Chapter Text
Chris inhales sharply through his teeth as he steps out of the half-baked building he’s spent all night in.
It’s dawn now, though the night’s bitter cold still clings in the air. It’s a thought Chris has had more than once, how the temperature in this city is damn near bipolar. In a handful of hours, it’ll be hot enough that the people on the day shift will be shedding layers, while Chris’ fingers are going numb even through the thick, knitted material of his gloves.
He tucks his chin into the warmth of his coat, fishing out a pack of Marlboros from his back pocket and the Zippo he keeps tucked right against his heart. It flicks open with the same satisfying metal click that it always does. Chris takes a cigarette between his teeth and lights it, letting his head tip back as he takes his first lungful.
“Hey, Minho-yah.”
The language tastes foreign now, and so does the smile that stretches across his face when the answering greeting comes through, tinny and distant through the phone.
“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”
Chris laughs. “How are you?”
“Better,” Minho says quietly, as earnest as he’s capable of being. Chris nods, even if Minho can’t see him. “He misses you, hyung.”
“Shit,” Chris says quietly. “He knows I miss him too, right?”
Minho clicks his tongue and sighs. When he does it, the sound is so distinctly Korean that Chris has to shut his eyes against the tidal wave of emotion that it brings crashing down over him. “He’s not an idiot.”
“He’s still my first kid,” Chris says firmly, like he’s trying to win an argument.
“Yeah,” Minho agrees. “He is. Inherited your manners and everything.”
Chris smiles crookedly, takes a drag of his cigarette. “And you both? How are you?”
He’s asking about them as a unit, now. Minho understands immediately, of course.
“Better,” he repeats. “We live in Itaewon-dong now. Sung-ah got us moved out here by his managers.”
It takes a torturous moment for Chris to place the neighbourhood in his mental map of Seoul. When he does, he gasps, painfully belated. “Ah, fuck. Damn. That’s really great, Min. Safe, then?”
“Very,” Minho agrees. He’s agreeing with Chris more than he has in years. “You?”
Chris can’t help it; he laughs. The sun is slowly starting to peek over the tawny ridgeback edge of the Diablo Range, bathing Chris and the spackle-studded wall of untreated concrete he’s leaning against in orange light. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Safe, though, hyung,” Minho restates, presses his fingers into Chris’s pressure points. “Are you safe?”
Chris smiles. “Yeah, Min. I’m safe. Chae’s here, you know. She keeps me alive.”
“Ah, shit, speaking of,” Minho sighs, and Chris knows he’s being let off the hook. “You remember, I’ve got family out there, too?”
“Yeah,” Chris says, frowning and taking a drag. “An aunt and her kids, no?”
“Exactly,” Minho confirms. “The ones from Australia, like you. Thing is, one of the kids, uh—” He fumbles with his words for a second, uncharacteristic of him, then finds his footing and continues. “He’s always been a bit of a problem kid, you know? Few years younger than us. He managed to get himself kicked out really young. My aunt’s psychotic, though, so it really could have been anything.”
Chris frowns, but says nothing, nursing his cigarette.
“He’s been on his own for too long, I think,” Minho muses, and Chris can just imagine that crease forming between his eyebrows, the one that says he’s thinking hard about whatever he’s discussing. “He depended on the wrong guy and got fucked over. He told me— Do you remember— ah, wait, no that was after you’d left.”
A small hum pulls from Chris’s throat, just so that Minho knows he’s still listening. He feels slapped across the face, even if the comment wasn’t meant as one. He’s been gone for years, now. More than half a decade. Hasn’t called in half a year. Of course there are things from ‘after he’d left’ that are already history.
“Well, a couple of the kids Jisung-ah trained with ended up moving out there. Safer for them. You get it. He’s staying with them for now, but…” Minho’s pause gives away everything. “I don’t know.”
Minho’s cousin must be twenty-two or so. Maybe just a little older. So young for problems like that. Chris sighs. “That’s awful.”
“Awful,” Minho echoes. “I mean, I wish I could do something, but he’s sort of… on his own. He won’t come here — can’t. Not sure he’s even got dual citizenship here. Pretty sure he doesn’t speak any Korean. And no one else in our family is in the states.”
