#chanhee fic

But it was December, and Sunwoo always started to feel bad about things like that around the holidays. He blamed it on the constant presence of the Hallmark Christmas movies Chanhee liked to watch (and insist he didn’t like watching whilst refusing to let Sunwoo change the channel, holding the remote away from him in a death grip). People were always insufferable and trying to do right by everyone in those movies, in “the spirit of Christmas”. Disgusting.

But Sunwoo was a sucker with a conscience, no matter what everyone else thought. And the disgusting goodwill in the Hallmark movies would be nice of him to try, especially since Chanhee put up with Sunwoo practically nonstop as a roommate.

The deal was sealed when a gift labeled “Sunwoo” appeared under the mini Christmas tree in their living room. After all of Sunwoo’s constant torture, Chanhee had still gotten him a gift. Thus began Sunwoo’s quest for a “sorry I’m an asshole friend” gift that might make up for at least some of his worse hijinks. Sunwoo’s one unnecessary stipulation for himself was it had to be made, not bought. That was the “spirit of Christmas” part. Simple, surely.

The first attempt was a painting. In retrospect, it had felt a little too easy to Sunwoo, since it was from a wine and painting night their friend Kevin had gotten him into for free. It had been fun, to his surprise, and had made him feel a bit guilty for all the times he’d made fun of Chanhee for enjoying them. And it must’ve been too much to ask to have fun while making the gift, because once Kevin got a look at Sunwoo’s painting he’d laughed so hard he’d fallen out of his seat. And if Kevin had laughed, then Chanhee most certainly would.

So the painting was out.

His second attempt was a batch of cookies Sunwoo knew Chanhee liked. In retrospect, the recipe was a little too ambitious for a baker like Sunwoo, the kind of person whose name didn’t belong in the same sentence as the word “baker”. But in his defense, there were instructions; it shouldn’t have been hard to follow step-by-step instructions and get results. Except when he’d been too proud to ask Chanhee the difference between the different measuring cups and spoons, or how cold “chilled” was, or why the self-cleaning option on the oven was on the same knob as the rest of the temperatures. Frankly, it’d been a miracle Sunwoo had convinced Chanhee not to call the fire department and to just let their apartment air out.

“What the hell were you trying to do?” Chanhee had asked through the haze of smoke in the kitchen.

“Annoy you,” Sunwoo had said in a panic to not ruin the surprise, and Chanhee had smacked him upside the head.

So the cookies were out, too.

By the third attempt, Sunwoo was rapidly running out of time. The holidays were only a handful of days away, and both he and Chanhee would be leaving the apartment to celebrate with their families. He had to have it done and ready before they left, or it wouldn’t count. Not according to Christmas spirit.

He’d wracked his brains trying to think of something whilst un-booby-trapping the apartment (a demand made by Chanhee after realizing Sunwoo had managed to reverse the shower knobs as a joke). He couldn’t make him a song, since they liked completely different types of music; how many times had Sunwoo been working on a rap verse only for Chanhee to bang on his bedroom wall and shout at him to keep it down?

This is all his fault, Sunwoo had griped to himself as he opened Chanhee’s closet and dug out the hidden fog machine he’d planted. If he wasn’t so nice all the time….if he wasn’t so thoughtful….if he wasn’t so easy to bother….

He’d found himself glaring at a crocheted dragon on Chanhee’s desk when it came to him. Hey. In a surprising twist, Sunwoo knew how to crochet. He’d learned in an arts and crafts course Chanhee had dragged him along to last semester. It was surprisingly easy and relaxing to do.

He probably couldn’t do an animal like the dragon; that was probably too out of his league. But on god, Sunwoo could make a scarf. Chanhee had been complaining about the cold lately…

Maybe I have some yarn left over from the class. Sunwoo had lugged the fog machine back to his room and done some digging. He hadn’t found yarn, but he had found an old craft store gift card he’d been meaning to gift to his mother for her birthday last year. Sorry, Mom. Chanhee needs it more than you do.

By the next day, Sunwoo had procured several skeins of festive-colored yarn and had dug his old crochet hook out of a desk drawer, and had gotten to work. His friend, Hyunjae, had smirked at him when Sunwoo pulled it from his backpack during lectures, but Sunwoo had ignored this in dignified silence. This was gearing up to be one hell of a scarf; Sunwoo could do the stitches fast, and he even decided to get fancy and swap back and forth between colors.

He’d been so engrossed in his work for the past several days that he hadn’t stopped to check how the entire thing looked. By the time Sunwoo cast off the last stitch, most of the skeins he’d bought were gone. But that’s okay. Sometimes scarves just use a lot of yarn.

