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If he was asked, Chan could recall exactly where everyone was when it happened. Everyone was sprawled around the dressing room before the performance, some still being polished with last-minute hair and makeup. Seungmin and Jisung were piled onto the couch near the humidifier on their phones. Changbin was idly running through his part under his breath while he surveyed the snack table options for later. Minho was having his stubborn bangs re-curled. Hyunjin was getting the shine on his forehead taken down a notch. Jeongin was in the washroom in front of the mirror helping Felix with a belt. 

And then suddenly, he was yelling. 

“Hyung!” he cried, not specifying which one he wanted. “Something happened!”

Maybe it was some difficulty in detecting the seriousness of the event spoken in his melodic voice, but Seungmin laughed at first, and pocketed his phone as the announcement came for them to finish preparations and make their way to the lift.

“If you’re talking about the pimple behind your ear, it’s hard not to notice,” he said nonchalantly, stretching his arms over his head.

“No! I’m — something happened! Yongbok-hyung — does anyone know CPR?!” Jeongin cried, an edge of panic to his voice.

That got everyone’s attention, and Chan surged around the furniture to the washroom, gaze darting from Jeongin’s fearful brown eyes to the figure sprawled on the floor. The adrenaline rush that followed nearly caused him to black out, and everything moved pretty quickly from there. 

“He fainted or something, hyung, I don’t know, he just fell — !“

“Did he hit his head?! Changbin, get a medical staff!” Chan shouted behind him as their fifteen minute stage warning came over the speaker. He laid Felix out on the floor of the washroom in a more comfortable position, and propped his legs up as Jeongin recounted Felix hitting his head on the edge of the sink. The fall hadn’t busted his head open, but he could see the bruise quickly beginning to bloom above his eyebrow where he was swelling from the impact. He put his thumb over Felix’s wrist to check for a pulse, but couldn’t feel anything over the whooshing of his own heart racing. Frantically, he moved his fingers to Felix’s throat, pressing into the soft, warm give of it and looking at his pale face. The white of his eyes shone through the slit of his lids where they were closed. Hyunjin raced over to check his breathing, and help Chan who was visibly shaking and looked compromised.

“He’s breathing, his heart’s beating normally,” Hyunjin reassured quickly as Changbin raced back in with a small group of medics. The members parted to let them through, and Chan watched helplessly as they loosened the belts on his pants and jacket, checked his vitals. 

“He just… he fainted or something, he just fell over,” Jeongin repeated, feeing dumb and confused.

They all watched for a few more seconds, looking back and forth from Felix to the medical staff’s busy hands to one another, startling when Felix started squirming sluggishly on the floor. Chan felt his breath punched from his chest as he watched the life return to his love’s eyes. One of the medics fanned cool air onto his face, and his lashes fluttered as he tried to focus against the fluorescent lights of the washroom. 

The managers called the members over to get the gist of what had happened, and began making quick decisions. Stray Kids would still perform their program set, but without Felix front and center. 

One of us needs to stay with him, Chan thought desperately, feeling as if he were moving in slow motion ahead of the members, herded towards the stage lift. He glanced behind him at Felix being lifted on a gurney. Their eyes met for a split second between the silhouettes of the medics as Felix realized what was happening, as he watched the members walk to the stage without him. I need to stay with him…!

“No,” he saw Felix’s lips form, right before an oxygen mask was placed over his mouth. His eyes scrunched up as they prepared to move him.

“He’s okay, Chan-ssi, he’ll be fine!” one of their managers reassured hurriedly as they were funneled into place and given in-ears and mics. Seungmin put his hand on Chan’s back to ground him as they tested, and remind him that they had a job to do, despite the matching hard set of his jaw. They hadn’t had time to gather as a team before the show, but everyone looked to him with strength and resolve despite the circumstances, Minho falling into Felix’s place at the front of the formation without question. He was reminded in that moment, beyond the loud buzz of worry in his brain for Felix, that while he was Stray Kids’ leader, it would have been a useless role without his capable team walking by his side. 

The lights began to flash around them as they rose to the stage, and he finally let everything but the music fade away.

********

Chan barely registered anything beyond color, sound and the safety of the members coming offstage, until he ran into a manager on his way back to their dressing room.

“They took him to the hospital,” the manager said, jogging alongside him to keep up helping him remove his equipment. Chan wracked his brain, trying to remember the closest hospital to the arena, but his mental map of Tokyo wasn’t very good. 

“Is there a driver?” Chan asked frantically, pushing the dressing room door open and looking around for his shoulder bag.

“Here,” Minho said from the couch where their stuff was piled, tossing him his black leather bag. Chan began stripping out of his performance clothes in the middle of the dressing room down to his black briefs, dressing quickly in his jeans and hoodie, smearing some sweat-tacky makeup on his white tee. He pulled off his loaned jewelry and piled it on the makeup counter, trusting Hyunjin and the managers to take care of it for him. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled in apology to the others as they all worked together to help him get everything settled. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, we’ve got it,” Jisung consoled. “Tell us how he’s doing, okay?”