Chris wonders for a moment if he’s being baited, then realises that Minho would never do that to him. That dragging, aching pull he’s feeling in his chest is all him.
He’s baiting himself at the mere thought of someone he doesn’t even know, all alone. Chris debates it, taps at his cigarette and watches the ashes fall. “Is he in the Bay?”
“Hyung.” Stern. That’s the Minho Chris knows well.
“I think I could help him,” Chris says in his own defence.
“I don’t see why you would,” Minho’s voice has gone steel-hard. “I don't even know him that well, Chan-ah.”
The dropped honorific stings like it always does. It would have made him happy, once. It used to. Chris has always enjoyed letting people close like that — casual. But being Minho’s hyung has always been a privilege — a hard-earned one — that will be remorselessly revoked if deemed necessary. It’s not comforting to hear him do away with the title.
Chris sighs. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
There’s a long silence between them. It smothers the quiet, faceless battle of wills that follows, unspoken and untouched.
There you go again, hyung, Minho doesn’t say. There you go again, collecting strays you can’t take care of alone.
I can do it, Chris doesn’t rebut. I can do it this time, I swear.
A staticky, matching sigh to Chris’ own finally comes through the speaker of his phone. “You’re gonna give him that second chance, then?”
“If no one else will,” Chris says, laid out and open, painfully honest. “Then, yeah. I will.”
“You don’t even know his name, hyung.” The conversation is so familiar it hurts. Minho’s voice embraces the words like an old friend. Chris has somehow earned his honorific back, even if all he did was hard-headedly, bullishly trudge forward through the tension.
Chris is somehow smiling. “What’s his name, then?”
“Yongbok.”
“Is that what he goes by, here?” Chris hopes his asking doesn’t push at the fact that he’s not Chan anymore. He’ll let Minho die on that hill if that’s what he wants.
“Shit,” Minho murmurs. “No, um… Felix. He goes by Felix.”
The word is awkward in Korean. Not quite right. Pil-lig-seu. Chris hums, then tries it out in English, unaccented. “Felix.”
Minho gives a noncommittal hum. Chris can’t tell if it’s because he can’t hear the difference in pronunciation or if it’s that it doesn’t bother him.
“Okay,” Chris says. “Can you ask Felix if he can hold out a couple days?” He pauses awkwardly, considering Minho’s admission that Felix doesn’t speak Korean. Those conversations must be stilted. Chris shakes his head, allowing that to be Minho’s problem. “I’m finishing up a graveyard right now. Pulling another tomorrow. I can get to him afterwards.”
Another stumbling block of theirs. Minho is quiet for just a moment too long, then says, “I hate that you’re killing yourself like this when you don’t have to.”
“I’m not killing myself, Min—”
“You might as fucking well be,” Minho snaps, so deeply emotional that it makes Chris cringe away from his phone against his cheek. “You and Chaebin-ah— I’ll never understand why you—” He sighs again. It crackles over the speaker. “I don’t understand you two.”
Chris looks up at the pinkening sky as if it’ll give him an answer. “You don’t have to. We still love you.”
“You could’ve done anything else—” Minho stops himself, clicks his tongue again. “Nevermind. Felix will be fine to wait for you. He’s with those friends of Jisung-ah’s.”
“Okay,” Chris says. “Good.”
“I know the guys, they’re good kids. They’d keep him there if they could, but… It’s a studio apartment.”
Chris cringes, imagining the tight squeeze. Bodies and furniture and items and emotions too big for a cramped space. A space not built for three. Not built for a third.
“I get it. I mean…” He hesitates. “I’m in a one-bedroom, do you think—?”
“Don’t start backing down already,” Minho says, sharp. “I think that Yong- — Felix — will take whatever he can get, right now.”
“Right,” Chris says, around the butt of the cigarette he’s stuck back between his lips. He inhales deeply.
“You start smoking again?”
Chris exhales heavily. “No.”
Minho doesn’t say anything. No sigh, no sarcastic quip. Just horrible, deafening silence. Chris drops his dying cigarette and puts it out with the toe of his boot.
