Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hyunjin, shadowed within the vestibule, can see Felix in the passenger seat of the car, and he can also see the driver, who has a big nose and therefore—in Hyunjin’s experience—is likely perfectly hung. Hyunjin watches them hug goodbye, awkward across the center console. Felix clambers out of the car, laughing at something the driver had said, and trips and skips his way over to the ballet studio’s door, but just before he grabs the handle, he turns back and waves, his entire little frame swaying with it. The driver waves, too. He has dimples.

“Oh!” Felix says, lighting up even brighter with surprised delight when he pulls open the door and finds Hyunjin inside. “You waited! Oh, don’t do that next time!”

“Don’t be late next time,” Hyunjin says, smiling with his eyes, too, and slips his arm through Felix’s convivially. Of course he waited; they both like coming in to rehearsal together, Felix presumably because they’re friends, and Hyunjin also because they’re friends but more importantly because it makes everybody else feel envious and inadequate. Hyunjin and Felix are like two mirrors pointed at each other, and their beauty is the beam of light reflecting and strengthening between. They’re better together. Felix is so pretty that Hyunjin should hate him, but as hard as Hyunjin has been trying over the six months of their acquaintance so far, he can’t find any faults in Felix’s character. Finally, Hyunjin’s hair isn’t at its best today, and Felix always has extra hair ties. Basically, he’s an angel.

“I know, sorry,” Felix pouts. “It wasn’t even my fault! The bus was late first!”

Hyunjin hums, like, sure, and they’ve fallen into step as they head for the stairs. When he glances down to check on Felix, he finds that he’s still post-giggle pink, and Hyunjin can’t help but ask, voice dropping into a pre-giggle conspiratorial tone, “Who was that dropping you off?”

Felix reacts quickly, as if he’d been waiting to be asked. He pulls a face, goes pinker, rolls his eyes. “Chan. My best friend. I’ve probably mentioned him?”

Yes, but not that he was sizzlingly hot. Hyunjin can still picture the dimples. “A little,” Hyunjin says. “Nice of him to drive you.”

“Oh, he insisted. He’s such a dork,” Felix grumbles, but his smile is unabatable. “D’you know what he said when he dropped me off? Have a good day at school, honey! Ugh! Dork!”

Hyunjin giggles with him, condescending, playful, girlish, but he’s thinking, That doesn’t sound dorky—that sounds lovely.

And that’s how it all starts.

***

Felix does mention Chan a lot. He did before, too, but somehow, Hyunjin never noticed—maybe because he didn’t know he needed to be paying attention. It’s like that psychological phenomenon where, after learning a new word, you suddenly hear it everywhere. Chan this, Chan that. Chan likes this song. When I wear my hair like this, Chan calls me Heidi. You look so pretty in your new leo—did you know Chan wears the same three outfits over and over and refuses to go shopping with me no matter how much I try to convince him? Chan came over for dinner and we watched true crime shows until 1 AM and then I was too scared to sleep so he spent the night. Chan Chan Chan Chan Chan.

Stretching at the barre or changing in the locker room, Hyunjin pieces together their story. Felix and Chan have known each other for half a decade. Chan, like Felix, is Australian. He’s three years older. Their moms, back in Sydney, were friends first, old friends, but they only thought to matchmake the boys when they went abroad for college; they hit it off immediately, like chemistry, like magic. Inseparable ever since. Nowadays, Chan works in data entry, and it pays very well, but he hates it. They don’t live together—“We’d never,” Felix laughs. “We’re very different. It would be a nightmare!”

Hyunjin wouldn’t mind living with his best friend. If he had a best friend. Even if they were very different. Especially if his best friend were someone like Chan.

As Felix tells it, Chan is very supportive. Chan is deeply earnest to the point it’s embarrassing—he has no sense of irony, he’s not mean at all. Teasing him is fun since he’s so oblivious, and he lets Felix get away with everything. “I really want you to meet him,” Felix says, chewing on his baby kale salad in the cafeteria. “Agh, it’s so hard to explain him, he’s such a special person. I think you’d really like him!”

I already do. You don’t know how lucky you are to have him in your life. “But would he like me, is the question,” Hyunjin points out with a private smile.

Felix scoffs and hits Hyunjin’s arm with all the aggression of a tissue. “You’re the fucking best, Hyunjin. Of course he’ll like you.”

Hyunjin tips his head, toying with the ends of his hair. Honestly, as Felix tells it, it doesn’t seem like there’s room in either of their lives for anyone but each other. But it’s a nice thought. He smiles, and watches the way Felix responds to his smile—the beam of light between their mirrors refracts, broadens. “We’ll see,” Hyunjin says, and steals one of the croutons in Felix’s salad.

***

Felix is always so flamboyantly sunny that an overcast day is cause for drop-everything concern, and Hyunjin clocks him immediately, from the instant he drags his feet into the studio. He’s positively funereal, and the stormcloud over his head is darkening the whole block. His cheeks are pale, which makes his freckles look blotchy instead of charming, and his lower lip is bitten to the point of nearly bleeding. “Felix,” Hyunjin murmurs, already at his side, having crossed the room in a smooth run to reach him. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“No—I’m fine,” Felix mutters, distracted, and then blinks up at Hyunjin as though he hadn’t even noticed it was him. There’s a line between his eyebrows that Hyunjin hasn’t seen before. “I’m fine,” he repeats, but it’s even less convincing than the first time.

Hyunjin softly pets a hand over his forehead, which is clammy, not warm. “You sure?”

Rehearsal is starting in just a few seconds. Felix is as aware of that as Hyunjin is, and his guarded eyes flicker past to the clock behind Hyunjin’s shoulder, to the opening door through which the company’s lead mistress, Svetlana Dmitrievna, the USSR’s meanest export, who’d adored Hyunjin at his audition and has despised him ever since, is currently walking. “I’ll tell you later,” he says. “I definitely”—he swallows—“could use some advice right now.”

“I’m here,” Hyunjin assures him, squeezes his shoulders, ducks down to catch his gaze and try and coax a little smile out of him. It only half-works, and it doesn’t last long; Felix gets back to dazed and drifting shortly, and all through the stretches and group warmup, Felix seems unconscious, missing steps, distracted, slow to obey orders. Not even when he gets yelled at—such a rare occurence for perfect quick-study sunny Felix—does he flinch.

Hyunjin’s thinking it’s bad news. A family loss. He has to move back to Sydney—he won’t be able to stay with the company. They must really be friends, now—Hyunjin is more concerned about what that would do to Felix’s mental health than excited about the opportunities it would open up for Hyunjin in Felix’s absence. He’s so worried about whatever has Felix worried that he’s distracted, too, but at least when he’s the target of the yelling, it’s less of a surprise. He and Felix spin in magnetic orbit around each other, and normally, Hyunjin’s eyes are on himself in the mirror, but now, he’s watching Felix. Felix misses a jump. He can’t quite manage a lift that’s normally easy for him. His spins are sloppy. But most concerning of all is that expression on his face, and the way he keeps chewing his lip—the instant he’s not dancing, he withdraws back into himself so completely it’s hard to see him at all.

The countdown to their morning break is excruciating, but finally, it’s time, and Hyunjin catches Felix before he can slip away into troubled solitude. “Hey,” he says, weaving his fingers through Felix’s right away. “Let’s go get a matcha.”

“Okay,” Felix says, like he’d have agreed to anything, so Hyunjin leads him out of the room and down to the café, holding fast to his hand the entire time. Felix, who typically spends all rehearsal bubbling with excitement to tell Hyunjin all about his morning and his night and what Svetlana Dmitrievna thought of his solo and the latest memes in his family WhatsApp, doesn’t say a word. It’s like he’s hollow, a Felix balloon, just pulled around on a string. Hyunjin orders for them—oat-milk unsweetened iced matcha lattes with a pop of spirulina—and Felix is still silent, cold, his fingers occasionally twitching in Hyunjin’s tight grip.

“You’re really scaring me,” Hyunjin says softly when they’re sitting down at their usual window table (again, friendship versus a public display of their unanimous beauty). “What do you need advice on?”

Felix takes a long sip of his matcha and takes an equally long time to swallow. His face does something twitchy. He starts to say something, but stops, frowns, mulls it over, sips his matcha again. Hyunjin waits, worry increasing exponentially by the second, doing his best to silence the wild speculation in his brain. And finally, Felix says, “I had a really strange conversation with Chan last night.”

“Oh?”

“Really strange,” Felix repeats, so quietly. He looks down into his plastic cup like he’ll find his answers under the ice. “He told me—he—I mean, he asked me out.”

“Oh,” Hyunjin says again, but very differently. This doesn’t seem like good news—personally, he’d be jumping for joy and weeping happy tears onto strangers’ shoulders—so he doesn’t know what to say, licks his lips, stalls, “Oh, that’s—”

“Like,” Felix says around a tremulous breath, “he said he’s been—has had feelings for me nearly the entire time we’ve known each other. Like, it’s really serious.”

“Wow,” Hyunjin says—what is he supposed to say? What is he supposed to do? Comfort, rage, conspire? All he can feel is a distant, displaced jealousy, but he’s not sure of whom. Keep Felix talking—that sounds like a good way to figure out what Felix wants to hear. “And you really had no idea? Like, this came out of nowhere?”

“Nowhere,” Felix confirms vehemently. “We’ve always been close. So close. He’s like family. And I thought—I guess I always thought—” He goes quiet, so Hyunjin doesn’t get to know what he thought.

Hyunjin takes a sip of his own matcha. It tastes like a field of seagrass thanks to the spirulina, and it might make his tongue green. He squints at Felix, trying to decide if he should be congratulatory or offer condolences, and settles on, “So what’d you say?”

“I said…” Felix exhales very slowly. His little knuckles are white around his thin plastic cup. “I said it’s not a no. But I need time to think about it.”

“Of course,” Hyunjin agrees readily. “Of course! That’s such a big, like, change!”

“I know, right? And if he’s felt this way the whole time, then…” Felix goes quiet again, which is very frustrating; Hyunjin wants to reach into him and pull the story out. “He’s very important to me,” he says. “Maybe I’m overreacting.” Hyunjin makes sympathetic noises. “Like, objectively, he’s good-looking, and he’s so good to me. All my school friends always joked that he was such great boyfriend material.” (Ah, so Hyunjin’s not the only one with a proxy crush.) “He takes care of me, and we’ve known each other forever, I’m so comfortable with him, it’s not the craziest idea in the world, but I just—but I just don’t know.”

