkly pink sweater with a puppy’s face embroidered on the front from the little girl’s clothing section. They’ve technically finished, and they’re on their way to the checkout, but…
“Hey, Chan. What do you think? For Chloe’s party?”
Chan’s gaze follows Felix’s finger, and when it lands on the sweater, he snorts.
“Oh, that’s pretty.” He does a complete 180 and starts to head straight towards the sweater. “Oh, yeah, definitely my colour. What do you think?” he asks, picking up the sweater and holding it against his chest.
Felix imagines what he’d look like in it - and snorts. The image is ridiculous.
“I don’t know. A bit small, maybe?” he says, poking at the hem against Chan’s stomach. It barely looks like it would reach Chan bellybutton. Which would mean that it would show off those ridiculous washboard abs. All of sudden, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“Are you saying I’m big? Lix, I’m hurt-”
“You’re a grown man, dumbass.”
“Jury’s still out on the whole ‘grown’ thing, honestly.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
Chan grins. And he launches the sweater at Felix’s head.
“Hey!”
“Last one to the checkout’s carrying the bags!” And before Felix can even register what the hell is happening, Chan is speeding off down the aisle. Felix shouts and takes off after him - Chan veers a corner, decidedly not in the direction of the checkout, and Felix skids around the corner after him - Chan’s cackling, balancing off the edge of the cart as if it were a scooter and all Felix has to keep up is his little legs-
They turn another corner and Chan skids to halt, almost crashing into a towering display of potato chips. A granny with a bright orange bag on wheels glares at them.
“Hey! No running in the store!” A voice calls out from behind them, and Felix glances over his shoulder, panicked, to see an annoyed-looking security guard glaring at them from near the canned peas.
“C’mon, trouble,” whispers Chan, grabbing Felix’s hand and pulling him around the next corner. Felix’s heart jumps at the touch. They veer back into the baking aisle with an aura of feigned nonchalance, and only manage to hold it together until they’re out of sight of the security guard among the shelves of flour and sugar, when they both collapse into fits of giggles.
“I told you we’d get in trouble!”
“That guy had a stick up his butt.”
“We nearly crashed!”
“But we didn’t!” Chan’s grin hasn’t left his face since they raced away from the clothing section. “Come on. Lix. You need to - brighten up.”
Felix looks. Chan has let go of the cart, and is holding a tub of vibrantly coloured rainbow sprinkles.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Come on. Are you saying I don’t make your life more-” and he puts the sprinkles down, and reaches for a little bottle of pink food colouring. “-colourful?”
“Chan.”
“Felix!”
And Felix can’t help the swelling fit of laughter he’s trying, and very much failing, to hold back. The look on Chan’s face is part-shit eating grin and part heart-meltingly sincere. He squeezes Felix’s hand - and Felix realises that Chan let go of the cart before letting go of Felix’s hand.
His heart’s doing That Funny Thing again.
“We really should, probably get going,” he says, and he mentally kicks himself when his voice comes out all breathy.
“Suit yourself, trouble.”
Felix’s stomach hurts, and so do his cheeks. But he can’t bring himself to care, not with the way Chan keeps glancing at him, not with the way his hand feels.
The air is cooler by the time they step outside.
“Thank you, by the way,” says Felix as they start to approach Chan’s car.
“Why are you thanking me?”
“For - you know. Helping me out.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” says Chan, shrugging. They reach his car. “We still have baking to do.”
“...You’re coming to help me?”
“But of course. What, you thought I was just going to abandon you with all of this? Hell no. I want to eat the cookie batter, for a start. And like I said, I’ve got those TimTams waiting for me.”
“Waiting for you? Not a chance.”
Chan just cackles.
~
Felix is so incredibly nervous as Minho drives them to the beach on Friday evening.
I mean, it makes sense. Chloe’s hosting this event - she’s put so much hard work into it already - and he really, really wants it to pay off. He’s got his plastic tubs of cookies and brownies and shortbreads, all stacked up neatly next to him on the back seat. And he’s desperately trying not to think about how Chan had invited himself back and helped, and how he’d stuck his tongue right into the bowl of brownie mixture and how he’d dusted flour over Felix’s face and how there had been a smear of melted chocolate over his lip and Felix’s brain had supplied itself with the ridiculous idea of licking it off and then he had hidden in the bathroom for ten minutes and panicked.
Jisung has wedged a galvanised steel tub that rattles with a selection of glass bottles next to Felix, and Minho’s loaded his trunk full of decorations. He’s also supplied a couple of different baked treats, and Felix realises (if a little begrudgingly) that Chan definitely had a point about baking fewer things than Felix had originally planned.
They’ll be at the beach pretty early, before the party’s supposed to start, and the sun is starting to get low on the horizon. They’re not quite yet at golden hour, but the shadows are long, and everything is cast in the gentle hue of yellow that signifies the near-imminent burning of the horizon as the sun approaches it.
When Felix was little, he believed that the reason the sky turned into that mesmerising canvas of gold and crimson was because the clouds were actually on fire. That the oxygen in the sky was burning, burning away to make way for the wash of night sky and its glittering stars.
He’d never quite figured out how the oxygen and the blue skies appeared in the morning, nor how the people on Earth didn’t suffocate during the night, but there are some gaps in logic that the brain of a primary-schooler doesn’t mind missing out.
Chan would probably like that fact about him.
He coughs and straightens his back in the back seat of Minho’s car. Thankfully, Jisung and Minho are both in the front and paying him little to no attention, and even if they were, he’s incredibly grateful that they can’t see the inside of his brain.
He really wishes the trip to the store and the following baking incident had solved the stupid conundrum happening inside his head. That spending a bit of time alone with Chan, doing a task as menial as shopping, something as focused as baking, would have helped to fix some of the goddamn confusion.
It obviously didn’t. It’s been one of the most fun moments of Felix’s summer. It was also, he had realised shortly afterwards, the first time he’d really made the choice to spend some time alone with Chan, and not just as an offshoot of a larger group.
He’d liked it. He’d enjoyed it, spending time with Chan one-on-one. And as much as he hates to admit it to himself, he realised that he does actually quite like Chan.
Not like that, obviously. Duh. He just likes spending time with the guy, because all the teasing and silliness aside, he’s fun. And nice. And handsome. And yeah, he’s aware that maybe Chan likes him - it would explain his behaviour - and then his heart starts to do That Funny Thing again and he thinks he might be sick all over the back seat of Minho’s car.
But they’re too close to the beach for Felix to ask Minho to turn around. Because Minho would, and that’s the thing - he would drive Felix all the way back, even if Jisung would make fun of him the whole time and tell him that he should just walk back. But considering that Felix’s feet are tingling and his stomach is churning, he probably wouldn’t take much convincing to actually walk the twenty miles or whatever it is back home. If he starts now, he could make it back by Sunday.
Oh, grow up. He pinches himself, yelps - earns a very strange look in the mirror from Jisung - and then a few moments later, just as pure gold light starts to bounce off the glittering swathe of crystal blue that is the ocean, they pull into the parking lot.