At that exact moment, Chae cracks open the door next to Chris and sticks her head out. Chris can see the inventory that she takes of him, like she always does; a wide sweep of her eyes up and down his form. She’s dressed equally practically, Cahartt jacket and gloves matching Chris’ own. Her long hair is mostly tucked up into her beanie, with a few choppy, shorter strands and her bangs framing her round face.
Chris straightens up, looking at Chae with raised eyebrows. She’s half a head shorter than him, but she cuts an imposing figure, all principle and strength — the kind of person that makes you want to listen to whatever she’s got to say. It’s why she’s their foreman.
After a moment, she points at him, then gestures sharply with her thumb over her shoulder. She turns on her heel and goes back inside, mercifully leaving Chris alone to pick up the broken pieces of this conversation.
He shoves his free hand in his pocket and sighs. “Look, Min, I gotta go.”
“Be good to yourself,” Minho says, a beat too quick. He must have felt their conversation drawing to a close.
“Yeah,” Chris says quietly. “You too.”
“That’s what I’ve got Jisung for,” Minho says flatly.
“Ha-ha,” Chris replies, stilted. Maybe sarcastic. Maybe not. “Bye.”
“Call more often,” Minho says, not a question. “Bye, hyung.”
Chae is already looking over the work forms on her clipboard when Chris comes back inside, flipping through them with the practised ease of a woman who knows what she’s doing. She glances up for just a second when she hears Chris coming, then goes back to initialling boxes.
“You reek like a pack of cigarettes,” Chae grumbles, then passes the clipboard and papers to Chris. “Finish your half up, project manager. I’m thinking we can get our men out of here a little early.”
“Sounds good,” Chris says, and then it’s the English that tastes foreign on his tongue. That’s the hardest part, he thinks. The fickle way that language can leave you and come right back, over and over again.
“I’ll tell Sammy. She doesn’t work ‘til noon today,” Chae says over her shoulder as she starts towards the stairs, already on her way to help their crew round off their tasks for the day. “She’ll be happy to see you.”
It’s barely even an invitation. Chae always makes sure of that, always is sure not to give Chris any means to free himself from plans. If she loosened the screws even just a little, Chris would be able to squirm his way out of the trap, so she never does. She keeps him locked down, anchored firmly to the ground.
“Yeah,” Chris says, looking up from his initialing to watch her walk away. “Sounds good, Chae.”
She raises her hand over her shoulder, not bothering to look back. Chris lets his eyes unfocus as he loops his initials together into every single empty box on the paper.
CB, CB, CB.
The narrow spiral of his tunnel-vision helps him stay focused, even as life continues around him.
It’s how he stays alive.
It's his tunnel-vision that brings him to Sunday behind the wheel of his car before he even knows what’s happening.
“Oh, God,” is all Chris can think to mutter under his breath when he rounds the corner of the street in his car and sees him.
Felix is a fledgling. A baby bird, pushed out of the nest too early.
Maybe that’s not Chris’ judgement to make. Not yet, at least; he doesn’t know Felix at all.
But he’s always had a soft spot for delicate little things that could have used a helping hand just a bit earlier than he’d gotten to them. He has a habit of thinking he can make up for it — fix it, by offering that help they’d needed once he's there — no matter how late he may be in giving it.
Felix is no different.
Waifishly thin, he’s swallowed up in a pair of cargo pants and a t-shirt that are both a few sizes too big for him, standing with his arms crossed on the street corner. He’s exactly where he’s supposed to be — exactly where Minho said he'd be waiting — with a scuffed-up blue duffle bag thrown over his shoulder.
Chris can see even at a distance that he’s Minho’s cousin. He’s got the clever, round cat eyes and the delicate features. What’s missing is all the bravado and confidence Chris used to know from Minho. Felix turns those wide eyes on Chris and stares as he pulls his car up to the curb and parks.
Felix has a smattering of freckles over every single piece of skin that’s visible. The little sun-spots cover his cheeks and nose and disappear into his shirt down his neck and up his arms. That familiar aching, magnetic pull in Chris’ chest is worse than it’s ever been before.
