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I am no viper, yet I feed
On mother's flesh which did me breed.
I sought a husband, in which labour
I found that kindness in a father:
He's father, son, and husband mild;
I mother, wife, and yet his child.
How they may be, and yet in two,
As you will live, resolve it you.
(1.1.64-71; Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
In the humid summer, homes glaze over with the heat of the stark midday sun. Sweat condenses—first on the outer panes of windows, then on the outside of ice-cold glasses left out on tables, and then along skin. It forms in barely noticeable droplets like gooseflesh until enough has gathered to roll down in rivulets, down foreheads and necks and the inside of arms and the backs of thighs.
Felix’s shirt bunches up at his armpits as he slides down his bed, head rolling back along the edge of his pillow. He’s already showered twice today, once in the morning and another just half an hour before, but the thin cotton t-shirt he’d thrown on is already sticking uncomfortably to the back of his neck, between his shoulderblades, under his arms.
It’s summer, it’s too fucking hot, and Felix is bored.
He rolls up straight, and lets his bare feet thump against the floor as he tugs the collar of his shirt up to rub at his neck. It’s already feeling a little raw from the endless perspiration and the itching that always follows. He might as well spend the rest of his day alternating between dousing himself in freezing-cold water and sucking on ice cubes, or just convince his dad to invest in a better, newer air-conditioning unit.
Then again, Felix remembers, he’s only here for the summer. Summer break, just a couple of months away. A couple of months back home.
It’s summer, it’s hot, and Felix is bored and home alone.
Little has changed since the last time he’d been home. He’d missed the chance to go home over Christmas break, as had all of his friends from out of state, postponing his cancelled flight to May instead. He’d FaceTimed his dad on the day of, but it hadn’t felt the same. And now he’s home for the first time in almost a year.
A year, but everything is still in place despite there being one less person in the house—
Two. Two less people in the house.
Felix bounces up from his bed and stretches, ignoring the bitter catch in his chest. Whatever, he thinks sorely, it doesn’t matter. If she wants to leave them behind, it’s perfectly in her right to do so. It’s not like she’d waited for him to even fucking come home before moving out with her new boyfriend, who’s apparently working in finance, or accounting. One of those. Some sort of auditor or something. Probably makes more money than his dad does. Probably why she’d left them even though he’s plain as hell.
Don’t be rude, comes his dad’s voice, as mild as the day he’d video-called to tell Felix that he was getting a divorce from Felix’s stepmother, Paul seems like a nice man.
Paul the auditor, who’s off vacationing with his stepmother on some overpriced capitalist-haven holiday island. Felix doesn’t even want to think about it, and instead lets himself snort at the memory of Jisung splayed across his bed in the dorms, reading aloud from his phone that the name Paul meant ‘small’ and that probably meant Paul had a tiny dick, so he shouldn’t let Micropenis Paul’s existence bother him in the slightest.
He still doesn’t know why his dad hadn’t fought harder, or fought at all, really. All he remembers from the video call is the tired line of his dad’s eyes and the strange, almost-accepting smile on his face as he’d said, “It’s fine, Felix.”
It’s not fine. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get why his dad isn’t angrier, because it’s not fine, it’s never been fine that they keep fucking leaving—
Felix swallows, and rubs at his eyes. He’s not gonna think about it. He’s not spoiling his summer thinking about it too hard. It’s not like they’d been close, anyway; his dad had raised him on his own for years, dating on and off, until he’d met Yuen, and Felix had already been fourteen by then anyway. Five years.
It doesn’t matter. It’s frustrating enough that she’d left without saying goodbye face-to-face, that she’s left his dad alone like the others. But Felix isn’t going to care.
The wooden floors are cool under his feet as he pads out of his room and down the corridor. On his right, the door to his dad and stepmum’s room is just the slightest bit open. A thought washes over him, and then breaks into a million pieces like the shattering of a bulb at his feet. It’s a naughty idea, he knows it is, but.
But.
