This year stray kids came into my life and made 2025 one of the best years ever. Now I wanna leave a message to them to thank them for what they taught me this year:
Bangchan:
You can be crazy talented but nothing beats a caring heart. Sometimes that's more important than any record or legacy. (Doesn't mean I don't appreciate him as a musician. I do, so, so much.)
Lee Know:
People won't always understand you. But they don't have to. You'll find your path anyways and shine bright in your own, unique way.
Changbin:
Sometimes it can feel like people don't see who you truly are, but there will be true friends in your life who love you unconditionally.
Hyunjin:
Sometimes, we ourselves are our harshest critics. And as important as this awareness is, we shouldn't let it drag down our self esteem. Everyone in this world is needed.
Han:
Even the sunniest people can be confronted with their own shadows. It's important to not let them take control.
Felix:
Kindness is a rare thing that multiplies when you share it. You can be the light in someone else's life.
Seungmin:
People don't always show how deeply they feel things, but that doesn't make them rude. It's okay to express emotions in your own way.
I.N:
There will be times in your life where you question yourself. Are you good enough? Couldn't you improve? It's normal to feel those things, but don't let them take over your mind. You're perfect the way you are.
Stray kids everywhere all around the world. You make stray kids stay.
My brain this whole day. Yes, it's controversial, but I love Boompala (even though the lyrics are...interesting. "Self love is the mommy I'm the baby" ???)
a/n: thank you wonderful lot for the feedback on the first part <3 I'm sorry if this has any errors in it -- I tried my best to edit it but life is not kind at the moment. I hope you enjoy this, the first part is very heavy though so you have been warned.
[part one]
You didn’t intend to get in the pool.
You sit with his family for nearly half an hour first, pretending to read while his sister and dad cannonball into the water and his mum settles into her chair with a magazine, but the whole time your attention keeps drifting to the pool itself—to the glitter of the surface, to the children splashing in the shallows, to the deep blue of the far end.
And to Chan.
Every time someone gets too close to the edge, his head turns. Every time a child jumps without looking, he’s already moving. Every time you look up, there’s this strange, impossible sense that he’s keeping one eye on you, too.
Maybe it’s because he’s here that the water doesn’t look quite so frightening, or maybe it’s because your boyfriend isn’t. There’s no teasing or pressure. No one standing over you waiting to see if you’ll fail. Just sunlight, noise, chlorine, and the memory of Chan’s voice in the dark saying, push your feet into the floor for me, breathe with me, I’ve got you.
Without really deciding to, you stand, and his mum glances up from her lounger. “You all right, love?”
“Yeah,” you say, surprising yourself with how steady it sounds. “I think I might… go in.”
Her face lights up with pleased surprise. “Really?”
You laugh a little, nervous. “Maybe just the steps.”
“That’s brilliant.”
His sister pops up at once, water dripping from her chin. “I’ll come with you!”
“No, it’s okay,” you say quickly, smiling. “I just want to try on my own.”
Your words make something flutter low in your chest.
On my own.
It’s not fully true, perhaps—not with Chan thirty feet away and somehow stitched into your courage now—but true enough for you to walk to the edge of the pool slowly, pulse loud in your ears.
The shallow end is crowded with children and inflatables, so you give up on the steps and keep going along the side until you reach the quieter lane where the pool slopes deeper. Not all the way to the diving section, but close enough that the water turns a darker blue and the painted line on the tiles disappears beneath the surface. You stop at the edge. You’re not planning to jump in – you’re not that insane - you just stand there, arms folded loosely over your stomach, looking down at the water and trying to assess it the way Chan taught you to. Not as one giant terrifying thing, but in pieces.
There’s the surface, the depth marker, the ladder, the wall. There’s where your feet would go if you climbed in slowly.
You can do this, you think. You’re not ready for the deep end, and you’re not ready for the noise of the shallow end, but maybe this is enough. Maybe—
“Funny place to start.”
The voice behind you hits like a slap, and you turn so fast your heart nearly stops.
Your boyfriend is standing there.
For one wild second, relief is all you feel. Relief so huge it’s almost dizzying - he’s here, he’s alive, he’s okay – but then he steps closer, and the smell of alcohol hits you. Stale beer, spirits, sweat. The sour, sharp tang of someone who hasn’t slept and has been drinking far too long for it to still be “last night.”
Your relief curdles instantly.
“Oh my god,” you breathe. “Where have you been?”
He ignores the question. His eyes are bloodshot, jaw shadowed, yesterday’s clothes creased and damp at the collar. He looks wrecked. Not just tired—wrecked in a way that twists your stomach.
It takes you a second to realise what his gaze is fixed on.
It’s not your face but… The water.
“I saw you last night,” he says.
Your mouth goes dry. “Can we not do this here?” you ask quickly, glancing over your shoulder toward his family, toward the lifeguard chair, toward anywhere this conversation might not happen.
He laughs once, but it’s not a nice sound. “Here’s good.”
You step back instinctively. “You’re drunk.”
“Not drunk enough to imagine you all over him in the pool.”
The words hit like a physical blow, and your face burns as you try to deny his words with, “I wasn’t all over him.”
“No?” He takes another step closer. “Looked pretty fucking cosy to me.”
You glance again toward the loungers. His family is too far away to hear. Thank god. Chan—Chan is still in the chair, but from here you can’t tell how much he’s noticed. Your pulse starts to pound.
“Please lower your voice.”
“Why?” he snaps. “Embarrassed now?”
You flinch. His eyes narrow at the movement, and for a split second you see something ugly shift behind them—hurt turning sharp, humiliation hardening into cruelty.
“Let’s see how well you can really float.”
You blink. “What?”
“Float.” He gestures to the pool with one jerky hand. “Go on. Since you’re suddenly such a good little swimmer.”
Ice floods your veins. “No.”
He smiles, but it’s the wrong smile. Thin and mean and frighteningly familiar as he says, “Lifeguard taught you, didn’t he?” He steps closer, forcing you closer to the edge as he repeats, “So float.”
Your whole body goes cold. “I said no.”
“Why not?” His voice rises. “Thought you trusted him.”
“I do—”
The words slip out before you can stop them, and your boyfriend’s face changes. You see the exact moment it lands, the exact moment he decides to hurt you with it.
“Then do it,” he says.
You take another step back, heel skidding dangerously close to the wet edge. “Stop it.”
He follows. There’s fury in his eyes now, but underneath it something worse—something wounded and reckless and desperate to make you feel as out of control as he does.
“Float,” he says again.
“No.”
And then he shoves you.
It happens so fast your brain doesn’t catch up in time. One second you’re standing on hot tiles with your heart in your throat, and the next his hand is on your shoulder, shoving, and the world tilts violently sideways.
You hit the water wrong.
It’s not a controlled entry, not feet first, not anything you’ve practised with Chan in the quiet safety of after-hours. You go in twisted and unprepared, the shock of cold swallowing your scream before it can fully leave your mouth.
The pool closes over your head.
Everything disappears.
Sound goes muffled and monstrous. Light fractures above you in blinding silver ribbons. Your limbs kick out on pure instinct, but there’s no floor beneath your feet—just water, too much water, all around you at once.
Panic detonates, and it’s not the slow-rising terror Chan has taught you to breathe through. This is different, violent. This is being eight years old again and swallowing seawater and watching your mother vanish under the surface because you couldn’t stop screaming.
Your mouth opens on instinct, and more water rushes in. It burns down your throat, into your nose, into your lungs in a choking flood that feels like fire. You try to claw upward, but your body is all wrong - too frantic, too disoriented, limbs flailing without rhythm or thought. You can’t tell which way is up. Can’t tell where the wall is. Can’t hear anything but the roar of blood in your ears and the memory of your own name being shouted over crashing waves years ago.
Help.
You don’t know if you think it or try to say it.
Another mouthful of water fills your throat, and your chest convulses as darkness creeps into your vision. You can feel the fight leaving your limbs, your body growing heavy in the water.
Something slams into the water above you, and there are arms around your middle – strong, sure and impossibly fast – hauling you hard against a solid chest. One hand clamps across your sternum, the other cradles your forehead from behind, forcing your face up, up, up—
You break the surface, coughing so violently you can’t breathe. Noise crashes back in all at once - people shouting, someone screaming, your own body desperately trying to retch up the water suffocating you from the inside in ugly, broken gasps.
Chan’s voice is in your ear, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you—”
He says it over and over, breathless and fierce, as he tows you toward the edge with one arm locked around your chest. You’re choking too hard to answer. Your whole body is seizing, trying to cough up water and suck in air at the same time, and neither seems to be working.
“Look at me,” Chan orders, voice shaking in a way you’ve never heard before. “Hey—eyes on me, sweetheart, stay with me.”
You can’t.
You’re still drowning somehow, even in open air.
Hands reach down from the side of the pool. Another lifeguard, maybe. A guest. You don’t know. Chan half-lifts, half-throws you toward them and then hauls himself out right behind you, water streaming off him as he drops to his knees on the hot tile beside your body.
Everything feels wrong. Your chest won’t open properly, and your throat burns. Every failed breath comes in wet, strangled little sobs, and the darkness is growing worse. It must only have been a couple of minutes, but it was enough for your body to fail you.
“Come on, baby, breathe,” Chan says, hands cupping your face, his voice so close and so panicked it barely sounds like him. “Come on.”
You cough and cough and cough, water spilling from your mouth, but then your body jerks and your eyes roll. Suddenly there’s nothing - no air, no breath at all - just a terrible locked pressure in your chest and the distant sound of people shouting your name.
Chan swears from somewhere above you, yelling, “Call the ambulance now!”, and then his hands are on you—one at your jaw, one tipping your head back. You barely register the world tilting before his mouth covers yours.
It isn’t romantic. It isn’t even really a kiss.
It’s urgent and clinical and terrifying, Chan breathing air into your lungs while one hand seals around your face and the other braces at your neck. You feel the pressure of his breath forcing your chest to rise, feel him pull back, hear him say your name in a voice that cracks clean through the middle, and then his mouth is on yours again.
Air.
Again.
Again.
You come back with a violent, wrenching cough that folds you in half. Water gushes from your throat. You gasp, sob, choke, and suddenly Chan’s there catching you upright before you can collapse, one arm banded around your ribs, the other cradling the back of your head against his shoulder.
“There she is,” he says, voice wrecked. “There you are. Good girl, good girl, breathe for me.”
You cling to him blindly, distantly noting that his whole body is shaking. He’s warm and solid and saying your name like a prayer against your hair while sirens start somewhere far away.
The hospital is a blur of fluorescent lights and wet clothes and oxygen.
They put you in a wheelchair despite your weak protests. Someone wraps a blanket around your shoulders. A nurse shines a light in your eyes and asks you the same questions three different ways while you sit there shivering hard enough to make your teeth hurt.
What’s your name?
Do you know where you are?
How much water did you swallow?
Did you lose consciousness?
Do you have chest pain?
Can you breathe deeply?
You answer as best as you can: Y/N. Yes. I don’t know. I think so. A little. It hurts.
Chan doesn’t leave until they physically stop him from following you through the emergency doors. You know this because the last thing you see before they wheel you away is him arguing with a paramedic, hair dripping onto his face, resort staff shirt half-unzipped and plastered to his skin, chest heaving like he’s the one who nearly drowned.
Your boyfriend’s parents arrive not long after.