“You’re Felix, right?” Chris asks uselessly as he shuts the car door. He walks around the back of his car to the trunk to unlock it, watching Felix as he turns the key in the lock.
“Yeah,” Felix says. His voice is rich and deep, but fragile. He looks guardedly at Chris, not making a move towards him even as Chris steps out from behind the car.
Chris leans against the passenger side of his car, his inherited second-hand Benz, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He's sure the picture they make together isn't the most enticing. But Chris can wait for a few moments if Felix isn’t going to come over by himself. “I’m Chris,” he offers.
A few blank blinks from Felix. “Uhm…”
It takes a moment for Chris to realise what’s wrong. He laughs self-consciously. “Sorry. Sorry, Minho probably said ‘Chan’, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Felix says again, still looking a little wary.
“He gets… stuck on those names, huh?” Chris says, maybe a little too knowingly. “He didn’t exactly introduce you as ‘Felix’.”
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Chris has a pit in his stomach the moment the words are out of his mouth, because Felix’s response is a little flinch like he’s been slapped across the face. Chris can’t tell if it’s because he’s simply spoken a bit too far out of turn or if it’s something that runs deeper. Either way, the net result is that it makes Felix loosen up a little and laugh quietly, nodding as his hand falls to the strap of his duffle bag.
“You ready to get outta here?” Chris asks, a little half-assed.
He can see it in Felix’s eyes that he’s waiting to bolt. He doesn’t want to be on this street for any longer than he has to, and Chris is right there with him. Felix is waiting for a go ahead, so Chris gives him one, taking a step towards him and holding out a hand.
Felix nods again, shrugging his bag off his shoulder and handing it carefully to Chris to be put in the trunk.
The drive is quiet. Not awkward, but also certainly not comfortable. Maybe Felix is simply too tired to make it awkward. He seems to be fighting tooth and nail to stay awake in the passenger seat. Chris can work with that. He doesn’t say anything to break the quiet. He’d much rather this than forced, uncomfortable small talk.
He doesn’t say anything when Felix does doze off either, letting the silence continue to bathe them. The cursory glance over at Felix that Chris allows himself twists his lips into a private smile, even if it’s tinged a little sad at the edges. Felix looks so young in his sleep. Chris remembers that type of bone-deep exhaustion. He remembers feeling so unsettled. He would have killed for a soft spot to land. Chris desperately hopes that he can offer one to Felix.
He’s being psychotic about this. He knows he is.
It’s just that he can’t contain this need he feels tugging harshly at his chest to protect Felix, only about an hour and a handful of spoken words into knowing him. Chris has a problem. A saviour complex. He knows he does.
But can it really be all so bad when he’s helping someone? Can he really be all that bad if everything he's doing is for the sole reason to help?
Felix is asleep for the majority of the ride, leaving Chris to his thoughts. The more that Chris thinks, the more resolute he feels. He’s going to help Felix. He’s meant to help him.
Chris is mercifully saved from the task of waking Felix. The sharp curve of Chris’ exit from Highway 580 does it for him, even if Chris purposefully takes it as slowly as possible explicitly not to wake him. Chris doesn’t say anything as Felix wakes up, and neither does Felix. They simply make the mutual decision not to address it.
“Almost there,” Chris says quietly, half to himself and half to Felix. He sees Felix looking out the window out of the corner of his eye.
It’s not good — the area where Chris lives. Not as bad as the part of the San Francisco tenderloin he’s just pulled Felix out of, of course. But it’s not good. It’s Oakland, plain and simple, which means it’s underserved, overdeveloped, and overpriced. All at once.
Felix doesn’t seem to have much of a reaction, adverse or not. He just observes. Chris can appreciate that.
It had rained overnight. The streets are dark with it but no longer wet, and the morning air is so cold that it fogs, every car on the street leaving a trail of white behind it. When Chris pulls into his assigned parking spot in front of his apartment complex, it feels familiar as always, with an added edge of Felix’s presence. He tries to imagine what Felix is seeing and finds that he can’t. It’s hard to imagine himself a stranger to this place again.
