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“Ugh, I think I’m breaking out again.”
Jisung pouts at his phone screen, sticking out his bottom lip and crinkling his nose. He prods at a tender spot below his nose that had been looking a little pink and raised at practice. He lets out a huffy sigh as if offended that mother nature would dare to lay a hand on his face, despite the fact that all teenage boys—even idols—were greasy, sweaty, hormone-wild pizza faces.
He makes to squeeze at the bump and that’s when Changbin interferes, swatting at his arm. “Ya, stop it. You’re just going to make it worse with all the oils on your fingers.”
Jisung scowls. “We have a fansign tomorrow.”
“And whose fault is this? You know high-carb snacks destroy your skin.”
“So does ramyeon, but I’ll die before I stop eating that,” he mutters. “Maybe I’ll get Channie-hyung to squeeze it…”
“If you show up tomorrow with a red and bleeding popped pimple, the stylist noonas are going to kill you.”
Defeated, Jisung sighs again and closes out of the camera to scroll through Twitter. Changbin knows for sure that he has a paper due in a couple days that he should be working on, but even if he wasn’t barely disguising the bags under his eyes with foundation, Changbin wouldn’t breathe a word. It wasn’t that school wasn’t important, but with Chan, Minho, Felix, and Hyunjin running themselves into the ground with overwork, they needed the rest of the members to at least attempt a regular schedule. And Jisung was as guilty as Changbin of staring at the ceiling of the dorm, wide awake even with the lights off and school in five hours with lyrics or a melody stuck in his head but not quite right.
Most days, Changbin wished he could just graduate already so that he wouldn’t regret getting up to record himself humming the tune in the bathroom or scrawling the words if the bottom’s where we’re at then you’ll never see us coming through eyes so bleary that the next day they read something more like if the boat sweat the north lever is coming.
Even now, Changbin can feel the corner of his right eye twitching intermittently, which means he really needs to pass out soon, but…well, complications.
“Is he dead?” Jisung asks, peering around Changbin’s body to get a better look at the member stretched across Changbin’s lap.
Changbin holds a hand up in front of Felix’s barely parted lips. The puff of air is soft but tangible. “Nope, still with us.”
Jisung’s eyes sparkle and he shifts forward in the armchair.
“Oh no you don’t,” Changbin says, swatting Jisung’s arm again. “Leave him be. He stayed back late with Minho-hyung.”
“No fair,” Jisung says. “You only ever let Felix and Jeongin sleep on your lap.”
“Maybe that’s because unlike you, they don’t wriggle around and demand that I pat their heads. Besides, you only let Jeonginie sleep on you, too.”
“I would let Minho-hyung sleep on me!”
“Yeah, if hyung ever slept.”
Jisung looks away, sobered. Changbin feels a little bad for joking like that. Hyunjin and Felix managed themselves adequately, despite the overwork, but Chan and Minho pushed themselves dangerously hard. The amount of times Chan had fallen asleep in the middle of a producing session, mid-conversation even, had both of them on edge. And Minho had been cagey about his weight lately, which only made how much thinner he had been looking lately even more concerning. Jisung had a soft spot for Minho a mile wide that was returned two-fold, but Minho wouldn’t talk about it, even with him.
“…Sorry,” Changbin says.
“What for?” Jisung says, smiling. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re right; I should let Felix sleep. Make sure he doesn’t keep you up too late though, alright?”
“Yeah,” Changbin says. “You heading to bed?”
Jisung’s hand twists around his other wrist, but he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “Gonna make sure hyung is asleep.”
“He ate well tonight,” Changbin offers. He doesn’t mention that it was mostly due to Hyunjin swapping his bigger pieces of meat for Minho’s more conservative portions and Felix feeding him.
Jisung nods. “Thank you, hyung.” He squeezes Changbin’s shoulder, then brushes a hand through Felix’s bangs so they’re out of his face. “Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll worry after him; you worry about this one. He’ll listen to you, probably.”
“When have any of you dongsaengs ever listened to your hyungs?” Changbin scoffs.
Jisung grins and sees himself out of their living room.
Sometimes Jisung was just a little too old for his seventeen years, and sometimes he was as obnoxious as the rest of them. To say Changbin was grateful for him was a massive understatement. The members were a family gathered under Chan’s wings; Changbin never doubted that the fierceness of his love for his members was stronger than that of his outside friends, but sometimes he really wondered if he and Jisung weren’t related somehow.