Noise and music and laughter already swell from a distance, and the party isn’t supposed to start until 9pm - well into the twilight hours. The beach is far away enough from the city that light pollution is minimal - and there are a few clouds, but otherwise, it’s looking to be a clear night. Chloe’s been praying for good weather all week; hoping that the stars will be out, twinkling away as they drink and dance and laugh and enjoy their time just before summer comes to an end.
Chloe’s already standing in the sand, looking gorgeous in the golden light, the yellow outfit she picked out with Felix all those weeks ago radiant on her tanned skin. Her hair is straight, she’s pushed it back with a turquoise headband that matches her seaglass necklace and earrings - she looks older, somehow. More mature - she’s always been soft and glowy, gentle around the edges in her pink lace - but this evening, watching intently as a couple of their friends struggle to erect bamboo poles with strings of paper lanterns between them, she looks absolutely incredible.
And Felix doesn’t feel anything when he looks at her.
He shakes himself out of his stupid brainspace and follows after Minho and Jisung, who are struggling with the galvanised steel tub between them. Jeongin materialises and places himself in the middle to support the weight. Felix isn’t struggling nearly as much, though the balanced tupperware is a little precarious in his arms. Chloe directs him towards the ‘snacks and drinks’ area, and as beautiful as she looks, her hair is a little frazzled and she’s clearly a bit stressed about everything.
The tables are slanted slightly due to the uneven level of the sand, despite the bamboo mats underneath to try and stabilise them. There are a plethora of low chairs and tables nearby, and a couple of people - namely, Seungmin - are sitting in them already with a drink in hand, not bothering to help finish the set up as the sun finally touches the horizon.
There’s so much food. So many drinks. Felix sets out his own offerings amongst trays of miniature tacos, slices of pizza, multiple bowls of chips and multiple dips, platters of chicken wings and skewers or grilled shrimp, platters of fresh slices of watermelon and pineapple and mango…
There are multiple dispensers full of different drink concoctions, multiple huge jugs of lemonade and tropical fruit punch, several buckets filled with ice with bottles of beers, cans of seltzers and sodas, and of course there’s Jisung big steel tub and Jisung is giggling as he pours in a bottle of vodka and one of white rum-
Fairy lights are strung everywhere, draped over bamboo poles and wrapped around palm trees. A makeshift dance floor—a stretch of sand a little farther down the beach—has been marked off with shells on all sides, right next to a growing stack of wood for the bonfire. Scattered nearby are cushions, beanbags, woven mats, and elegant boho lanterns, with a large gazebo adorned with flowers and more fairy lights. Inside, it’s filled with cushions and blankets laid over a tarpaulin - something Chloe had suggested weeks ago for them to curl up in at the end of the night and watch the sunrise together.
As the party takes shape, time slips by, and before Felix realizes it, the sun has dipped below the horizon. The sky fades into the soft darkness of evening as more and more people arrive. Soon, the beach is packed, and Felix finds himself standing by the drinks table, holding a cup of Jisung’s jungle juice, completely stunned. He had no idea Chloe knew this many people.
Suddenly, music blares, triggering a cheer from the crowd. Changbin is at the makeshift DJ booth near the dance floor - which is really just a folding table holding a laptop and soundboard, with speakers plugged in, one of them sinking slightly into the sand. Felix doesn’t know how they’re powering it all, but music is definitely playing.
Felix nervously clutches his cup of jungle juice, unable to even take a sip. He hasn’t eaten all day, though the sight of all the food only makes him feel queasy. He hasn’t spotted Chan yet - not that he’s looking for him, of course. Definitely not.
He tugs at the hem of his shirt.
He’d spent a long, long time trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to wear. It’s too warm for jeans, even at night, and he couldn’t really afford to buy any new fancy loose pants. Shorts and a sleeveless shirt seemed too casual, and his sneakers were a bad idea and his socks are already filled with sand.
So he’d ended up with white shorts and a loose black short-sleeved shirt with a swirly sort of pattern in muted colours. The top few buttons are undone, of course, and it’s sort of half-tucked into his shorts; a delicate gold chain glints around his neck. He did bring his sunglasses, and they’re perched on top of his head. It’s nighttime. The sunglasses might have been a dumb idea.
He scans the crowd again. Where is Chan? Changbin and Hyunjin are both here, and Chan had said he was driving - it’s not like him to resist popping up next to Felix and teasing him about something. Not that Felix cares. Obviously.
His stomach is churning and his heart is pounding because he’s - uh, maybe coming down a cold? Definitely. He lifts his cup to his lips but only pretends to take a sip, because maybe he is about to be sick, because where the hell is-
“Nice sunglasses.”
The smooth, warm tone sounds right at Felix’s ear, and sends a strange shiver down his spine that takes him a second to process - it both settles that churning in his stomach and speeds up his already erratic pulse, and he turns to come face-the-face with a smirking Chan.
“Afraid the moon might be a bit bright for you?” says Chan, gently tapping on the arm of the sunglasses perched on Felix’s head.
“Nice to see you too,” says Felix, batting away Chan’s hand. Chan just chuckles.
“Here.” And Chan proffers Felix an ice cream.
Felix takes it, his hand shaking. It’s brownie flavoured. It tastes just as great as the first one Chan got him. Better, even.
Chan looks fantastic. He’s got a sharp-jawed narrow-eyed floppy-haired thing going on - Felix thinks, and not for the first time, that he wouldn’t be out of place on the front cover of a magazine. He’s wearing loose-fit pants. An oversized black button-down with sleeves that come to the elbows, covered in swirly silver patterns. He smells absolutely divine - Felix isn’t sure what cologne he wears, but it’s warm, and woodsy, and Felix has to remember that he’s not actually allowed to stick his nose in the man’s collarbone to take a whiff. That’s what, like, serial killers do.
Several moments have passed, and Felix has spent most of them with an ice cream in one hand, jungle juice in the other, and he’s been staring at the exposed sliver of skin of Chan’s clavicle. Felix takes a quick sip of his drink to pretend like he’s not suddenly been caught on one frame of a film like an old DVD, and he has to inhale sharply because, damn, what did Jisung put in this? Is there any mixer at all?
Chan chuckles and takes a lick of his own ice cream.
“So, have you tried any of our baking yet?”
“No, not yet. It’s over on the table, but - I’m not really hungry.”
“I can’t wait to try those cookies, you know,” says Chan warmly. “I’m still mad you didn’t let me eat any the other day.”
“They had to cool!”
“Still. It was a fun day, though.”
“...we weren’t exactly doing much, you know.”
“Yeah. But I spent it with you.”
Felix covers up the butterflies that the statement elicits with an eyeroll and another sip of his drink. “Ha ha.”
Chan doesn’t look convinced by Felix’s feigned nonchalance. He raises his eyebrows, lifts his own ice cream back to his mouth, and turns to stare out across the beach with an annoying little smirk on his face. Felix grumbles, his cheeks heating up, and stares out across the party.
People are dancing. Others are milling around the food and drinks, with cups and plates and bottles in their hands. Felix hasn’t quite had enough to drink to join in - he takes another hurried sip of his drink.