Felix pushes the door open and goes in. He doesn’t bother shutting it behind him; he knows he’s the only one home until his dad gets back from work in three hours. The room is just the way he remembers it: dark blue sheets, pale walls, a couple of nice wooden cabinets from a secondhand furniture store. Ironing board in the corner beside a messy stack of clothes that hasn’t been put away yet (he’ll take care of it later), a floor lamp with a stained shade.
It’s six steps from the door to the set of drawers closest to the attached bathroom. Felix slides the top drawer open with sticky fingers and rifles through to see if there’s any cash his stepmum had left behind. It’s not stealing if he’s just borrowing it for the summer, he tells himself, flicking past expired eyeshadow palettes, a pack of silver safety pins, a pale jade bangle.
He shuts that one, and moves onto the middle drawer.
A half-used bottle of toner, a stick of deodorant, a folded sheet of paper for one of his dad’s insurance policies—
Nothing good. Felix scowls, and considers ransacking the refrigerator for juice instead just as he slides the last drawer open and comes face to face with a plain, cream-coloured box.
Huh. Maybe that’s where she keeps her loose cash. Hoping for something good, Felix lifts it out and sets it on the floor, pushing the lid up with his thumbs, flipping it back onto the carpeted floor.
His face goes bright red, and he scrambles for the lid to shut it again. “Shit,” Felix mutters, letting out a horrified laugh, “seriously?”
A moment passes, and Felix very hesitantly opens the box again.
They’re toys. For sex, Felix’s mind very unhelpfully supplies. Yes, of course he knows they’re for sex—he’s got his own, and if that sure isn’t a thought to have to confront. That his parents—parent? Stepmum, person who sort of helped to raise him, et cetera—have sex. Had sex. Funnily enough, the realisation isn’t a completely awful, life-ending, horrifying one. Maybe he’s a bit too desensitised by the internet, he figures. And they’re adults. He’s an adult (more or less). Adults have sex.
And adults keep sextoys in their drawers and forget to take them along when they move out, apparently.
He reaches forward, pausing for a moment, before putting his hand into the box to sift through what’s in it. There’s a little purple vibrator, some bottles of lube, condoms, a couple of dildos. Nothing outlandish, but nothing really interesting either. Not a single handcuff or paddle in sight. It’s a bit of a surprise. He honestly hadn’t really pegged his dad for being that boring in bed. Not that he’s thought about it before.
Felix idly wipes the sweat off his browbone, and thinks about how he’d had to leave all his own toys back at university, because he hadn’t even wanted to entertain the thought of bringing them through airport security. Thinks about how he’s only really here because he’d wanted to see his dad again, and hadn’t grasped the fact that being back in this sleepy little town would mean spending three entire months being without any of his fuckbuddies.
But there’s an open box on the floor, and Felix, well.
He’s thinking about it.
She hasn’t been here for a while. Probably hasn’t touched this box in longer. And really, it’s not like they’re related. Rationally, logically—it’s just like sharing cutlery with your family, isn’t it? Sticking a spoon in your mouth after it’s been in god-knows-who-else’s mouth about a thousand times over?
Felix plucks one of the toys out of the box. He’ll clean it. It’s fine. It’s like a spoon. It’s just like a spoon. No one’s coming back for it anyway. He’ll put it back when he’s done. No one would even miss it.
It’s summer, it’s hot, Felix is bored and home alone—and horny.
The box goes back into the drawer, and Felix goes back to his room.
Door, locked. Window, rolled closed. Towel, thrown onto the bed and blankets kicked off. Felix lays down and takes his time to slick his hand up and finger himself open, feet braced against the mattress as he gets up to one knuckle and then two, and then three.
Sweat beads along his temples and the tip of his nose as he works his fingers in. It hasn’t been too long since he’d done this, but he’s always been a bit tight no matter how much he forces himself to relax, to loosen up for his or anyone else’s fingers.