“So you’ve never seen him that way,” Hyunjin clarifies.

Felix shakes his head. “But, apparently, he’s seen me that way the entire time.”

Hyunjin huffs, just a bit. “Why didn’t he say something sooner?”

“He’s not like that,” Felix says, with his first genuine smile of the day. “He never goes for what he wants. I literally had to force him to tell me last night. Do you want to hear about how it happened?”

Hyunjin isn’t so sure. This seems personal. This seems like he might need to pick a side, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be on the right one. “Duh,” he says.

Felix nods and takes a breath and launches into the story, even though break is winding down and they’ll need to go back up soon. But Hyunjin can see that talking about it, unburdening, is making Felix feel better, especially since Hyunjin is such a sympathetic listener. Last night, Felix explains, they’d been watching When Harry Met Sally while cuddling—“Okay, I know that sounds bad, but we do that sort of thing a lot—oh, God, that sounds worse,” Felix says, cringing endearingly—and Chan had been so quiet, so strange. He’d cracked an awkward, shy joke about finding the film too relatable. Felix’s interest had been piqued, so he’d asked just what friend Chan had been secretly harboring feelings for—and Chan had demurred, and Felix had pressed, and Chan had dodged, and then it had turned into a full-blown interrogation until finally, it slipped out, like an accident, like a breach of containment: I don’t know, did you ever think that maybe someday we might—that we—? And Felix had said, Oh, because in retrospect, it had been so obvious. And Chan had said, I’m sorry.

“He apologized?” Hyunjin interrupts, fascinated, leaning so far forward that his and Felix’s cheeks are nearly touching. “Why?”

Felix waves that off. “Classic Chan. He apologizes for everything. Like it’s his fault he exists, or like he’s a criminal for wanting something. He could also probably tell I was uncomfortable.”

Hyunjin hums, frowns in thought. “And then what?”

“Then we… talked about it a little more, and then he went home,” Felix says, sighing heavily, “and I’ve been fucked up over it ever since. We should go.”

They both stand, and Hyunjin takes Felix’s hand again, thumb pressing soothingly into the meat of his diminutive palm. “This is crazy,” he says gently. “But you really care about each other. I’m sure it’ll work out one way or another.”

And Felix looks up at him with a smile so bright that Hyunjin honestly believes it.

***

Their first “date” is a Friday night; Chan picks Felix up after rehearsal ends, and Hyunjin watches from the second floor as the car drives away, off, presumably, into the sunset. He hears all about it the next morning. Felix is in a good mood—it’s nothing like after Chan’s confession. “It was only awkward for the first, like, five minutes,” he reassures Hyunjin as Hyunjin’s bending Felix’s leg up to get his back all limber. “And then it was just like hanging out with my best friend, like it normally is.”

“Well, that is what you were doing,” Hyunjin points out astutely. “Did it feel romantic, though?”

Felix pulls a face at Hyunjin in the mirror. “It’s so hard to tell. I think we almost kissed at the end, but then instead, we just hugged.”

“Ooh,” Hyunjin says. “Did you want to kiss?”

Felix squirms, and Hyunjin doesn’t think it’s just because Hyunjin is currently stretching him in half. “I don’t know?” he says. “I’m almost disappointed that he didn’t try to kiss me, because that would have made it easier.”

“You could have kissed him first, you know.”

Another astute observation, and this one makes Felix laugh. “Maybe I should have, actually, just to see. I know he wouldn’t kiss me first. He already feels so bad for imposing this on me.”

“Imposing?” Hyunjin repeats. He watches Felix’s expression in the mirror. “What’s he imposing? It’s not like he’s making demands and threatening you if you don’t go along with them.”

“That’s how he sees it,” Felix says, still smiling.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah,” Felix says, “it doesn’t. But that’s very in-character for him.”

Hyunjin hums noncommittally, runs his hand down Felix’s thigh and pats his hip to get him to drop his leg and switch sides. “Are you going to go out with him again?”

“Tuesday night.”

“You should kiss him,” Hyunjin says. “Just to see how it feels.”

Felix’s other leg goes up, and up, and up. He’s so pretty and dainty, the musicbox ballerina Hyunjin has always wanted to be. His freckled cheeks are flushing pink and the rest of the company is filing into the room. “Maybe I should,” Felix says. “Maybe I will.”

***

“Um, two-point-five stars?”

“Out of five?” Hyunjin laughs. He spears a cherry tomato. “That’s not very good, Felix.”

“It was the smallest peck ever,” Felix whines. “He acted like I’d shot him or something. He physically ran to the other end of the room.”

“What’s his problem?” Hyunjin can’t help but wonder. “Does he not want to kiss you? Who wouldn’t want to kiss you?” He reaches across the table to dramatically pinch Felix’s cheek and thumb at his bowed lower lip. Felix ducks away, but he’s beaming, albeit flustered. Hyunjin relents, and bites into the cherry tomato, a satisfying burst inside his mouth.

“It’s complicated,” Felix grumbles. “I think he does want to kiss me. But we just can’t rush things.” Suddenly, he gets serious. “That’s the biggest thing for me, like. If we’re going to do this, we have to take it slow. I’m just still deciding how I feel, you know? He already knows, but I’m still deciding.”

“Right,” Hyunjin says. A cucumber slice this time, then a tiny sliver of salmon, which he likes eating because it makes him feel like a prize Persian cat with a glossy, sleek coat. “Did you have fun, though?”

“I always have fun with him,” Felix says. Now he’s wistful. “He picked out a night full of things I like to do. He’s so caring, he almost doesn’t have room to care about himself because all he does is care about me.”

And that’s a bad thing? Hyunjin can’t help but think. “Wow,” is all he says, and waggles his eyebrows at Felix. “So he’s a giver?”

“Oh, my God, stop,” Felix whines, reaching over to smack Hyunjin’s arm.

“Hey, third date’s coming up, and you know what that—”

Felix’s shriek of laughter cuts him off. His speaking voice is so deep, but his laughing voice is so high. It’s infectious. Hyunjin laughs, too, even though he’s serious. He always puts out by a third date. If someone’s invested that much time, energy, and money into him, they deserve a reward. Chan sounds like he definitely deserves a reward. He’s been waiting for years, hasn’t he?

When Felix stops laughing, his cheeks are still pink; Hyunjin has noticed that he does tend to blush a lot, whenever the topic of Chan comes up. He used to before, too. Is that a good sign? “You’re ridiculous,” he grumbles, sticking his leg out under the cafeteria table to prod his toes into Hyunjin’s already-badly-bruised shin. “You might be enjoying this more than I am.”

Hyunjin raises his eyebrows as high as they can go. “Hmm. You mean that?”

Felix must know how bad that sounds, because he shakes his head quickly, and busies himself with the paper wrapper of his straw. “No,” he says. “I’m enjoying it. I really am.”

Hyunjin believes him. Felix isn’t a liar like Hyunjin. And Hyunjin’s not jealous. He doesn’t even know Chan. But based on Felix’s descriptions, he just wishes he did.

***

Home alone, while Felix is out with Chan, presumably. Hyunjin stares at himself in the mirror, sick of crying. He can’t begrudge Felix his happiness—he’s just never known envy like this. His whole life, it’s been there, yes, but formless, an unending well of hunger for more, not even knowing what he wants more of. Now, he sees it. He sees it every day, except for Saturdays, their one day off from practice. He even sees it when he’s alone, even when he closes his eyes. If only he could look in the mirror and see someone else—someone bright, joyful, carefree, beloved. Felix.

He can’t have the talent, the joy, the freedom from woes or worries. He certainly can’t have the devoted, handsome best friend who’d do anything to make him happy in exchange for the barest scrap of affection. He can’t be Felix.

But maybe he can be blond. And that’ll be a start.

***

Although Hyunjin slinks into practice wearing a hat, he has to take it off before long—he overheats quickly. His stomach is in knots. There must have been a problem with his mixing of the drugstore bleach, or maybe he’d had a crooked hand in application. He’s not just brassy; he’s positively tangerine. When the hat comes off, Svetlana Dmitrievna swears gutturally for a solid fifteen seconds, then sends him home to “fix that.” Felix had gasped at the sight, and gives Hyunjin a sympathetic smile in the mirror as Hyunjin, holding back tears, flees. Later, a text:

> Do you want my colourist’s info?

oh, sure

it looks so bad. i hate it lol

> Nooo it’s adorable

> I just know she won’t be happy unless it looks all-natural

yeah

> Let’s go together!!

> I need a root touch-up too

i love youuu

> Ilysm

***

Hyunjin feels better as his scalp is burned professionally. It’s a nice day out with Felix, who doesn’t even ask why Hyunjin had wanted to make this sudden, radical style change in the first place. His colorist is kind, too, so kind about Hyunjin’s fried ends and bronze roots that Hyunjin almost doesn’t trust it. It’s a nice day, a nice spa day. At the end of it, Hyunjin will finally be pretty.

Naturally, the conversation doesn’t take long to get personal.

“Have you ever heard of”—Felix searches for the word, slipping a fingertip under the front of his crinkly plastic cap to rub at a tiny itch—“the ‘ick?’”

Hyunjin nearly laughs until he sees how serious Felix is. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “Let me guess. Chan?”

“He called me ‘baby’ last night,” Felix confesses, half-groaning. “And it just—I’m sorry, God, I felt awful, and I didn’t say anything in the moment, but it made me feel so gross!”

Suddenly, Hyunjin understands perfectly and achingly the concept of being blind to one’s own privilege. What a strange thing to complain about. “Why?” he can’t help but say. “I mean, isn’t that a normal, like, romantic pet name?”

Felix shudders. “I don’t even know. I just got the ick! I’ve never even minded pet names before, but coming from Chan it just felt—I mean, I’ve always just been Felix to him, you know?”

Hyunjin never knew Felix to be so resistant to change. “Yeah,” he says, to stall.

“I feel like that’s a bad sign,” Felix says glumly, slouching in his heat-lamp chair, and Hyunjin can’t help but privately agree.

***

More in the same vein. Worse than even Hyunjin, who tends inexorably toward the pessimistic, had expected. It’s almost startling, considering Felix, in contrast, is the most optimistic person Hyunjin knows. This should be easy; it should be natural. But it seems like it’s taking a lot of effort, and in the wrong direction.