And then there were members like Felix, who weren’t so much brothers as they were like a third limb. Awkward, very often annoying, but after having them in his life for even as short a time as this, he couldn’t imagine not having them.
Given how he bounced off the walls in waking hours, it was hard to believe that Felix could sleep as if he was one with his horizontal platform of choice. He fell asleep so quietly that when they were all in the living room together, they only noticed that he was out when the volume of the room dropped several decibels. It was the only reason Changbin allowed Felix to climb on him to nap. Jeongin twitched and stretched in his sleep, but everyone let Jeongin sleep on them, even Seungmin who got cranky about other people being too far in his space. Saying no to the maknae was a crime against humanity.
Besides, they didn’t keep the heat on very high and it was cold. If Changbin was going to stay up and pen some disjointed lyrics connected by question marks and insert some metaphor about cliffs here, he might as well have a human hot water bottle across his legs. Felix sprawled with his whole upper body, hauling his chest onto Changbin’s lap and pillowing his head with crossed arms. He wasn’t that much thicker around or taller than Jisung, but while Jisung weighed about a hundred pounds sopping wet and could be thrown like a javelin, Felix was heavy. Less of a human hot water bottle and more like a sentient blanket made of solid iron.
Changbin would wake him up when he lost feeling in his toes or Chan stumbled out and scowled at Changbin in a wordless command to sleep already, not that he had any right to be telling his members off to bed. As it was, Felix had arrived in his practice clothes, eaten in his practice clothes, and then fallen asleep on Changbin before they could even clear the dishes. That kind of exhaustion was met with an exchange of understanding glances and a few hair ruffles before the other members filed off to do dishes or homework.
Changbin sighs. He sticks his pen in his mouth and lets his hand fall to Felix’s head, carding his fingers through his hair, staring at the blank wall across from the couch and wondering if there was a particularly ugly picture of Chan’s sleeping face that he could blow up and have printed and hung up so that their dorm wouldn’t look so empty. Instead of, you know, writing lyrics like he should have been doing if he wasn’t going to sleep.
Their fans as well as the fans of 3RACHA had responded well to lyrics about themselves, about their struggles and dreams and daily lives. Relatable things—striving for a hope that seemed so out of reach, life as a young adult, dealing with stress and overwork…the concepts were really good. But their sound wasn’t exactly cohesive, which was fine for a pre-debut album, but this was their first foray into the industry without training wheels. It needed to be good, and not just good, but it needed to land them the rookie award.
Keeping Minho and Felix wasn’t a mistake. Nine or nothing would pay off.
Felix makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat and Changbin realizes he’d accidentally tightened his grip on Felix’s hair and tugged a bit at his roots.
“Sorry, sorry,” Changbin soothes, petting the strands back down and smoothing his palm across Felix’s head.
It was just hard to think of relatable lyrics about themselves when things like my members are still beating themselves up over their mistakes to the point of overwhelming exhaustion and our leader won’t let us take on more of his burden and it’s killing him and my dongsaeng is growing up too fast and I feel like it’s my fault for not being a better hyung were what occupied Changbin’s mind lately.
He cups the back of Felix’s neck, warming his cold skin with the heat of his palms. Felix makes another noise in the back of this throat, but this one is deeper, like the beginning of a rumbling purr than a whine. He thumbs at the soft baby hairs on Felix’s nape.
“Take care of yourself, you hear me?” Changbin murmurs, half-hoping that Felix is more unconscious than conscious. “Hyung is telling you to watch your health, so you have to listen to him.”
Felix doesn’t say anything in response, breathing evenly, every inhale pressing his ribcage against Changbin’s thighs.
“We’re good, you and me, yeah?” Changbin says. “We understand each other. So understand me when I say you don’t have to prove anything to anyone, not even producer-nim. You have talent and everyone knows. Chan didn’t pick you out of a sea of trainees for your good looks.” He pauses. “Well, maybe he did. But he kept you for your talent.
“The fans want you here, the members want you here, I—” he doesn’t finish that thought, because that’s Jisung’s territory, the whole feelings thing. Jisung likes lyrics that reach deep and touch the heart and he’s good at that kind of stuff, he’s good at feelings, which is their saving grace, honestly, because while Seungmin is by far the most delicate, he and the maknae line cry to themselves instead of reaching out, and the hyung line don’t know how to express themselves without awkwardness. Jisung is the one who reaches out. Jisung holds hands and embraces and comforts when the rest of them freeze up.