Chris turns in his seat to look at Felix and finds his eyes already on him.
“So,” Chris says quietly. “We’re here.”
“Okay,” Felix says slowly, obviously understanding that Chris has more to stay. His eyes are sharp, intelligent, flicking across Chris’ features and then away, as if to hide from him.
“I just need to make it clear,” Chris says, the words he’s been spinning over and over in his mind for the past better part of an hour coming out blessedly smooth and practised, “that you’re welcome here.”
Felix hasn’t had much of a reaction to anything Chris has said or done up to now. It’s a pleasant surprise to see emotion on his face. The way his round eyes widen with surprise and the way he wets his lips with his tongue make him look alive. Not just a pretty face, but a real one.
“Oh,” Felix finally says, and it comes out strained and a little wary — like Chris is saying something absurd.
“I want you to make yourself at home, yeah?” Chris rests his temple against the headrest of his seat. He sweeps his eyes over Felix, aches at the look of him, the way Felix seems to be holding himself together with his arms crossed over his chest. “You can stay for as long as you need. But I’m also prepared for you to stay as long as you want.”
Felix blinks quickly, all long lashes and round, shiny bambi eyes, and for a horrible second Chris thinks that maybe Felix is about to cry. Jisung had cried too, when Chris had taken him in. The thought of it makes Chris’ heart stutter painfully in his chest. Felix isn’t a second Jisung. Chris doesn’t want him to be. If Felix is another Jisung, then Chris will fail him, too. Felix is not another Jisung. Will he act like one?
Then Felix’s gaze shifts up. He looks up to the shabby, scuffed ceiling of Chris’ shitty old car, takes a breath, and says, “Okay.” He blinks again and then looks back to Chris, and there are no tears in his eyes; they’re not even glossy anymore. He clears his throat. “Thank you.”
Chris stares back at him.
Felix looks away. Down. To his own hands and he lets them rest in his lap. He almost looks embarrassed. Chris sighs, turns the key in the ignition to kill the engine. Neither of them make a move to leave the car, Chris staring at Felix and Felix staring at his own hands.
“It’s a small place,” Chris continues, trying very hard not to sound like he’s giving Felix bad news. “And, well… It’s been just me for a good few years now. It— it’s not very nice. I’m sorry if it’s… not a big step up from where you were before.”
“It will be,” Felix says, quick enough on the draw that it startles Chris a little. He looks back up, making hesitant eye-contact with Chris. “It will be better.”
He says it with so much conviction that all Chris can do is nod, trying to keep his face from crumbling into an expression of the pain he feels blooming in his chest.
Felix laughs when Chris unlocks the door to his apartment. Actually laughs — the loudest he’s been since Chris picked him up — and shakes his head, looking at Chris with a crooked smile tugging at his lips and a furrow between his brows.
“Not very nice?” Felix asks. His voice sounds so different through a smile. “Nah. This is nice. This is a home, Chris.”
It’s the first time Chris hears his own name from Felix’s lips. It’s odd. Good. It makes him smile back at Felix, wide and embarrassed. “I never said it wasn’t a home. I said it was small. And it is. It’s, uh,” Chris pauses, holding open the door for Felix to walk through, “one bedroom.”
Felix makes a little humming sound at the back of his throat. He’s bent over, already taking off his shoes without Chris having asked or even hinted at it. Well-worn, faded black Doc Martens. The socks he’s wearing underneath are a soft baby blue. Chris closes the door behind him.
“Do you have a bathtub?”
The question catches Chris right as he’s toeing off his own shoes. He frowns as he steps out of them, nudging them right next to Felix’s, which have been placed very carefully in line with Chris’ only other pair of good shoes that are sitting out. He looks over at Felix, head cocked to the side.
“Yes?” Chris says it like a question, then thinks better of it and amends the statement. “Yeah. The shower stall has one in it.”
Felix nods, his hands falling to the strap of his duffel bag and playing with the fabric. He shifts his weight, looking cautiously at Chris. “I’ll sleep there.”
Chris blinks back at him. “In the bathtub.” It’s not a question. He’s so incredulous that it comes out as a statement.