Chloe’s standing on the edge of the dancefloor beneath a string of fairy lights. She’s watching the crowd of moving bodies with a plastic wine glass in her hand filled with sparkling prosecco - the music is loud and the night is warm, and the stars are sparkling overhead.
“She did a great job, didn’t she?” Chan’s voice cuts into Felix’s thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Insane. I couldn’t have planned something like this in a million years.”
“She looks lovely.”
Felix doesn’t even think about his answer. “Of course. She always does.”
As he watches, Chloe blinks and looks around. Then her eyes light up - Zoe is walking towards her, looking unusually pretty in a slender black dress underneath a denim jacket, holding two clear plastic cups of something clear and fizzy.
“You still haven’t made a move on her.”
Something twists uncomfortably in Felix’s stomach. “Oh. No. I guess not.”
“Any reason why?”
“Uh… I don’t know.”
“You’re shy?”
“I’m not shy. I just - I’ve never found the right moment.”
“It’s a lovely night. There’s music, drinks, it’s perfectly atmospheric - this could be the right moment. No?”
Felix turns to Chan, ready to ask him what he’s playing at, only to be met with Chan’s intense gaze staring him down. The butterflies return, more insistent this time. It is the perfect night for a confession, the kind that comes after a year of holding onto feelings, in the very place Chloe has poured her heart into for everyone to enjoy.
But Chan is still looking at him.
Felix’s heart pounds. He quickly breaks eye contact and downs the rest of his drink in one long gulp. The alcohol burns as it slides down his throat, the citric acid from the fruit juice biting at his tongue, and the ice clacks loudly against his teeth. Almost instantly, the buzz hits him hard, making his head spin.
“Come on.” He turns towards the drinks bar for a refill. “Let’s try these cookies.”
And so Chan obliges.
They’re delicious.
Macadamia is a nut native to Australia - specifically to the South West region, and they’re nutty (duh) but slightly creamy and taste oh-so-distinctly of a childhood growing up under the Australian sun. And Chan clearly thinks so, too, as his eyes flutter closed when he takes his first bite, and Felix has to stop himself from staring at the way his throat bobs when he swallows.
The sun is completely down, now, but the moon hasn’t risen yet. The sky is dark, but the stars are out; they blaze in the distance, twinkling like tiny diamonds. Felix wonders if somewhere out there, on one of those distant planets, there’s a little blue alien boy sitting on a beach, staring back at Earth.
Chan has to disappear to the sound deck for a moment, and for a time he and Changbin stand up there conducting pulses through the air like a pair that were made to make music together. Felix takes pride of place in front of the sound desk, the sand squishing beneath his sneakers.
The alcohol takes him quickly. He’s always been a light drinker, and he finds himself light and floaty before long. His friends appear and he hugs them and then they disappear again.
Chan beams from where he stands at the deck. He’s jostling with Changbin, he’s grinning the whole time, and he keeps looking up at Felix. He looks stunning in the low light; the fairy lights twinkle and they illuminate the sharp cut of his jaw, his stupidly kissable lips, and then Felix shoves that thought somewhere deep, deep down inside him. Chan’s loose clothing doesn’t reveal much, but Felix doesn’t need to guess. He knows exactly what’s hidden beneath - a strong torso, the toning of the muscles, the ridiculous definition of his biceps and the veins that lead down to his hands.
Then Chan claps Changbin on the back and heads down to rejoin Felix, and they get another drink.
And then another. They shift between the beanbags and the dancefloor. Jisung has been pulled onto the decks, and he’s really good, and Changbin has joined Hyunjin on the dancefloor - Jeongin and Seungmin have disappeared. Several people have run down to the water with a couple of torches. There’s a dark corner where it’s hard to tell where one person ends and the other begins.
Felix’s vision starts to blur. He can feel the blood in his ears - he’s kicked his shoes off, and he’s not sure where they went. The sand is soft between his toes.
He finds himself sitting on a beanbag. Maybe he fell asleep for a moment, or several - the music’s different.
Chan is nearby, watching the festivities.
Felix wants to reach out and touch him.
He’s so handsome in the low light.
Felix wonders again how soft his lips are.
Felix startles into full consciousness and tries to stand up - he fails, the beanbag falling sideways on the sand. Chan stumbles over and catches him. His fingertips are soft on Felix’s arm.
The music changes again. It’s growing colder, now - and then hot, and the crackling of the bonfire calls Felix over.
There are people asleep on beanbags, on the scattered cushions, underneath the gazebo. It’s quieter. The music’s changed. Or maybe it’s stopped.
The waves crash on the beach in the distance. Jeongin shivers, his hair wet - Seungmin holds a towel around his shoulders as they lean into the warmth of the bonfire. Felix laughs and throws himself backwards to lie down, spilling the contents of his cup everywhere. He’s warm.
His head lands in Chan’s lap. It was an accident, he swears. He knew Chan was behind him. Just slightly to the right, leaning back on a cushion. His hands are sandy - it doesn’t matter, not as it comes to rest in Felix’s hair.
This is where Felix likes to be.
Maybe he falls asleep again. But he blinks, and the flames of the bonfire have died down. And the sky is a strange colour.
The sun comes up by 5am in the summer. Or maybe it’s 4am or maybe it’s 6am, Felix doesn’t know. It’s milkier now, and the stars are fading. Have they really been here all night?
Chan’s hand is still in Felix’s hair. He yawns and moves to sit up, and Chan’s hand moves down to rest on Felix’s back, and Felix already laments the loss of warmth.
By god, he’s stiff. His mouth is dry, and there’s a pain behind his left eye.
“Water,” he mumbles. Chan nods. Felix isn’t surprised when Chan follows him to the food and drink tables.
The contents of the tables are entirely decimated. Felix’s tupperware is empty. So is Jisung’s steel tub, save for the last few remaining chunks of fruit. It takes some searching, but he eventually locates one last untouched pack of water, and opens a bottle, and by God he needed that.
He shivers. They say it’s always coldest before the dawn, and without any sort of jacket and bare legs, Felix starts to understand why. Or maybe it’s ‘darkest’ before the dawn. That doesn’t make as much sense, because the sun’s not up yet, and it’s lighter than it was an hour ago. It’s not quite bright, not yet - the stars are still visible. But they’re disappearing rapidly as dawn approaches.
“I’ve always loved the stars,” says Felix.
Chan looks at him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Felix points. “That’s Ursa Major - the great bear. That bit’s called the Big Dipper.” He traces the pattern in the sky. “It’s highest in the sky in Spring. You can only really see it from the Northern Hemisphere. And Ursa Minor is just there, next to it. Look, you can follow it from its tail - Polaris. The North Star.” He turns. “That incredibly bright one there, that’s Sirius. The brightest star in the sky. You can’t usually see it in summer - only in the two or so hours just before dawn.”
“... I’ll be honest, I’m really not sure what you’re pointing at.”
“Look, that one.” Felix moves so he’s standing next to Chan, and lifts his arm to guide his finger to direct it towards the star. Everything else is fading rapidly. “Just there. On the horizon.”
“The really bright one?”
“Exactly.”
They watch for a moment.
“It’s pretty special that we can see it now then, right?”
“Very.”