“We did try making out—sorry, God, is this TMI?” Felix asks, suddenly hushed, like he hasn’t been telling Hyunjin every single little detail of every single little interaction he and Chan have had for the last two weeks, like Hyunjin doesn’t thrive off of it, nourished like a vampire over a fresh kill. Hyunjin, eyes wide, lower lip sucked into his mouth, rapidly shakes his head, but not too much, so as not to dislodge Felix’s hands from braiding his beautiful, angelic, perfect, silvery-golden spun-silk hair. “Okay. Sorry. We made out, but he kept getting nervous and having to stop—”

“Nervous? About making out?” Hyunjin snorts. “Is he a virgin?”

“No,” Felix frowns, amusingly offended on Chan’s behalf, and pulls on the end of a lock of Hyunjin’s hair. “He’s just—I mean, it’s me. The stakes are high. I think.” He stops to consider it further. “It was frustrating. Like, I was taking it more seriously than he was. He kept giggling.”

Cute. “So how did it make you feel?” Hyunjin tries instead.

Felix sighs very heavily; it makes his entire body seem to vibrate. “Weird. I don’t want him to be scared of me. I’m going out of my comfort zone here, for him, and he’s, like, still all hung up on how I’m too good for him or something—but I don’t want to be up on a pedestal, and in our friendship, I never was, yeah? And now, all of a sudden, I am.”

Hyunjin watches his own expression in the mirror, guards it. “You don’t want him to like you too much,” he guesses.

“He already does,” Felix says with another sigh. “But that’s the problem, too. Is there such a thing as too much? Why can’t he just like me, without it being some sort of big space opera? That makes me nervous, too. Like I can’t let him down.”

Don’t let him down, then. “That’s hard,” Hyunjin says softly, while also thinking, I wish someone liked me too much. Felix looks dejected, and Hyunjin can feel his braiding is getting sloppy. To cheer him up, Hyunjin asks, “Is he a better kisser now, at least?”

It doesn’t work, and if anything, Felix only looks guiltier. “I couldn’t really tell, could I?”

Hyunjin twists his mouth to the side, out of gentle platitudes to say. Felix finishes the braid in silence. Hyunjin is watching him. Felix can probably tell, but he’s not meeting his eyes in the mirror. Finally, Felix says, “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me.”

I’m worried about him, too.

***

At least the next time Felix comes to rehearsal looking shrunken, Hyunjin has a better idea of what’s wrong, and Felix doesn’t leave him waiting long—it bursts out of him the moment they’re alone together. “I really think I have to break things off with Chan,” he says.

It’s what Hyunjin has been waiting for—what he’s been dreading. Chan is going to be devastated, he knows. “What happened this time?” he asks, doing his very best to reserve judgement.

Felix throws his hands up in frustration, like a cartoon character. “Nothing happened—well, that’s not true, something did happen—but it’s just everything. I think I’ve made a huge mistake, honestly.”

They’re staying in the studio through lunch break; Svetlana Dmitrievna has been insisting that Hyunjin needs extra practice, and Felix offered to help. Hyunjin accepted, although that’s humiliating, just for the sake of hearing whatever was on Felix’s mind. Now, watching their twinned reflections in the mirror as they go through arabesques, Hyunjin is thinking this better be worth it. “What happened?” he repeats, and lifts his back leg higher to get a perfect angle, like Felix.

“A little more to the left,” Felix says, and although it stings, Hyunjin doesn’t snap at him—just arches a little more to the left. Felix continues, “Well, he asked me what we should do for our one-month anniversary. Our one-month anniversary!”

Has it only been a month? Hyunjin likes a considerate man, a man who keeps track of milestones. “Huh,” he says.

“It’s weird. It’s only been a month, but it feels like we’re an old couple, all domestic and…” Felix wrinkles his nose. “Boring.” (Hyunjin swallows envy, sucks his stomach in more tightly, draws his head higher toward the ceiling.) “And the other night, when I stayed over at his place”—Felix starts pinkening and stumbles over his words slightly, especially when Hyunjin’s knowing eyes quickly flash to meet his in the mirror—“he—kind of as a joke, but also I know him, he wasn’t joking—he brought up moving in together. But in this way where, like, he was talking about it as a given? Like, should we redo the kitchen tile? And he already cleared out drawers in his dresser for me. Obviously we’ve talked about it before, and we agreed it would never happen, and we spend enough time together, I thought we were on the same page, but now it’s like—it’s like he already decided that’s what we were doing.” Felix frowns. “I don’t really like that.”

It all sounds perfectly innocuous to Hyunjin. “Do you have a key?”

“I’ve had a key since the day he moved into this place,” Felix huffs. “That’s nothing new.”

Hyunjin mouths, oh.

“I just—” Felix starts and stops, balances his weight from delicate foot to delicate foot, curves his fingertips just so. “I just. It’s all happening too fast. It’s like he’s thinking about marriage while I’m still just trying to decide how I feel. And I think that, more than anything, is showing me how I feel? Does that make sense?”

“Like, if you knew, you’d know by now?”

“Exactly.” Felix is frowning harder, but Hyunjin can see the resolved set to his jaw. He’s making up his mind. He’s choosing wrong. When he looks this serious, Hyunjin is reminded that Felix, sweet little angel Felix, is a Virgo—he can’t be swayed, and he’s not very emotional. Hyunjin wonders what Chan’s sign is. Whether he’ll get over this. The experiment has failed, and Felix has made up his mind. And who’s going to pick up the pieces?

***

Felix does it nearly right away, the next time he sees Chan. “It would be cruel to keep leading him on,” he had explained when he and Hyunjin were hugging bye after practice.

“Let me know how it goes,” Hyunjin had said, squeezing Felix extra tight as if trying to comfort him, but really to try and understand how he feels, like he could absorb it through his skin, wear it better than he does. “I’m here if you need anything. Ice cream and Titanic!”

“I’ll be okay,” Felix had laughed, his little fingernails scratching affectionately at Hyunjin’s back. “Just wish me luck.”

Hyunjin did. The words had felt so hollow, but evidently, they’d worked, because Hyunjin hears from Felix nearly right away.

> I did it. 😓😳😶

ahh!! how did it go?

> Okay…

> It was hard but

> He didn’t seem that upset

oh really??

bastard

> Hahah stop

> I mean, he didn’t try to talk me out of it or anything

> He actually seemed like he’d been expecting it

aw man

> Yeah…

are you okay?

> I feel really bad

> But I know I’ll feel better

> Such a huge weight off my shoulders

it was the right thing to do

> Yeah, this is definitely for the best

yes!!

i support u 💝

youre gonna be okay

> I know

> Thank you for everything 💕

of course omg

whatever u need always 💝

***

Felix is much happier; it’s obvious, immediately. Hyunjin wants more details—it’s a painful, perverse curiosity, and he wishes he could picture better the look on Chan’s face when Felix choked the words out (and had he said I think we should break up, or I can’t do this anymore, or Sorry, I’m just not that into you, or what?). But he doesn’t ask, because Felix is happier, and things are good. Felix is sunny again, back to normal, how he’d been before any of this happened.

Things are different, though. Chan doesn’t pick Felix up anymore. And Felix doesn’t talk about Chan a hundred times a day—in fact, he practically doesn’t talk about Chan at all. One day, Hyunjin can’t resist, and in the locker room, he asks, “What’s Chan been up to?”

He has no idea if they’ve even been seeing each other; it seems needlessly harsh, twisting the knife, if Felix has gone no-contact after the breakup. But maybe it would be hard for Chan to see him, too, and be reminded of how close he came to happiness? Felix squirms a little at the question, sighs, shrugs. “Working, mostly.”

Ah, so they have been seeing each other. “Working too much?” Hyunjin guesses.

“When is he not working too much?” Felix says, with a glimmer of his old, usual fondness. Hyunjin hasn’t seen that in a while; they really haven’t been talking about Chan, and until now, Hyunjin hadn’t really realized how much he missed it. But that expression drops fast. Felix adds, “I don’t actually know. We haven’t been hanging out as often.”

Oh. “Oh,” Hyunjin says. Carefully, he prods. “How have you… been? Are you doing okay, about everything?”

Felix nods vigorously and strips off his shirt, emerging rumpled like a dandelion. “I had a D&M with my mum about it over the weekend, and that helped a lot. I still feel bad, obviously, but he seems like he’s doing okay, and just—knowing I don’t have to fake it or force anything is just such a relief. God, I know that’s awful of me.”

“It’s not awful,” Hyunjin soothes, lies. Why did it have to be fake or forced? What’s so wrong with Chan that Felix couldn’t love him back? Everything Felix tells Hyunjin just makes him want to know Chan, love Chan, more. If I had someone in my life like Chan, he thinks, I wouldn’t waste him.

“We’re supposed to hang out tomorrow, actually,” Felix says. “It’s not the first time we’ll have seen each other since, y’know, but it’ll be the longest proper hangout.”

“Oh, really? What are you going to get up to?”

“Park picnic. It was my idea. I just feel like I’ve barely seen him, like, he’s practically been avoiding me.”

Hyunjin watches Felix for a moment—his tiny, slipping body as he contorts himself to pull on his tights. He’s elegant and small and fast like a minnow, but he broke someone’s heart last week, and he barely cares or understands. “Do you miss him?” Hyunjin asks.

Felix glances at him quickly, and there’s something totally unreadable in his eyes. “Of course I do. He’s my best friend,” he says, softening. “I know he feels horrible, like he ruined everything, but nothing’s ever going to change how I feel about him.”

Yeah, clearly. Hyunjin has to give up. And Felix is happier. Hyunjin reaches out to gently poke Felix’s freckled shoulder. “Why don’t you ever take me out for a park picnic, huh? Do I have to date you for a month to get that kind of invitation?”

“Hyunjin,” Felix giggles.

“Because I’ll do it! I’ll treat you right!”

“Let’s go this weekend,” Felix says, still giggling, blushing so sweetly. Hyunjin’s chest hurts for a moment—he’s so cute, and when he’s this cute, it’s easy to believe he’s never done anything wrong. Hyunjin understands Chan well; maybe a little too well. Maybe that’s the problem.

***

It’s at Hyunjin and Felix’s picnic when things really start to change.