“Mm-hm.” Felix turns, peeks into the kitchen. “Oh, nice! I’d been hoping you had a full range.”
“Why?” Chris manages to ask, still rooted to the spot in the entry hall.
Felix peers back over his shoulder and smiles lightly. “So I can pull my weight around here.”
“No, wait. I— I mean,” Chris unglues himself, manages to get himself to follow Felix as he steps further into the apartment, into the living room. “I meant, why would you sleep in the bathtub?”
“We don’t know each other,” Felix says, not missing a beat. He takes a break from examining Chris’ sad, mostly-empty bookshelf to look at Chris. “I’m not kicking you out of your bed. And I’m not sleeping with you in it.”
Chris flounders under Felix’s full attention. “No, I didn’t— Shit. I really didn’t mean to imply—”
“I know,” Felix says. His expression twists into something that’s sort of a smile, sort of not. “It’s okay. I slept in the bathtub at my friends’ place in SF. It was better than the floor.”
“I do have a couch,” Chris says helplessly. He knows he can barely call the shitty little Ikea two-seater in his living room a couch. Felix would probably be just as uncomfortable on it as he would be in the bathtub, if not more.
Felix hums, glances at the couch. His eyes are a little closed off when he looks back at Chris. “I'd rather the bathtub, if that’s okay?”
“‘Course,” Chris says, still just as helpless.
He's got this sort of sinking feeling in his chest. Chris isn’t sure how Felix must be seeing him right now, but it hurts to even think of the possibility that Felix might be wary of him. Felix is right, of course. They don't even know each other, not yet, but the idea of disappointing him in any way at all makes still Chris feel like a kicked dog. It makes him want to lay down on the floor and beg for forgiveness.
The interminable weight of the way Chris’ emotions are already beginning to wrap themselves around Felix is already getting exhausting. He wants Felix to smile again, like he means it. He wants it like it’s a need. He wants it in the way he needs air.
Unaware of the way Chris’ head is spinning, Felix turns back to the bookshelf, cocks his head. “‘Twilight’, huh? All four and ‘Midnight Sun’. I have seriously misjudged you, Chris.”
“Hey. That’s serious literature,” Chris says without even thinking, which gets him what he’d been wanting; Felix laughs sweetly, turning around with his hands up in surrender.
Felix’s nose crinkles when he laughs. Chris doesn’t think Felix even notices that he does it. He’s seen it twice now. It’s just a fact of life, maybe — grass is green, the sun is hot, and Felix Lee’s nose crinkles when he laughs. Chris can’t help but grin, too.
“I’d never dream of trying to convince you otherwise,” Felix says, running his finger down the spine of Chris’ battered copy of Eclipse. “Just didn’t take you for a Twihard.”
Chris shrugs, still smiling. “The more you know.”
Some sort of ice is broken between them, after that.
The rest of the day is spent as comfortably as it can be. Chris doesn’t have work; he’s got nowhere to go. He sits on the couch on his laptop, messing around with old files that he pretends don't exist anymore and doesn’t watch Felix unpack. Chris is very certain not to watch Felix unpack. He doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable.
He busies himself with texting when the files get boring, vaguely updates Chae and Minho, both. Separately. That groupchat actually doesn’t exist anymore.
Felix, after very delicately asking where he could put his things, was perfectly stunned to find that Chris had cleared a drawer of his dresser for him. He spends a solid half-hour in the bedroom arranging the things from his bag in the drawer, then carefully asks if it’s okay for him to keep some medications in the bathroom.
Chris, of course, has no qualms about it and agrees enthusiastically, tacking on that Felix is welcome to keep things wherever he likes while he’s living here.
“You’re not a guest, Felix,” Chris says softly, looking up from his computer to look Felix in the eyes. “You live here now.”
Felix thanks him with this look of quiet awe on his face, like Chris is making some sort of sacrifice — like he’s some sort of a martyr for a cause — smiling that wide, genuine smile.
Right about then is when Chris decides that he needs a new couch. A sleeper couch, preferably. As quickly as possible. Felix only validates that silent decision when, at the perfectly respectable hour of 6:00 PM, he offers to make dinner.