Dark style suits Changbin as a rapper rhythmically, but also lyrically. His lyrics aren’t not deep, they’re just not on the vulnerable side of the emotional spectrum and as long as he’s playing the tough guy, they never have to be. Maybe never will, because it’s things like allowing Felix to hang onto him without complaint and chewing on his lip when he looks at Felix too tired to move that makes the words freeze up in Changbin’s head and he can’t easily explain why he’d rather walk across hot coals than see Felix cry again.
Chan would call him a tsundere, but Chan was also a weeb and therefore his opinions were worth dirt.
How did the saying go again…a picture is worth a thousand words? Actions speak louder than words? No, perhaps he was only imagining that there was a saying like that for music. Because while stuff like rap was lyrical, and while the backing track set the mood, it needed lyrics to buff it up and turn it into something powerful and unforgettable. Maybe instrumental artists could write a score that turned their feelings into a symphony, but there were only so many metaphors that Changbin could hide behind before it became explicitly, vulnerably clear what he meant.
If Changbin were to be real and honest, like he, Chan, and Jisung had agreed to be, maybe he would pen down the lyrics that were swimming in his head instead of trying to keep their struggles plastic-wrapped and safely packaged. Something like, watching the sun rise won’t turn you golden, you do that well enough on your own or it’s not blood, sweat, and tears if you’re only ever coughing up red or if you ride that updraft too far, I won’t be able to catch you.
Something like, sometimes my hand on yours is the only way I can tell you’re still with me.
Except that last one’s not quite lyrics—a bit too stream-of-consciousness, a bit too much like Changbin and not enough like SpearB. That’s something for the dusty little red notebook he keeps hidden at the bottom of his suitcase, away from snooping dongsaengs. The notebook doesn’t have a title and neither do the entries, just dates assigned to arbitrary half-lyrics scratched in as rough handwriting as Changbin can manage and still read. It’s not generic enough for a Stray Kids’ album, not rhythmic enough for a 3RACHA mixtape, and too lyrical for a diary. It’s something like a SpearB mixtape, Changbin thinks, if he ever made peace with himself enough to open the contents to the world.
Changbin drags his nails up the back of Felix’s head, scratching at his scalp in the way the other members always bugged him to pet them. Felix’s hair was getting long—too long for Changbin to mindlessly run his palm back and forth over, feeling the strands bend under the pressure until Felix tilted his head back against Changbin’s thigh with a huff and a smile and a what’re you doing, hyung?
Making sure, Changbin thinks, but the words don’t make any sense even as they refuse to leave his head.
Making sure, he writes in his Stray-Kids-approved lyric notebook, because even as the very tail end of the millennial generation, Changbin stubbornly remained the crotchety Gen X-er that he was at heart. Writing lyrics down made them real, made them flow. There was something about carving ink into the marble of clean paper—some words just begged to be slotted together in ways that he couldn’t see when he was tapping at the keyboard of his iPhone.
Romantic, Jisung had said the first time they worked on lyrics together, after Chan had bullied them into forming a rapper unit. Changbin remembers that night because he had snapped his head up, an acidic retort on the tip of his tongue, but Jisung’s voice had been soft and his eyes wide, glancing between his phone and Changbin’s dog-eared note book with a pouted bottom lip.
I’ll give you a page if you want, Jisungie, he had said. It was the first time he had called Jisung by the nickname, and his dongsaeng’s lips went thin from how broad his smile was. That’s when Changbin knew they were meant for greatness, when he first fell in love.
He fell in love with Chan’s obnoxious energy and Jisung’s everything and with 3RACHA and how good it felt to spit and snarl their words with nothing holding them back because Chan was good enough to mold their feeble beginnings with lyricism into tracks that didn’t sound half-bad.
He fell in love with Hyunjin and Jeongin because, well, Hyunjin and Jeongin.
He fell in love with Minho’s quiet perfection, with Seungmin’s grumpiness and clear, sweet sound, with Felix’s…
Changpil, Felix had said, holding the selfie stick in front of both of them and tilting his head towards Changbin. He smiled so bright on the phone’s screen, proud of the name mashup, while Changbin huffed through his nose and made a face so that he wouldn’t laugh out loud.
Changbinie-hyung only likes Felix, Jisung had said.