His mum is crying in that quiet, devastated way that somehow makes it all feel so much worse. She keeps taking your hand and stroking your knuckles and saying I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry, as if she can apologise for what her son did. His dad looks like he might be sick. His sister is pale and silent in the corner, hugging herself so tightly her shoulders are up around her ears.
No one says his name at first, but no one has to. He’s the elephant in the room that no one is ready to address yet.
The police come before midday, and suddenly it’s time to address what happened, because, apparently, when a drunk man shoves his girlfriend into the deep end of a pool in full view of half a resort, there’s a procedure to follow, but not much ambiguity to investigate.
You tell them what happened in a voice that doesn’t sound like yours. You tell them about the argument, about the smell of alcohol and him telling you to float.
About the push.
You don’t cry until they leave, but then you cry so hard the monitor on your finger starts beeping.
By late afternoon, your chest aches with every breath and your throat feels sandpapered raw from chlorine, vomit and oxygen. The doctor says you’re lucky, and you’d roll your eyes if you had the energy. You inhaled water and likely had a brief hypoxic episode, but they got to you quickly enough to avoid anything catastrophic. They want to keep you overnight to monitor for secondary drowning symptoms and because your oxygen levels dipped when you first came in.
Lucky.
The word makes you want to laugh and throw something at the wall.
It’s nearly evening when your boyfriend appears.
You know he’s coming before you see him because the atmosphere in the room changes. His mum stiffens in the chair by the window, and his dad mutters something under his breath as he stands. Even the air seems to tense.
He looks awful when he finally reaches your doorway - all hollowed-out and ugly with it. His eyes are red-rimmed, his face ashen beneath patchy stubble, the same clothes from this morning now crumpled and stained. There’s a split in his lower lip you don’t remember seeing before. Maybe someone hit him. Maybe he fell. Maybe his dad did it.
You don’t have any sympathy for him, and you simply don’t care enough to ask.
The second he sees you in the hospital bed—oxygen prongs under your nose, heart monitor leads stuck to your chest, bruising already blooming dark where you hit the pool edge on the way in—his face crumples.
“Oh, my god.”
His mum stands so abruptly her chair screeches against the floor. “No.”
“Mum—”
“No.” Her voice shakes. “You do not get to come in here and make this harder for her.”
“I need to talk to her.”
His dad steps forward, too. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Your boyfriend looks at neither of them. He only looks at you, gaze begging you. You know that you should tell them to throw him out, that you should never have to see him again if you don’t want to, but you’re tired in a way that reaches all the way into your bones, and some part of you knows if you don’t do this now he’ll keep trying until he gets his chance.
So, voice rough and quiet, you mumble, “It’s okay.”
His mum turns to you immediately. “Sweetheart—”
“I just want…” You swallow against the pain in your throat. “I just want to get it over with.”
The room goes still for a minute, and you see his parents exchange a look before they finally move. With the kind of reluctance that feels almost physical, his parents step out into the corridor, ushering his sister out with them.
Your boyfriend doesn’t move until the door shuts behind them, but then he’s approaching your bed like a man walking toward his own execution.
“I’m sorry,” he says immediately.
No hello, no how are you. Just sorry, raw and broken and desperate enough to make something old and exhausted in you flinch.
“I know that doesn’t mean anything,” he rushes on when you don’t answer. “I know it doesn’t fix anything, I know it doesn’t even begin to—” His voice cracks. He drags a hand over his face. “I just need you to know I would never—I never meant—”
“You pushed me into a pool,” you say.
The room goes silent, and he just stares at you. You’ve never interrupted him like that before, never cut straight through the excuses to the ugliest part and left it there between you. His mouth opens, closes, and tears gather in his eyes so fast it almost startles you.
“I know.”
“No,” you say, because suddenly the weakness in your body doesn’t matter. Suddenly the ache in your lungs doesn’t matter. “No, I don’t think you do know, actually.”
Your voice is still quiet, but there’s steel in it now. Something clean and terrible and long overdue.
“I told you why I’m afraid of water. You know what happened to my mum. You know I can’t swim. And you still looked at me, smelling like a fucking bar, and shoved me into the deep end because you were angry.”
Your face twists in tired disgust when his tears fall.
“I know,” he says again, shaking his head over and over. “I know, I know, I know, I was drunk and I was angry and I saw you with him and I just—I wasn’t thinking, I swear to god I wasn’t thinking—”
“Exactly.” The word comes out sharper than anything else you’ve said, and his whole face crumples. “You weren’t thinking about me,” you say. “You weren’t thinking about whether I’d be scared, or hurt, or humiliated, or dead. You were thinking about punishing me.”
He makes a broken sound in the back of his throat. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You nearly killed me.”
He has no words for that, no excuses. The monitor beside you keeps ticking out your pulse in calm electronic beeps while he stands there with tears running down his face and finally, finally seems to understand the shape of what he’s done.
You almost wish it made you feel better, but it doesn’t. It just makes you tired.
“I love you,” he whispers.
It should hurt more than it does, because the truth has become impossible to ignore now, stripped down to its bones by bright hospital lights and the taste of chlorine still lingering at the back of your throat.
Love is not what he did to you this morning. Love is not mockery at the edge of a pool; love is not using your dead mother as collateral damage in an argument.
Love is not putting your hands on someone in anger and calling it a mistake because you regretted the consequences after.
“I know you think you do,” you say quietly. “But I don’t want your version of it anymore.”
His breath catches. Your own eyes sting, but not for the reason he probably thinks. You don’t feel heartbroken; you think you’re too far gone for that now. It’s grief, you suppose. For the version of him you kept trying to salvage, and for the relationship you kept translating into something kinder than it was. For the fact that part of you still wishes this had all turned out differently.
“You can’t mean that,” he whispers.
“I do.”
“Please—”
“No.”
The word lands with a steadiness you don’t feel.
You look at him properly then, at the man you loved enough to come on holiday with his family, the man you made excuses for, forgave, and kept trying to understand, even when understanding came at your expense.
And you let yourself stop.
“I’m done,” you say. “We’re done. I’m not pressing charges, but I never want to see you again. Ever.”
He stares at you as if you’ve slapped him, before he drops heavily into the chair beside your bed and buries his face in his hands. For a horrible second you think he’s going to refuse. That you’ll have to call his parents back in, or a nurse, or the police. But when he finally looks up, there’s something defeated in his expression that wasn’t there before.
“Do you hate me?” he asks.
The question is so childishly devastating that your throat tightens despite yourself.
“No,” you say after a long moment. “I don’t.”
You’re surprised that you don’t hate him. After using your mother’s death as a guilt trip, after trying to drown you, you still didn’t hate him. You just feel hollow.
“I think,” you say slowly, “I’m going to spend a very long time trying to understand how someone who was supposed to love me could look at me terrified and still decide to be cruel.” Fresh tears spill down his face, but you don’t look away. “And I think you need to live with that.”
He breaks then, folding in on himself with a kind of silent misery that fills the room. He says sorry again. And again. And again, like if he says it enough times he can undo the image of you going under.
He can’t.
Eventually you call his mum back in, and she takes one look at your face and understands immediately. Your boyfriend is ushered out before he can say anything else.
You don’t see him again.
The first few hours after he leaves are almost peaceful, and you feel lighter than you have since before this holiday even began.
The decision sits in your chest like a bruise—tender, ugly, unavoidable—but also like relief. A clean cut where there used to be a slow rot. You cry a little after his family goes back to the resort for the night, but it’s mostly exhaustion by then, the kind that comes from surviving something your body still hasn’t fully processed.
Despite everything, you keep expecting Chan. He saved you, he rode in the ambulance, he was there. Of course he’ll come. Maybe he’s finishing his shift, or he was giving a statement. Maybe the resort manager dragged him into some debrief about protocols and incident reports and liability. So, when the door opens, and it’s only a nurse checking your oxygen, you don’t think much of it.
When another hour passes and still nothing, you tell yourself he’s probably showering, changing, dealing with paperwork. When evening turns properly dark outside the window, and his chair by your bed remains empty, something uneasy starts to stir under your ribs.
Your ex’s mum notices first.
“Are you waiting for someone, love?” she asks gently, adjusting the blanket over your legs.
You shake your head too quickly. “No.”
What a terrible lie, you think to yourself.
By midnight, you’ve checked your phone so often the battery dips below twenty percent, but there are no messages from him.
None.
No, how are you? No, I’m sorry I couldn’t come. Not even a stupid emoji, a single full stop, or anything at all to prove he’s thinking about you, too.
The rational part of your brain tries to help, fabricating any and all excuses in the book, varying from him not being allowed to contact guests (lies; he told you that you could through reception) to the resort having some policy after an incident. But the longer the silence stretches, the harder it is not to take it personally.
By morning, hurt has curdled into something rawer, and you replay every second of the last few days with horrible clarity. The way he held you in the pool, the way he said I’m not going anywhere. The way his hand hovered at your jaw at the gate, and the look on his face when he asked if you wanted to come back tomorrow.
Maybe you had imagined all of it.
Maybe the almost-kiss was only in your head. Maybe the tenderness was just because he’s kind and you were convenient to rescue. Maybe once the actual danger happened—once this stopped being quiet after-hours lessons and became police reports, hospitals, ex-boyfriends, and all the messy reality of your life—he decided he wanted no part of it.
That thought hurts more than you expect, more than it should.
You don’t cry when the nurse comes to remove your IV. You don’t cry when the doctor says you can probably be discharged by the afternoon if your oxygen stays stable. You do, however, cry when the hospital room door opens around noon and for one hopeful, humiliating heartbeat you think it might finally be him… and it’s only lunch.
After that, it gets worse.
Everything makes you emotional. The bland soup, the smell of disinfectant, the ache in your chest every time you cough. His mum brushing your hair back from your face as she asks if you need anything brings you to the verge of tears. By the time his family leaves to go sort your things at the resort, you’re wound so tightly with disappointment that it spills over into anger.
Fine, you think viciously, blinking at the ceiling because crying hurts your head. Fine. If he doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t have to. You don’t need him. You never asked him for anything. You can survive drowning and a breakup and a hospital stay without some lifeguard who apparently only knows how to show up when there’s an emergency.
The thought barely lasts ten minutes before dissolving into fresh hurt, because the awful truth is that you do want him. Not in the broad, dangerous way you wanted him at the gate with his hand on yours and his mouth inches from your own—though maybe that, too—but in the smaller, more pathetic way that matters even more right now.
You want him to walk through the door and say, "I’m here";you want his hand around yours while your lungs still ache. You want the stupid certainty of him, the way he always knows when you’re about to panic, the way he looks at your fear like it’s survivable.
You want him to come, but he doesn’t.
By the time evening rolls around and the shadows in your room start to lengthen, you’re not just upset.
You’re devastated by it.
You don’t go back to the resort because you miss it.
You go back because you left half your life there.
The hospital discharges you late that afternoon with strict instructions to rest, come back if your breathing worsens, and absolutely avoid swimming for the next few days, which would almost be funny if your ribs didn’t hurt every time you laughed. Chan’s absence sits heavier than the paper bag of medication in your lap on the drive back. His mother insists on accompanying you to collect your things, his father carries your suitcase, and his sister hovers like you might collapse if she looks away for too long.
Your ex isn’t there; apparently he’s been told to stay elsewhere while you gather your things.
Honestly, you don’t think you could bear the sight of him right now.