The heat helps. It prickles under his skin like his blood is boiling, warming him up until he’s sinking back into the sheets, a breath trapped behind his teeth. He’s more game for this than he’d thought. His dick rests against his belly, throbbing with want, a little wet from where he’d jerked himself a few times with his other hand as he felt for his prostate with experienced fingers.
He tastes salt on his tongue, but it barely registers as he works the toy in. First the head of it, and back out, and then a little deeper. A few inches at a time, hand clutching the base of it so hard that he’s almost white-knuckled, until it’s down to the base. He groans, one hand flying to his dick to stroke it as he shifts his hips on it. It’s thicker than what he’s used to, but it’s good. It’s really good, after weeks of not getting any sort of dick.
“Fuck.” Felix moans, gravel-rough and low in his throat. His hand moves faster on his cock, and he thrusts the dildo in until the head of it is just rubbing up against that spot inside his ass that makes his balls tighten up, over and over and over again. It’s good, it’s really good, and then he’s losing his breath as he clenches hard around it, feet slipping on the bed as his cock swells.
When he comes, his jaw pops. Tension runs out of his limbs as he slumps back down, letting out a soft, satisfied noise.
He feels full, fuller than he’d usually feel. Felix licks the sweat off his lips, and exhales when he slowly tugs the dildo out. It’s got a slant to it that Felix hasn’t really seen with other dildos before.
Looks like he’d picked the best out of the box, then.
Later, he runs it under the cold water of his shower, and then once more under the tap with hot water for good measure, giving it a good soaping up. He works it on autopilot, humming under his breath as he palms over the head, the shaft, the base.
There’s a label on the bottom that he hadn’t noticed before. An embossed rectangle with a manufacturer’s logo just within the rim of the suction cup. Fancy, Felix thinks, scraping his thumbnail over it lightly, you don’t see a lot of custom-made stuff often—
Something cold and dreadful settles in the pit of his stomach.
Custom-made.
He doesn’t drop it, but it’s close. The faucet remains running, water splashing over the dildo, distorting its shape within its mild stream. Like this, it doesn’t look different from any other dildo, but when he brings it up closer, it’s definitely different. Thicker, angled different. A bit veinier than anything else he’s had.
No. He’s just overthinking it, isn’t he? There’s no—there’s really no way, it’s can’t be, really—
A memory.
He’s sixteen again and returning to his room from the kitchen, a cup of something in one hand. His dad’s travelled out of state for work, some meet he’s had to substitute-coach on request of a friend, and it’s just him and his stepmum, parted ways after a shared dinner of laksa. The door’s cracked open on its hinges, and he can hear the way she’s speaking into the phone. Miss you, she says, the faded whisper of her voice a gunshot in his ears. It came in the mail today. Gonna be thinking about you while I—
Felix sets it down gingerly beside the tap, and clutches at the edges of the sink, needing something to hold him up before his knees give out. His heart’s going to burst right out of his chest. It’s his dad’s. He’s just shoved his dad’s dick up his ass.
He’s overthinking.
(He’s not.)
“No, no,” Felix says, disbelief giving way to a sinking horror. “Shit. Fuck, what the fuck.”
His voice echoes off the tiles. There’s a moment where he thinks he feels a bit faint, almost, but he shifts his footing and takes a moment to think. His breathing is coming easier now, and although his heart’s still racing, he mostly just feels… strange. He doesn’t recognise what the feeling is, but—he mostly wonders why he doesn’t feel sick.
Maybe he’s sick for not feeling sick about it.
He rinses it off once more. Shuts the tap off, reaches for a towel, and steadily pats it dry. Felix scrutinises the shape of it, big in his hands, and rummages through his memory for anything that’ll confirm his suspicions, that’ll connect the thing he’s holding to the person he’s thinking of—before he realises what he’s doing, and he winces.
Fuck. He shouldn’t even be thinking about this. He should put it back and pretend it never happened. Go and get some water and then watch some TV and then wait for his dad to get home so they can get dinner.
He can forget it happened, because no one else will ever know.
(But he knows.)
He should put it back. He has to.
Felix doesn’t.