Felix made sandwiches and cookies, Hyunjin provides the drinkies (sugar-free strawberry-elderflower syrup to mix with San Pellegrino, ice cubes with edible flowers frozen into them). They sit on a checkered blanket in the shade of a tree and gossip about the rest of the ballet company, complain about their ballet mistress, compare new scrunchies, and, inevitably, the conversation turns to Chan and how their picnic went, and Felix’s smile drops so quickly that Hyunjin is uncannily reminded of that first time, the day after Chan’s confession. Something’s wrong again.

“It wasn’t like this,” Felix says, gesturing between himself and Hyunjin, the wicker basket, the soft blanket. The grass. “It wasn’t nice. It was kind of awful, actually. He could barely look at me, and he was trying so hard to be brave and strong—I could tell—but he seemed like, well, a wreck.”

Hyunjin makes a crestfallen, sympathetic sound, blinking soulfully at Felix over the tops of his sunglasses. “I thought you said he was doing okay.”

“He was!” Felix agrees earnestly. “At least, he seemed like he was! He must have just been being a champ about it until he couldn’t anymore.”

Hyunjin tries to picture it. It must take so much effort—pretending to be that okay when you’re that fucked up. He tongues an ice cube into his mouth and lets it melt in his cheek. “That sucks,” he says, lips numb.

“I just wish he’d talk to me,” Felix says softly. He hangs his head. “He won’t be honest with me about it. He practically told me that outright, when I kept asking him if he was okay. He thinks—he thinks it would pressure me if I knew how poorly he was doing, I guess. Like he was asking for a second chance out of pity or something.”

“Well, is he?”

“No,” Felix says. “No, he’s not like that. In a fucked-up way, I kinda get his point of view—he’s trying to protect me. But it’s so frustrating, too, because, like—I can handle it! I want to know how he’s doing! If he’s sad, I want to help! But he won’t let me. Fuck.”

To have the cause of your sadness try to help you be less sad—again, Hyunjin understands Chan. He wouldn’t want that, either. What can he say other than that sucks again? “Maybe he just needs some space,” he suggests tentatively.

Felix sighs heavily and leans back on his hands, spine arching, toes pointing. “He definitely does. I do, too, honestly—it would help me come to terms with everything and keep my feelings clear. But…” His voice takes on a whiny tone, and he sits up abruptly, legs pulling up so he can curl around his knees. “But then—I know him! If I don’t force him to take care of himself, he’ll just waste away, especially when he’s sad. He’s really bad at being alone.”

Hyunjin crunches on his ice cube and feels the grit of the flower petals between his teeth.

“And it would kill me to not know what’s going on with him,” Felix adds, more wistful. He buries his face in his knees. “I just wish I could… argh.” He curls up even more tightly, tense and so small, and then, all of a sudden, he expands, like a corn kernel popping. “Hyunjin!”

“Felix?” Hyunjin says, alarmed.

“Do you think you could…” Felix is sitting up, reaching for him, eyes saucer-huge, lower lip quivering. “Oh, Hyunjin, this is such a big favor, I can’t ask this of you.”

“Just do it,” Hyunjin says and reaches for him, too, meeting him halfway to hold his hands. “I told you I’m here for you, whatever you need. What is it?”

Felix bites that quivering lower lip. His chilly hands are tight in Hyunjin’s own. “Do you think you could… check on him for me?”

That’s not at all what Hyunjin had been expecting Felix to say. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting. But not that. “Oh,” he says. “Um.”

“Because he says he’s fine, but I know he’s not, and if he doesn’t tell me, then I have no way of knowing,” Felix explains, rushing. “I’ll tell you where you can find him, and if you just keep an eye on him and let me know how he’s doing—”

“You want me to stalk Chan for you?” Hyunjin clarifies, disbelieving, laughing.

“Not—not stalk! I’m sorry, it’s—you just know him by now, a little bit, through me. I think you’d be able to get through to him. You don’t have to tell him I sent you—or you can, if you want—but actually, it might be better if you don’t. He won’t talk to me, and I just don’t want him to be alone. And you’re the best person I know, and he’s so special, and I really trust you with him. Could you—would you?”

Felix’s eyes are so big. He needs Hyunjin so much, and he’s saying Chan does, too. How can Hyunjin possibly refuse?

“Felix,” Hyunjin says, letting go so he can put one hand over his heart, “I won’t let you down.”

***

Felix tells Hyunjin everything Hyunjin needs to know. Where Chan lives, where he works, his typical haunts—coffee shop, salad bar, dive bar. He sends Hyunjin a Venmo of $25, for his trouble, and for whatever drink or snack or whatever he’ll need to buy to pass the time while waiting for Chan. Hyunjin’s task is simple: just get proof of life. If possible, strike up a conversation, get an overall unvarnished read on Chan’s mental state, maybe offer a shoulder to cry on if he needs it. Felix won’t interfere. He thinks they’ll get along. He’s so grateful, so grateful. He looks happier every day, now that he’s transferred the burden of worry onto Hyunjin. The plan is convoluted—and it’s not even a real plan. They both know that as soon as Hyunjin drops Felix’s name, Chan will clam up; Hyunjin doesn’t know how he’ll talk to Chan without bringing Felix up. He’s not as bold as Felix thinks he is. But he can do this, one way or another. It’ll be good for everyone, he thinks. All he wants is to help.

***

The bar will be the easiest place. Chan goes for exactly one drink every Friday night, which is lucky, because Hyunjin and Felix’s practice ends early on Fridays. It gives Hyunjin enough time to go home and get changed before he goes back out on his mission. Felix hugs him extra tightly this Friday, and now he’s the one wishing Hyunjin luck—it doesn’t sound hollow at all. It’s so full of sincerity and warmth and gratitude. Hyunjin is so nervous he might be sick, but he just promises again that Felix has nothing to worry about, and heads on home to get changed.

He’s been so calm and casual all week. He hasn’t brought Chan up himself; he’s waited for Felix to initiate every single conversation. He doesn’t want to seem too eager. Too invested. He’s helping Felix, he reminds himself a thousand times a day, he’s helping Chan. It’ll be so strange to finally meet him—Hyunjin feels like he knows him, but Chan won’t know him. Or will he? Has Felix been talking about Hyunjin to Chan, the way he talks about Chan to Hyunjin?

Great—now Hyunjin is nervous again, because that is a massive, glaring flaw in Felix’s slapdash plan. He reminds himself that it’s not that serious; this is basically just a spy mission. Light stalking. Just seeing if Chan is sobbing himself to sleep every night. Hyunjin will figure it out. He’s attractive. He’s magnetic. Strangers randomly talk to him in public all the time. He can channel some of that energy back out into the world. And he knows Chan. He knows Chan better than Chan will ever be expecting to be known. This will work.

He goes home and dolls up, his heart beating so hard and fast that he can practically see it through his ribcage and skin when he’s half-naked. Will Chan be okay? Will Chan like him? What do people even fucking wear to bars? He hasn’t been to a non-dancer nightlife event in years. He tries on nearly everything in his closet, and finally settles for something casual, unobtrusive, simple: a cropped ink-black blazer with nothing underneath, and tie-waist leather pants. A gold necklace for luck, mascara for luck, perfume for luck. He brushes his golden hair until it’s gleaming. He tries not to overthink it. He tries to be himself, even though today’s a day where he doesn’t know what that means. And he takes a dozen selfies, but doesn’t send a single one to Felix, for once bored of his own beauty. He’d rather do some good today.

His hands are shaking in the Uber. Nonsensically, he wishes Felix were with him. They have fun together, and Felix likes him, and Hyunjin likes himself when he’s with Felix, too. Felix brings out a lot of Hyunjin’s confidence, and a caring side. Remembering Felix, keeping him in mind, is helping. Hyunjin is very bad at being alone, too. He and Chan have that in common.

He asks the car to drop him off a block away. This is so not his area; he’s such a fish out of water. What if he gets mugged or lost? He has no one here, not that he has many people anywhere. He hugs his arms around his exposed waist but keeps his shoulders square and doesn’t trip on any jutting concrete. The street is quiet and dark, but he can see—and hear—the bar, snatches of music coming his way on the breeze. He hugs himself around the middle tighter. Only when he’s within touching distance of the bar’s door does he release—he has to affect a confidence he doesn’t feel, draw his back straight up, chin angled, limbs loose, like he’s about to step out onto the stage. His stage tonight is a red brick building with a buzzing neon sign reading BILLY’S. The lights are down and he’s the prima. He opens the door. He goes inside.

Chan isn’t there—Hyunjin stands in the doorway scanning every possible face. But he figured he wouldn’t be here yet; according to Felix, he finishes work at 6, then has dinner at home, then meanders over for his singular drink, and is home again by 8. It’s a narrow window. Hyunjin hopes he’s just slipped through. Hyunjin installs himself at the end of the actual bar—heads turn as he goes. He tries not to notice. He orders a tonic water—“Yes, not soda water.” He’s upset, a little, that he’s standing out; he’d really tried to look modest. One TV is playing a basketball game and the other is playing baseball. He doesn’t recognize the song playing from the literal jukebox. He’s already cold and he checks his phone and waits for a text from Felix saying he’s changed his mind and he’s going to talk to Chan himself, but it doesn’t come.

The tonic water is bitter in his mouth, and it’s difficult to swallow, but it’ll keep him focused. He keeps his eyes on his phone, but he’s actually watching the door. He’s chewing on the tiny red straw. He asks for a maraschino cherry. 6 comes, then 7—Hyunjin imagines Chan having a quiet, lonely dinner. He shudders internally every time the door squawks over its frame with a new entry, but it’s always some ruddy middle-aged man, not Hyunjin’s Prince Charming, and said man inevitably gawks when he sees Hyunjin at the end of the bar. Hyunjin is tired of everybody looking at him. He wants someone to look at instead.

When Chan comes in, Hyunjin is slouching. But Chan comes in, and Hyunjin sits up straight.

Oh, he’s beautiful. Oh, he’s perfect. So much better than Hyunjin remembered, than his mind was able to fill in the gaps. He’s not as tall as Hyunjin had expected—he’s shorter than Hyunjin—but Hyunjin is charmed by that, helplessly, he knows Chan must be so sweet. There’s his big nose, and now Hyunjin can also see the bags under his eyes, the spaces where his hair is messy, where he hasn’t been taking care of himself. He missed a spot shaving—Hyunjin wants to touch. Seeing him in the flesh has changed everything. Hyunjin quivers, braced, waiting for Chan’s dark eyes to flicker up and over and find him, the same way every stupid man who’s come into this bar has looked at him, but—Chan doesn’t. He doesn’t look up at all. He sits diagonally from Hyunjin at the opposite end of the bar and stares at the baseball-playing TV and orders “the usual” from the bartender. His accent, fuck—it’s like Felix’s, but cuter. He looks so good, so real. His posture is awful, and Hyunjin’s back aches in sympathy, his hands want to push against his vertebrae and straighten them out for him. His head is hanging heavy. His “usual” is amber liquid on the rocks, and Hyunjin sips his tonic, chews the stem of his cherry, and watches.