You pack slowly, every movement stiff and sore. Your chest aches in a deep, bruised way that makes breathing feel deliberate. Your throat still burns from chlorine and tears and the oxygen cannula, and there are dark fingerprints of exhaustion under your eyes when you catch your reflection in the mirror. You look like someone who nearly drowned.
You feel like someone who was left suffering.
By the time you zip up the last bag, his mum is standing awkwardly in the doorway with tears in her eyes.
“Sweetheart,” she says softly, “you don’t have to rush off tonight. You could stay one more evening and leave in the morning if you wanted. We’d make sure—”
“No,” you say, more sharply than you mean to. She flinches, and guilt pricks instantly so you try again, more gently this time. “I’m sorry. I just… I can’t stay here.”
Not in the room where you waited for your boyfriend to come back. Not in the resort where he pushed you into the pool. Not in the building where Chan somehow didn’t come.
She nods at once. “Of course.”
His dad drives you to the little rental apartment that you’d booked for the final two nights of the holiday before plans changed and everyone decided the resort would be easier. It’s only twenty minutes down the coast, a whitewashed place above a bakery with blue shutters and a balcony overlooking the sea.
You’d forgotten about it until this morning, and instead of feeling like a sanctuary, it feels like exile.
His dad carries your bag upstairs and sets it gently inside the door. He lingers there for a moment, hands on hips, looking older than he did a week ago.
“I know I’ve said sorry already,” he says quietly, “and I know it doesn’t count for much coming from me, but… I am. More than I know how to say.”
Your throat tightens. He isn’t the one who did it, and neither is his wife, or their daughter. They’ve done nothing but cry and apologise and bring you tea and argue with doctors on your behalf. Still, all you can manage is a tired nod, and he gives you a sad little smile, squeezes your shoulder carefully, and leaves you alone.
On your own, the apartment is quiet, but not peaceful. Just empty in a way that makes everything echo. You set your bag down by the bed and stand there for a long moment, staring at the unfamiliar room with the evening sun striping gold across the floorboards. You should shower, take your antibiotics, and call your friend back home. Maybe sleep for a year. Instead, your eyes catch on the sea beyond the balcony doors.
All at once you know exactly where he is. He wouldn’t be at the pool, at the hospital, at the staff quarters, or at some miserable bar trying to forget what happened.
The cove.
The tiny, quiet cove he pointed out on that first night, when you’d gone walking because you couldn’t bear the noise of the resort and he’d found you staring at the dark water as if it had personally offended you.
Go there if you need somewhere quiet, he’d said then, half-smiling. No one really knows about it except staff and a few locals. It’s good for thinking.
You almost laugh - ‘good for thinking’. As if thinking hasn’t already ruined your life. Still, once the idea has lodged in your head, you can’t dislodge it. He might not be there, maybe you’re insane for even thinking it, and maybe you should have more self-respect than to drag your half-drowned body across the island looking for a man who couldn’t even send a text. But your anger has become too restless to sit still with. It keeps clawing at the inside of your ribs, fed by every unanswered question, every hour you stared at the hospital door, every humiliating second you checked your phone hoping for him.
So, you change into a loose cotton dress that won’t rub too hard against your bruised chest, take your inhaler and your keys and your rapidly thinning patience, and leave.
The walk to the cove is shorter than you thought it would be, and much harder than it should be.
Your body has opinions about being dragged along uneven coastal steps after nearly drowning yesterday. By the time you make it down the narrow path between the rocks, your lungs are burning, and your ribs feel like someone’s driven a crowbar between them. The sea breeze tastes of salt and sun-warmed stone. Waves fold gently against the sand below.
The cove is almost empty, just as Chan promised.
A little crescent of pale sand tucked between dark cliffs, the water calm and glassy in the evening light. A couple sit at the far end near the rocks with their feet in the shallows, talking quietly over a bottle of wine. Otherwise—
There.
You stop dead halfway down the last set of steps.
Chan is sitting on the sand with his back against the cliff wall, one knee bent, one leg stretched out toward the water. He’s in a grey T-shirt and black shorts instead of lifeguard gear, dark hair damp at the ends like he’s showered and then forgotten to dry it properly. One forearm rests across his raised knee, his head tipped back against the rock, eyes closed.
He looks exhausted, the way people do after they’ve been hit by something heavy and are still standing only because they haven’t realised they’re allowed to fall, and your chest tightens at the sight. He’s here; you were right, and some pathetic part of you still feels a pulse of relief at the sight of him before the hurt catches up.
You take one step down onto the sand, and the scrape of your sandal over stone makes his eyes open. For a second he doesn’t move. He just stares at you as if his brain can’t quite make the image fit, like he’s hallucinating you out of guilt and sea air and no sleep. Once his brain catches up, he’s on his feet so quickly it’s almost violent.
“What—” His voice catches. He clears it. “What are you doing here?”
You nearly laugh at the question.
“Oh, are you shocked to see me?” you ask.
Chan’s face changes immediately. He takes one step toward you, then seems to notice how pale you are, how tightly you’re holding yourself, the way your breathing is just a little too shallow from the walk down. He stops dead.
“You shouldn’t be walking around alone,” he says, and there’s alarm in it now, genuine and sharp. “You should be resting. What are you doing out here?”
The concern in his voice is the worst possible thing he could have offered you, because it sounds real. It sounds exactly like the Chan who held your face in his hands and told you to breathe, and it makes the silence of the last twenty-four hours feel even crueller.
Something in you snaps.
“What am I doing here?” you repeat, staring at him. “Are you serious?”
Chan opens his mouth, but you’re already moving. Not toward him—just forward, into the conversation, into the anger that’s been simmering since the hospital room and now spills out faster than you can stop it.
“I spent the entire night in a hospital bed because my boyfriend shoved me into a pool and I nearly drowned,” you say, your voice shaking. “I broke up with him, I gave statements to the police, I had his mother crying at the side of my bed, and the whole time I kept waiting for you to show up.” Chan goes still. “I waited all day,” you continue, louder now, because if you stop you might lose the nerve to say any of it. “I kept checking the door every time it opened like some complete idiot because I thought— I don’t know what I thought, actually. That maybe the man who told me ‘I’m not going anywhere’ might at least visit after he gave me CPR? That maybe the person who spent days teaching me not to panic in water would care enough to see if I was okay when I almost died in it?”
His face has gone white, but you don’t care. You have to finish what you were saying for your own mental wellbeing.
“No text. No call. Nothing.” Your breath catches on the last word, anger and hurt tangling so tightly you can barely tell them apart. “Do you have any idea how humiliating that was? Sitting there like a fucking idiot waiting for someone who clearly had no intention of coming?”
“Hey—”
“No, don’t hey me.” Your voice cracks. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to look at me like that now, not after you vanished.”
Chan drags a hand through his hair, visibly at a loss. “I didn’t vanish.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I was there.”
You stare at him. The words hit hard enough that for a second you can’t even process them. “What?”
Chan’s jaw tightens. “I was there.”
Something in your face must change, because his expression softens immediately—guilt, frustration, and something that looks dangerously close to panic all flashing through at once.
“At the hospital,” he says more quietly. “I came with the ambulance. I stayed until they took you through to triage. I tried to follow, and they stopped me because I’m not family.” He swallows. “I came back again after I’d given my statement. Security told me visiting hours were over, and I wasn’t on your approved list.”
You blink at him, the fury in you stumbling at his words. “Then why didn’t you text me?”
Chan closes his eyes for half a second as if he’s been waiting for that one, and when he opens them again, there’s a bleak look in his face as he says, “I was told not to contact you.”
You laugh once in disbelief. “By who?”
“My manager. The resort’s legal team. Two police officers. Pick one.” He folds his arms across his chest, not defensive so much as trying to hold himself together. “The second your ex told them we’d been seeing each other after hours, everything got messy. Management wanted full statements. They wanted to know why I was giving private lessons to a guest after the pool was closed. They wanted to know if there was anything between us, if I’d crossed professional boundaries, if I’d done anything that could be construed as encouraging a complaint or provoking him.” His mouth twists bitterly. “Apparently ‘helping a traumatised girl not be afraid of water anymore’ sounds a lot less noble when someone’s just shoved her into the deep end over jealousy.” Your stomach drops, and Chan looks away toward the water, jaw tight. “I told them nothing happened. Which was true.” He lets out a humourless laugh. “Mostly.” Heat flickers weakly through your anger at the implication, but it’s gone again just as quickly, swallowed by the rest of it. “They said if I contacted you before they’d finished taking statements, it could look like interference. Like I was trying to influence what you said.” He glances back at you. “And because you were a guest and I’m staff, they made it very clear that if I ignored them, it wouldn’t just be me dealing with it. It could make the whole thing more complicated for you, too.”
You stare at him. Part of you wants to believe him immediately. The facts line up too neatly with everything you already know—the police, the statements, the resort trying to protect itself. But another part is still too hurt to let go that easily.
“So, you just listened,” you say.
Chan flinches, a tiny recoil, like the words found exactly where to land, as he admits, “For a while.”
The honesty of it hits harder than an excuse would have. You fold your arms around yourself, partly because you’re cold now, partly because if you don’t, you might start shaking. “Why?”
He laughs again, and this time there’s nothing funny in it at all. “Because I thought maybe they were right.” You frown. Chan scrubs a hand over his face, suddenly looking every one of the sleepless hours he’s clearly lived through. “Because I was standing there outside your hospital room covered in pool water, and all I could think was that your ex saw us together the night before and then you nearly died the next morning.” His voice roughens. “And I know that’s on him. I know that. But I couldn’t stop thinking if I’d kept more distance, if I hadn’t let it get personal, if I hadn’t kissed the line of your jaw with my eyes every five fucking minutes, maybe he wouldn’t have lost it like that.”
Your heart gives a hard, painful thud. “Chan—”
“No, let me finish.” It’s the first time he’s ever cut you off, and he sounds desperate, like if he doesn’t get the words out now he never will. “I know it’s not rational,” he says. “I know the blame is his. But that doesn’t change the fact that I was supposed to keep you safe in that pool and I didn’t.” His voice cracks on the last word. “I got to you in time, and you still stopped breathing in my arms.”
The cove goes very quiet. Even the couple at the far end have gone now, leaving only the soft hush of the tide and the wind moving through scrub on the cliffside. Chan looks at you with red-rimmed eyes and no defences left.
“I haven’t slept,” he says, and there’s no self-pity in it, only exhausted truth. “Every time I close my eyes I see you going under. I hear you coughing up water and I can’t—” He breaks off, jaw flexing. “So, when management told me to stay away, part of me listened because I thought maybe you’d be better off if I did. And part of me listened because I was scared to see you and realise you couldn’t look at me without thinking about what happened.”
The anger in your chest shifts shape, tangling with something heavier. It doesn’t vanish. There’s still hurt there, still the sting of all those empty hours in the hospital, still the humiliation of waiting. But now understanding wraps around it, and you resent it on principle.
“You should have fought harder,” you say, and your voice comes out smaller than before. “You should have found a way.”
“I know.”
The immediate agreement makes your eyes sting. Chan steps toward you then, cautiously, as if he’s approaching a frightened animal.
“I know,” he says again, softer this time. “And I’m sorry. Not in a bullshit, excuse-making way. I’m just… sorry. I made the wrong call.”
You look down at the sand because if you keep looking at his face you’re going to cry, and you are absolutely not crying in front of him after coming all this way to yell. Unfortunately, your body doesn’t seem interested in your preferences, and your throat tightens as your eyes burn. You blink hard and fail miserably.
