I'm Also A We // Hyunlix

Collision

THEN

C H A N G B I N

Fighting with Chan is always scary. Because it takes a lot to make Chan truly mad and they bicker often, but they rarely fight. Both the shouting and the not-talking kind of fight.

Changbin is aware that this is also scaring the kids. He's seen Jeongin openly stare at them this morning when they left the van and it was fairly obvious that Chan and Changbin weren't speaking. Felix asked him directly, in a quiet moment when Chan was nowhere to be seen. And Hyunjin is downright off today, no matter how hard he pretends he doesn't care.

Changbin is off as well. He watches Chan out of the corner of his eyes, the stoic face, the clenched jaw. Chan scares him when he's angry too, but Changbin doesn't like to admit that out loud. It scares him because it tugs at something deeper, a wound that only he can touch. Makes him feel cold and alone somehow, even when Chan is right there, and he hates that ache in his chest, burning somehow, like ice.

It starts on a Tuesday night and then drags over the next day.

Changbin could give in, which he usually does when he knows he's wrong, but he isn't. Neither wrong nor ready to give in. They've butted heads over this a million times before. About Chan's inability to keep a half-decent sleep schedule or meal schedule for that matter. And most of the time he lets Changbin bicker and nag, and he would give in and go home with him or let himself be dragged to a restaurant. This time though he explodes right into Changbin's face.

'Do you really think I can't take care of myself?" he shouts back, and Changbin startles so badly at the reaction that he doesn't even answer. "You think so little of me? So what? I can't take care of myself, how would I be able to take care of all of you?"

"That's not what I said, hyung," he shoots back, wondering where all of that comes from. He wrecks his mind even now, trying to find something in his memory that will tell him why this time Chan doesn't laugh it off. He comes up with nothing, and Chan turns away from him, leaving, and somehow taking all the warmth with him.

Now, almost a full day later, they still haven't moved on from that.

The shoot in the morning went well enough, both of them professionals to their core, and dance practice went even better because there was no talking required at all. But after a late dinner, they planned to record the guide for a new song they worked on together, and Changbin doesn't know how they're supposed to do that. Just Chan and him, stuck in Chan's tiny room at the company, not ripping out each other's throats.

They leave the basement together and enter the showers together, but they don't speak a single word. Changbin watches him out of the corner of his eyes, even though he tries not to, Chan's presence a pulsing thing, a piece of ember he knows he will burn his hands on if he gets closer, but at the same time can't make himself stay away.

"How long are we going to keep this up?" Changbin asks, when they're dressed again and just out the door on their way upstairs. Chan walks in front of him, not turning around. There's a constant knot formed in Changbin's stomach, and he isn't one to be overly touchy with his hyungs, but he wants to reach out now, and hold Chan's hand, just so that the knot would finally resolve.

"Keep up what?" Chan asks.

"This not speaking to each other bullshit?"

"We are speaking. Right now, if you didn't notice."

Changbin knows Chan knows how to rile him up. They've been living in each other's pockets for too long not to. They've exchanged the keys to their most vulnerable spots without either of them noticing, and usually, Changbin is pleased with the idea, proud even. But it also means that Chan knows how to wield the sharpest weapons against him. He rarely uses them like he does today.