“I looked, um,” Felix says awkwardly. “In the fridge. I can do something with what’s in there. If that’s okay. It’s your kitchen.”
“Ours,” Chris corrects absently, more focused on the offer. “You don’t have to do that, y’know.”
“No,” Felix says, looking back down at his phone and messing with the chipped edge of his screen protector. It’s a shabby little iPhone, many years old. “I know. I’d like to, though, if that’s okay?”
Chris laughs lightly, disbelievingly. “Of course that’s okay. Jesus, Felix, do you have any idea how long it’s been since anyone offered to cook something for me?”
Felix steals a little glance at him, smiling sheepishly. “I’m cooking for both of us.”
“Oh, I see,” Chris says, sarcastic. “In that case, it’s a different story. I take it back — it’s not okay anymore. Sorry.”
He just gets a well-warranted eye roll from Felix at that one. Chris is just happy to watch the tension seep from Felix’s frame.
Felix cooks what might be one of the best meals Chris has eaten since his arrival in the states. It’s not that Felix is some sort of prodigy chef. It’s good food, yes, but nothing Chris hasn’t tasted before. The ingredients Chris had bought are made into pasta nearly identical to what Chris had originally intended to make for himself.
The difference is the fact that it’s Felix who makes it for them both. Felix puts in the time and effort to make them dinner — actually seems to enjoy doing it, whereas Chris usually simply tolerates it. It’s horrifically cliché, but it’s like Chris can taste the enjoyment and effort in the food.
Leave it to a Lee to bring the joy back into eating.
He does the dishes while Felix takes a shower and absently wonders if it will be dry enough in time for Felix to sleep soon. When he’s done in the bathroom, Felix pads out pink-cheeked and damp-haired, sits next to Chris on the couch. The rest of the evening plays out a little like a silent hawk-dove game. Chris can feel that neither of them want to be the first to sleep. It’s too strange — the new environment for Felix and the mere fact of a new human in Chris’ environment.
Finally, it’s Felix who says something. “I think, um… If it’s okay, I think I’m ready to go to sleep.”
“Yeah,” Chris says, standing up at the same time Felix begins to. “Yeah, ‘course. Do you… need anything? Can I—”
“Um, blankets,” Felix says softly. “If you have any extras.”
Chris could smack himself. “Right. Yeah, of course. I— I’ll grab you some blankets and pillows.”
Felix nods, doesn’t say anything. He looks skittish, almost; he’s wide-eyed, shifting his weight uncomfortably. Like he’s afraid to even acknowledge out loud that he’s being given something. It makes Chris want to throw something. Instead, he smiles at Felix in a way he hopes is convincing and turns on his heel to go and dig some extra linens out of his closet.
“Thanks, Chris,” Felix finally says when Chris hands him an armful of blankets and two spare pillows, looking like he’s saying something really brave.
“Yeah,” Chris says lightly. He scans Felix’s features on instinct, like he’s going to be able to uncover some sort of cosmic truth by taking in pretty, round eyes, full lips, and the freckled bridge of his nose. “I’m usually up pretty late. If you need anything.”
“Good night, Chris,” Felix says, a soft smile on his lips.
Chris gets this weird, sinking feeling, like he’s the butt of a joke, as he watches Felix close the door of the bathroom behind him.
Felix sleeps in the bathtub. He really, actually does. It’s no problem in the morning. No complaints, no comments. Felix folds the blankets and places them atop the pillows in a neat little stack that’s already sitting on the couch when Chris exits the bedroom in the morning.
They don’t exchange more than a cursory greeting before Chris has to run out the door to get to his morning shift. It’s five in the morning. Felix has seemingly no reason to be awake. Chris thinks about it the entire drive to today’s site.
Some deranged, unthinking part of him hopes that Felix will catch up on sleep while he’s gone — not in the bathtub. In Chris’ bed. Warm and comfortable and safe. He can’t shake the thought away. It plagues him. It’s ridiculous. He’s only known Felix for under 24 hours, but he’s already desperate to make him comfortable and safe.
When Chae asks him about Felix, all Chris can say is, “He’s lovely.”