Fake Exes | Changlix

VI

Changbin woke up around noon the next day, after another late night on Tiktok. Of all places to be after midnight.

He padded into the kitchen in fuzzy socks and an oversized sweater, not bothering to do anything about his bed hair. His roommates, Chan and Jisung, had all seen each other in worse conditions by now. This was normal.

What wasn't normal was the fact that Chan was staring at him, judgingly. Chan never judged people without good reason, and Changbin was sure when they'd said goodnight yesterday (or very early today?) Chan was still all smiles and proud mom friend.

Changbin shrugged it off as he made himself coffee and started looking for everything he needed for cereal: a spoon, a bowl, milk, and the cereal box.

Chan was staring at him.

Did he even blink?

Changbin took a sip of coffee and sighed. He felt much more awake already.

He ate one bowl of cereal before he looked up to find Chan still staring at him. This was concerning.

"Chan-hyung," Changbin began. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" Chan asked back, unbelieving. "I'm asking myself if you are okay."

"I – what?"

"I just," Chan sighed. "How could you? You're my best friend, and you never thought to tell me? You didn't even introduce us."

Okay, Changbin was officially out. What the fuck?

"And like," Chan continued, "I've known Felix for half a day and if anything happened to him I would kill everybody in the room and then myself, yes that's a Brooklyn Nine-Nine quote but it's also true. I just wanna know, okay? I wanna know why you broke Felix's heart."

"How do you even know Felix," Changbin said faintly, because this – did not make any sense, but fuck, what if it did make sense.

"The fact that you need to ask me this." Chan stood up, wrung his hands, paced around and then dropped into the chair across from Changbin. "He's one of our new neighbours. They moved in over the past week. I went to introduce myself this morning after I invited Jeongin to our performance yesterday and didn't see him there. Turns out they left early because you're Felix's ex boyfriend. And Felix looked very conflicted when I told him you live here."

Changbin opened and closed his mouth. "Hyung, I don't even know where to begin."

Chan glared. "How about at the beginning? Binnie, I'd really like to take your side in this, but you're also making it really hard, you have to understand. How could you hurt Felix like that?"

"I didn't break up with him because we were never together," Changbin really didn't know what else to say. A lot of things started to make sense. "I literally only saw him twice in my life, and one of those times he asked me to go along with his friend – Minho? – who was accusing me of breaking his heart."

"What," now it was Chan's turn to look confused.

Changbin rolled his eyes. "Chan-hyung. The only time I lied to you in my entire life was about those cigarettes two years ago, believe me when I say you have this all wrong. I'm sure Felix has his reasons he needed a fake ex yesterday, and now he's in the awkward situation of either going with his lie or telling his new roommates he lied."

"I..." Chan frowned. "Oh. Fuck, was he the cute guy you met in the cafe? With the freckles? Sunshine smile? Deep voice?"

Changbin nodded. "Yeah."

"Binnie, I'm sorry for accusing you like that," Chan said and blushed. "That's embarrassing and... a shitty thing to do. I shouldn't jump to conclusions simply because a new neighbour says you broke up with him. He didn't even say it himself, his friends said it for him, and he looked pretty uncomfortable now that I think about it..."

Changbin sighed. "I can't even blame you, hyung. As I said, I met Felix twice, and I would react the same way if someone told me you broke his heart."

Chan chuckled nervously. "Let me make you more coffee."

"Sure," Changbin said. He got up to put his dishes in the dishwasher and the milk back into the fridge. Chan put the cereal back into the cupboard.

So they sat on their couch with their coffees in silence, because they both had no idea what to say after that conversation, but didn't want to just leave it at that.

Changbin briefly wondered if he was still dreaming, but no, probably not. He could not make this up.

Chan stared into his coffee like it would tell him the secrets of the universe.

"Wait, what was that about you lying to me about the cigarettes," Chan suddenly asked.

The door opening and feet shuffling was a welcome distraction, as Changbin had no desire at all to ever elaborate on the cigarettes. Sometimes you just listened to heavy metal and hard rock for a week and went to sleep with your eyeliner still on your face, and the important thing was that Changbin learned from that experience and took better care of his mental health (and skin) now.

"Channie-hyung!" Jisung called into the apartment. "I found my long lost twin! Is Binnie awake yet?"

"That's 'hyung' to you," Changbin muttered under his breath.

"A twin? Sungie!" Chan scrambled to his feet. "I'm too young to have twins –" He froze as Jisung walked into the room.

Changbin looked up and met Felix's eyes.

"Oh." Chan said. "Wait, you're related?"

Jisung grinned. "He is born just one day after me! I'm adopting him!"

Chan sat down heavily. "Oh thank god."

"I'm very sorry," Felix said, looking at Changbin.

"Huh?" Jisung's turned to Felix, then to Changbin, back to Felix, and back to Changbin. "Do you know each other?"

"Chan-hyung," Felix said when Changbin could not make his mouth work because Felix was there and he was wearing a pink sweater and ripped jeans that looked like they were painted on his thighs, "Changbin-hyung didn't break up with me, we never dated. It's just something I made up to get my friends to back off because they were pressuring me to make a tinder profile, and I didn't want to."

"Oh. I know," Chan said, then backtracked. "I mean, not about the tinder thing! But Changbin told me he only met you twice."

Felix blushed and looked down at his hands. "Um, yeah. I'm sorry about that. I should have insisted instead of coming up with a lie, and they should have backed off when I said I'm not interested in dating on tinder. And I'm especially sorry they brought it up to you today."

"You don't need to apologize to me, Felix," Chan said with a smile. "I'll support you with whatever makes you comfortable. Changbin?"

"Um, it's fine?" Changbin cleared his throat. "I mean, I was confused yesterday, but if your friends back off a bit, I'm fine with playing the crazy ex."

Felix chuckled nervously. "I was kinda hoping you would say that..."