“I thought you didn’t care,” you whisper.
The confession lands between you like glass, and you hear Chan inhale sharply. When you risk looking up, his whole expression has changed. Gone is the careful, guilty explanation. In its place is something rawer. Something almost wounded.
“Don’t,” he says quietly.
You frown through the blur of tears. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t say that like it’s even possible.”
His voice is low, wrecked around the edges, and before you can react, he’s taking another step closer, followed by another. He stops only when he’s right in front of you, close enough that you can see the faint purple shadows under his eyes, the tiny nick at his jaw from a careless shave, the way his hands flex uselessly at his sides like he wants to touch you and doesn’t trust himself to.
“I care so much it’s making me stupid,” he whispers, looking straight at you. “That’s the problem.” Your breath catches, and Chan laughs once under his breath, miserable and disbelieving all at once. “You think I didn’t want to be there? I spent half the night sitting in my car outside the hospital because I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving and I couldn’t figure out how to get back in without making things worse for you.”
Tears spill hot down your cheeks, and you hate that they do. Hate that your body has apparently decided now is the moment to collapse.
“I was so angry,” you admit, wiping at them with the heel of your hand and only smearing them further. “I was lying there feeling like an idiot because I kept expecting you to walk through the door, and every time it wasn’t you I just felt more stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I know that,” you snap, because crying has not improved your temper. “That’s not the point.”
Chan’s mouth twitches despite the circumstances, and it only makes you cry harder.
“Oh, brilliant,” you say thickly, scrubbing at your face again. “Now you’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You look like you’re laughing at me.”
“I look like I’m trying not to kiss you while you’re furious with me and crying on a beach.”
The words knock the air clean out of your lungs. Silence drops, and Chan seems to realise what he’s just said about half a second too late.
His eyes close briefly. “Right. Great. Fantastic timing from me, as usual.”
You stare at him through wet lashes. “You what?”
He opens his eyes and looks at you with the expression of a man who has just watched the last available exit collapse behind him. “I said,” he replies carefully, “that I’m trying very hard not to kiss you.”
Your heart stutters. The sea keeps breathing at your feet, but you can feel your pulse in your throat now, in your bruised ribs, in the aching space between one breath and the next.
“You shouldn’t say things like that when I’m mad at you,” you manage.
Chan’s gaze drops to your mouth. “I’m aware.”
“Especially not when I’m still deciding whether to throw sand in your face.”
“That seems fair.”
“You deserve it.”
“Probably.”
You hate him a little for being so easy to stay angry at and so impossible to keep hating. Another tear slides down your cheek. Chan watches it with a helpless sort of frustration, then slowly lifts one hand.
“Can I?” he asks.
It takes you a second to realise he means "touch you." To wipe your face, tuck your hair back, hold your hand. Something small and gentle and probably ruinous.
Your answer comes before your pride can stop it. “Okay.”
Chan steps closer still. His fingertips brush your cheek so lightly you barely feel it at first, just the warm drag of his thumb catching the tear there and wiping it away. He does the same on the other side, careful around the bruised ache of your face, his touch reverent in a way that makes your chest hurt worse than the water ever did.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter now. “For not finding a way around it. For letting you think I’d just disappeared. For all of it.”
You look at him, close enough now to see his pupils blown wide in the fading light.
“I still think you’re a bit of an idiot,” you mumble.
Chan huffs a laugh. “That’s fine. I think that, too.”
“And I’m not done being annoyed.”
“Also fair.”
“And I nearly died, so I’m allowed to be dramatic for at least a month.”
His expression flickers at the words nearly died, pain flashing through it so openly you immediately wish you’d chosen another phrase.
“Six months,” he says quietly. “Minimum.”
You stare at him, and then, despite the ache in your ribs, the tears still drying on your face, and the emotional carnage of the last day and a half, a laugh escapes you. It’s small and wet and shaky, but Chan smiles like it’s the first decent thing he’s seen in days.
“There she is,” he murmurs.
And just like that, your eyes sting all over again.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” you mutter, pressing the heel of your hand to them. “I hate that I’m crying this much.”
“I don’t.”
You look up. He’s still close - too close, really - one hand hovering by your face like he’s resisting the urge to smooth your hair back again, the other clenched tight at his side.
“Why not?” you ask, half defensive, half genuinely curious.
Chan’s gaze softens. “Because you don’t have to pretend with me.”
The words undo you more effectively than anything else has. You make a strangled little sound, and then you’re crying properly, shoulders shaking in a way that instantly punishes your ribs.
“Hey, hey—careful.” Chan moves without thinking, both hands coming up to steady you by the arms. “Easy. Don’t make yourself sore.”
Too late for that, you think. You laugh and cry at the same time, which is as humiliating as it sounds.
“I hate you,” you mumble, stepping into him before you can think better of it.
Chan catches you instantly, without surprise or hesitation. More like he’s been holding himself back from it for hours. His arms wrap around you carefully, one across your upper back, the other around your waist, and he gathers you in against his chest with excruciating gentleness, mindful of every bruise and every aching breath. You bury your face in his shirt, and he tucks his chin over your hair, holding you like he’s trying to make up for every minute he wasn’t there.
“I know,” he murmurs into your hair. “I know, sweetheart.”
The pet name should probably annoy you. Instead, it makes you cry harder, but Chan holds you through it. There’s no shushing, no telling you to calm down, and no awkward jokes to make you stop. He rubs slow circles between your shoulder blades and lets you soak the front of his T-shirt with tears, seawater, and whatever lingering hospital smell still clings to your skin.
“I really thought you weren’t coming,” you whisper eventually, the words muffled against his chest.
His arms tighten around you. “I know.”
“And I kept trying to tell myself it didn’t matter because obviously I had bigger problems than some lifeguard ghosting me—”
Chan makes a wounded noise. “That is an appalling summary of events.”
A laugh cracks out of you before you can stop it.
“There she is,” he says again, softer this time, and you can hear the smile in his voice.
You pull back just enough to glare up at him, though it’s difficult to look threatening when your face is blotchy and damp and pressed red from crying into his chest.
“Stop saying that.”
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
You sniff. “You’re insufferable.”
“Still hugged me, though.”
You open your mouth to argue and then close it again because, annoyingly, he has a point. Chan’s smile grows gentler when he sees you give up, and he brushes a thumb carefully beneath one of your eyes again, catching the last of the tears there before his expression softens and warms.
“You shouldn’t have come out here alone,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“You should be in bed.”
“I know.”
“You definitely shouldn’t have climbed down those steps with bruised ribs and lungs full of pool water.”
“I know, Chan.”
“Okay.” His mouth twitches. “Just checking we’re on the same page.”
You roll your eyes, but there’s no heat in it now. The anger has been worn down by tears and explanations and the simple fact of being held. What’s left is mostly exhaustion, and the strange, fragile relief of finding him exactly where you thought he’d be. Chan seems to read that on your face, too.
“Come sit down,” he says gently. “Before you fall over and I have to rescue you from dry land as well.”
“I’d never recover from the embarrassment.”
“No, but I would absolutely hold it over your head forever.”
He keeps one arm around your shoulders as he guides you the few steps back to where he’d been sitting against the cliff. When you lower yourself onto the sand beside him, your body protests immediately, ribs aching, legs weak from the walk. Chan notices and shrugs off the thin zip-up hoodie beside him, folding it behind your back against the rock before you can protest, then sits close enough that your shoulders touch.
For a little while neither of you says anything. The sun is dropping lower now, turning the water molten gold. Waves hush over the sand in a rhythm that feels almost like breathing. Chan’s knee presses lightly against yours. His hand rests palm-up on the sand between you, not touching, but there… Waiting. You stare at it for a moment before you quietly slide your hand into his. Chan’s fingers close around yours immediately, a steady, careful grip, warm and sure.
You look out at the sea and say, “I broke up with him.”
Beside you, Chan goes very still.
“Yeah?” he asks after a moment, voice deliberately neutral.
You nod. “At the hospital.”
He squeezes your hand once. “How are you feeling about it?”
You let out a long breath.
“Sad,” you admit. “And not sad. Guilty. Relieved. Mostly tired.” You glance down at your lap. “I think I stopped being properly heartbroken somewhere between him making fun of me for being scared and him trying to drown me.”
Chan’s jaw tightens at the last part, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I just feel stupid,” you finish.
His head turns sharply. “For what?”
“For not leaving sooner. For not seeing it properly. For…” You shrug one shoulder. “For still needing a minute to grieve someone who did something unforgivable.”
Chan is quiet for a beat before he says, “You’re allowed to grieve the version of him you thought you had.”
Its simplicity catches you off guard, and you turn quickly to look at him. He’s watching the sea when he says it, not you, like he’s trying to give you the dignity of not being observed while something painful settles.
“You don’t have to justify being sad,” he adds. “It doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision.”
Your throat tightens with emotion, and you squeeze his hand a little harder.
“Thank you,” you whisper.
Chan glances at you then, and the look on his face is so open it almost scares you. “You never have to thank me for that.”
The air between you changes. It’s subtle at first - just the awareness of his thumb moving once across your knuckles. The fact that you’re already leaning slightly toward each other without meaning to. The way the conversation has gone soft around the edges, all the sharp hurt worn away until what’s left is this quieter, more dangerous tenderness. You know you should probably move; you know you are one emotional breakdown and one near-drowning and one fresh breakup away from making a truly catastrophic decision, but when Chan lifts your joined hands and presses his mouth gently to your knuckles, you don’t stop him. Your breath catches. It isn’t a kiss as such, just the briefest brush of warm lips to the back of your hand. Still, your pulse goes wild. Chan keeps his gaze on you as he lowers your hand again, and there’s no missing what’s in his face now. No plausible deniability left. No hiding behind swimming lessons, concern, or the convenient intimacy of a rescue.
You can see the want, see the restraint, and see the emotion threaded painfully through both.
“You need rest,” he says quietly, as if he’s forcing himself back to sense. “And probably actual food. And a doctor would murder me if I let you sit out here until it gets cold.”
You blink, still a little dazed. “Did you just use medical negligence as a flirting strategy?”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
A laugh slips out of you, and Chan smiles, standing and offering you his hand.
“Come on,” he says. “I’m walking you back.”
You look at his hand, then up at him. “And if I say no?”
“I’ll guilt you by pointing out that you almost drowned yesterday and can currently be taken out by a flight of stairs.”
You sigh theatrically and place your hand in his. “You’re impossible.”
“Yet here you are.”
He pulls you gently to your feet, steadies you when the movement makes you wobble, and keeps his hand at your waist just a fraction longer than strictly necessary. Neither of you mentions it. He doesn’t let go of your hand on the walk back up the path, and for the first time since waking in that hospital room, the hurt in your chest eases enough for something else to fit beside it.
Not peace. Not yet.
But maybe the beginning of it.
Chan does walk you back… And somehow ends up staying.
It isn’t dramatic. There’s no grand declaration, no awkward pause in the doorway where either of you pretends this is just a quick check-in before he leaves. He gets you up the stairs to the apartment with one hand at your back and the other wrapped around yours, makes you sit on the edge of the bed while he finds your painkillers and the glass of water you should have had an hour ago, and then gives you a look so unimpressed by the state of your tiny kitchenette that you laugh for the first time all day.