Well. Sunwoo realized his mistake that afternoon, when he came home early to wrap the gift and put it under the tree before Chanhee got home from classes. It could have been a bit out of a three stooges scene, Sunwoo pulling and pulling and pulling yard after yard of knobbly scarf out of his backpack. By the time the entire thing came free, the pile of scarf was large enough to completely obscure the toaster oven it sat in front of on the kitchen counter.

“What the hell,” Sunwoo muttered to himself, digging through it and trying to figure out what to do. How long were scarves normally? Maybe he could cut it at some point? No, he couldn’t cut it or the entire thing would unravel. It already looked a little tenuous as it was; Sunwoo had opted for speed over precision.

Sunwoo rubbed a hand over his eyes, hard. This was God punishing him for being a jerk all the time, surely. The moment he’d actually tried to do something nice…

Sunwoo jumped as the door to the apartment clattered open.

“I am cold and I am tired and I am starving!”

Sunwoo leapt in front of the pile of scarf as Chanhee trudged into view, haphazardly kicking off his shoes and shrugging off his coat.

“I need a bottle of wine and some takeout and maybe a Hallmark movie and I don’t want to hear a single complaint about it or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“Mmm,” Sunwoo managed out as Chanhee opened the fridge door and slumped against it, scouring the contents within.

“I swear to god my professor is trying to kill me. She wants me to review three of the students’ final projects for that intro class I’m TA-ing. Three! The projects are supposed to be all her thing, I’m only supposed to be her homework lackey. What do I look like, someone with a form and analysis Ph.D?”

Sunwoo knew a loaded question when he heard one. “Long day?”

“You have no idea,” Chanhee mumbled. He pulled wine out of the fridge and promptly yelled, losing his grip on the bottle.

Sunwoo dived across the kitchen and caught the loose bottle. “Whoa.”

Chanhee smacked Sunwoo’s arm. “Yah! Didn’t I tell you to de-booby-trap the apartment?”

“I did, I did…” Sunwoo spluttered, trailing off as he caught sight of a few rubber snakes on a shelf in the fridge. “…oh, yeah. Forgot about those.”

Chanhee scoffed and took the bottle out of Sunwoo’s hands. “Idiot. Get rid of them, please. Nearly cost me a bottle of cab sauv.”

“Yeah, a whole seven bucks,” Sunwoo muttered, digging around on the shelf and grabbing all the snakes.

“What’s this, then?”

Sunwoo whirled around to see Chanhee standing next to the scarf pile, looking at it as he uncorked the wine.

“Nothing! It’s nothing!” Sunwoo scrambled to close the fridge, losing the handful of rubber snakes in the process. He huffed in frustration and crouched down to grab them again, tossing them in the trash bin.

“It’s certainly a whole lot of nothing.”

Sunwoo fought a wince as Chanhee picked up one end of the scarf between his thumb and forefinger, staring curiously. Oh, god. He was going to have to explain this mess. He was going to have to say with his mouth that he’d tried to make Chanhee a gift and failed, that this was the most recent in a long line of failures, and that it was all an attempt to apologize for being an ass all the time, and this was embarrassing, he didn’t know how to make things, he should have just bought some stupid thing instead, he should have just not been an asshole, why was he like this, why couldn’t he just be a normal, nice person, and Sunwoo hated this, actually, he couldn’t bear it. It was too much for one man, even a jerk like him.

Chanhee cleared his throat, and Sunwoo snapped back to attention. 

Sunwoo cleared his throat. “Oh, um. Right. It’s….well, it’s a….”

Chanhee studied the scarf again as Sunwoo stammered, then hummed in recognition.

“Ooo. It’s perfect. Where did you find it?”

Sunwoo stopped scrambling, confused.

“I, uh….I made it. Wait, perfect for what?”

“You made this?” Chanhee raised his eyebrows, looking at the scarf with new eyes. “I didn’t know you knitted.”

“Crocheted, actually. Chanhee, I—”

“This is damn good for you making it. I’m actually impressed.”

Sunwoo snapped his mouth shut, blinking. This…was not right. Something about this wasn’t right.

Before he could take the scarf back and explain or apologize, Chanhee scooped the whole thing up and walked into the living room. “Help me with it?”

“I…uh.” Sunwoo stumbled after him, lost.

Chanhee sat on the floor by the hearth and handed Sunwoo one end. “Here.”

Sunwoo took it slowly, unsure what the hell needed to happen next. Was he supposed to…drape it over Chanhee’s shoulder…?

He blinked as Chanhee straightened out a considerable length of it and tucked it into the lower branches of their little Christmas tree.

“What are you, uhm…” Sunwoo trailed off as Chanhee scooted a couple feet to the right, picking up more of the scarf length and continuing to tuck it in.