That’s not true, Changbin wants to say. I love you, hyung. I love all of you. I’ve loved all of you from the start. Felix is just—
Felix is I wanna rap like G-Dragon, hyung! through a mess of English and botched Korean and Changbin thinking that this sure is a troublesome dongsaeng he’s been saddled with. Felix is hyung, I just can’t—this grammar is—I don’t— and Changbin squeezing his shoulder and opening the door to his room a bit wider, ignoring the sidelong glances from his roommates, because some things were worth a cold shoulder. Felix is check this! and backflipping without a spotter and Changbin’s breath catching in his throat, not because he is impressed, but because what an idiot, what if something happened—
Felix is the something that happened when Changbin was doing his best not to let anything happen.
Changbin twists the ends of Felix’s hair around his index finger. It’s starting to make the telltale curl of a mullet and Changbin scowls and tugs lightly at it. “Ah, handsome Felix is dead.”
“’S wrong with my hair?”
Caught. Felix’s voice is thick, both with his accent and with sleep. He doesn’t move his head, but his voice rumbles through Changbin’s thighs. “Nothing,” Changbin says. Pauses. “Ringo.”
Felix does turn over at that, shifting his shoulder just enough to level a bleary glare at Changbin. “Time’s it?” he asks.
Changbin flips over his phone. It’s approaching three in the morning. He purses his lips and doesn’t answer, but Felix’s dull-eyed expression says he understands well enough. He glances at the notebook Changbin’s pen is hovering over. “What’re you doin’? Lyrics?”
“Something like that,” Changbin says. That’s what he’d gone into this night with the intention of doing, but the bare page laughs at him, the words making sure staring back at him. Whatever the hell that means.
“Need help?” Felix asks.
“Shh.” Changbin shushes him immediately. “Go back to sleep, Jikseu.”
The nickname rolls off his tongue as easily as Jisungie did, back then. It’s not strange either—the other members call him by the misspelling, gentle ribbing turned affectionate petname. Hell, Changbin has called him by the name before. But not in this tone of voice. Not with a feeling swelling in his breast that he can only call hyung. He’s the little brother back home, but Stray Kids has gifted him with five little brothers of his own. He cherishes them in a way he can only call hyung because he’ll take on the world for Jisung, curl against Hyunjin whenever he feels unwell, heckle Jeongin until it’s impossible for him to doubt his place in their group, read quietly in Seungmin’s room while he works on his homework, and become Felix’s shade, the tree he falls asleep under, shielding him from the elements until he’s strong enough to stand again.
I almost lost you, Changbin thinks every now and then, which hurts in a different way than Minho does. Losing Minho felt like losing a softness, like they’d been cozy, tucked under a blanket, only to have that blanket ripped from them and the backs of their necks exposed to the cold. Minho wasn’t built from concrete, but he was still a hyung and still precious, and losing him made Changbin feel lost.
Losing Felix felt like dying.
Because a part of all of them must have said ‘it won’t happen again,’ even though it had happened and could happen again. And then PD-nim said words that amounted to your best just isn’t quite good enough and Changbin had to swallow that medicine. Had to come to terms with the fact that his little brother was being ripped from him.
It’s different when it’s yours. Changbin understands why Chan cried so hard over Minho. It’s different when they’re yours. He—he raised Felix, in some strange way that language hadn’t caught up enough to describe other than hyung, but he raised Felix. He taught him Korean, he guided his rap, he humored his jokes, he cuddled with him when he was homesick…
I’m sorry, he’d said to Felix, like that could ever come close to a decent fucking apology. He had raised Felix, and without the fearsome support of their fans and the rest of the members, he could have lost Felix. So never again. It would never happen again.
“I could help you,” Felix says, almost pouting.
Changbin flicks him on the forehead. “Next album, Korean seonsaeng-nim.”
Felix rumbles in his throat and rubs his forehead. “I got better…”
“Mm,” Changbin agrees. “You did.” But doesn’t relent.
Felix rolls onto his back, looking up at Changbin. “Binnie…” he whines.
Felix is so soft. The soft edges of his mussed hair brush past Changbin’s fingertips when he rolls over and Changbin’s fingers twitch. He wants to reach out and twist his fingers in Felix’s hair and just—hold on. He doesn’t want to pull on Felix’s hair or move at all, really, he just wants to have Felix’s hair slotted between his fingers and he wants—to make sure. He’s so distracted by the impulse that he doesn’t even berate Felix for dropping the honorific.
Changbin brushes Felix’s bangs out of his face once, twice, because his dumb hair is so long it gets everywhere now, but the company won’t let him cut it. Felix closes his eyes again at the ministrations, hands folded neatly over his stomach. Changbin scratches a little more at his scalp, now that he knows Felix is awake to appreciate it.