The light in the sky grows - the few remaining stars start to twinkle out.
“I miss the Southern Cross the most,” says Felix softly. “At home, I would sit out under the stars all night if I could. It was always my favourite. I get sad, sometimes, when I remember that I can’t see it here.”
“When was the last time you went back?”
“Easter. I nearly went back this summer, but - things fell through.”
“Same here.” Chan pauses. “Maybe we should go back together one day.”
Felix’s knees feel weak. “Yeah.” Then he shivers.
“You’re cold.” Chan moves and wraps his arm around Felix. “We gotta get you a blanket.”
“I’m okay.”
Chan draws his arm tighter. Felix feels strange tingling in the soles of his feet. The waves crash onto the shore.
“Tonight’s been really fun,” says Chan softly.
“Yeah. It has.”
“Chloe’s done amazingly.”
“She did.”
“And it was nice to spend some time with you.”
Felix’s so used to Chan’s teasing. His blase, brash, often downright infuriating jabs and the way he so perfectly winds Felix up like he’s a ball of yarn on a rotary spinner. It’s not there, now. He sounds sincere.
Felix looks at Chan. The growing light reflects in his dark eyes. He is sincere.
There’s a magic of the early dawn, the hours between the realities of the night before and the promise oncoming day, where things don’t feel quite real. A liminal space, or perhaps a dream, where actions don’t have consequences and the brightest star in the night sky twinkles on the horizon before the sun comes up.
Chan’s thumb rubs circles on Felix’s shoulder. The space where the edge of his palm brushes against Felix’s upper arm feels like a brand. And maybe Felix likes the feeling of being burned - at least, he does when Chan’s the one doing it.
Then Chan looks at Felix. Felix realises he’s been staring. But he can’t find it in himself to look away. The latent alcohol still runs in Felix’s body, and maybe that’s the reason why.
“You’re too cute, Lix. You and your stars.” Chan sweeps a dark lock from Felix’s forehead. He’s not too sure when they started facing each other. The sand is cold beneath his feet. Chan’s watching him like he’s never seen the stars in his life, and Felix’s the first person to show them to him.
They’re face to face. Like when they were at the waterpark. Or on the beach. And his heart is doing That Thing.
He wonders how it might feel to kiss Chan.
He wants to find out.
He’s kissed people before. He’s had girlfriends before. He’s done all of that before, of course he has.
He’s never felt this nervous before. Not even about Chloe.
Their noses are almost touching.
If there wasn’t alcohol still flooding through Felix’s veins, if there was no magic of the early morning as it blazes into dawn, then maybe he wouldn’t have done what he does next.
But he is still drunk or tipsy, and definitely tired and cold and wrapped up in the magic of the dawn and the way Chan is looking at him, so he does. He clumsily lurches forward and kisses Chan.
Oh.
Chan tastes like tropical fruit and macadamia and sea salt. He feels warm on Felix’s goosebump riddled skin.
He realises it all in one fell swoop, in the rising sunlight on the beach in the early throes of a hangover.
He likes Chan.
He really, really likes him.
Chan makes Felix blush. He makes Felix giggle. He holds Felix’s hand and gives Felix butterflies, and holds Felix’s hand for support and brings him ice cream. And kissing Chan isn’t weird, or strange, or unusual - it is, so inexplicably and so wholly, right.
And then he realises that he’s kissing Chan.
He jolts back suddenly, alarm rising in his stomach. The taste of Chan’s lips linger on his. The taste is how Felix imagines an addictive drug must be, wanting immediately to go back for more. But it’s alarm, it’s panic, it’s shock and dare he say something almost akin to horror that floods through him now - he kissed Chan. Willingly.
And he liked it.
“Uh, I - I think I’m gonna go home,” stammers Felix. His voice sounds hollow in his ears.
Chan’s face - which a second ago had been warm, and inviting, and - oh no, he’d been looking at Felix with so much overflowing affection in those eyes - falls. He responds. Felix can’t hear it. The waves are too loud, crashing on the shore. Or maybe it’s the rushing of blood in his ears.
He turns and runs.
~
“I like you.”
Chloe, peering around her front door, blinks sleepily at Felix. “Huh?”
Look, he doesn’t have a fucking excuse. He’d run from the beach up to the parking lot, then had followed the winding road towards the small nearby town as the sun had finally risen, blazing orange into Felix’s stinging eyes. He’d doubled over and thrown up on the side of a road, and then ordered a taxi back to his apartment. It took too long to arrive, and cost way too much. He didn’t realise he’d left his shoes behind until it was far too late.
He then got home, couldn’t fall asleep. He wanted to turn around and go back to the beach. To kiss Chan again, or to apologise. He wanted to bury himself in his floorboards. He wanted to immediately pack his bags and move to Alaska.
That was yesterday. At least, he thinks it was. The day that’s passed has felt like a blur. He might have eaten lunch. Or maybe he slept last night. He doesn’t know. He’s ignored all phone calls and text messages from everyone. He’s thrown up from panic more than once. He’s laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the kiss, thinking about Chan, on an incessant repeat. His dreams were filled with floating sensations of fingers against his scalp and the scent of chlorine and shrieks of joy in a waterpark and sea salt on his tongue.
Chan hasn’t called or texted once.
And now Felix is here. At Chloe’s front door. Her hair is a tangled mess. She’s wearing a bra and baggy shorts and one sock. And he’s just told her, finally, that he likes her.
He gets it. He’s a moron. Even he doesn’t know why he’s here, and not at Chan’s front door instead. (Barring the fact that Chan’s front door is in some other city somewhere else, and that he’s been staying with Hyunjin this summer).
“I like you. A lot. I’ve liked you for a long time. For absolutely ages, actually, and - I was always too scared to tell you.”
Chloe blinks again, like she’s trying to process what Felix’s just said. Then, a small smile breaks out on her face.
“No, you don’t.”
“I - I do, I -”
“No,” says Chloe again, more firmly. She opens the door a little wider, and gestures for Felix to come in. He does so, his heart hammering - she heads into her house and leads him towards her bedroom. He follows. He enters her room; she shuts the door behind him, and he almost trips over a set of hair curlers on the floor. The covers on her bed are in a crumpled heap, and her pillow’s on the floor - she’s clearly just woken up.
“You don’t like me, Felix,” she says, sitting down on the side of her bed and folding one leg - the one with the sock - over the other.
“But-”
“You like Chan.”
She might as well have upended a bucket of ice water over his head. She’s right, of course, but he’s not going to admit that. Not after he’s spent a solid hour (or twenty four) worrying himself in circles inside his bedroom.
“That’s ridiculous. Of course I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do not. I don’t even like guys-”
“Lix. Come on. Don’t lie to yourself.”
What are you doing, Felix? He wishes he knew how to answer the question pinging around in his head. And why he even decided to come here. And not to Chan’s house - where he’s supposed to be.
“But, Chloe - I’ve liked you for so long.”
“I know.”
“I - you - what?”
Chloe smiles. It almost looks sad. “I’ve always known. You’re hardly subtle.”
“Then… why did you… why didn’t-”
“I’m a lesbian, Lix.”