“I was in hospital,” you remind him when he opens the fridge and finds nothing but half a lemon, two yoghurts, and a bottle of water.
Chan glances over his shoulder. “And apparently preparing for the apocalypse.”
“I wasn’t planning to move in.”
“Tragic. Here I was hoping for a full spice rack and at least one pasta sauce.”
You smile weakly as he shuts the fridge and reaches for the takeaway menu abandoned on the counter. “You don’t have to stay.”
The words slip out before you’ve fully decided whether you want them to. Chan looks up, and there’s a beat of silence before he sets the menu down, crosses the room, and crouches in front of you on the bed, elbows resting lightly on his knees.
“I know I don’t,” he says gently. “I want to.”
Your throat tightens. It shouldn’t still catch you off guard, how simple he makes things sound when your head is busy tangling itself into knots.
“I just…” You look down at your hands in your lap. “I don’t want you to feel obligated because I cried on a beach and nearly died.”
Chan’s mouth twitches. “Very persuasive argument for leaving, that.”
You huff out a laugh despite yourself. He reaches out and hooks a finger under your chin, lifting your face until you’re looking at him properly.
“I’m staying because I want to be here,” he says quietly. “Not because I feel sorry for you. Not because I think I owe you. Because after the last twenty-four hours, the idea of leaving you alone in this flat feels objectively ridiculous.”
Something warm and unsteady unfurls low in your chest. You swallow, murmuring, “Okay.”
Chan smiles, small and relieved, as if he were waiting for permission he didn’t want to ask for. “Okay,” he echoes.
He orders food—something bland enough not to upset your stomach and salty enough to make you drink water—and then all but bullies you into showering while he changes the sheets on the bed because, apparently, he can’t bear the thought of you trying to sleep in hospital-smelling clothes and sand-covered linen.
“You’re weirdly bossy for someone who technically works in flip-flops,” you call through the bathroom door while steam fogs the mirror.
“I’m choosing to hear that as flirtation,” he calls back.
Your laugh catches in your sore ribs, turning into a cough and a wince. “Don’t make me laugh, you ass.”
“Noted.”
By the time you emerge in one of the oversized T-shirts you sleep in, hair damp and skin pink from the shower heat, takeaway has arrived, and Chan has somehow made the apartment look inhabited rather than abandoned. The curtains are half drawn against the dark, lamps switched on. Your phone is plugged in on the bedside table, and the little paper bag of hospital medication lined up neatly beside a glass of water like you’re under the care of a very attractive, mildly overbearing nurse.
You stop in the bedroom doorway and stare.
Chan looks up from where he’s setting cartons out on the tiny table by the balcony doors. “What?”
You shake your head. “Nothing.”
His eyes narrow immediately. “That’s a lie.”
You lean your shoulder against the doorframe. “You’re just very… domesticated for someone who met me because I was having a breakdown next to a resort pool.”
He snorts. “Please. I’m deeply mysterious.”
“You folded my pyjama shorts.”
“Deeply. Mysterious.”
You smile to yourself, hand coming up to hide it before he could see the full extent of it.
He watches you for a second, something soft passing over his face at the sight of it, before he jerks his chin toward the table. “Come eat before your antibiotics start trying to kill you.”
It’s not elegant when you eat together. You sit cross-legged on the sofa with a carton balanced in your lap while Chan steals your spring rolls and pretends he doesn’t know why you’re glaring at him. You take your medication under his supervision, which is humiliating enough that he has the decency to look smug about it, and by the time the food is cleared away and the apartment has gone properly quiet, the exhaustion you’ve been outrunning all day catches up with you in one brutal wave.
Chan notices before you say anything.
“You’re fading,” he says softly from where he’s rinsing chopsticks in the sink.
“I’m fine.”
“You just yawned so hard I saw your soul leave your body.”
“I did not.”
He turns, leaning one hip against the counter, and gives you a look, waiting. You yawn again immediately, and Chan points at you in silent triumph.
“Shut up,” you grumble.
He grins and dries his hands on a tea towel. “Come on, then.”
You frown. “Come on where?”
“To bed.”
The words land with enough force that your brain simply stalls. Chan seems to realise how that sounded about half a second too late.
“To sleep,” he says quickly, ears going pink. “I meant sleep. As in rest. Because you look like you’re about to fall face-first into the rug.”
You blink at him, and he blinks back, but apparently neither of you can survive a normal conversation, because you both burst out laughing at the same time. It hurts your ribs, but it’s worth it.
“Right,” Chan says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I can take the sofa, obviously. Or the floor, if the sofa’s awful. I just meant I’d help you get settled and make sure you’ve got water and—”
“No.”
He stops in his tracks. You’re not entirely sure where the certainty comes from. Maybe the lingering panic of the hospital, or the way the apartment suddenly feels too quiet every time he moves more than a few feet away. Maybe the fact that you haven’t spent a single night alone since nearly drowning and the thought of starting now makes your chest go tight.
“Don’t sleep on the sofa,” you say, trying for casual and missing by a mile. “It’s tiny.”
Chan’s expression softens immediately, and you look away before it can do anything unhelpful to your pulse.
“I just…” You pick at a loose thread on the blanket draped over your knees. “If you’re staying, you could stay properly.”
There’s a beat of silence. When you risk a glance up, Chan is looking at you with an expression so warm it nearly burns.
“Are you asking me to share your bed?” he asks gently.
Heat floods your face. “I’m asking you not to martyr yourself on a two-seater sofa after you’ve spent all day pretending to be Florence Nightingale.”
He smiles, slow and unbearably fond. “That’s not actually an answer.”
You narrow your eyes. “You’re very irritating.”
“And yet.”
“And yes,” you mutter. “I’m asking you to share the bed.”
Chan’s smile changes at that – softens, deepens. Loses its teasing edge entirely.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
Your heart stutters. He doesn’t make a big thing of it after that. Just checks that you’ve taken everything you need, turns off the main lights, and disappears into the bathroom long enough to brush his teeth with the spare toothbrush you offer him, then comes back looking unfairly comfortable in a borrowed T-shirt and his own lounge shorts.
You are suddenly, acutely aware that there is a man in your bedroom… A very attractive man. In your bathroom. A man who has already admitted he’s trying not to kiss you. A man you have now voluntarily invited into your bed.
Oh, shit.
You feel like you’ve been hit by a bus and dragged through a swimming pool, which helps to distract you somewhat. Chan seems to understand that balance instinctively as he doesn’t touch you straight away. He slips under the covers beside you carefully, keeping a respectful distance while you settle onto your side facing away from him, and for a few minutes the room is filled only with the soft whir of the fan overhead and the faint hum of traffic from the street below. You thought maybe the quiet would make things awkward. Instead, it makes them too easy. Too soft.
You can feel his warmth at your back even without contact, a steady presence in the dark that loosens something knotted in your chest.
“Hey,” Chan says after a while, voice low in the dim room. “You okay?”
The answer catches somewhere behind your sore ribs, because the truth is, you’re not entirely sure.
Your body hurts, and your head won’t stop replaying the moment you went under. Every time you close your eyes for too long, you feel water rushing into your nose, your mouth, your lungs. And underneath all of that there’s the newer fear, quieter but no less insistent:
This is temporary.
Two more days of holiday, then home and real life. Distance and silence and the possibility that this—whatever this is—might disappear as quickly as it arrived. Your throat tightens at the thought, and you shuffle back slightly towards him.
“Can you…” You stop, embarrassed by how small your voice sounds. “Can you hold me?”
There’s no hesitation.
“Yeah,” Chan murmurs. “Come here.”
You turn toward him, and he immediately opens his arms, gathering you in with the same careful gentleness he’s used ever since the hospital. One arm slides under your head, the other curves around your waist, drawing you close until your cheek is tucked against his chest and your leg slots carefully between his. He smells clean now. Soap, salt, and something warm that is just him. You breathe it in and let yourself melt a little. Chan’s hand settles between your shoulder blades, rubbing slow, absent circles through the cotton of your T-shirt. Not trying to soothe you into talking. Just there, steady and warm and impossibly comforting.
For a while you say nothing. You just listen to the thud of his heart under your ear and the quiet rise and fall of his breathing and try not to think about how badly you’ve come to need the simple fact of him being here.
It doesn’t work.
“Chan?”
“Mm?”
You trace the hem of his shirt between your fingers, eyes fixed on the soft fold of fabric where it disappears into the mattress.
“I have to go home in two days.”
His hand stills for half a beat, then resumes its slow path up and down your back as he says, “I know.”
His calmness catches you off guard, and you tip your chin up enough to look at him. “That’s all you have to say?”
Chan glances down at you, one dark brow lifting.
“What would you like me to say?” he asks mildly. “That I’m going to chain myself to the departure gate?”
A laugh escapes you before you can stop it, and you gently slap his chest, saying, “Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. Airport security would absolutely love me.”
You smack his chest weakly again, and Chan catches your hand gently against his shirt and folds it back against his ribs, holding it there. His expression softens when he sees yours.
“Hey,” he says quietly. “Talk to me.”
You hesitate. It feels ridiculous to say it out loud. Childish, almost, compared to everything else that’s happened. You nearly drowned. You ended a relationship. You spent the night in hospital. In the grand scheme of things, what if I never see you again after this holiday sounds embarrassingly small.
Yet it sits there anyway, heavy and aching and impossible to ignore.
“I just…” You swallow. “I’m worried that this is it.”
Chan watches you for a second. “This?”
“This.” You gesture vaguely between your bodies, which is difficult considering one of them is currently wrapped around the other. “You. Us. Whatever this is. I’m going home in two days, and you live here and—”
Chan interrupts you with his laughter. It’s not cruel or loud, just a warm, startled little huff against your hair, like something about your panic is unexpectedly endearing.
You pull back enough to glare at him. “Excuse me?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Sorry.”
“You are absolutely not sorry.”
“No,” he admits, still gently amused. “I’m not.”
You stare at him in affronted silence, and Chan’s smile softens when he sees the real worry underneath it.
“Sweetheart,” he says, brushing his thumb over your side where his hand rests at your waist, “this is my summer job.”
You blink quickly. “What?”
“I don’t live here.”
You prop yourself up on one elbow despite your ribs’ immediate objections. “You don’t?”
Chan reaches up to steady you automatically, hand sliding to your lower back as you shift. “No,” he says, looking faintly entertained by your confusion. “I work here for the summer because the pay’s decent and I get free accommodation if I don’t complain too much about tourists doing catastrophic things with inflatable flamingos.”
You stare at him, and he stares back, smile growing as he watches the pieces click together so slowly it’s almost painful.
“You mean…” Your mouth goes dry. “You’re going home too?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“Where?”
Chan’s smile softens, as if he can see exactly where your mind is going now and is trying not to enjoy it too much.
“I’m from Sydney,” he says. You freeze, and he watches you carefully. “That look means something.”
You push yourself up a little more. “Sydney?”
“Yeah.”
“You live in Sydney.”
“Last time I checked.”
Your brain short-circuits because Sydney is not here, and it’s not exactly home either, but it’s close enough to your home city that the train journey is irritating rather than impossible. Close enough that you’ve done day trips there before. Close enough that your best friend once dated someone there and still somehow managed to see them every other weekend.
Close enough that the sudden ache in your chest loosens into something bright and disbelieving.
“That’s two hours from me,” you say.
Chan’s mouth curves. “I know.”
You narrow your eyes. “You know?”