Instead, he digs a clean, dry shirt out of his closet and wraps it up before leaving it under his pillow. He’s the only one who changes the sheets on his own bed, no one ever really comes into his room anyway, and his dad—he won’t see it.
Felix sits on the edge of his bed, a creak receiving him as he puts his face in his hands.
It’d felt good. It’d felt really good. He hates that it doesn’t feel less good after the knowledge of whose dick it is. His dad. It’d been his dad.
He doesn’t know how long he ends up sitting there for, but by the time he’s finally regained some semblance of calm, the sun has started to set. He doesn’t even hear the car pull up outside, the gate unlock, the door open and shut.
The only warning he gets is the knock on the door, and Felix only has a moment of panic to himself before it opens. Chan peeks in, a beanie tugged over his still-wet hair, his stopwatch and tag still hanging from a lanyard around his neck. He’s smiling, bright and easy in a way Felix never sees over video-call, only ever when he’s home. “Hey, kid,” his dad greets, “what d’you want for dinner?”
“Anything.” Felix shrugs, trying to pass for casual.
Chan huffs a sigh, and leans against the door-frame, crossing his bare arms over his chest. “Thought college would’ve trained you outta saying that.”
“Yeah, nah. Made it worse, actually,” Felix quips, “no one there can ever decide on anything. So… anything?”
“Guess we’re having rice and boiled chicken breast, then.”
Felix makes a face. “Daaad,” he whines. “I’m on holiday.”
“Alright, geez, fine—pasta and… chicken nuggets, then? I got the kind that you like.”
In an instant, Felix has turned his pleading eyes up to a hundred, clasping his hands together. He’s always been good at wheedling Chan into making the same kind of food he’d enjoyed the most as a kid—remnants of days and night spent coming up with dinners on their own. Just the two of them.
He gets a laugh from Chan, who straightens back up. “Okay, okay, got it. Go say hi to Auntie Lekha first, yeah? I come down the driveway and she’s watering her plants and the first thing she says to me is: you know, Christopher, I haven’t seen Felix in months. Months! And now you tell me he’s been back for almost a week and I haven’t even gotten to say hello?”
Felix winces. He’d forgotten about their neighbour who’s lived here even longer than they have, babysat him whenever she could, and had been just as teary-eyed as his dad when he first left for university. “I’ll go, sorry. I just forgot.”
“Not like you to forget.” Chan gives him a look. “Anyways. Dinner at seven-thirty, yeah?”
“Yeah. Thank you, daddy.”
Chan pauses right before he shuts the door. "You're welcome, baby," he says, voice gentle.
The second he leaves, Felix throws himself back onto the bed. One hand falls against his pillow.
Felix glances over at it, and bites his lip.
He shuts his eyes—
—and he opens them again, a noise caught red-handed in the back of his throat, threatening to escape, to give him away as he sinks back down onto the dildo, hating himself the entire time. Hating himself as he slicks it up further and lets his weight bear down on it and digs his knees into the mattress as he rocks deep, feels his shoulders draw up, feels the same guilty pleasure curl in his gut.
His dad doesn’t even know. Doesn’t even realise that Felix is in the room he’s just left, doesn’t realise Felix is fucking himself on a dick that looks like his, again.
Felix clutches at his hair, and lets his mouth fall open on a soundless groan. He wonders if his dad’s cock would feel the same, or whether it’d be bigger. Thicker. Hotter, for sure. Pulsing inside him with every thrust. Baby, his father whispers, cock thick and hot inside him, filling him up. Felix, baby, c’mon. Take it. Take me.
Take me.
He comes for the second time that day, shaking, ashamed, horrendously turned on—wanting to throw himself out the window. Wanting to do it again.
Felix doesn’t.
He forces himself to clean up, to rinse the toy off again, readjust the sheets and wipe down the floor where he’d accidentally let some lube splatter in his haste to get off again. He runs on autopilot. White noise, manifesting in a barely audible hum, travelling between his ears as he focuses on everything other than himself.