“Hurry up,” Minho said, stuffing Chan’s phone and charger into his bag and patting his back.

“Okay, okay,” Chan said, grabbing a mask from a box on the table and affixing it on the way out the back to the car. 

********

The hospital smelled overly clean, almost like an absence of scent. It was a shock to his system, even with the buffer of the car ride, going from the colorful pulse of the arena to the relative white stillness in what felt like seconds. The nurse and their manager talked quietly ahead of him in Japanese and Korean, and he followed behind them, counting the room numbers as they passed them by.

“バンチャンさん、ここ、入ってください。”

The door opened to a comfortable looking room by contrast, warmly lit by the sconces on the wall. It was fully nighttime, the window’s curtains opened to the lights of Tokyo below. In the center of the bed in the nest of powder blue blankets, Felix sat up, eyes alight as they landed on Chan’s familiar face. 

Chan sighed in relief, looking over Felix. He appeared awake and healthy, cheeks full of color once again. He was hooked up to an IV of some sort, the bruise above his brow fully formed in variegated shades of plum and blue.

“Channie,” he breathed. Chan thought he might cry a little, hearing his voice. It was probably the adrenaline finally crashing, he reasoned. He glanced at the nurse and their manager, who looked meaningfully between them. 

“Call if you need anything,” he said, and they let themselves out. Chan watched them leave, waited for the blanket of privacy settle over them at last, and padded over to the bed, sitting lightly on the edge and looking over Felix’s face. 

“Hey, baby,” he said, brushing his fingertips over his cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” Felix said, and then frowned deeply, expression abashed. “Channie, I’m so sorry. I’m so humiliated.”

“No, no. Don’t. Everything was fine. Everything’s fine, as long as you’re okay. Minho’s no Felix, but he filled in, did great, and everything’s fine. Only as long as you’re okay.”

Felix pouted, looking at his fingers in his lap, and picking at his cuticle. “Still. I let you all down.”

“No, you couldn’t. Ever. We were worried about you.”

Chan knew Felix was going to have to feel his feelings about this, and let him be since he didn’t seem overly preoccupied with it, reaching past him for his water cup and holding it to his lips. 

“Drink, baby.”

Felix nodded, twisting the blanket in his hands and sipping at the water. 

“Did the doctor tell you what happened? Do they know yet?”

Felix was quiet for a moment, and took the cup for himself, swallowed another sip of water before replacing the cup. 

“Mmm. Dehydration and low iron,” Felix said simply. Chan cooed at him and nodded, running his fingers through his hair. “The doctor said it was the sudden increase in blood volume, I didn’t have enough iron to support it. They gave me a supplement,” Felix said, watching Chan’s face closely. Chan looked confused for a split second but shrugged. 

“Good. Good. What causes an increase in — in that?” Chan asked, picking up the discarded wrapper for the individual supplement Felix had taken. He read over the tiny words printed in English. 

Prenatal. 

“Felix, what…” Chan mumbled softly, reading over the packet a second time. A tremble began somewhere in his body. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Felix pull something out from under the pillow behind him. A white envelope, a print in black and white, a small plastic bag. Felix placed the black and white print in his lap.

His eyes moved around the image, seeing some information he knew (Lee, Yongbok 2000/09/15) and some that he didn’t (GA=6w2d). A shape, not unlike the shape a windshield wiper would make in the rain, a black shape like the eye of a storm, with the tiniest thing nestled inside. The tremble took hold in his arms as he picked the paper up and looked over it. His eyes burned. 

“Do you know what that is, Channie?” Felix said, his voice shaky and fragile. Chan’s lip shook as emotion wracked him for the second time that day. He nodded, a tear sliding down his cheek as his expression crumpled. 

“It’s a sonogram,” Chan blubbered, finally meeting Felix’s eyes. “Baby, you’re pregnant?

Felix’s eyes curved into smiles, tears lining up against his lower lashes as he nodded. 

“I’m pregnant.”

Chan carefully placed the image next to Felix on the bed and crawled closer, wrapping Felix with care in his arms. 

“We’re gonna have a baby?” he confirmed, carding his fingers through Felix’s hair. “Is that why you fainted, oh — oh God, is the baby okay…!?“

“The baby’s okay,” Felix assured, giddy in disbelief of the words coming out of his own mouth. “They made me do a blood test and a urine test, that’s how they found out. They wanna keep me overnight since I hit my head pretty hard.” He pulled back to look at Chan’s face. 

“We’re gonna have a baby.”

“Felix… Felix!” Chan sobbed happily. 

“Is it… do you wanna talk about it some more, I mean… is it something you want —“

“Yes! Yes, I — do you? I’m sorry, I should have asked first, I just got so… y’know,” Chan said, flapping and wiping his eyes, smearing glitter everywhere. 