When he stops, leaving his fingers hooked in just the ends of Felix’s hair, Felix’s eyes stay closed for long enough that Changbin thinks he really might’ve fallen back asleep. But then his eyelids flutter open, looking at the ceiling, and then, his head lolls to the side and he looks up at Changbin with droopy eyes and parted lips.
And it really would take no effort at all to lean down and kiss him, would it.
It wasn’t like Jisung and Chan didn’t run around the dorm threatening to kiss the other members so often that Minho had picked up on it, the petulant part of Changbin sniffs. Why should it matter if Changbin kissed Felix, especially when he had done it already and they brought it up constantly during VLives and fansigns?
Because it’s not the same. Chan and Jisung made fish lips to torment and got red in the cheeks only from chasing their target up and down the stairs of their complex. This is not the same.
This is Changbin choosing the silence and the stillness over the screaming and the running. This is Changbin leaning in slow and purposeful, so Felix can’t possibly write it off as a joke or a punishment. This is Changbin hesitating, breath rushing over Felix’s lips, because he wants him to be able to say no. This is Changbin wanting Felix to say yes and tilt his chin up and slot their mouths together, so Changbin can stop thinking about it all the time, what it must feel like to really kiss something as bright and white-hot as Felix when Changbin had made a brand for himself with dark.
This is the rising pressure in Changbin’s chest, clogging his throat with how much he feels, because what he feels for Felix is as much of hyung as it is I want you to kiss my neck, and none of the other seven boys he loves have ever made him feel that way.
Make sure, his notebook says.
“Do you want me to carry you to bed?” Changbin asks.
On principal, Felix wiggles his eyebrows. Changbin laughs through his nose and rolls his eyes.
“What about your lyrics?” Felix asks, craning his head back to look at the notebook, upside down.
Changbin swallows and moves the notebook away, suddenly self-conscious. There’s only two words, nothing incriminating, but his skin feels itchy and tight and Felix’s Adam’s apple is kind of right there and Changbin worries that Felix might somehow see through him if he reads those two words.
“I’ll carry you to bed,” Changbin says.
He doesn’t, in the end, if only because Felix has several centimeters and several more kilograms on him, but he does throw Felix’s arm around his shoulder and slide his other hand around Felix’s waist to help him to his room. It’s unnecessary, but they make an event of it, swaying back and forth across the hallway like a couple of drunks kids stumbling home. Changbin shushes Felix as he opens the door to the room he shares with the other younger members, the lights already out.
Felix walks to his bed and again, does not remove his clothes before face-planting onto the mess of covers he liked to call a bed. Changbin follows after, picking around their mess of a floor, not that he and Chan were much better themselves. He’s not really sure what he’s doing there when Felix is obviously about to pass out again, but he busies himself with yanking the covers out from under Felix, to mumbled protests from a face shoved in a pillow. He then pulls the covers over Felix and tucks them over his shoulders and his neck so he doesn’t catch a chill.
Changbin’s work here is done, but before he can make a run for it, Felix rolls onto his back and his hand snags the sleeve of Changbin’s hoodie as he turns away.
The light from the hallway shines on Felix’s pupils like pinprick moons. “Thank you, hyung,” he says softly.
Not yet, Changbin thinks. We’re not far enough yet that you can thank me.
Make sure, that inner voice chides him.
Changbin brushes Felix’s bangs back one last time and leans in to kiss him on the forehead. His skin is dry and slightly salty after a long day and without washing up properly. Felix is not alarmed by the kiss. He blinks once, slow, and nestles further in the covers. “Good night, hyung,” he says.
“Good night, Jikseu,” Changbin returns. Can’t help it.
Changbin retires to his own bed. Small mercies—Chan is already snoring, one arm hanging off the bed and most of his chainsaw rattling muffled by the pillow he’s suffocating himself in. Changbin rolls his eyes and lifts Chan’s arm up, tucking it beneath his pillow. Chan makes a snort that sounds like someone directly inhaling gooey snot. He is nothing if not a graceful creature.
Changbin leaves his notebook on their desk. There’s no need to add to the words he’s written there. They don’t belong in a Stray Kids song after all, or in a 3RACHA track, or even in a line in Changbin’s red book. They’re just a reminder, because being an idol is about putting on a performance, and Changbin has to stop forgetting that he’s only playing a role.
Make sure, because if you’re wrong, it’s going to hurt like hell.