Felix blinks. “Huh?”
“I’m a lesbian. I like girls.”
“I know what lesbians are, Chloe, I just - what? Why did you never say?”
Chloe huffs and tugs at a strand of bedraggled hair. “I dunno. Maybe for the same reason you’re here telling me some bullshit confession that’s long past its expiry date when we both know who you actually want to be confessing to.”
“I - I’m not-” But Felix doesn’t have an excuse. It falters out into the thin air of the mid-morning. His mouth feels dry. In all fairness, his mouth has felt dry since he fled the beach yesterday morning. He groans, and he flops down on Chloe’s unmade bed next to her.
“I… I don’t like guys.”
Chloe huffs and sits forward. Her hand lashes out and grips Felix’s. “Look, I appreciate you for finally getting the guts to tell me. Even if I would have always said no, and even if it is a big fat lie.”
“But… I was serious. Or, I am serious, I-”
“Six months ago, maybe you were telling the truth. I would have still turned you down, but - maybe you would have at least been honest. Now, however?”
“I just - I don’t-”
Chloe sighs and squeezes Felix’s hand again. “How does it feel when you hold my hand?”
“Uh- fine. I guess? Your skin’s really soft.”
Chloe chuckles softly. “And how does it feel to hold Chan’s hand?”
Safe. Warm. Surprised. Comforted. Nervous. Steady. Calm.
But more than anything, when he holds Chan’s hand - he feels like he doesn’t want to let go.
He doesn’t say any of it out loud. He doesn’t have to. Chloe, her eyes fixated on Felix’s face, nods knowingly.
“See?”
Felix swallows nervously. The soles of his feet are tingling. That’s a new sensation.
“I kissed him.”
That was something that Chloe did not expect. She drops Felix’s hand and splutters, her eyes flying wide.
“I’m sorry, you - what?!”
“The other night. At the beach party. It - it was late. Or early. I don’t know.”
“And you - and instead, you thought you’d come straight to me with that weak-ass confession?”
“I don’t know, okay! I panicked! I just - I kissed him, and then I - I got up and ran, and I’ve been thinking about this all day-”
“You left?! Felix, I knew you were an idiot, but-”
“What was I supposed to do, Chloe? I’ve never - felt any kind of way towards a guy before, and - fuck, I just panicked. Okay?!”
Chloe lets out a guttural sigh. “Okay. Right. You’re - processing this. This is strange and different. But I’m right, aren’t I? You like Chan. Like, a lot.”
Felix grumbles. “Okay, fine. Yes, I do, or whatever. But I don’t know what that means - what it makes me.”
“It doesn’t have to ‘make you’ anything, Lix. He obviously likes you back. You can just start there.”
Felix sighs. “But what do I do? I don’t know the first thing about dating a guy.”
“You don’t know the first thing about dating, full stop.”
“Hey! That’s not true. I’ve had girlfriends before!”
“Your first instinct after kissing someone you’ve been crushing on was to run immediately to someone else’s house and confess something that isn’t true any more.”
“That’s not - that’s - ugh, shut up.”
Chloe smiles gently. “You’re overthinking this. And it’s making you stupid. Just how you overthought me for a whole year, or whatever it was. But this time - he’s into you back. Like, he was smitten like crazy the first time he laid eyes on you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he wasn’t.”
“He was. He told me.”
“He… told you?”
“Yeah. It was so cute. He asked me a million questions about you the second your back was turned. So don’t worry, you’re not gonna be rejected or anything.”
“...oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. So stop being an idiot, and go to him. Have you heard from him at all since yesterday?”
“Uh… no.”
Chloe groans. “Lix, you idiot. You kissed him, and ran, and have left him in the dark for over a whole day? Poor fucking guy.”
“I get it, alright? I’ll - I’ll go to him. I’ll go to - he’s staying with Hyunjin. I’ll go see him.”
Chloe nods, satisfied. “Good.”
And Felix takes that as his cue to leave. He stands and heads to the door - kind of feeling a like a complete fucking moron, because yeah, he is a complete fucking moron.
He stops before he leaves and looks over his shoulder.
“Just, one quick question.”
“Hm?”
“If you knew how much I liked you - even if you didn’t, or couldn’t, feel the same - why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Chloe smiles. But it looks sad. “Well, again - maybe it’s the same reason you came to me instead of going straight to Chan.”
“...you were scared?”
“Yeah. Kinda.”
“Of what?”
“I didn’t know how you’d react. I didn’t - I never wanted to lose you, Lix. You’ve always been like, one of my best friends, and - if my choices were to pretend like I didn’t know, or to let you down and risk losing you - I’d choose the first one. Always. I never wanted to lose you.”
“I - you must have known that things would have been okay. Right?”
“Must I? Then why didn’t you tell me six months ago that you liked me?”
“...because I didn’t know how things would turn out.”
“Exactly.” Chloe takes a deep breath. “But that’s not going to happen now. Chan likes you. So go. He’s going home next week. College starts again. Go talk to him before he leaves this town forever, and you lose your chance for real.”
~
Felix’s never felt this nervous before. Not even at the start of summer, when he was planning on how he was going to ask Chloe out at the carnival. Not at any point, really, that they’ve spent time together - alone or in a crowd - has he felt as weak as he does as he climbs out of the taxi in front of Hyunjin’s house.
“Hey, Hyunjin - is Chan in?”
Hyunjin yawns, and runs his hand through his hair. “Yeah. He’s in the spare room. At least, he should be, he’s not left the damn thing since yesterday.”
“Oh. Uh - is he okay?”
“I dunno. He was dead silent on the drive home. I don’t think he’s hungover, or maybe it was delayed - we got back at like, lunchtime, and he hasn’t so much as left to take a shit.”
Oh, crap. “Oh. Can I come in? I wanna speak to him.”
Hyunjin shrugs. “Yeah, sure. Don’t blame me if he’s not awake.” Felix is about to thank him and push into the house - when Changbin emerges from the corridor. Completely nude, save for his boxers - with a hickey on his neck. Hyunjin only has the power to turn a vibrant shade of red.
Felix knows where the spare room is. He’s been to Hyunjin’s place before, stayed there a handful of times, even. If Chan’s in there, it means Changbin must have been staying on the sofa. Or perhaps in Hyunjin’s bed. Which would explain the hickey. Felix surprises a nervous, hysterical sort of giggle.
His ears are ringing as he trudges up the stairs and towards the door. He could throw up as he raises his fist and raps it against the wood.
Silence. Maybe he’s asleep.
Slowly, Felix pushes against the door. The curtains are closed, but there’s a crack along one edge that lets in the filtered sunlight. The light in the room is a strange sort of twilight - dark, but not totally dark - there’s a single bed on one side, and there’s a human-shaped lump underneath the covers.
Felix has no idea what he’s doing here. No idea what he’s going to say. Maybe he should turn around and leave, and move to a remote settlement in the middle of the icy planes of Norway and become a Reindeer farmer-
The Human-Shaped lump on the bed moves.
“Who…?”
“Oh. Chan. Um. It’s me. Hi.” God. That was so lame.