Chanhee looked up at Sunwoo with a raised eyebrow. “What, are you going to tell me you’re the angel on top of the tree that holds the other end?”

“I…I’m…” Sunwoo blinked stupidly and looked from the tree, to Chanhee, back and forth.

Chanhee sighed, laughing in exasperation. “Hang up the garland, Sunwoo.”

Sunwoo raised his eyebrows. “The…the gar—” Oh. Oh. Well, that…made sense. That was a far more reasonable conclusion to draw about Sunwoo’s disaster knots than “scarf”.

…He should correct him. This was far kinder than Sunwoo’s sad, sorry, knobbly, thirty foot scarf deserved. Much kinder than what Sunwoo himself deserved.

Chanhee looked at Sunwoo curiously. “Why did you make a garland, anyway?”

Sunwoo opened his mouth, shut it, then repeated the process a few more times. “I, um….”

Chanhee cocked his head, and Sunwoo sighed.

“It….it was supposed to be a gift. For you.”

Chanhee blinked. “A…gift?”

Sunwoo couldn’t look at him anymore; he was too embarrassed. “Yeah. I hadn’t gotten to wrap it yet.”

There was a long silence, the rustling of the mini pine tree’s branches the only sound in the room as the two continued to put up the garland.

“You got me a gift? You made me something?”

“Well, yeah, it’s Christmas,” Sunwoo said, as though it was obvious. “And you’re my best friend. I can’t just not get you something.”

Sunwoo glanced at Chanhee and wished he hadn’t when he caught the touched look on his roommate’s face.

“That’s….so nice.”

Sunwoo groaned. “Come on, man, this isn’t a crying kinda thing.”

“Shut up,” Chanhee sniffled. “You’re just….you’re you, all the time, you know, the snakes in the fridge kind of guy, and then you do something like this—”

“It was supposed to be a scarf!” Sunwoo cried. “Okay? A scarf! Not a garland!”

“Don’t you dare badmouth my garland that you made for me!”

Sunwoo groaned. “You can do so much better. I can do so much better than that. This isn’t a bar you want to set.”

“I didn’t set it, you did,” Chanhee sniffed, wiping and eye and then staring in disgust at his hand. “Ew. The tree’s leaking sap, I think.”

“A lovely addition to your garland,” Sunwoo muttered as Chanhee stood up and moved to the kitchen.

“Shut up, you made it for me and it’s a perfect garland and I love it, wasn’t that the goal?”

Sunwoo pursed his lips. “…just feels like I’m getting off too easy.”

Chanhee looked like he was biting back a smile as he made his way to the sink. “Well….it’s Christmas. I can let you off easy, just the once.”

Sunwoo was reminded, for what must have been the millionth time, how astronomically lucky he was to have a friend like his roommate.

Chanhee turned on the sink and immediately yelped, water spraying him directly in the chest. Fumbling around frantically, water going everywhere, Chanhee reached for the faucet knob and shut it back off.

Sunwoo stood frozen, staring in surprise. Oh, shit. Right. “I, uh…I forgot about the rubber band on the sprayer head. Um, sorry…”

Chanhee stood there for a long moment, entire front soaked, before turning to Sunwoo.

“I change my mind. You’re buying our takeout tonight. And extra dumplings. I’m not sharing.”

“I….” Sunwoo rubbed the back of his neck. “….Yeah. Totally fair.”

“And lunch tomorrow.”

“Done.”

This was your 5th consecutive hour at the library. It was midterm season, meaning you were busy pulling all nighters.

But no matter how long you stared at your notes, you were completely stuck on chapter 3. It didn’t make sense when the professor explained it and didn’t help when the TA went over it again.

Clearing your throat, you pulled at the collar of your hoodie. It was starting to get stuffy in the quiet room.

You took a deep breath, hoping it’d help rid your chest of the tight feeling. It didn’t.

The pen spinning in your hand slipped out and dropped to the floor. Sighing, you bent down to pick it up. Your concentration was officially broken.

“Y/n, take a break if you need it,” Juyeon whispered as he glanced at the clock on the wall. “We’ve been here for hours.”

You shot him a grateful smile but shook your head. You didn’t have time for breaks when your exam was tomorrow.

Chanhee looked up from his textbook and eyed your expression. He mouthed at you to listen to Juyeon but you assured him that you were fine.

Lightly slapping your cheeks, you tried to pull yourself together. Instead, all you could think about was how uncomfortable your hoodie was. Was it always this tight on you?

You shifted in your seat as it squeaked, Now it felt like your voice was caught in your throat. Clearing it once more, you grabbed at your top’s collar again. It was loose but why did it feel so suffocating?