He has the decency to look only slightly smug. “It came up when you were half-lucid in the hospital and ranting about train delays when someone mentioned your address.”
Your jaw drops. “I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I was on oxygen!”
“And deeply passionate about the NSW TrainLink, apparently.”
Mortification crashes into you so hard you forget your ribs and smack his shoulder. Chan laughs properly this time, catching your wrist before you can do it again.
“You’re evil,” you accuse.
“Maybe a bit.”
“I cannot believe I apparently trauma-dumped my transport grievances while concussed.”
“You weren’t concussed.”
“Not helping.”
He’s still grinning when he brings your hand to his chest and settles it there again, before his expression gentles.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, quieter now, “I was going to tell you anyway. About home. About not living here.”
You search his face. “Why?”
Chan looks at you like the answer should be obvious. “Because I’d like to keep doing this.”
Your breath catches. He says it so simply. There’s nothing big or dramatic about it. It’s just the truth, placed carefully between you.
“Doing what?” you ask, though your voice has gone so soft that it’s almost not a real question.
Chan’s gaze drops briefly to your mouth, then lifts again before he speaks. “Getting to know you. Seeing you. Taking you on actual dates that don’t involve near-drownings or me yelling at children not to run by the pool.” His hand slides a little higher up your back, warm and steady. “If you want that too, I’m very willing to make two hours work.”
You stare at him. There’s something surreal about how quickly your fear rearranges itself into hope. It’s still fragile—still tangled up with fresh bruises and the wreckage of the last few days—but it’s there, undeniable and bright.
“You’d really do that?” you ask.
Chan’s brows lift. “Travel two hours to see a girl I’m already sharing a bed with? Seems manageable.”
Heat floods your face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” His thumb strokes along your side once. “Yes. I would.”
Your eyes sting a little, which feels frankly unfair given how much you’ve already cried. “You say things very casually for someone saying kind of life-altering stuff.”
Chan smiles. “Should I make it more dramatic?”
“No.”
“I could get on one knee. I’m sure your ribs would love the excitement.”
You snort before you can stop it, and he grins before sobering just enough to brush a strand of hair back from your face.
“I mean it,” he says quietly. “I’m not asking you to decide anything tonight. You’ve had enough decisions for one week. But if part of what’s scaring you is the idea that this ends when you get on a plane…” He shrugs one shoulder. “It doesn’t have to. Not unless you want it to.”
The room goes very still. You look at him—really look at him. At the tiredness still living under his eyes, the softness in his face when he looks at you. You feel the careful way he’s holding you, like even now he’s mindful of every sore place. And you realise that, despite everything, he’s offering you something steady instead of something urgent.
Your chest aches for reasons that have nothing to do with chlorine now.
“I do want it,” you whisper.
Chan’s expression changes instantly and your pulse jumps at the intense look in his eyes.
“Yeah?” he asks, voice lower now.
You nod.
“Even if I’m annoyingly smug about geography?”
“Especially not because of that.”
He laughs softly, and then his hand slides up to cup your cheek, thumb resting just under your eye as he murmurs, “Okay”.
It’s such a small word, but it feels enormous.
You don’t know who moves first. Maybe it’s both of you. Maybe it’s been happening since the cove and this is just the first moment neither of you is too frightened or guilty or half-drowned to stop it. All you know is that one second you’re looking at him and the next Chan is leaning in slowly, giving you every chance in the world to pull away.
You don’t.
His lips meet yours gently - so gently it almost hurts. There’s no urgency in it, none of the frantic relief and adrenaline that’s been chasing the edges of every touch between you. It’s just warmth and care. The soft press of his mouth against yours like he’s been wanting to do this for days and is still treating the moment with the same tenderness he’s treated everything else.
You make a tiny, helpless sound into the kiss and Chan’s free hand tightens at your waist. He kisses you like he’s trying to prove something and protect something at the same time—slow enough not to startle, soft enough not to take more than you can give, but with a kind of aching certainty underneath that makes your whole body hum.
When he finally pulls back, it’s only far enough to rest his forehead against yours. Your breathing is a mess, but his doesn’t sound much better.
“Well,” Chan murmurs after a second, voice roughened into something that makes your stomach flip, “that probably complicates the friendship angle.”
A laugh bursts out of you before you can stop it, and it jostles your ribs, making you hiss.
Chan’s eyes widen in alarm, hands hovering over you. “Shit—sorry. Sorry. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” you wheeze, still laughing. “You just made out with me and then said friendship angle.”
He looks offended. “I’m trying to keep things light.”
“You’re terrible at it.”
“And yet you kissed me back.”
You smile so hard your cheeks hurt. Then, because the exhaustion is finally winning and your body has started to sink into that heavy, drifting ache that comes right before sleep, you tuck yourself back against his chest and let him pull the blanket up around your shoulders.
Chan presses a kiss to the top of your head, murmuring, “Get some sleep.”
You curl closer automatically. “Only if you promise you’re still here when I wake up.”
His arms tighten around you instinctively as he says, “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”
This time, you believe him, and with your cheek over his heartbeat and the knowledge that two hours is not nearly enough to lose someone you’ve just found, you finally let your eyes close.
You wake to warmth.
It’s not the sun, though there’s plenty of that leaking gold around the edges of the curtains. It’s not the fan overhead either, turning lazily in the thick morning air.
It’s him.
Chan is still there. One arm is tucked under your head, the other wrapped around your waist beneath the blanket, his chest warm against your back and his breath slow and even at the nape of your neck. At some point in the night, you must have wriggled closer, because you’re practically folded into him now, your legs tangled, your hand resting over his where it spans your middle.
For one disorienting, sleepy second, you don’t remember anything.
Then it all comes back in a rush.
The pool, the hospital, the cove. His arms around you in the dark. Sydney.
That kiss.
Your heart does a ridiculous little stutter.
As if sensing the shift in your breathing, Chan’s fingers flex lightly against your stomach.
“You’re awake,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep behind you.
You smile before you can stop yourself. “So are you.”
“Barely.” His nose brushes the back of your neck, warm enough to make you shiver. “I’m considering going back to sleep for another six hours.”
“You’d be a terrible nurse.”
“I’m not a nurse,” he mumbles. “I’m a lifeguard. Entirely different skill set.”
You turn carefully in his arms until you’re facing him, trying not to jostle your ribs too much. Chan blinks back at you through messy hair and sleep-heavy eyes, his face soft and unguarded in a way you’re not sure you’ve seen before.
He looks unfairly lovely first thing in the morning, but you should probably keep that to yourself.
Instead, you say, “You drool in your sleep.”
Chan squints. “Rude.”
“You absolutely do.”
“You’re lying to damage my self-esteem.”
“I’m simply reporting the facts.”
He studies you for a beat, then tightens his arm around your waist and drags you bodily closer until you make an indignant noise.
“Chan—”
“This,” he informs you, voice still husky with sleep, “is what happens to people who slander me before breakfast.”
You laugh, which is a mistake because your ribs protest immediately. Chan’s expression changes at once at the pained look on your face.
“Hey—careful.” His hand is at your side in an instant, thumb brushing lightly over the place just below your ribs, his brow furrowed. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” you say quickly, still smiling. “Just laughed too hard.”
He doesn’t look convinced.
“It’s okay,” you promise, softer this time. “Just sore.”
Chan exhales through his nose, the crease between his brows easing only a little. Then, because apparently his concern is terminal, he lifts the duvet and peers down at your middle as if he expects visible evidence of pain to present itself on command.
You stare at him blankly as you ask, “Are you inspecting me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very weird.”
“It’s thorough,” he corrects, then glances up and catches your expression. “What?”
“I nearly drowned, and somehow you’ve turned into someone’s aggressively protective husband.”
Chan goes still for half a second before one dark brow lifts. “Aggressively protective husband?”
You realise what you’ve said approximately one second too late, and you feel the heat race up your neck. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m not complaining,” he says, and there’s a smile threatening at the corner of his mouth now. “Just trying to work out whether I should be offended that I apparently give off husband energy.”
“You absolutely do not.”
“Wow.”
“I mean—” You flounder. “Not in a bad way. Just in a very bossy, making-sure-you-take-your-medication, checking-the-fridge-like-you-pay-bills-here kind of way.”
He laughs quietly, ducking his head enough to press a quick kiss to your shoulder through the T-shirt. It’s a tiny thing, barely there, but your whole body notices. You go very still, and Chan seems to realise what he’s done only after the fact. His mouth lingers for half a beat before he lifts his head and looks at you, gaze suddenly warmer, quieter.
“Morning,” he says softly.
Your stomach flips unnecessarily.
“Morning,” you manage.
For a second neither of you moves.
The room feels different in daylight. Less dreamlike than last night, maybe. Less wrapped in adrenaline and confessions and the soft blur of exhaustion. What’s left now is clearer somehow—him looking at you like he still can’t quite believe he gets to, your body tucked instinctively into his, the memory of his mouth on yours sitting low and warm in your chest.
Then Chan glances toward the curtains and groans dramatically, “We should probably get up.”
You narrow your eyes. “You literally just said you wanted another six hours.”
“I did. Tragically, I’ve remembered you only have one full day left before you leave, and I’d like to make selfish use of it.”
Your heart gives a traitorous little kick. “Selfish use, hm?”
“Mm.” He stretches, all long limbs and warm skin and sleep-rough voice. “Feed you breakfast. Make sure you take your antibiotics. Maybe steal an entire day of your time.”
You try very hard to sound casual. “That’s a lot of ambition for someone who was snoring in my ear ten seconds ago.”
“I do not snore.”
“You absolutely do.”
“More slander. Unbelievable.”
He rolls onto his back and drags you with him until you’re half sprawled over his chest, and for a moment you just lie there, looking at each other in the soft, gold quiet of the room. Then Chan tucks a strand of hair behind your ear and says, “Come to the cove with me.”
Your breath catches. He must see it happen, because his expression softens instantly.
“Only if you want to,” he adds. “No pressure. We can do literally anything else. Stay here. Walk into town. I’ll buy you breakfast and let you bully me over my snoring. But…” He hesitates, thumb brushing once over your cheekbone. “I thought maybe it might be nice. To go back in daylight. On your terms this time.”
The cove.
The sea.
Not a pool. Not chlorinated deep water under a hundred staring eyes. Not the place where your ex pushed you under.
The sea where Chan first told you that you were safe. The sea you’ve only watched from shore since. The sea that still makes something old and frightened twist low in your stomach.
You swallow. “I don’t know if I can.”
Chan’s hand slides to the back of your neck, gentle and grounding. “That’s okay,” he says immediately. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“I know.” You look down at the line of his collarbone, tracing it with your eyes. “I just… I want to. I think.”
There’s a pause before Chan asks, very quietly, “Do you want to try?”
Your throat tightens. You think of your mother and the cold water and panic and years of avoiding anything deeper than a bath. Of the way the sea looked yesterday evening, calm and clear and nothing like the nightmare in your head. Of Chan standing in it with his hands out, never once mocking, never once pushing, always waiting for you to come to him. And you think, with sudden clarity, that you don’t want the last thing water took from you to be this, too. Not this holiday and this fragile new courage you’ve built. Not the chance to step into the sea with someone who makes you feel safe instead of small.
So, you nod. Chan’s face changes in the smallest, softest way at it.
“Okay,” he says.
No big reaction. No triumphant grin. No, I knew you could do it. Just that one quiet word, as if you’ve entrusted him with something precious and he intends to hold it carefully.