“Felix? What - is that you?” Chan shuffles himself into a sitting position, and reaches backwards to the curtains to try and pull them open. Felix hurries over and does it for him, yanking them back - Chan hisses and throws his arm over his eyes in the light.
He looks like… well, he looks like a man who’s just woken up. Dishevelled and sleepy with puffy eyes and rumpled, curly hair. His chest is bare under the covers - the side of his face is pink and lined from where it had been pressed into the pillow.
“Hi, sorry, I didn’t - you know, Hyunjin said you were asleep, but I wanted to talk to you, and, uh - I didn’t, like - um, how are you?”
Chan doesn’t reply right away, blinking slowly up at Felix as he tries to adjust to the light difference.
“Felix, what are you doing here?”
Ooh. That maybe wasn’t supposed to hurt as much as it did. But it’s that way that Chan said it - not angry. Not hurt. Not even accusatory - he just sounds really, really tired. There are creases in the corners of his eyes.
“I - I wanted to say sorry. For running away the other night. For kissing you and then running away, actually, because it wasn’t fair.”
“...I see.”
“...I mean, I’m not sorry for like - kissing you, I mean - unless you hated it, and then in that I am sorry, but I’ve never had any feelings for a guy before because I just had this massive crush on Chloe, but I don’t think I do any more, and I think I like you and I don’t know what to do about it, and I was drunk and you were drunk and then I panicked, and I just - there are so many things that I was thinking about and then I went and told Chloe I liked her, but she told me I was being stupid, and that I don’t, and now - and now I’m here, and - I’m rambling aren’t I?”
Chan lets out a huff of not-quite-laughter through his nose and nods.
“You are. And I’ll be real, Lix. I didn’t get half of that.”
“I-”
“I did get one thing. You like me?”
Felix blinks. “Um. That was your takeaway from all of that?”
“Amongst the rambling, yes.” Chan stifles a yawn and runs his hand through his curly hair. “You finally plucked up the courage to tell Chloe then, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. But she shot me down straight away. She’s a lesbian.”
“Yeah. I’m surprised it took you so long to figure that out.” He blinks heavily and tilts his head. “You don’t seem too cut up about it.”
“...no. I… uh. No, I guess not.”
“Because you like me.” Oh, he’s infuriating. He’s watching Felix with an expectant look, and Felix can feel his cheeks heating up like someone’s injected them with magma. He’s turning into a radioactive beacon. And his stomach is doing a zillion cartwheels an hour.
Oh. He should probably reply.
“Um. Yes. I think?”
“You think? What do you think?”
“You only ‘think’ you like me?”
“Oh my god, you’re fucking insufferable,” groans Felix, and he closes the distance between himself and where Chan’s sitting amongst the crumpled up bedsheets, and kisses him again.
It’s an entirely different experience when sober. There’s no blurriness, no jungle-juice induced urge or lack of inhibition, and no immediate shock of ‘what the hell am I doing?’ halfway through.
It feels right.
Especially considering Chan pulls Felix into him, so that he falls into him and then they’re lying together on the bed. Especially considering that Chan’s arms wrap firmly around Felix’s back to hold him in place, and his fingers press into Felix’s sides. Especially considering that he tastes so warm, that he smells sort of unwashed but still like sea salt and something so tantalisingly delicious, and that Felix can feel him smiling.
Chan pulls away first. “You’re cute when you’re flustered.”
And Felix lets out the loudest groan yet and his head falls forward into Chan’s chest.
“You’re an ass.”
“And you’re adorable.”
Felix’s heart skips. Or sings. Or both.
They lie there for a few minutes in the silence - there’s a thud from downstairs, and a muffled voice that could be either Hyunjin’s or Changbin’s.
“You know,” says Chan eventually. “It’s so funny to me that you never figured out about Chloe.”
“I… I don’t know, okay? I just never thought-”
“I know you didn’t. Have you figured out yet that Zoe’s her girlfriend?”
Felix splutters. “She’s what?!”
“Seriously? Do you pay any attention to the world around you?”
“Well, yes, but - I just thought they were really good friends.”
Chan laughs and pulls Felix forward to kiss his forehead. “You’re such a dork.”
Felix grumbles. But he doesn’t pull away. Because lying here with Chan, right now - for a split second, before he knocked on the door, he wasn’t sure how it was going to feel. If it was going to be strange to confess anything without the social lubricant of alcohol. And he had no idea if he was just going slightly insane and if actually kissing Chan was going to be weird. If it would feel right to… well. Be with him.
Felix doesn’t think he’s ever belonged somewhere more, in his entire life, than he does right now.
Chan definitely doesn’t smell incredible right now. He’s just woken up, he probably hasn’t showered since before the party - but the faded scent of cologne still lingers on his skin. Warm and woodsy, and he still smells vaguely of sea salt, and he had tasted of macadamia. And his arms are so tight around Felix’s torso, and the sheer overwhelming feeling of emotion swells up inside Felix and threatens to overtake him, and oh God he likes Chan so fucking much.
“I really thought I did something wrong, you know,” murmurs Chan. “When you left - I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do. I mean it, you’re so fun to tease - I wondered if I’d gone too far. If I’d made you think - you know, confused you in some way, or if I’d been too pushy, or… I don’t know.”
Felix doesn’t know what to say. He can hear Chan’s heart through his chest. It’s beating quickly.
“I really like you, Lix,” Chan whispers. Felix’s soul lifts into the air and starts to sing. “From the second I saw you, down on the grass, waving at Chloe. You were so sweet, right from the start.” He takes a deep breath and presses his lips against the side of Felix’s head. “This is new to you. All of it. Isn’t it?”
Felix gives the smallest of nods. “I don’t know - I don’t know what this makes me. I’ve always liked girls, and-”
“You never had a crush on a guy before?”
Felix shakes his head. And then shrugs. “Hell if I fucking know. I always thought it was normal to like… be curious. But I’ve never thought of taking it further.”
Chan chuckles. “Fair enough.” He kisses Felix’s forehead. “It doesn’t have to make you anything. You can take all the time you need to figure it out.”
“…thank you.”
“Don’t thank me just yet. I’ve gotta go back to college in a week.”
Felix groans and throws his head backwards. “Fuck. I forgot about that. How far away are you?”
“About a four hour drive.”
“That’s so far.”
“I know.” Chan tightens his arms around Felix’s body. “I’ve only got a year left. I can drive up at the weekends. But, I don’t want to think about that yet. How about I take you on an actual date?”
Felix has to bury his face in the covers to hide the grin that he can’t stop from splitting across his face. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Amazing.” Chan kisses Felix again. “Now, get your ass off me. I’ve been rotting in a nest of heartbreak for a full day, and I need a shower.”
“Heartbreak? Don’t be dramatic.”
“You’re the one who ran away from me. I think you’re being dramatic.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Is so.”
“Isn’t.”
There’s a loud thud on the door that interrupts their bickering, causing both of them to jump.
“Guys? Changbin’s going to the patisserie for breakfast, do you want anything?”
Felix blinks and looks at Chan. “Since when did we have a fucking patisserie in this town?”
~
“Can you please tell me where we’re going?”
Chan grins. “Absolutely not. It’s a surprise, remember?”
