Down The Rabbit Hole And What They Found There - [Bang Chan, Lee Know]

Hey There Delilah

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She can't be that far from where he is. That's the place; this is the bar; he remembers it like it was yesterday. It wasn't difficult to escape. With all the media attention focused on the protests in the streets and all the stays raging on Twitter, walking around New York without being noticed is a piece of cake. It was good that they were no longer at the hotel they were at for the Met Gala, but probably nobody expected them to stay in the USA for that long after the event.

He feels like shit, Bin next to him is fidgeting, Jisung keeps texting on the phone to Minho (like they hadn't spent the last 2 hours on a call before his flight to London); and his hair is a mess, so he had to put a beanie on. Felix is ordering a cocktail ("This place is very nice, Chris, I think the barman gave me his phone number, very nice"), Jeongin keeps staring at him. Why is Jeongin staring at him? He should stop, it makes Chan even more nervous.

"What?" he blurted out, cause he couldn't actually stop it. Innie blinked a few times behind the thick glasses, shrugging, and only then looked away.

"You are shitting in your pants." he mumbled, making Felix scoff and smirk.

"Innie, that's not very nice." Yongbok said, with his lips behind the glass, something pink in it. Is that alcohol? Ah, never mind, better if he doesn't drink right now.

"Not very nice..." Chan mumbled under his breath, scanning the room once again.

Alice said something about how in this particular season, the pub where they danced together more than 6 months ago turns into a more soft and elegant place, and today - today is the karaoke night. Which, usually it would not be his business, but tonight Alice - and some of her colleagues - are going to spend the after-show there. Their show at Broadway is doing well (Chan asked if it was okay if he wanted to see her show, and she said something like..."better if you don't; there are a lot of TikTok kids there". It annoyed him, but he pretends it didn't), and at least once a week, they have their night out to have fun at the karaokes. When Chan told her that this was basically one of the few free evenings the company would allow them, she just said, "oh, then join us! It would be fun." Yeah, fun. Like it hadn't been months since the last time he saw her, weeks since he heard her voice. And it's not like he got that much free time to dwell in his lost love - the amount of schedules they have every day is enough to make them forget they are humans that need to eat and drink water.

They are far from complaining about it. Surely, there's something they would've liked to have a say about it... like the Puth collaboration, which had no feelings in it, and surely it's not something they would have done if they could've chosen it. But here they are, with contracts, and they are not going to complain after years of closed doors. He had to close Twitter at one point, feeling like he just betrayed the people he promised to never lie to, but it's fine. Well, it's not. But right now, he's too nervous about meeting Alice, to care.

The girl on the stage, clearly drunk, is tone-deaf enough to wake him from his overthinking. Gosh, how could you disrespect Olivia Rodrigo like that? Fuck.

"Why are you so tense? Drink some, here," Lix asked next to him, gesturing for him to take a sip of his drink. Chan just shook his head and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Yes, he's tense, of course he is. He already made the mistake of asking her if she was going to attend the Met Gala - which, thinking back, okay maybe he was really just a little bit too desperate, but her answer gets him back to earth immediately - "Oh, Chris, you joking, right?? You are the big international star here, not me! Thank you, though, that was really kind."

Just a few days ago, he was confidently chatting with Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth, and here he is, with sweaty paws and his friends around as emotional support. Binnie was the one that was the most useful, actually, he said something like-