He kisses your forehead before either of you can make it weird, then throws the duvet back and climbs out of bed before you can overthink the fact that he just kissed your forehead like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Right,” he says briskly, as though he didn’t just short-circuit your nervous system. “Breakfast first. Bravery second.”
Breakfast happens at a tiny café down the road where the owner seems to know Chan well enough to greet him with, “Back again?” and then looks between the two of you with such obvious interest that you nearly choke on your orange juice.
Chan, the traitor, only grins.
“You come here a lot?” you ask once you’re seated outside under a striped awning, the sea visible in flashes between whitewashed buildings.
“Most mornings when I’m working,” he says, stirring sugar into your coffee before you can reach for it. “Good food, good coffee, and Maria threatens anyone who serves me watery eggs.”
You watch him slide the cup back toward you. “You remembered how I take it.”
Chan glances up, like he’s surprised that would surprise you. “Of course I did.”
Something warm unfolds in your chest. It gets worse when he orders for you too—not because you can’t, but because when the waitress asks if you want something lighter after the hospital, he’s already gently suggesting toast and fruit and something with actual protein in it before you can insist you’re fine. He’s not controlling about it - not even close. Just attentive.
A small distinction, maybe, but one that feels enormous now.
The whole morning is like that. Chan steering you around uneven pavements with a hand at your back, passing you his water bottle without asking when the heat starts to get to you, slowing his stride automatically when you lag on the uphill bits because your lungs still aren’t quite happy. Touching you in a hundred absent little ways that somehow never feel possessive—his fingers brushing your wrist when he wants your attention, his palm warm at the small of your back, his knee knocking lightly against yours under the café table.
And every time it happens, some tiny part of you notices the contrast.
Your ex used to make you feel like an inconvenience whenever your fear got in the way of what he wanted. Chan makes you feel like your fear is simply a fact to work around. Not shameful or dramatic. Just real.
By the time you’re walking the path down to the cove just before midday, sun hot on your shoulders and Chan carrying a tote bag with towels and water and the medication he insisted on bringing “in case you’re annoyingly stubborn later,” your nerves have settled into a low, manageable buzz.
The cove looks different in daylight - softer, somehow. The water is so clear you can see the pale sand beneath it, sunlight scattering gold over the surface. The cliffs throw pockets of cool shade across the shore, and the tide is low enough that the beach is wider than it was last night. There are a few people here today—an older couple reading under an umbrella, two teenagers skipping stones near the rocks—but it’s still quiet enough to feel private.
You stop at the edge of the sand, and Chan notices immediately. He doesn’t say anything at first, just sets the bag down and comes to stand beside you, close enough that your shoulders brush.
“You okay?” he asks after a moment.
You nod, then shake your head.
“Useful,” Chan murmurs.
You huff a laugh, and he reaches down to link his pinky with yours. The tiny gesture nearly undoes you.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” you admit.
Chan looks out at the water with you. “You don’t have to know.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be.” His mouth twitches. “It’s meant to remind you that there isn’t a right way to do this.”
You turn to look at him. He’s watching the sea, squinting a little in the sun, hair already ruffled by the breeze. Beautiful in a way that still catches you off guard, but steadier than that too. Safer.
“When we did the pool lessons,” he says, “you trusted me enough to get in, right?” You nod. “Okay. Same principle.” He glances at you then, expression open. “We go as far as you want. If that’s your ankles, brilliant. If it’s your knees, amazing. If you get to the waterline and decide actually you’d rather sit in the sand and throw pebbles at me, I’ll be offended, but I’ll survive.”
A laugh escapes you, and Chan smiles, pleased. “No pressure. No deadlines. No proving anything.”
The knot in your stomach loosens a little at his reassurance, and you take a deep breath before you say, “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoes.
You spread the towels first, mostly because it gives your hands something to do. Chan strips off his shirt while you’re pretending to be very interested in arranging a beach bag, and the sight of him in swim shorts with sun-warmed skin and broad shoulders and the kind of stomach that should probably come with a warning label does absolutely nothing helpful for your concentration.
You look away so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.
Chan catches you at it anyway, and his mouth curves. “You all right there?”
“Fine.”
“Mm.”
“You’re very smug for someone who folds pyjama shorts.”
“That’s because I contain multitudes.”
You roll your eyes, but your face is hot.
Then it’s your turn.
You’d packed a swimsuit because some stubborn, hopeful part of you knew you might want to try, but pulling your dress off in bright daylight still makes you hesitate. Not because of him exactly, but because of your body. The faint bruising still yellowing at your ribs, the soreness, the vulnerability of bare skin after everything that’s happened.
Chan seems to read every thought on your face. He turns away without being asked, busying himself with opening the water bottle and facing the sea.
“I’m not looking,” he says lightly.
Your chest tightens for a reason that has nothing to do with fear this time.
“Thank you,” you murmur.
“Anytime.”
You change quickly, wrapping your arms around yourself for a second once the dress is off, just to steady the strange self-conscious flutter in your stomach. Your swimsuit is simple and dark, nothing dramatic, but you still feel exposed in it.
When you tell Chan he can turn around, he does. Infuriatingly, he just stares - not in a crude way, not even obviously. Just long enough that you become acutely aware of every inch of skin you’re showing.
“What?” you ask, defensive at once.
Chan blinks like he’s been caught doing something embarrassing. “Nothing.”
“Chan.”
He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly looking about seventeen instead of devastatingly competent. “You look nice.”
Your heart trips over itself. “Oh.”
It’s not exactly poetry, but it still makes you blush. Chan’s gaze drops briefly to your ribs then, and the softness there replaces whatever had been in his face a second ago.
“How sore are you?” he asks.
“Manageable.”
“That’s not a number.”
“I don’t know. A six?”
He winces. “You’re not going in if it’s a six.”
“It’s a six when I laugh or twist. It’s like a three when I’m standing still.”
“Okay.” He considers that. “Then I’m not making you laugh.”
“That sounds impossible.”
He gives you a look. “I’m very serious.”
“You literally made a joke about airport security while spooning me last night.”
“That was emotionally supportive comedy.”
You smile despite yourself, and Chan sighs like you’re proving his point before he holds out his hand. The sight of it does something odd to your breathing – the simplicity of it: just Chan, barefoot in the sand, sun on his shoulders, hand outstretched, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to ask you to trust him. You take it, and his fingers close around yours, warm and sure.
“Come on, then,” he says softly.
The first touch of water around your feet steals your breath. It’s not cold, just cool and sharp over sun-warmed skin, but it’s water, moving around your ankles with a pull that immediately wakes up every old instinct to freeze. You stop dead, and Chan stops with you. There’s no pressure on your hand, no tugging forward. Just stillness.
“Breathe,” he says quietly.
You do. In through your nose and out through your mouth, all whilst the sea laps around your ankles, then retreats, then returns. A rhythm. Not a threat. Just movement.
“It’s shallow,” Chan reminds you. “And I’m right here.”
You nod without looking at him. Another wave curls around your feet, followed by another. After a minute, the panic doesn’t disappear, but it changes shape. Softens at the edges. Becomes something you can stand inside without immediately wanting to run.
“I hate this,” you whisper, echoing your words from earlier in the week.
Chan’s thumb strokes once over your knuckles. “I know.”
“I feel stupid.”
“You’re not.”
“I know, but I feel stupid.”
He hums. “That one I can work with.”
You glance up at him quickly. Chan’s expression is serious, but there’s warmth tucked into it too, a quiet kind of steadiness that says he’ll stand here all day if that’s what you need.
“You know what I think?” he says.
“That you’re about to annoy me.”
“Always. But also, that you’re doing really well.”
Emotion catches you off guard so sharply you have to look away. No one has ever said that to you about this. Not your ex, who treated your fear like an inconvenience. Not the well-meaning relatives who told you to “just try to relax.” Not even yourself.
Chan says it like it’s obvious, like he isn’t measuring your success by how far into the water you go, only by the fact that you’re trying at all.
“Can we go a bit further?” you hear yourself ask.
Chan’s surprised eyes flick to yours, checking. “Yeah?” You nod, and his smile is small and immediate. “Yeah. We can do that.”
You tentatively take steps forward until the water reaches your calves, followed by your knees. Your heart races the whole time, every inch of progress fought for and fragile, but Chan never lets the panic get ahead of you. He talks quietly as you move, asking about ridiculous things—what breakfast you’d force him to eat if he visited you in your hometown, whether you think seagulls know they’re evil, if he’d survive meeting your best friend—and somehow the normality of the conversation keeps your body from tipping into terror.
By the time the water reaches mid-thigh, you’re breathing hard, and Chan asks if you want to pause. You nod, and he steps closer so the water moves around both of you, his hand still locked with yours. Sunlight flashes over the surface between your bodies. You can feel the sea pulling gently at your legs, the drag of the tide, the old fear still pacing at the edges of your mind.
“I don’t know if I can do more,” you admit.
“That’s okay.”
You look at him, eyebrow arched. “Do you ever get tired of saying that?”
“Nope.”
“Even when I’m being dramatic?”
“Especially then.”
You laugh softly, and this time the pain in your ribs is worth it. Chan’s gaze lingers on your face, then drops to where the water eddies around your waistline.
“If you want,” he says, voice quieter now, “I can hold you.”
Your pulse stumbles. “You’re already holding my hand.”
“I know.” His thumb strokes across your wrist. “I mean properly.”
Heat flickers low in your stomach despite the nerves. The request shouldn’t feel loaded, and maybe it doesn’t to him. Maybe he means exactly what he says—support, stability, nothing more. But one look at his face tells you he knows exactly how intimate it would be, too.
Your mouth goes dry as you whisper, “Okay.”
Chan doesn’t make a big thing of it. He just shifts closer, slowly enough that you can stop him at any point and slides his free hand carefully to your waist. The touch is warm even through the water, broad palm settling against your side with a steadiness that sends a different kind of shiver through you. When you don’t pull away, his arm comes around your back too, bringing you gently against his chest until there’s barely any space left between you. Your breath catches. There’s something surreal about standing in the sea—your greatest fear and your newest source of comfort colliding all at once—and feeling safe because of the way someone is holding you.
Chan lowers his head a little so he can look at you properly. “You with me?” he asks.
You nod.
“Good.” His voice softens. “Because I want you to do one thing for me.”
“What?”
“Lean back.”
You stare at him. “No.”
Chan huffs a laugh. “Very decisive.”
“I’m not floating in the sea.”
“You’re not floating in the sea,” he says patiently. “You’re floating on me. There’s a difference.”
“That sounds fake.”
“It’s not fake, it’s physics.”
“Physics can piss off.”
Chan bites back a smile. “Language.”
You gape at him. “Did you just tell me off?”
“I’m trying to create a calm environment.”
“In the ocean?”
“In the ocean.”
Despite yourself, you laugh. Chan’s grin flashes, quick and bright. Then he sobers and adjusts his hold, one arm firm around your waist, the other sliding up between your shoulder blades.
“I’ve got you,” he says quietly. “I’m not letting go.”
The words hit somewhere deep. You look at him—really look at him—and see no impatience there. No challenge. No expectation. Just trust, offered freely.
You take a breath and very, very carefully, you let some of your weight tip backwards into his arms. Every muscle in your body locks, but Chan just tightens his hold in response.
“That’s it. I’ve got you.”