Everything other than his da—
Alright, Felix thinks, unwilling to confront a single thing about what he’s just done. He’s going to act completely normal. He’s going to head down, say hello to the neighbour and charm his way into some peanut butter cookies. Then, he’s going to have dinner with Chan and everything’s going to be completely normal.
It’s going to be perfectly fine.
At dinner, Felix gets the plates and lets Chan bring the food over, and watches as Chan spoons food onto Felix’s plate first before his own. “Try the nuggets,” Chan says, “do they taste okay?”
Felix takes a bite of one. It’s burnt. It tastes like home. “It’s perfect,” he says.
His dad shoots him a thumbs up, and sucks his pasta sauce-covered finger into his mouth, making a muffled noise that could pass as, “Good.”
Felix nods, and ignores the traitorous thump in his chest.
Just a spoon.
He pushes his laptop screen back. It wobbles for just a moment before stabilising.
Little more, Felix thinks, one hand steady on the edge of it as he moves it back just a couple more degrees. It’s funny how Chan’s habit of arranging things to be absolutely straight, in order, perfectly balanced, has ended up rubbing off on him.
“You done?” Jisung peers at him through his own camera, and tosses something into his mouth. Felix hopes it’s actually edible, and not some piece of candy he’d picked up off the floor like the last time they’d video-called and Jisung had found some random lollipop in his attic (“Ugh, tastes like old people,” followed by,“Bruh, what the fuck, how do you know what old people tastes like?”) and ate it in front of him. “I’m getting dizzy as hell looking at you.”
“Stop complaining. Just switch tabs next time.” Felix rolls his eyes. “Not like you even pay attention when we call.”
Jisung’s face scrunches up in a fake sob. “’Wah,” he mock-cries, clutching at his cheeks, “my best friend’s not paying attention to me!' Cry about it. I’m totally paying attention, okay—you’re wearing the earrings Hyunjin bought you for your birthday, and your 5SOS poster is falling off the wall again, and there’s a massive dildo on your bed holy fuck I thought you left all that stuff in our room, where did you get that—”
Felix flinches, and moves to hide it from Jisung’s view. “Don’t pay attention to that,” he chokes out, “bro!”
“You can’t be shy about stuff like that anymore,” Jisung says, waggling a finger at him, “not when I’ve had to hear you play out your daddy kink in person.”
“I didn’t know you were back—”
“—and you’re the worst roommate ever—”
“—so next time just like, say you’re awake—”
The bickering goes on for a solid few minutes, until Jisung flops back in his chair and nearly falls over. “Ugh,” he says. “I gotta get a new chair soon.”
“Maybe if you stopped making fun of me, your parents would buy you a new one,” Felix mumbles. God, he hates Jisung so much.
(He doesn’t. Not at all.)
“Not my fault you have daddy issues.” Jisung sniffs. “Wait, do you even have daddy issues? You probably do. I can see it in your eyes, even though my wifi’s lagging like shit and your face is literally like, one and a half pixels on my screen right now. But, no cap, your dad seems so chill though, so… the fuck? He’s not like, an asshole or a deadbeat or anything at all.”
At that, Felix can’t help but laugh. “For real, if anything I should have mommy issues since my mum’s the dead one.”
His real mum. The one he’s only seen photos of. The first one to leave.
“Dude,” Jisung says, eyebrow raised, voice hushed, “that’s super fucked up.”
Felix snorts. Jisung’s not wrong, but—it’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, resting his chin on the heel of his palm as he listens to the distorted crinkling of Jisung reaching into a bag of chips. “I don’t remember her anyway.”
He doesn’t touch it for a couple of days, but it remains in his room. On his bed. It lies there like it’s mocking him. He’d stood it up in his bathroom, but it’d looked hilariously out of place amidst the stark white tiles and against the bright porcelain sink. It can’t go into a drawer, because he just knows he’ll be absolutely obsessed with opening it over and over again just to know that it’s there.
So it stays on his bed. Right next to his pillow.