One drink. Chan only ever has one drink. He’s a steady sipper, half-watching the TV, half-scrolling through his phone. Hyunjin is frozen—terrified. He hadn’t planned this enough. He doesn’t know what to say to him, how to just approach out of the blue and ask him, a perfect stranger (literally), how he’s doing, really. What had Felix been thinking? Hyunjin touches his phone in his blazer’s inner pocket, considering texting him, saying that it’s all good, Chan seems fine, but—he doesn’t seem fine, really. His eyes look like a soldier’s. The bartender tries to chat, but Chan practically ignores him. The amber liquid is sipped away and Hyunjin is missing his chance. He’s swaying a little on the stool because he needs to get up and move and go and talk to him, but he’s riveted. He’s staring through his eyelashes, not wanting to catch Chan’s attention before Chan is ready. And Chan doesn’t notice.

The glass is down to dregs. There’s a good person in there—all these random men, these meat-and-potatoes red-blooded men, have no idea what a good person is sitting at the edge of this bar, nursing icy scotch (or whatever it is). Hyunjin knows, but can’t do anything about it, because he doesn’t know anyone like Chan, he never has, he wouldn’t even know where to begin talking to him. Felix just had Chan handed to him on a silver platter—no wonder he didn’t treasure him. Look at those broad shoulders, that sad smile. He deserves to be treasured. Hyunjin has been sitting up perfectly straight this entire time, like a deer poised to bolt, and this should be his chance—he should be coiling to strike—Chan is waving the bartender over, presumably to pay for his drink so he can leave—and Hyunjin extends a leg to press against the bar’s sticky floor, heart in his throat, quinine settling unpleasantly in his stomach, because he has to go, if he doesn’t go now he never will, and he’s taking half a step and opening his mouth to speak, but—Chan taps his fingertips on the rim of his glass. “I’ll do another, please,” he says to the bartender.

Hyunjin sits back down, heavily. Chan gets a new drink. He drinks this one faster. He gets a third. According to Felix’s primer on all things Chan, this shouldn’t be happening—this never happens. The music from the jukebox is louder and Hyunjin gets a glass of moscato—which the bar serves for some reason, presumably keeps stocked just in case one of these men happens to bring their girlfriend along. Chan’s cheeks are visibly warm and his eyelids are unsteady. He’s drinking the third one slower and Hyunjin hasn’t taken his eyes off him for a second. So he’s watching as some other man comes over to order a beer, says something about the baseball game to Chan, and as Chan laughs, loud and bright, sways on his stool, responds in kind. He has opened up—he’s loose where he’d been tense, he’s relaxed where he’d been upset. He sends the other man off with a fraternal clap to the shoulder. This is Hyunjin’s chance.

“Excuse me,” he says politely to the bartender, hushed. “Could I have another glass of this, please, and also one of whatever he’s having?”

The bartender hasn’t been trained in reserving judgement and looks Hyunjin up and down this time. “Let me guess. You want me to put it on his tab?” he says, but it sounds like a joke that’s going over Hyunjin’s head, and Hyunjin, frowning slightly, shakes no and holds out his own credit card. The bartender shrugs. He pours Hyunjin’s wine, and he pours Chan’s something-or-other. Whiskey, maybe. Hyunjin can feel the moscato in his head and heart—he’s not drunk, but he’s braver. And Chan, visibly, is drunk. Hyunjin sniffs the amber liquid in the glass the bartender has left for him and nearly retches—it’s like floor cleaner. But across the bar, Chan is resting his cheek in his hand, glazed eyes on the TV, cheeks glowing. He needs someone to talk to. Hyunjin needs to be that someone.

He stands. He draws himself up nice and pretty. He has a glass in each hand. Chan isn’t looking his way—Hyunjin is, accidentally, sneaking up on him. He walks smoothly, in a straight line, intention locked on his target just like Svetlana Dmitrievna always yells at him to do. If only she could see him now—she’d swoon. Chan still isn’t looking. Not even when Hyunjin sets the glasses down next to him with a wet clink against the bartop. Not even when Hyunjin slips down to sit on the stool by his side. He’s so much more handsome from this close. That strong nose. His strong jaw. His hair, Hyunjin notices, has just a little curl to it. Hyunjin is blushing. “You look lonely,” Hyunjin says.

Chan glances at him, then again, a double-take, and jolts to the point he nearly falls off his stool—delayed, in slow-motion. “Fuck,” he says, grasping for the edge of the bar, and Hyunjin grasps for him, too, holding his arm to keep him from toppling. He doesn’t let go even when Chan seems stable—he can’t help himself, he wants to touch him, and Chan is warm and firm. Chan is goggling at him, drunk eyes dazy, lips barely slack, jaw dropping. It’s like he’s staring into the sun. Hyunjin knows that look, and he’s never been prouder to be on the receiving end of it. He can’t help a small smile, and Chan, settled, breathes, “Hi. Sorry. Are you real?”

“Yes. Are you?” Hyunjin replies, and does, finally, for propriety’s sake, force himself to let go of Chan’s arm, even though the fact that Chan’s already apologizing—for what?—makes him want to dig his claws in even tighter. He nudges the glass of floor cleaner a couple of inches closer to Chan. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and he feels like he’s doing it all wrong. “Mind if I sit with you? I’m lonely, too.”

Chan is staring at him now, really staring. He must catch himself, because he shuts his mouth and shakes his head like he’s shaking something loose, and his cheeks are even redder. “That’s… fine,” he says. He also looks back over his shoulder, checking for someone else. “You’re… talking to me, right?”

“Yes,” Hyunjin says, and he can’t stop smiling now. “How’s your night going?”

“Terrible,” Chan groans, tongue catching barely in the middle of the word. Not like he’s slurring—just like he’s talking faster than he can think, even in such short bursts. “Just—so bad.”

Hyunjin hums, tips his head to the side, watches the unhappy lines between Chan’s eyebrows, at the corners of his mouth. He can’t picture Chan and Felix together; they seemingly have nothing in common. But much like how Felix brings out something caring in Hyunjin, Chan is bringing out a new confidence in Hyunjin, too. Maybe just because Chan is drunk and sad and Hyunjin wants to make him feel better. That’s it. “But better now?” he offers lightly.

Chan appears to notice the glass Hyunjin had brought him for the first time, and Hyunjin, invitingly, takes a sip of his own wine. Chan seems speechless or tongue-tied and Hyunjin wants to undo him. How could Felix hurt him? Hyunjin can actually picture it, now, the face Chan must have made, the way he must have crumpled when Felix said whatever words he said. It’s horrible. Chan doesn’t look like that now, though. He just swallows thickly and, hesitating, reaches for the glass. Hyunjin thrills at this tacit acceptance. “I dunno,” Chan says finally. “It’s pretty bad.”

“Then let’s make it better,” Hyunjin suggests, and, since he’s had one and a half glasses of wine and because Chan is very drunk, he puts his hand on Chan’s arm, and slides it down. He can’t believe himself—his heart is pounding, and his eyes are wide when Chan’s not looking. He’s never this forward. But Chan needs help. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Chan groans again, quieter. Hyunjin wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even notice the touch. “So lame,” he mutters. “It’s the—the classic thing. Got dumped.”

To hear him put it like that—so blunt. So sad. Hyunjin knows Felix wouldn’t describe it that way—that he dumped Chan. Hyunjin inhales, pets his hand lightly down Chan’s arm again. He’s in a soft flannel, but he doesn’t look comfortable in it, not even with the alcohol easing the world. Now Chan notices, glancing at Hyunjin’s hand and then up at his face, and he looks so startled all anew, and Hyunjin offers him another gentle smile. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I think I could tell.”

“It’s so fucked up,” Chan says. He’s so open, so confused. “But I deserved it.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Hyunjin says with a frown.

Chan laughs; it’s bitter, like Hyunjin’s tonic water earlier. He picks up the glass Hyunjin had gotten for him and takes a long drink. Notably, he hasn’t pushed Hyunjin’s hand off his arm—honestly, he might have forgotten it was there. “It is, though,” he says once he’s swallowed, and the liquor has made him hoarse. It’s so attractive, Hyunjin needs to take a few shallow breaths. “I deserved it for thinking—thinking I could ever—have a shot. I guess.”

Hyunjin hums. Pets him, soothingly. “Why wouldn’t you have had a shot?”

Chan’s face twitches into a grimace. He shakes his head. “I’m such a fucking loser, mate, I don’t know. I always lose, that’s the—that’s the thing about me. I should just give up.”

“No,” Hyunjin says, startled, and leans closer to him. “How does that make sense? It’s just one breakup. It doesn’t define you.”

“Yeah, this one really does, though,” Chan sighs.

Hyunjin braves on; this is helping. This has to help. “And what do they say? There’s plenty of fish in the sea, hm?”

Chan stubbornly shakes his head. “Not for me.”

Hyunjin squeezes his arm until Chan looks up at him. Dark, sad eyes. Unhappy, plush mouth. He’s the most beautiful, most real person Hyunjin has ever seen. Horribly, selfishly, Hyunjin wants him all to himself. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” he points out very softly.

Chan snorts. He shakes his head again, like he’s shaking off a fly. “Sure. But you’re not, like, into me.”

“Sure, I am,” Hyunjin says—it just slips out of him, so easy, so easy it’s surprising, but it’s so honest. Sweetly, innocently, meaning it, he bats his eyelashes.

Chan can’t look away, and neither can Hyunjin. Disbelievingly, still hoarse, Chan starts to laugh. His cheeks are flushed and burning. Hyunjin remembers that Chan doesn’t know his name. That Hyunjin’s not supposed to know his. Chan is curling back, awkward and tense, and drawing his arm away from Hyunjin’s touch. “Sorry,” he says, “sorry, fuck, I just—I can’t believe someone who looks like you… would be into me.”