Felix grumbles and folds his arms. “You’re no fun.”
“Au contraire - I’m loads of fun. Telling you would ruin the fun.”
“Fun for you, maybe.” Chan glances sideways at Felix, and turns off onto a side road.
“Stop grumpling. You’re too cute to be pulling faces.” And he takes one hand off the gear shift to gently rest it on Felix’s thigh.
When Felix had met with Chloe for coffee the day after the insane jaunt to her house, she had - naturally - been over the moon to hear how things had gone. She’d nearly knocked over her coffee in excitement, leaning across the table with a mad gleam in her eye, hitting him immediately with the 20 questions about what happened, what’s their relationship status now, when’s the wedding-
Okay, she doesn’t quite go that far. Not quite.
“We’re not - well, neither of us have said the word - like, boyfriend, yet,” Felix had said uncertainly. “I don’t - I don’t really know what happens next. We just - y’know. Hung out. And talked. And he says he’s taking me on a date before he goes back to colle-”
But he hadn’t had a chance to finish his sentence, cut off by Chloe’s high-pitched squeal of excitement, and this time she hadn’t managed to avoid knocking her coffee over, and it promptly spilled across the table and soaked Felix’s sleeves.
Nobody else knows yet. Or at least, he’s not spoken to anyone. Jisung kept giving him extremely annoying looks when he got home from Hyunjin’s place, and Felix had been on the verge of telling him to just spit it out when Minho had emerged from his bedroom, and Jisung had just gone red.
And, when date day does finally arrive, and Chans picks Felix up in the evening (Felix hasn’t eaten all day from the nerves), he adamantly refuses to tell Felix what’s even going on.
It’s pretty late in the day. The sun’s glowing through the trees that edge the side of the road - trees that aren’t yet turning orange, but the air is definitely just that little bit colder that indicates that fall isn’t too far away. That’s the other strange bit - Chan has driven out of town and they’re now firmly in woodlands territory, trees and brush looming on either side of the windy road, and Felix’s pretty sure they’re driving up a mountain.
Maybe this has all been a long plot to kidnap and sacrifice Felix in a horribly horrific way. Not that Chan would do a great job, because Felix did tell Jisung that he was going out with Chan that evening and they have each other’s locations (just in case), but still.
He looks at Chan from the side of his eye. His one hand still rests on the wheel, his fingers drumming an absentminded rhythm. The low angle of the sun highlights his cheekbones, on the curve of his jaw. It’s absurd, really - he’s just sitting there, driving, and looking like that. His side profile is ridiculous, with that nose and his hips, and so are his hands, and his arms, and-
Felix glances away quickly. It wouldn’t do to get caught staring, as much as he wants to. Chan’s hand is still resting on his thigh. He feels entirely giddy. It’s not even like the motion is that romantic - Chan’s just sitting there, driving them both up a winding mountain road, and Felix feels like a blushing, giggling schoolgirl going on a date with her first teenage crush.
Every nerve in his body feels like it’s on high alert. And he finds himself thinking, almost madly, that it wouldn’t be so bad if this drive did last forever.
“We’re almost there,” murmurs Chan, taking his hand off Felix’s knee to change gear, and the space where it was feels empty.
They turn another corner, and they’re on a narrow, bumpy, windy road now, not even wide enough for two cars to pass. The car slows, and turns again, and then they’re pulling into a clearing; Felix’s mouth drops open.
They’re at the top of the cliffside, at the edge of an overlook where the trees thin into a clearing. There, nestled between clusters of wildflowers and pine trees, is a campsite. A sturdy tent is set up with open tent flaps facing onto a small firepit, circled with stones with a pile of meticulously arranged kindling and firewood.
Chan’s heart leaps into his throat. A picnic spread has been laid out, too - a blue chequered picnic blanket is laden with treats, all under net covers or plastic wrap; plates piled with fresh fruit, slices of cheese and crackers arranged neatly around a small dish of honey, a container of chocolate-covered strawberries, colourful macarons…
He steps out of the car with unsteady knees. The flap of the tent is open, and a citronella strip hangs out the front to catch any bugs and flies. The inside of the tent is a thick air mattress, layered with soft blankets and fluffy pillows. He turns, looking around the space, taking in all the detail - the sun touches the horizon, and everything is awash in gold.
“You did all this?” Felix asks, his voice barely above a whisper. He turns his head, and finds Chan watching him with a soft, almost hesitant expression. There’s vulnerability there, a hint of uncertainty that doesn’t fit with his usual cockiness.
“I - well, yeah. You know, I quite like camping, and - I wanted - I didn’t know if you’d like it, so I thought - you know, I’d make it comfortable-”
Oh, he’s shy.
He’s blushing.
He’s watching Felix with uncertain eyes, red ears, and a tight voice that’s unlike anything Felix’s ever seen. He’s so goddamn…
Cute.
“Is it too much? You liked Chloe’s beach camp idea, but I don’t know if it was too similar-”
“Chan, all of this? It’s - it’s insane. It’s… it’s incredible.”
Relief floods Chan’s face, and his lips tug into a smile. A shy smile - a real one, so different to his usual smirks and grins.
“I really like you, Felix,” he says. He’s twisting his hands in the front of his shirt. He’s dressed up, or as nicely as he can apparently - smart black jeans and an oversized black sweater with sleeves that are far too long. It swamps him, making him look all the more endearing.
“I wanted to do something really special, because - well, I mean it. You made me so giddy, you were so cute from the second I saw you - I didn’t even care if it meant you thought I was annoying, I just wanted to be around you. I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable. I just - I like you so much.”
“Chan-”
“Hold on, Lix- just, one more minute.” He lets out a deep breath. “I know this is new for you. Dating a guy, I mean. Like, it might be strange, or uncomfortable, or - I want you to know that I’m in this for real. I want to do this right. I want to be your boyfriend, tell our friends… do the whole thing, you know? Take you on dates, be someone you can trust - you know. All of it.”
Felix’s heart pounds so loud he’s sure Chan can hear it. For a split second the only thing he can do is stare, and process what’s happening. All he can do is watch Chan standing in the setting sun, his hands twisting so nervously, his cheeks dusted faintly pink - unguarded, vulnerable.
God, he likes him so much.
It’s scary to admit that. It’s really, really goddamn scary.
But Chan looks as nervous as Felix feels. He’s looking straight at Felix in a way that they both know should look like confidence - but his hands betray him, and his pink cheeks betray him, and his shaky tone betrays him.
Felix likes him so much. He’s not sure he’s ever truly known what love feels like, not yet - he was certain he’d been there with Chloe, just a couple of short months ago. Now, he’s not so sure; he’s never found himself falling so fast, and so hard, for someone. He’s never felt this tightly-wound electricity that shoots through every square inch of his body. He’s never been barely unable to hold himself back from crossing the space, and trying to gather up as much of someone in his arms as he can possibly hold.
He’s never felt to need to purely imbibe someone in totality, in fullness, in completeness.
“Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before,” whispers Felix, turning on the spot to cast his eyes over the beautifully arranged campsite. Taking in the flickering oil lantern, the cushions on the ground, the jug of lemonade.