It’s there, but he doesn’t touch it. Not until Chan comes home from work one evening with his clothes looking like they’re stuck to him, completely soaked. “Was getting ready to leave, but I heard someone shout. Thought someone fell in, so I jumped in after them,” he says, the curve of his mouth exasperated as he tugs his shirt off and trudges up the stairs. “Turns out they’d just done the worst dive I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“Oof,” Felix says, eyes falling on the line of Chan’s bare, flexing shoulders as his arms fall to his sides. The way his back dips into the curve of his ass. Chan turns a corner and Felix’s gaze ghosts over the bulge in the front of his low-slung shorts before he walks right out of sight.
He shouldn’t, really. He shouldn’t.
But he just wants to know. If he’s still holding onto it, he might as well.
In the privacy of his own room, Felix gets down one knee and then the other. He feels silly kneeling in front of his bathroom door like this, but it’s the only surface smooth enough that the toy will stick to. It juts out obscenely, but doesn’t fall when Felix gives it a flick.
He moves closer, examining it in better detail. The length of it compared to his forearm, the thickness of it when he fits one hand around it. It’s not enough. He puts his other hand around it, and slides it forward, closer to the head. Then, he moves it back, and then forward once again, like he’s jerking it off.
Felix’s mouth feels dry. His hands look so tiny around it.
And if—if his hands look this small, then what about—
He touches his mouth to it. Lets the bow of his lower lip hug the bottom of the head as he stretches his maw over the rubber tip. The floor bites into his knees when he shuffles closer, but he pays it no mind. His tongue presses against it and is then pushed flat against the floor of his mouth when he slides his mouth further over it.
Felix stops, and sucks a rushed breath in through his nose. His dad’s cock is in his mouth.
For a moment, everything feels like it’s too much.
Felix wishes he could see how deep he’s gone. From here, his perspective is skewed—there’s more than a hand’s width left down the shaft, and he doesn’t know if he can even take the entire thing, fuck.
The hinge of his jaw is already starting to protest. Felix ignores it too in favour of slowly working his hand over it again, all the way down and then back up again. He shuts his eyes and imagines it. He’s on his knees, sucking his father off. His shorts pushed halfway down his thighs, one strong hand in Felix’s hair.
His own dick throbs. Felix shoves a hand down his underwear and pulls his hardness out, giving it a couple of strokes as he focuses on the way his chin is beginning to tremble, spit gathering at the corners of his mouth.
Dad would tell him he’s doing good, Felix thinks hazily, dad would feel better than this, he would—
His moan is muffled by the dildo in his mouth. Felix pulls off, watches a line of spit connect his teeth to the shiny, wet tip, and groans again. “Fuck,” he whines, mouthing at it again as he fists himself quicker, “daddy.”
At this point, he’s barely holding himself up, knees gone weak under himself. He’s craning his neck to keep his lips latched around the tip of the toy, the fingers of one hand just managing to keep himself steady as he jerks off.
It’s too good. It’s too much for him, his mouth, his hands.
His small mouth, his small hands. They fit perfectly around it.
The dildo slaps against Felix’s cheek when he pulls off, and tenses up, falling against the door with a loud thud as he comes, a breathless shudder running through his entire body, flooding his system with nothing but a burst of pleasure.
Felix keeps his eyes shut, catching his breath. His ears are ringing. There’s come on his knuckles, his thigh, on the floor. Hot and sticky and pure proof of what he’s just done.
He’s sick.
(He wants to do it again.)
Outside, footsteps come to rest by his door. “Kid?” Chan’s voice comes muffled, but his concern is apparent. “You okay? I heard something fall.”
“M’fine!” Felix calls, hoping Chan can’t hear how hoarse his voice is. “I just dropped something.”
“Okay. Careful, alright?”
“Yeah.” Felix rubs at his eyes, and resists the urge to sob. It’s okay. He’s okay.
Everything is just fine.