“How come? You’re gorgeous,” Hyunjin says, but it’s not right, something’s wrong, Chan is pulling away, closing off. He’s shaking his head so Hyunjin’s words won’t even enter his ears. That bitter laugh is back, and Hyunjin knows how he feels—so drunk that it’s not fun anymore. And Chan is still pulling away, and even starting to stand, and even turning his head to look at the door, like he’s going to leave, and Hyunjin—panics. He just panics, and for some reason, all he can think about is the way the bartender had looked him up and down and assumed he’d be putting his drinks on Chan’s tab—like he’s the proverbial nice boy like you in a place like this, like he dressed up real nice just to get someone to buy his drinks for him, to buy his time for him, and Hyunjin is panicking, and he grabs Chan’s leaving arm, and says, “Wait.”

“Sorry,” Chan says so quietly, gives his arm a little tug, “sorry, I just—I know you couldn’t be into me, just being stupid again, I—”

“But I could be,” Hyunjin blurts, “for a price.”

Chan goes extremely, preternaturally still, and Hyunjin thinks, What the fuck is wrong with me?

After an interminable and excruciating pause, Chan says, “Oh.”

Hyunjin isn’t breathing. The weight of the realization that he’s just ruined everything—just royally fucked it up—is compressing his spine such that he can barely keep his head up. Of everything in the world—every way he could possibly think of to get Chan’s attention and let him lick his wounds—why had he thought of this? Of pretending to be an escort? Ah, yes, male prostitutes, famously a respected and trustworthy group. Now that’s inviting. Now that’s something Chan wants to be around. At least, Hyunjin thinks, despairing, at least this’ll make a funny story for him to tell Felix, when they’re all made up.

But Chan is sitting back down. He’s looking at Hyunjin like at a lethal animal through thin glass at a zoo. Admiring, curious, a little bit afraid. “Oh,” he says again. “Really?”

Hyunjin, incapable of breath or speech, nods.

Impossibly, Chan seems to be relaxing. He’s cracking a new smile—one that crinkles the corners of his eyes. He takes a sip of his forgotten drink. “Oh,” for the third time. “Figures. Of course.”

“Of course?” Hyunjin repeats.

Chan, vaguely, gestures, still smiling to himself. “Explains it. Someone who looks like you being into me. Dunno why I didn’t see it sooner.”

Hyunjin glances down at his own body. Chan’s really not questioning this. How could he have seen it sooner? Hyunjin isn’t a real hooker. Is Chan saying he looks like an expensive whore? Hyunjin isn’t sure how he feels about that. What he is sure of, though, is that Chan isn’t running away anymore. Unsteadily, but testing the limits of how far he’s willing to commit to this, Hyunjin says, “I mean, I did actually want to come talk to you.”

“You could see I needed company,” Chan corrects. That smile is very nice. Wistful, self-effacing, but it makes him look five years younger. Hyunjin wants to see all his different smiles—his real ones, especially. Chan exhales against his glass—condensation pools—and shakes his head, this time in smiling disbelief. “Wow. Good for you, y’know?”

“Is it?” Hyunjin says, against all odds starting to smile too. How would a fancy hooker smile? Just for fun, he tries it: a subtle glimmer, his head tilted back.

Chan nods vehemently. His eyes catch on Hyunjin’s smile. “That’s, like—a real job. The oldest profession, isn’t that what it’s called? And you—I have to hand it to you, mate, you really got me talking. I mean, I’m a chatty drunk, sorry, but not like that.”

“That was nothing,” Hyunjin finds himself saying. He leans an elbow on the bar. He picks up his wine. He sips. Once again, he has no fucking idea what he’s doing. “You didn’t even tell me that much. I’d like to hear more.”

Chan laughs. It’s a nice laugh. He keeps looking at Hyunjin now. “You an undercover cop?”

Hyunjin arches an eyebrow. “Do I look like an undercover cop?”

“No,” Chan says, laughing again, looking down to drink, and Hyunjin takes this opportunity to lean in just an inch or two further—he’d be even bolder, he thinks, if he really were what Chan now thinks he is. That makes Chan abruptly stop laughing, when he looks up and sees how close Hyunjin has gotten. His swallow is long, and he hiccups.

Hyunjin asks, “Are you an undercover cop?”

Chan mutely shakes his head.

“Now that we’ve established neither one of us is an undercover cop,” Hyunjin says, “can I get you another drink?”

As if it’s hit him all at once, Chan has gone either monosyllabic or silent; he looks down at his glass, which is closer to empty than full, and slowly shakes his head again. “I should stop,” he says. “I’m—I never drink this much.”

“Then should we get you home?” Hyunjin says softly.

Chan goes still again. His eyes flicker to Hyunjin. He swallows, and there’s something—something in his expression—like he’s on a precipice. Like he wants Hyunjin to push him over the edge. He carefully says, “I’m… thank you. Not tonight, it’s… I don’t think…” Hyunjin doesn’t say anything. He lets Chan mumble en route to a destination, which he finally reaches—but it’s not the one Hyunjin had expected: Chan lifts his head, clears his throat, lowers his voice, and says, “How much?”

Oh, fuck. That’s a great question. Hyunjin has to stay cool, not give away his obvious deception, and he can’t even bask in the startling fact that Chan wants it. What to say? He can’t make himself sound cheap, and he remembers what Felix had said about Chan’s job—it pays well. But he also can’t make himself prohibitively expensive. What’s a good in-between sum? Fuck, Chan needs an answer, and it needs to make sense. “…Five,” Hyunjin says.

Chan exhales, almost like a whistle. (Hyunjin, internally, winces. Too high? Too low? What the fuck am I doing, seriously?) “Five thousand?” he says, quiet, awed. “I mean, I respect that. You’re clearly… a pro, you should be paid for your labor, but that’s… definitely out of my—”

“Hundred,” Hyunjin interrupts smoothly. He watches Chan’s expression change from awed to—hopeful? Encouraged, Hyunjin keeps going, and Chan keeps brightening: “For an overnight. For an hour, it’s one hundred.”

“Oh.” Chan quiets. He traces a fingertip through the drip left behind by his cold glass. Hyunjin’s heart is in his throat again and even the sweet moscato is souring on the backs of his teeth. But Chan glances up again, a slightly crooked smile this time, and he says, “And how much to walk me home?”

Hyunjin lights up. He can’t help it. “Baby, I’ll do that for free.”

It makes Chan laugh, which is what Hyunjin wanted. “Okay,” Chan shrugs, loose, grinning, having fun again, and Hyunjin holds out a hand to help him off the stool, and Chan takes it—sudden touch, so startling, so warm. They both have to pause. Chan looks at him—has to look up. “I’m Chris,” Chan says.

Oh? He’s using a fake name? Why? How saucy. He wants it. He wants it. He wouldn’t be using a fake name if he didn’t want it—if he didn’t want it, and the anonymity that’ll keep him safe, that’ll let him do anything he wants without consequences, and to be someone else, and to do new things. Amazing. Chris. Hyunjin’s hand is in Chan’s and Chan is looking at him expectantly, and at first Hyunjin doesn’t understand why, but then he does, and then he panics again—his mind clicks through a ridiculous Rolodex of first-pet-childhood-address names, then Sapphire-Jasmine-Moonbeam-Cherry—and he sees a framed poster out of the corner of his eye, the Eiffel Tower (what a weird bar), and, smiling without his mouth, he murmurs, “Paris.”

“Paris,” Chan repeats, with a faint knowing grin. “Right. Pleasure to meet you, Paris.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Hyunjin says, and slides their hands down so they’re not shaking but holding, right as the bartender comes over to close out Chan’s tab for him. Hyunjin meets his eye, defiant: you were right about me. He wants to lean on Chan’s shoulder—he wants to curl around him. But he also doesn’t want to scare Chan away, not when he’s getting so close. He watches as Chan tips generously, maybe over-generously, maybe letting Hyunjin know that he has cash to spare? Chan looks up at him, as if testing whether Hyunjin is still there, and Hyunjin smiles at him. “Lead the way,” he says.

Heads turn again as they walk out. Chan does his best to hold the door for Hyunjin, but he’s a little slippy and uncoordinated, so Hyunjin helps him, and beams beatifically when Chan looks back—still checking. So sweet, like he can’t believe his luck. Hyunjin wants to be his guardian angel; he wants to be his secret, his call-for-a-good-time. He slips his arm through Chan’s when they’re walking close enough—again, he can’t believe how forward he’s being, but now that he’s not Hyunjin, now that he’s Paris, can’t he do anything? Paris isn’t shy. Paris isn’t even that lonely. Paris is the cure.

“I think…” Chan exhales against the cooler night air. “Shit. I might need to walk around a bit before I go home. Sober up.”

“Sounds good to me,” Hyunjin says, and now he does snuggle against his side, just slightly. He can’t believe Chan is real. He can’t believe Chan is accepting his help, against all odds. He thinks he might be very happy that he’s getting away with this. “How are you feeling now, Chris?”

Chan takes just a shade too long to answer, and Hyunjin, looking down, sees how pink his cheeks are. Like he’d forgotten he’d given Hyunjin a fake name. “Like I’m in a dream,” Chan says, eventually. He starts walking, and Hyunjin goes with him, holding onto him just in case Chan’s a stumbling drunk. “You sure you’re real?”

Hyunjin squeezes his arm. “Positive.”

“If he could see me now,” Chan says, then stops himself, stops walking, too, and laughs. “Nah, I bet he’d just be happy.” Yes, he would, Hyunjin nearly says, but it’s wise that he doesn’t, because then Chan makes a wet noise, starting to walk again, and says, “Even though I’m not happy.”

It’s not just that Hyunjin is getting him talking; it’s that Chan needs to talk. Many men do this, Hyunjin reasons. Pay a hooker just to talk. It’s like therapy. “Because of the breakup?” Hyunjin prompts gently. “Or—in general?”

“God—both, how did you know,” Chan groans. “It’s just hard to be happy, isn’t it? Don’t you think?”

“Sometimes,” Hyunjin says honestly. “It just depends where you’re looking.”

Chan hums, sighs, drags his feet. He chooses to steady himself with a hand covering Hyunjin’s on his arm. It’s a nice touch. “I work hard—I work hard to look. But it’s hard.”

Maybe you’re looking in all the wrong places, Hyunjin thinks with a private smile. Maybe you should stop looking, and just let it come to you. “Were you happy with him?” he asks after a moment.