“It’s not too much?”
“Not too - no, not at all. This must have taken you ages.”
“I wanted you to know that I mean it. It’s hard - to, like, be sincere right now. I’m usually, you know, all… whatever. But I wanted you to know that, I really mean it. So. Yeah. And this is actually all really awkward, so if you could tell me your answer now so I don’t have to stand here terrified that you’re gonna turn around and ask me to drive you home, then-”
“Oh, calm down, you big baby,” says Felix, crossing the space and rescuing Chan’s poor fidgeting hands, clasping them in his own. His own heart is racing, and maybe it has been from the first moment he brushed Chan’s hand all those weeks ago. He takes a deep breath, closing the space between them, holding their entwined hands between their chests. “It’s okay with me. All of it, everything you said - I’d like that.”
Chan’s eyes soften, and he lets out a shaky laugh. “That’s good.” He glances down at their intertwined fingers, his thumb tracing the edge of Felix’s hand where their fingers meet. “Boyfriend.”
A warm feeling swells inside Felix’s chest, his torso, his entire body. It spreads down to the soles of his feet and tingles the tips of his fingers, and it both feels so good, so natural, and so new and so strange.
“I like that.”
Chan’s smile softens, his eyes twinkling. “Me too.”
His hand reaches up to brush a strand of hair back from Felix’s face, and then he leans in to press a gentle kiss to Felix’s lips. It’s warm, unhurried. He tastes like mint toothpaste.
The sun heads swiftly towards the horizon. Chan takes Felix by the hand and guides him to sit, cross-legged, on one of the cushions near the picnic blanket, and kneels down to light the fire.
All the food that Chan has prepared is divine. The fruit, the macarons, the platter of finger food that he produces from an esky in the back seat of his car. He pops a bottle of prosecco, and produces a pack of marshmallows and a couple of skewers and offers one to Felix to roast over the fire. And then he produces a packet of TimTams, and Felix feels himself well up with the memory of home.
And that’s it. Chan isn’t just someone who he likes, someone who he’s merely fallen into: he feels like home.
As has happened so often over the last few weeks, Felix finds it all so easy to fall into a steady, comforting rhythm with Chan. It’s easy to be with him. It’s easy to laugh at his jokes, to blush at his teasing, his flirting. It’s easy to sit and to talk and to watch the sky fade into a deeper shade of twilight. Chan stands up at one point, when the valley spread out below them is almost cast in shadow, to switch on the fairy lights. The campsite is awash with gentle light from the fire, the gentle twinkling of the lights - Felix’s heart has never felt so full.
“...That one’s Ursa Major, right?”
Felix glances at Chan. He’s staring across the valley where the sky is completely dark, where the stars are coming out. He’s pointing at the constellation - he traces it with his finger.
“...you were actually listening to me?”
“Of course.” Chan smiles gently at him. “It’s important to you. I listened.”
Chan’s knee is resting against Felix’s. Their hands are resting so close to each other, splayed on the picnic blanket below them - Chan closes the distance and squeezes Felix’s fingers. Felix doesn’t have any words - he can only open and close his mouth, nothing coming out, as Chan watches him. The firelight flickers in his eyes.
“I’ve never done anything like this for anyone, either, you know,” he admits. “For anyone.”
“Really?”
“Mmhmm. I’ve dated people before, of course. But things feel different with you.”
Felix still doesn’t know how to react. He has no idea what to say, only knowing that he enjoys being closer to Chan - so he shuffles closer.
The heat from the day rapidly dissipates now that the sun’s gone. Felix shivers - Chan finds a blanket to drape over their legs, and adds another log to the campfire. Then Felix shivers again, and Chan rolls his eyes, and pulls Felix into his lap.
Oh. This is new.
Felix’s always been the big spoon in his relationships. Has always been the lap that his girlfriends sit in.
He quite likes the change. Chan’s arms close around him, drawing him in - he feels safe. Secure. He’s allowed to be here. He’s allowed to like this.
Then, he becomes very, very aware of just how close his ass is to Chan’s dick, and a strange, thrilling sort of dread floods through him. He freezes up - Chan, his arms still resting loosely round Felix’s torso with his chin tucked on his shoulder, feels it right away.
“What’s wrong?”
Unfortunately, Felix’s mouth answers before his brain can process. “How do we have sex?”
Chan bursts out laughing.
“What? It’s an honest question,” says Felix, stubbornly.
“No, you’re - you’re right, I just - I wasn’t expecting that,” laughs Chan, wiping a tear from his eye. “That was very direct.”
“You’re mean.”
“And you’re adorable.” Chan kisses Felix’s cheek. “I guess that means you’re a virgin, right?”
“What? No! Why do people think that? I’ve had girlfriends, I’ve had sex - I just, I don’t know what to do if it’s - like - you. Unless you have a vagina, which is cool and all, but-”
“I definitely do not,” says Chan, his eyes twinkling. “Well, there’s no manual, if that’s what you’re asking. We could always watch some porn to get an idea-”
“No, that’s not - ugh,” huffs Felix, rolling his eyes. “What if I do something wrong? What if I - get down there, and realise - that, you know, it’s not something that I’m interested in?”
Chan chuckles softly, and draws his arms tighter around Felix’s waist. “Well, that’s something we’ll have to figure out when we get there. And yeah, things might go wrong. But I won’t be offended. I just want to be with you, in whatever capacity you’ll have me.”
Felix squirms, his stomach feeling all funny. They’ve had a couple of glasses of prosecco, and he can feel it in his head. And he’s all too aware of the fact that he’s sitting in Chan’s lap - and his brain snaps somewhere else, all of sudden, and now he’s thinking about Chan’s dick. About what the fuck that possibly entails.
A warm sensation tickles at a spot in Felix’s groin.
He squirms again. Chan’s laugh, low and breathy now, sounds in his ear.
“I know what you’re thinking about.”
“Chan...”
“You sound cute when you whine.” Oh, no. The tingling sensation is growing. “And you’re the one who brought it up.” Chan chuckles again. “I don’t fuck on the first date. So you’re just gonna have to wait a little longer before we can start exploring that.”
“...But you’re going home soon.”
Chan lets out a deep exhalation of breath. “I know.” He kisses the nape of Felix’s neck. “But I’ll be back the second I have a day off. I promise.”
The campfire starts to die down. The stars ahead brighten in the blackness of the sky, untainted by light pollution so far away from the town, though the lights of the buildings flicker in the distance. Felix’s eyes start to droop - the invitation of rest, of the warmth of the blankets and cushions inside the tent awaits. Chan makes Felix get up so he can go and put the fire out properly.
There’s something about the way Chan interacts with the world - so confident, yet so unguarded and so uniquely himself. The glow of the dying fire illuminates his features against the backdrop of the sprawling valley. He’s beautiful.
He’s Felix’s boyfriend.
Felix quickly takes a photo on his phone. Chan hears the snap of the camera, and looks up - he smiles.
“Sneaky.”
Then, with a quick tap and a shaky hand, Felix sends the photo to the group chat.
First date <3
He turns his phone off. He can deal with the chaos in the morning.