“I’m happy! I really am, I know we weren’t like… trying, but I’m so happy,” Felix snuffled, showing Chan the positive pregnancy test wrapped in the plastic bag. “I don’t know where things go from here, I guess I have to meet with my physician through the company…? The company…” Felix trailed off, clearly worried. 

“Don’t worry about JYPE right now,” Chan said firmly. It was like whiplash really, how easily they’d gone from two to three, how he’d entered the room as half of a couple, and become part of a family. Felix felt soothed by the resolve in Chan’s eyes, and leaned back against the pillow. Chan smiled, love overflowing from his eyes.

“Is it okay if we don’t tell anyone else just yet?” Felix asked, shy. “I know we need to tell the members, just… is it ok if we wait?”

“Of course,” Chan said quickly, reaching down to touch Felix’s tummy through the gown and blanket, letting his hand hover, eyes asking permission. Felix beamed, moved the blanket out of the way and pressed Chan’s palm over his abs. Chan looked at his hand, rubbing. 

“They’re really in here,” he said, voice filled with wonder. “You went off birth control like, two months ago, how did it happen so fast?”

“One of us is obnoxiously fertile, I guess.” Felix grinned, watching Chan’s face, taking in the nuance of his emotion as he settled into the news. He was still made up artfully from the performance, hair stubbornly beginning to curl where it had soaked up his sweat on his nape and around his temples. 

“Oh, are you really a type O? Do you know if you’re a positive or negative? The nurse said the doctor might need to know the blood Rh factor for the first prenatal appointment when we get back to Seoul.”

“How did you remember that I’m an O?” Chan boggled.

“I couldn’t! I looked it up on a fansite.”

Chan’s eyes widened and he tossed his head back and laughed, covering his face with his hands. 

“Felix!”

********

Chan spent the night at the hospital, sat in the cushy chair by the window while Felix finally slept. Nothing could have separated him from Felix in that moment, and he silently thanked whoever threw his things in his bag as he oscillated between reading about pregnancy at six weeks and staring out the window at the planes blinking across the sky in place of stars, at the generous, cold twinkle of Tokyo’s lights at two a.m., one world below him and one sleeping peacefully beside him. Felix’s chest rose and fell in a rhythm that comforted something soul deep in Chan, eyes moving slowly under his lids and his lips twitching into a little smile every now and then. Chan wondered if he was dreaming, and what about. He thought about how Felix had been born into the world with the little egg that would become their baby, how he’d carried it across dusty playgrounds, swam in the sea with it, brought it over 8,000km with him to Korea to meet Chan. He pinched the bridge of his nose to stop himself from crying again. He was so, so tired. He was so in love and overwhelmed and he’d forgotten to eat dinner. There was a whole new, precious person that was half him and half Felix in the room whose heart had just begun to beat and he was going to have to talk to Park Jin-Young about how it would affect profit margins. 

Fuck.

Plugging his phone in, he leaned back in the chair and curled up under his hoodie that was serving as a makeshift blanket. It was a fool’s errand trying to sleep, his brain running at light speed. He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, cringing as they caught on the tangled remnants of product trying to keep it from curling up. 

Would their baby have his curls? 

He imagined his members, just blocks away, tucked into their beds in the hotel. He’d texted the group chat to let them know Felix was alright and would likely be discharged in the morning, heart warm and full when the messages flooded back. He wanted desperately to tell them, his most true family, what had been revealed to him only hours ago. But Felix was right about holding this close to their chests for the time being. The knowledge was new, tender and fragile. And it was so early, Felix had explained. They could still lose it. 

His phone startled him right at the edge of the realization that he was already hopelessly attached to the little one, and he brought his phone closer to check his messages. 

Minho: I’m bored

Chan: go to sleep then

Chan: you should have been asleep hours ago!

Minho: the hotel room is too quiet without your snoring

Chan: I don’t snore anymore! I don’t think?

Minho: how is he?

Chan: he’s sleeping well 

Minho: it seems a little unnecessary for them to keep him overnight

Chan licked his lips and picked up the sonogram on the table, unable to stop the swelling in his heart when he looked at it. 

Chan: they mostly needed to make sure he didn’t have a concussion, he hit his head pretty hard.

Chan: I can’t believe we didn’t hear it when he went down

Minho: you said he had low iron too

Chan: yeah

Minho: I looked into that

Minho: it’s pretty rare to suddenly become iron deficient with a couple of exceptions

Chan’s heart sped up in his chest, and somehow he just knew. 

Minho: anything you want to share?

He watched the ellipses form on his end over and over again, almost as incriminating as outright spilling the truth. 

Thankfully, Minho took pity on him. 

Minho: you don’t have to answer. no one suspects anything, and I haven’t mentioned it. 

Minho: are you okay?

Chan sighed. He had one job: to not tell anyone yet. To be fair, Minho was exceptionally shrewd and nosy, and Chan hadn’t actually said anything. 

Chan: never better!

Minho: are you… positive? giggle giggle

…

…

…

…

…

Chan: positive, hehe.