“Fuck,” Chan says, has to stop walking again, and Hyunjin waits patiently. Chan has his eyes closed and he’s taking deep breaths. “I really wanted to be,” he admits, and slowly opens his eyes. “He’s the—the situation is that he’s my best friend and I’m, like, in love with him and probably always will be. He makes me happy—as a person. Like this one time, back in uni, it was the only time I ever skipped class—although I probably should have done it more. Anyway, we skipped class, which was his idea, and we just went to a matinee of the worst musical I’ve ever seen in my life, and even though I couldn’t really relax because I was worried about missing that lecture, he was just so happy the entire time, and it made me happy, too, I forgot about how worried I was. God, that musical was a fucking—it was about, like, taxes—” He stops dead, mid-sentence, because Hyunjin is looking at him with a light, wry smile. Chan blushes, but all Hyunjin can think is how cute he is when he’s all lit up like that, burbling enthusiastically about something he enjoys. “…What was I talking about?”

“Whether or not you were happy with your ex,” Hyunjin says, “but it’s okay, you can tell me about the musical, I want to know.”

“The main character… was an accountant,” Chan says. Abruptly, he sniffles. “There were moments when I was so happy that I got to—that I finally got to—tell him or show him. I mean, how I felt, when we were together. But mostly I just got in my own fucking way. Couldn’t even enjoy it properly. Was too worried the whole time.”

“Worried,” Hyunjin repeats, doing his best to keep up. Chatty drunk was right. “About what?”

“About him dumping me,” Chan says with a miserable grin. “Got quite the gift of prophecy, me.”

The thing is—none of this is new information, strictly. But Hyunjin has to act like it is. The street lights around here are dim, a little yellowed. Chan looks good. Hyunjin wants to say, Could you see me coming? Instead, he gently pets over Chan’s hand. “Why do you think he did it?”

“Ouch,” Chan says, stumbles a bit, rubs his free hand over his own chest, but does his best to shrug it off. “He told me, actually, I don’t even have to guess. He just—I just friendzoned myself. He said he sees me like family and he wouldn’t want to mess that up. Fair enough. I don’t want to mess that up, either. I don’t blame him for any of it—I can’t.” Long inhale, tight, huffing exhale. “He didn’t want me,” he concludes firmly.

His loss. My gain. He’s crazy. I won’t waste you. “How long were you together?”

Chan snorts, but he does start walking again, slowly. “Not even a month. So pathetic, right? To be this fucked up over something that didn’t even make it a whole month?” Hyunjin makes a soft, nonjudgemental noise. “But it’s complicated. Told you, I’ve been in love with him for years.” He sighs. “Suppose I should start saying I was in love with him, right? I should get over him, right?”

“You should do what you want,” Hyunjin says. “What feels right. Does it feel right, to be in love with him?”

Chan doesn’t answer. Hyunjin wouldn’t know what to say, either. He knows it’s not that simple—he also knows what he’s asking, even if Chan doesn’t. Was he right for you? Is he worth all this? Chan, as they pass under one of those gold-glow lights, almost looks as though he’s tearing up. “He’s just good,” Chan says, at the very end of the block. That throaty, wet tone sad drunks sometimes take on. Hyunjin clutches at his arm more tightly. “He’s just so good, such a good and warm and lovely person. Being around him feels right. I should call hi—”

“If he’s good, are you bad?” Hyunjin cuts in, smooth and warm like a silk blanket, cocooning Chan away from Felix. “Tell me about yourself instead, Chris.”

Chan stumbles again, both physically and verbally, and half-laughs, his neck going a charming red. “Well, for starters, my name’s actually Chan.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah. I mean, Chris is my family name. But I mostly go by Chan.”

“Chan,” Hyunjin repeats, rolling it in his mouth to let it melt. He smiles down at him. Chan is looking up, to Hyunjin’s surprise, and nearly expectant for a moment—like he’s waiting for Hyunjin to tell him his real name, too. Hyunjin can’t. So he doesn’t. He just lets his smile widen, brighten. “So nice to meet you, Chan.”

“You, too.” There’s that self-effacing half-laugh again. “But—what’s there to tell?” Chan says. It sounds like his tongue is heavy. He keeps sighing, as if he’s trying not to be sick. “I haven’t made anything of myself. I’m shit at taking care of people, no matter how hard I try. Told you, Paris—I’m a loser.”

“You’re down on your luck,” Hyunjin disagrees, his tone so gentle. “Trust me. I’ve seen losers, and you are not a loser.”

Chan peeks up, quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Ah—he must think Hyunjin means other clients. Other johns. Hyunjin doesn’t even know who he actually meant. “Yeah,” Hyunjin says, confiding, conspiratorial, imagining it, and it makes Chan giggle, but in a scandalized way.

They’ve gotten to the end of the block, and Chan squints around a bit, then gestures right. They turn. “It’s not this way, but I’m still… y’know,” he mumbles. “Just a little while longer, if you don’t mind. Sorry.”

Hyunjin tuts. “No, I don’t mind. You apologize too much.”

Chan winces, but he’s smiling. “He says that, too.”

“Tell me about yourself,” Hyunjin reminds, tucking away that smile of Chan’s to enjoy later.

Chan rolls his eyes dramatically. Funny. “Really, there’s not much to tell. I’m, ah, eldest of three… Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, haven’t been back in ages… I hate my job… It’s all so boring, I don’t know what you—”

“Australia, wow,” Hyunjin says. “Are your siblings still there?”

“Yeah, both of ’em. I keep trying to get them to come visit, but little old me’s not worth the trip, I guess,” Chan says, smiling crookedly. “Nah, only kidding. Lucas is still in school, Hannah works full-time, and I’m really not much of a tour guide.”

Hyunjin nudges Chan lightly. “Hey. You’re showing me around just fine.”

Chan cracks up. Hyunjin likes his hoarse, squeaky laugh. “Oh, yeah, so good. Look, this is the—this is the, um. The fire hydrant. And over here we have the graffiti van. Uh, support local artists!”

“You’re better at things than you think,” Hyunjin whispers—has to lean in to whisper, and he watches the way it makes Chan shiver. “What do you do for fun, Chan?”

“I, uh—um.” Chan swallows—he shivers again. Hyunjin is making him nervous. Shit, he’d be making himself nervous, but Paris doesn’t get nervous, Hyunjin thinks. Paris likes this. Having men wrapped around his little finger. He does this all the time. But he’s lucked out tonight, found a special one. “I don’t… know. I mostly just go to work, or stay at home.”

“Why?”

“I’m boring,” Chan tries to explain, and when Hyunjin just tightens his lips and shakes his head, he laughs nervously. “No—seriously! I’m not used to being by myself. Doing things by—for?—myself.”

“Why not?”

“Paris,” Chan says, and now he’s nearly whining, and Hyunjin thinks maybe he’s taking this whole getting-him-talking thing too far, maybe he should politely apologize and back off, but then, after a deep breath, Chan actually answers, the answer spilling out of his liquor-loose mouth like he was just waiting for it to open wide enough to run free, perfect intoxicated clarity: “It just freaks me out. I don’t—I don’t think there’s anything all that special about myself, and whenever I do something just for myself, it’s like—well, I could have done something for someone else instead, y’know? And the stuff I like is weird and boring, like me. Not much to share. But at least when I’m doing something for someone else, when I’m helping, then there’s a point to me. I always think people only keep me around because I’m useful, but I’m not very—very good at being useful, either. I send a lot of money back home to my mum even though she doesn’t need it and she always sends it back right away. It always annoys Felix—annoyed Felix. He didn’t want me to help him. I just don’t know what else to do. My purpose just isn’t—isn’t myself. I don’t know how to focus on myself. I just want to help. I need to, I think.”

This is where it should cross Hyunjin’s mind that he might be crossing a line. Chan is panting now, and he stops walking, winded, leaning down with his hands on his knees like he really is going to be sick. Hyunjin is a stranger, a perfect stranger, a liar, a fraud. But his heart is going out to Chan, a man so selfless that he won’t let himself feel happiness. “I know exactly how you feel,” Hyunjin says softly.

“Fuck, I’ve never said any of that out loud before,” Chan mutters toward the concrete. He shakes his shaggy head, then lifts it, bloodshot sad eyes beaming need at Hyunjin. “…You do?”

“Yes, Chan,” Hyunjin says, with a feline smile. “I do.”

Chan swallows. “Tell me? A little? Only if you’re—if you’re comfortable.”

“I like helping, too,” Hyunjin says, and he holds a hand out for Chan, when he’s straightened back up all the way. Chan hesitantly takes it, cold to warm, and they walk, Chan shuffling after him like a lost puppy. “And I don’t feel like I’m myself when I’m alone, either. I’m a very strict perfectionist and my self-perception doesn’t always align with the outside world. Trying to make them match can be very painful. So what I do—this”—he waves his free hand across himself—“is like a release. If I’m doing what someone else wants, what I really am doesn’t matter. I can be anything. It’s the most freeing thing in the world. I love it.” He smiles at Chan lightly.

Chan is staring at him with his jaw dropped again. His eyes look misty. “That’s… wow,” he says, slow, dreamlike. “You are… so smart.”

Hyunjin laughs, tossing his head back for a moment. “Smart for a hooker, you mean?”

Immediately, Chan winces, his hands clumsily fumbling for Hyunjin’s shoulder, beseeching as he emits an embarrassed laugh. “No—no, fuck, I didn’t mean it like—”

“Just teasing you, Chan. It’s okay.”

“Oh.” Chan, blushing, keeps a hand on Hyunjin’s arm, and Hyunjin wants to touch him where his heart is. “I meant—you’re so smart for—turning something sad into something nice. That sounds nice.”

“It’s okay to like things that feel nice,” Hyunjin adds, just as lightly. “If you like helping people, that’s okay. That’s a beautiful thing to like. Just remember that you’re in there, too.”

Chan pulls a sad, sour face. “You might have to remind me.”

“I’d love to,” Hyunjin says. Dead serious. “Call me any time, day or night, and I’ll tell you. Or show you.”

“Okay,” Chan breathes. Now, blushing harder, he’s looking down at the ground as they walk, and he nearly stumbles again—Hyunjin has to brace him. “Oh—shoelace.”

He starts to bend down, but Hyunjin beats him to it—“I’ll do it,” he says, halting Chan gently, and he moves to get in front of him, kneeling without actually letting his knee touch the ground. He’s more focused on retying Chan’s loose shoelace than he’s been on anything else, he thinks; the loop has to be perfect, the knot true, so it won’t come undone. He’s so concentrated that at first, he barely feels it when an incredibly careful hand lands on his shoulder, but then he feels it, and he looks up at Chan. Chan is looking down at him. His gaze is as careful and reverent as Hyunjin’s fingers are on his shoelaces, and when Hyunjin smiles, gradually, Chan smiles back.

