OFF OF THE DEEP END | CHANGLIX ✔️

18. nights together

song: can't stop (seungmin, in) // stray kids

Changbin reclined on the hotel couch, bored out of his mind.

Yesterday, he'd attended the concert, staying in the backrooms to gift a hug to the exhausted idol after the performance. The earlier portion of this day had been spent exploring the lavish hotel, entertaining the vast possibilities hidden behind adored doors that held every type of entertainment to catch the quickly distracted minds of the wealthy class. He had discovered a surplus of bars holding the most exquisite soju, Michelin restaurants sporting incredibly expensive food, several designer stores with patrols of armed guards, and even an entire waterpark attached to an olympic sized pool.

Felix was out doing day two of his concert. Early in the morning, the idol had excused himself to prepare, leaving Changbin alone in the massive hotel room with nothing but a credit card Felix had forced upon him. He stared at the shiny black plastic, at the shimmery gold characters engraved in the surface of the gimmick surely holding thousands of dollars. Changbin refused to to use it, he had enough money to splurge on something expensive and the guilt of taking either the idol's or the company's money dulled the urge of shopping.

Absentmindedly, Changbin scrolled through the abandoned notifications on his phone. Normal things, messages from a random aunt telling him about the plans for a family reunion in several years, a cousin getting hacked and sending him a text advertising something unimportant, telemarketers, and an influx of messages— fourteen, to be precise— from Jisung.

Confused, he opened up the text thread. Assuming the spam was perhaps related to another interaction with one of the many handsome idols he fangirled over or complaints about running the shop without Changbin, he read through the messages, eyes widening over the unexpected twitter post the younger had send and provided his comments on.

The post was from a fan account of Felix and depicted a paparazzi picture of Felix in his pink hoodie entering the hotel side by side with Changbin, both obscured with masks. The comments underneath mostly remarked on how cute the idol looked drowned in the clothes, but several commenters were complimenting how hot the "bodyguard" looked. The other thirteen texts from Jisung contained messages with rapidly increasing panic and confusion, questioning why the bodyguard looked exactly like Changbin when he was supposed to be on a family trip, not accompanying a world-famous idol.

Of course. It was naïve to believe that with the sheer amount of fan accounts Jisung followed that he wouldn't see the paparazzi photos. In fact, Changbin would be offended that after the years spending weeks as coworkers the younger couldn't recognize his masked face.

At a loss for a suitable reply that didn't risk the idol's privacy, Changbin decided on leaving the messages on delivered for a few more hours and having a conversation with Felix to draft a response.

Changbin let his back fall against the cushions of the black leather couch holding him, the furniture similar to his own personal couch behind the register at the bookstore, but surely thousands of dollars pricier. The book lying off to the side of the glass table that he'd rejected for the shinier glass surface of his phone was a tempting worn surface brimming with the possibility of a gripping story hidden beneath carefully-inked pages. Intrigued with continuing the story he'd flipped through earlier, Changbin flung an arm off of the couch and painstakingly reeled the book in.

About thirty minutes into the rollercoaster of a book, a click sounded through the room. Changbin jolted up, his position causing an embarrassing crack from his back. He winced, but continued to gaze hopefully at the silver knob twisting on the door.

The familiar head of messy lavender hair stumbled into the room and face planted onto his bed, paying no heed to Changbin. Nervous, he anxiously approaches the collapsed idol, touching a tentative hand to the small of Felix's back.