With another sigh, you got up to go get something to drink from the vending machine. After buying a water bottle, you headed to the staircase to escape the stifling silence. You took a few sips as you sat down on the stairs.

No matter how many deep breaths you took, it still felt like you weren’t getting enough air. You pushed your hair back in frustration, upset that you were wasting time.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” you heard Chanhee’s soft voice from behind.

You turned around to see him take a seat next to you. You offered a tight smile as you held up the bottle in your hand.

“You okay?” he asked, noticing your discomfort.

“Yeah, I’m just tired,” you chuckled.

“Do you wanna head back to your dorm? I can walk you there.”

You politely declined the offer and insisted that you needed to study more. Plus, you didn’t want to take away his time.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I have plenty of time to take you home. I can go back to my place after dropping you off.”

“I appreciate you looking out for me but I really have to finish going over my notes for this class by tomorrow morning. The exam is in,” you paused as you checked the time on your phone lock screen. “Exactly 9 hours.”

“Meaning you should go to sleep soon so you can wake up that early,” he raised his brow.

“I’ll be fine, mom,” you joked as you stood up. “Now let’s head back to the guys.”

When you returned to the study room you had reserved, Kevin was the only one left inside. He notified you that Juyeon and Changmin had gone to the vending machine to get some snacks.

Grabbing the opportunity, you quickly texted Changmin asking him to buy you a bag of Cheez-It. When he replied with a thumbs up, you let out a small “yes!”

“Oh the bubble teas just arrived. I’ll go down to get it from the delivery person,” Kevin said, looking for his wallet. “Just Venmo me what you guys ordered.”

Left alone with Chanhee, your torso sprawled out onto the table in exhaustion. You whined about hating midterms as he empathized.

The enjoyable snack break was unfortunately short-lived as the pressure to continue cramming returned. Picking up your pen again, you blankly stared at the paper in front of you.

You barely managed to study for 15 minutes before you left the room again. This time, you went outside for some fresh air. You second guessed your need for a walk as your hand stretched out to feel the drizzle.

After some thought, you shrugged and pulled your hood over your head. You avoided the puddles that were beginning to form on the ground as you felt the cold air enter your lungs.

A shudder ran through your body. You hadn’t expected the weather to be so chilly.

Your hand reached out to tug on your collar again only to realize that it was already stretched out. Taking a few more deep breaths, you fisted at your tightening chest. You forced yourself to cough, hoping to alleviate the restless feeling.

It didn’t.

“Why am I like this?” you muttered to yourself as you began to shake.

Your breaths were becoming more sharp and fast-paced. Starting to feel scared, you looked at your trembling hand. Your free hand grabbed your shaking one but didn’t do much to stop it.

A wave of panic washed over you as you struggled to calm yourself down. Squatting in the middle of the sidewalk, you crumpled your body to feel some sense of security. Again, it didn’t seem to help.

Meanwhile, the drizzle had turned into thicker droplets. With the water pouring over you, the hood on your head quickly got drenched.

Your heart pounded against your rib cage and it felt like someone was squeezing it. You were now hyperventilating and beginning to feel light-headed. You knew you had to take deep breaths but you could only continue to gasp for air. The unfamiliar situation terrified you and only made it more difficult to relax.

At that time, your phone vibrated, notifying you of an incoming call. Your trembling hands barely dug the device out of your pocket and answered it.

“Chanhee?” your voice quivered.

“Y/n? Where’d you go?” his own voice was full of concern.

“I-I don’t know where I am,” you sniffled, finally taking notice of your surroundings.

“Tell me what you see. I’ll go find you,” he said.

By the time he arrived, you managed to pull yourself together enough to sit on a bench. When he sat down next to you and asked what was wrong, you didn’t answer. Or rather, you couldn’t. You had no idea what just happened.

Your head hung low as you stared at your still-shaking hand. How embarrassing to have Chanhee see you at your lowest point.

He surprised you by holding your hand and putting both of your hands in his pocket. You looked up to see him softly smiling.

“You’ll be okay. Don’t worry about the exam or feel like your weakness is exposed. I’m your friend and I’m here for you,” he comforted.

He was right about you feeling exposed. You had never been so vulnerable in front of someone before. And you hated it. You were extremely thankful for his help but now you felt awkward with him.

“Let’s go home,” he said as he stood up. “And I’ll treat you to lunch after your exam tomorrow.”

His nonchalance was weird but in a good way. He didn’t fuss over you or make you feel like a patient. He simply offered his presence. And for that, you were grateful to have someone like him by your side.

a/n: please please please remember to eat, drink water, and sleep !! school and grades are important but they are not more important than your mental and physical health. i know it’s so much easier said than done but do try to take care of yourselves 💖