“You’re really,” Chan says slowly, but cuts himself off to swallow, heavily and visibly, like someone in a cartoon—except it doesn’t play off as a joke—as Hyunjin rises to his feet. He has to keep looking up the more Hyunjin rises. “Really…”

“Really what?” Hyunjin prompts.

“Really good at… that.”

“Tying shoelaces?”

Chan shakes his head, and his blush seems here to stay. “At making… at looking… ah, shit, Paris, I forgot.”

Hyunjin somehow doubts that he forgot, but he won’t press him on it. Gently, he slips his arm through Chan’s so they can keep walking, quiet. It’s easy to keep breaking the touch barrier. This is right—this is exactly what Chan needs. They’re so alike; Hyunjin had no idea how alike they’d be. Chan drops his head against Hyunjin’s shoulder. It’s heavy—his mind seems like a heavy burden to him.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before,” Chan says quietly.

He could mean anything: someone this beautiful, a gigolo, an easy confidante. In a way, it doesn’t matter, even though of course Hyunjin wants him to clarify. He has to play it cool, though; he must hear that all the time. “Likewise,” he says, with a flash of a smile, and Chan immediately starts rolling his eyes. “No, I mean it! You really wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s admirable.”

“Admirable,” Chan snorts, and wriggles his arm free of Hyunjin’s hold so he can start pushing his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. That makes Hyunjin burst into elegant giggles, and Chan likes that, likes that he just made this pretty, frosty, expensive performer laugh, and laughs, too. He keeps glancing up at Hyunjin to check that he’s still smiling, so Hyunjin keeps smiling, to give him something to keep looking at. And look Chan does; his eyes flicker from Hyunjin’s face to the skin exposed at his chest, back up to his lips, back down to his narrow waist, and around again in circles. “Sorry,” Chan says, dreamy, nearly slurring again. “I’m staring.”

Hyunjin shakes his head, quiet and respectful. “You can stare. That’s free, too.”

Chan laughs, and returns his arm to Hyunjin’s grip. “That’s free,” he repeats. His smile fades; he looks like he’s thinking hard, but like the thoughts keep slipping away. His face is an open book to match the heart on his sleeve. He reads aloud: “Then what’s… like, what do people… what exactly…”

“What do I get paid to do?” Hyunjin guesses.

“Yeah,” Chan says, blushing. “Is that—is that okay to ask? Like I said, I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

Ah, so he did mean an escort. Hyunjin tries not to be disappointed. “Whatever you want,” he says, buying himself time. It might be better, actually, to frame this in terms of hypotheticals for Chan, rather than making up a list of past services he’s performed for past clients. He starts small, easy. “Attend events, be they business, pleasure, or personal—family reunions and such. Accompany you on trips. Share meals. Have long conversations about anything at all.” He smiles down at Chan, who’s still blushing, but also reluctantly starting to smile. Time to kick it up a notch. “Wear what you like, talk how you like, act how you like, be your type, be something new. Be a wet dream come true. Sexually, I’m very receptive and flexible. I prefer to bottom, of course, but I’ve been known to top if the mood is right—”

“Okay, okay, okay, okay,” Chan says, blushing so hard he can barely walk. “That’s—okay. Yeah. Cool. I was just asking.”

“Providing companionship,” Hyunjin sums up, smiling wider. He lightly touches Chan’s hand, and watches Chan flinch. “Which can mean all manner of things. Everyone has different needs.”

“You must have the patience of a saint,” Chan says. “Putting up with weirdos and their weird needs.”

Hyunjin shakes his head. This is important; he remembers acutely everything Felix had said about how cagey Chan is about having wants, needs, and desires. Like it’s his fault he exists, like he’s a criminal for wanting something. “Nobody’s needs are weird,” Hyunjin says carefully. “They’re just needs. We all have them. And like I told you, I like helping people.” He thinks about it for a further second, because Chan still seems troubled, and adds, “I also like money.”

It makes Chan laugh. He looks relieved. “And you—you’re safe? You’re not in any… danger, or anything?”

Hyunjin likes this world Chan is dreaming up around him. One where Hyunjin—Paris—is a helpless, tragic figure, like Fantine in Les Mis, at the mercy of a cruel, greedy pimp. Along comes Chan to save him. Hyunjin’s such a sucker for shining armor. “Don’t worry about me,” he tells him with a gentle, mysterious smile. “I love what I do. I’m doing what I want, when I want it. I’m my own boss. And I get to meet all kinds of interesting people, like you.”

Chan huffs very softly. “Shit, it sounds like you’re way better off than me.”

“Should I worry about you, then?” Hyunjin says, also very softly.

“Ah,” Chan says, suddenly startled, red to the tips of his ears. “No, I’m fine!”

“I think I will,” Hyunjin says. “I think I already do.”

“Oh, Paris,” Chan manages, but no words come after that. Hyunjin waits. Chan is squirming, uncomfortable, blushing still, and Hyunjin looks at the fire hydrant, the graffiti van—they’ve walked in a circle. Chan has been leading them in circles. Hoping to draw their time out together, maybe? Or maybe he’s just too drunk, he hasn’t noticed. Even if, when they get to Chan’s place, Chan invites him up, Hyunjin can’t expect sex—he’s probably too drunk, still. Hyunjin would want him to remember it all. To be so himself. Chan even stops walking, and Hyunjin does, too, worried he’s actually broken him this time, but Chan, pink-cheeked and rumpled, not making eye contact, but looking a little less miserable than he had when Hyunjin had first approached him, pats down his pockets and pulls out a jingling set of keys. “This is, um, me.”

Fuck. They must have walked past it five or six times. Was Chan just trying to get up the courage to invite Hyunjin inside? Hyunjin cocks his head, looks up at the dark building. “Which one’s yours?”

“Third from the top,” Chan says, moving to stand by his side so he can point. “That one… those windows. My room.”

“It must have a nice view,” Hyunjin says pensively.

Chan covers his face with his hands—he drops his keys without even thinking about it, like he’s so drunk he’s lost his sense of object permanence. Before he can even start leaning down to grab them, Hyunjin’s looped a finger through the main ring and is in Chan’s personal space, his other hand drifting to hold him at his elbow. Chan peeks through his fingers and Hyunjin hears his muffled gasp. “Paris,” Chan says, hands slowly lowering. “I—”

“You said not tonight, Chan, I haven’t forgotten,” Hyunjin says, quiet. “Do you think you can make it upstairs by yourself?”

Chan mutely nods. Staring, like he had the first moment he’d seen Hyunjin. Blindly trusting. Waiting for Hyunjin to say the perfect thing, the thing that’s going to make it all better, as only Hyunjin can do. The thing that’s going to make Chan see that he can’t live without Hyunjin.

Hyunjin has to be very careful. This is such a precious tightrope to walk. Luckily, Hyunjin’s been working on his balance, and he has the bruises to show for it. “You’ve been through a lot,” he murmurs. Chan shudders, almost swaying with it, so Hyunjin holds his elbow tighter. He presses the keys into Chan’s palm. “You need rest. You’ve earned the right to feel good.”

Intentionally so ambiguous. Hyunjin watches the different meanings swimming across Chan’s face, and finally, Chan’s fingers close around the keys. “I remembered what I was going to say earlier,” Chan says. “You’re really good at that—making me feel like someone worth your interest. Like someone you—someone you want.”

This is it. Hyunjin licks his lips so they’ll shine, takes a breath so he’ll be breathless. He steps even further forward, he takes Chan by the hands and squeezes, he leans in to press his forehead down against Chan’s. “That was nothing,” he vows, low, a little fevered. Chan has stopped swaying—he’s gone still, hardly breathing, too, as Hyunjin casts his spell. “Just think about it. I can make you feel so wanted. I can make you feel so treasured. I can make you feel so needed.”

“Paris,” Chan breathes, trembling.

“I want to see you again,” Hyunjin says. He closes his eyes. “Or I’ll really worry about you, Chan.”

Chan makes a hysterical, choked noise. He’s so clearly not used to this; it hurts Hyunjin to think about. Nobody’s ever paid Chan this much undivided attention—not even Felix. Nobody’s ever been this honest with him, and Chan thinks Hyunjin is lying, for money. “I don’t want you to worry,” Chan mumbles.

“Then don’t give me a reason to,” Hyunjin replies. He pulls away, opens his eyes, tugs beseechingly at Chan’s hands. “Will you call me tomorrow and let me know how you’re doing?”

“Okay—okay,” Chan says, shaken, like he’s surprised at the words coming out of his own mouth. “Yeah, okay, I will.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Call me,” Hyunjin repeats needlessly, softly, intensely insistent. “Call me and we can set a date.”

“Okay—a date?” Chan swallows; he nods. “To—to—see me again.”

“Only if you want,” Hyunjin says. Only if you want me. “It’s all about what you want.”

Chan is easing his hand out of Hyunjin’s hold and he’s getting out his phone. Squinting at the screen, he unlocks it, and passes it over to Hyunjin with the keypad open for his number. “When I figure out what that is,” Chan says, “you’ll be the first to know.”

Victory. Success. Triumph. Hyunjin’s really not breathing now. He types in his number, saves himself as just Paris, gives his own number a quick dial just so he’ll have Chan’s contact, too, just in case Chan takes too long. He hopes his hands aren’t shaking too visibly as he passes the phone back over. He keeps his expression soft, longing, understanding. “Good night,” Hyunjin says. He wants to kiss Chan so fucking bad. “Don’t be too lonely.”

“You, too,” Chan says. The sweetness of his sleepy eyes, as he blinks. Still looking at Hyunjin like he can’t believe it. His skin in the dim gold streetlighting, also gold. He presses the phone against his chest, unfolds his hand so Hyunjin sees the imprint the keys left in his palm, and he goes—keys, door, clattering stairs inside—he’s gone. He has a great ass and a very broken heart. Hyunjin would, in all sincerity, do anything for him.

For now, Hyunjin goes home. He’s silent in the Uber. He’s silent in his bedroom. He can’t tell Felix—he can’t tell anyone—he can’t even think. All he can do is sit by the phone, quivering.

***

Chan calls six hours later.