The water lifts a little under you, buoying your hips, your lower back. Your hands clutch at his shoulders on instinct, nails digging in hard enough that he should probably complain. He doesn’t. He just keeps one arm braced behind you and the other secure at your waist, anchoring you against the sea and against your own panic.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs. “You’re okay.”
You’re half-floating - not properly, not independently, not anything you’d be able to brag about to literally anyone - but the sea is holding part of your weight, and Chan is holding the rest, and you are not drowning.
You are not drowning.
Tears prick unexpectedly at your eyes.
“Hey,” Chan says at once, misreading the expression on your face. “Too much? Sit up, sweetheart. You can sit up.”
“No,” you say quickly, voice shaking. “No, I’m okay. I just—”
Your throat closes around the rest. Chan stills, and you can feel the exact moment he understands. His gaze softens into something so gentle it almost hurts.
“Yeah?” he asks quietly.
You nod once, swallowing hard. “I’m doing it.”
The smile that spreads across his face is small and unbearably tender. “Yeah,” he says. “You are.”
The tears spill over anyway. Embarrassing, maybe, but you’re beyond caring now. The sea is cool against your skin. Chan’s hands are warm and certain where they hold you. Your body is trembling with effort and fear and something close to triumph, and for the first time since you were a child, you are in open water without feeling like it’s about to take you.
Chan shifts you upright before your ribs can start protesting too much, bringing you back against his chest with one hand splayed between your shoulder blades. You wipe at your face furiously.
“Not a word,” you mumble.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were thinking things.”
“Only nice things.”
You sniff. “That’s still suspicious.”
Chan laughs softly and tucks damp hair away from your face. “You were incredible.”
Your chest tightens. “Stop that.”
“What?”
“Saying nice things when I’m already emotional. It’s manipulative.”
“It’s honest.”
That steals whatever sarcastic reply you were about to make. For a second, you just stand there in the water, looking at each other. Chan’s hands are still on you - one at your waist, one warm and broad against your back. The sea moves around your bodies in slow, shining ripples. Sunlight catches in the droplets on his lashes, the wet strands of hair falling over his forehead, the curve of his mouth when he looks at you like that—fond and a little awed and maybe just as affected by all of this as you are. Your pulse kicks because you know that look now. You know what it means when his gaze drops briefly to your mouth and then lifts again, checking… Asking.
You tilt your chin up before you can talk yourself out of it and Chan kisses you gently. It’s softer than last night somehow, though you didn’t think that was possible. One hand slides from your back to cup the side of your neck, thumb brushing damp skin just below your ear as he kisses you with the kind of care that makes your knees feel unreliable. You make a tiny sound into his mouth, and Chan’s arm tightens around your waist at once, keeping you steady when the sea and your own body both seem determined to turn your legs to mush.
When he pulls back, it’s only an inch to murmur, “You all right?”
You stare at him, breathless. “You cannot ask me that immediately after kissing me in the sea.”
His mouth curves. “Fair criticism.”
You narrow your eyes. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, quick and sweet and entirely unfair before he ruins the moment by saying, “Though for the record, if you drown because I kissed you too well, that’s going to be a nightmare for the paperwork.”
You burst out laughing. Properly this time, head tipping back, the sound spilling out of you bright and helpless over the water. Chan beams like he’s just won something.
“There she is,” he says.
“Oh my god,” you groan, hiding your face in his shoulder. “If you say that one more time—”
“What? It’s true.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet you continue to cling to me in a very boyfriend-adjacent way.”
You pull back just enough to stare at him. “Boyfriend-adjacent?”
“Mm.”
“That’s somehow worse than husband energy.”
Chan looks delighted. “Interesting that you’re the one who keeps bringing up long-term titles.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
No, you don’t, you agree.
The truth of it sits warm and terrifying in your chest.
You stay in the water a little longer after that, though not much deeper. Chan coaxes you through a few more minutes of floating against him, enough that by the time you wade back to shore, your body is exhausted but your fear has loosened in a way that feels almost impossible.
You did it.
Not perfectly. Not fearlessly. But you did it.
The rest of the afternoon slips into something softer. You lie on the towels in the shade while Chan disappears to buy ice creams from a little kiosk up on the road, returning with one already dripping down his wrist and the triumphant expression of a man who believes he’s just performed a heroic act.
You take the cone from him, trying very hard not to smile too much.
At some point he ends up stretched out on his back with his head in your lap while you card your fingers through his damp hair, and the intimacy of it should probably feel strange considering how recently all of this started. It doesn’t. It feels… inevitable.
He tells you about Sydney—about the flat he shares with two friends from uni, about the café near the harbour that does the best cinnamon buns you’ll ever eat, about how he only took the resort job because his dissertation left him too broke to be picky and one of his course mates knew someone who knew someone.
“You’re at uni?” you ask, playing with the ends of his hair.
Chan squints up at you. “You say that like you’ve just discovered I can read.”
“I don’t know, you spend a lot of time shouting at children not to belly-flop into restricted areas. It doesn’t scream academia.”
“I’m wounded.”
“What are you studying?”
“Physio.”
Your fingers pause in his hair. “Really?”
He nods. “Last year. One more placement after summer and then I’m done.”
You look down at him properly then, this man who held your body together in the water like it was the most natural thing in the world, who knew how to soothe panic without ever belittling it, who notices every flinch and every shallow breath and every time you pretend you’re less hurt than you are.
It makes sense in a way that almost makes your chest ache.
“You’d be good at that,” you say softly.
Chan’s expression changes. He reaches up and catches your wrist, turning his head just enough to press a kiss to the inside of it.
“Careful,” he murmurs. “You keep saying nice things like that, and I’m going to become the most insufferable husband.”
You scowl at him and say, “You’re already insufferable.”
“True.”
By the time the sun starts to sink lower, the cove has emptied again.
The older couple has gone, and the teenagers disappeared hours ago. It’s just the two of you now, wrapped in salt and warmth and that strange, suspended feeling of time running out too quickly.
You know you should probably head back. Instead, you stay where you are, sitting shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the water while the tide creeps up and cools your feet, Chan drawing idle patterns against your palm with his thumb.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
You lean your head against his shoulder. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“Very.”
He waits, and the patience of it undoes you more than if he’d pushed.
“I don’t want tomorrow to happen,” you admit eventually.
Chan’s hand stills, then turns to lace his fingers through yours. “I know.”
“It feels unfair.” You stare out at the horizon, all molten gold and deepening blue. “That I only just found you and now I have to leave.”
His thumb brushes over your knuckles.
“You found me on day one,” he points out.
“Yes, but you were being annoyingly professional and refusing to fall in love with me.”
Chan nearly chokes, and you grin despite yourself.
He turns to look at you, scandalised. “That is an outrageous thing to say to someone who is trying very hard to behave.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
He nudges your shoulder with his, smiling, before his expression softens.
“Leaving tomorrow doesn’t mean losing me,” he says quietly. “You know that, right?”
You look down at your joined hands. “I know.”
“You’ve got my number now. My address if you really want it. Mildly concerning amounts of enthusiasm about seeing you again.”
That earns a small laugh, and Chan turns your hand over and presses a kiss to your knuckles, just like he did last night.
“I’m not disappearing,” he murmurs.
The words settle deep, belief settling alongside it. It feels dangerous because believing him means wanting this properly. Not as a holiday thing, not as a bright little bubble to keep separate from real life, but as something that might continue once you’re back home, the sea is far away, and there are no more excuses left.
You don’t voice your words, choosing to just squeeze his hand as you say softly, “Good, because I’m not done with you yet.”
Chan smiles, slow and warm and devastating.
“Excellent,” he says. “I’ve been hoping that.”
The walk back to the apartment is unhurried.
He carries the beach bag again, even when you protest. Stops to buy you chips from a little place on the promenade because apparently sea swimming has made you “look suspiciously peaky.” Kisses your temple while you wait for the crossing light and then acts like he didn’t do anything at all when you stare up at him.
By the time you reach the flat, the sky has gone dusky pink. You shower first while Chan orders dinner. Then he showers while you sit cross-legged on the bed, eating stolen chips from the paper bag and smiling every time you hear him singing badly through the bathroom door.
The evening folds around you in soft pieces after that.
Takeaway cartons on the bed because neither of you can be bothered with the table. Chan stealing your drink and claiming yours tastes better. You tucked under his arm while some terrible reality show chatters in the background and neither of you pays attention because talking to him is better.
At one point, you yawn so hard your eyes water, and Chan glances down at you, where your head rests on his shoulder. “Bed?”
You pretend to consider. “Only if there’s cuddling.”
He looks solemn. “I suppose I can make that sacrifice.”
“Good.”
“On one condition.”
You narrow your eyes. “What condition?”
“That you admit I don’t snore.”
You gasp. “Absolutely not.”
Chan laughs and drags you closer when you try to wriggle away, until you’re half sprawled across him and both of you are grinning like idiots.
It’s different than this morning, almost worse once the lights are out.
Worse because the dark makes everything feel softer, more intimate. Because Chan curls around you from behind the second you settle under the duvet, fitting himself against your back like he belongs there, and you have to lie very still for a moment just to survive it.
His hand slips under the hem of your sleep shirt, not wandering, just warm against your stomach. “Comfortable?” he murmurs against your hair.
“Mm.”
“Ribs okay?”
“Mm.”
“Need anything?”
You smile into the pillow. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who’s allegedly trying to seduce me.”
Chan goes still before choking out, “I’m trying to what?”
You laugh so hard you nearly choke yourself. He makes an offended noise and tightens his arms around you in retaliation, dragging you flush against his chest.
“Go to sleep,” he mutters.
“Make me.”
“I’m literally spooning you. I’m doing all I can.”
You turn in his arms just enough to find his face in the dark, moonlight spilling silver across the pillow between you. Chan’s expression softens the second he sees yours, and there’s no teasing in him now. Just warmth, and maybe a little ache, because tomorrow is coming whether either of you wants it to or not.
You reach up and touch his cheek.
“I’m glad it was you,” you whisper.
His brows draw together slightly. “What was?”
“This holiday.” You swallow. “The cove. The lessons. All of it.”
Chan goes very still before he leans down and kisses you, slow and quiet and a little sad around the edges. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against yours.
“I’m glad it was you, too,” he says.
Your chest hurts in that lovely, unbearable way feelings sometimes do, so you kiss him again, because words feel too small for it. The kiss deepens only a little before Chan pulls back with visible effort, thumb brushing once over your lower lip.
“Sleep,” he murmurs, voice rough.
“Bossy.”
“You love it.”
You do, probably, but he doesn’t need to know that yet.
So instead, you tuck yourself back against him, let him pull the blanket up around both of you, and listen to the steady beat of his heart as the room goes quiet.
Tomorrow you’ll have to leave. Tomorrow there’ll be goodbye and airports and the awful uncertainty of stepping out of this little bubble and trusting it to survive in the real world.
But not yet.
Tonight, Chan’s arms are around you. Your body is tired in that good, earned way that follows bravery, and for the first time in years, when you think of water, it isn’t only fear that comes.
Sometimes, now, it’s him too.
a/n: ha-- so I've never really drowned (thankfully), so I had to do a bit of research on it? I hope it reads as somewhat believable. I love Poolside Channie and reader -- their banter and communication are goals, I think. What do we think of Part 2?
a/n2: happy for this to be the end, or I can give you guys an epilogue with the airport goodbye and a little bit after that? Let me know in the comments xo