There aren’t many places to swim at located around his campus. There’s a pool, but it’s not as nice as the one that he’d grown up going to, the aquatic centre about thirty minutes’ drive from from his house. He’d learnt to swim there, done his first cannonball there, gotten his first swimming medal there.
Even though he’d never pursued it seriously the way his dad had always hoped he would, he still enjoys it enough to genuinely crave the feeling of speeding through clear waters every now and then.
Summer continues to strangle their town in its blazing grasp, unwilling to allow even a moment of respite during the day. It’s no surprise that within the second week of being home Felix is draping himself over the couch and whining for Chan to bring him along to the pool, tired of his stuffy room and the hot air rumbling through the rest of the house each afternoon.
“Bring Your Kid To Work Day was two months ago,” Chan tells him, pinching him on the hip as he passes. “You’re that bored, huh?”
“A bit,” Felix says, looking up at him from his upside-down perch. “Just a little.”
“Maybe you should go somewhere nice with your friends instead.” Chan’s voice is light, but there’s something that suggests that he wouldn’t be entirely happy if Felix had chosen that over him. “I’m sure someone’s around.”
Felix flips over, and lands on the carpet with a grunt. “I don’t wanna go somewhere nice with my friends,” he says, pouting. “I wanna go to the pool with you.”
Chan shoots him a smile that makes Felix feel exorbitantly warm to earn, and says, “Get your things, then.”
“Yes!” Felix whoops. “Gimme five.”
As Felix bounces off to his room, he hears his dad call, “You know you could’ve just asked me to drop you off on Sunday!”
No, Felix knows, he couldn’t have. Chan wouldn’t have been there.
They drive over in a haze of warmth, the familiar shudder of the old Mazda coming to life beneath Felix’s feet, his phone plugged in to blast the one Spotify playlist he’s very carefully curated for car rides with his dad. It’s all the songs both of them like. All the songs Felix knows will get his dad singing along.
He’s got an amazing voice, always has. Felix has missed hearing it like this.
The outdoor pool isn’t too crowded today. There are a couple of families, someone sprinting down the far end, and someone lounging under one of the tents on the left hand side.
Felix itches to shuck his shoes off and jump in, already imagining the cool water against his skin. He turns to glance at his dad, who puts his hand up in a wave, sunglasses perched low on his nose. “I’ll be indoors. You’ll be okay out here on your own, yeah?”
“Yeah, dad.” Felix leaps forward to steal his sunglasses from him before Chan can even blink, slipping them on and shooting him a grin. “Thanks.”
“Don’t drop those,” Chan warns, not at all stern from the way his mouth is twitching.
Felix snickers, and tucks them into his pocket for safekeeping. “I won’t,” he says, “just come get them when you’re done.”
Chan laughs. “Sure, kid.”
The summer heat melts away the moment Felix slips one foot into the pool, and then the other, and then does a graceful dive under the surface. Water hits his skin like a lightning strike, shocking him awake as he remains still for a moment, before pushing himself back up for some air.
He sucks a breath in and flicks his hair back off his forehead like a puppy shaking water out of its fur. It’s more refreshing than Felix had imagined.
Felix inhales again and goes under.
Time passes differently underwater. Slower. Fuzzier, as if the drag of water catches on a string of loose seconds and tugs at it until it comes to a stop. In the same way, he floats aimlessly under the glare of the sun, face tipped up and then falling back again and again.
Three months back home. Just him and his dad. It’s only been a week and a half, but it already feels like he’s been home forever. Like he’d never left.
Time passes, slow and unrushed.
When he comes up again, he discovers his father sitting on the edge closest to him, one arm slung over the knee of the leg that’s propped up and out of the pool. He’s still dressed, not wet at all besides the foot that’s gently kicking back and forth beneath the water. The way his eyes track Felix suggest that he’s just been watching him swim for a while.
For some reason, the idea makes Felix’s skin prickle with heat. “Hi,” he says, swimming up to Chan and leaning his weight against the wall as he peers up at him. “Are you gonna come in?”
Chan makes a non-committal sound. “Maybe.”
“C’mon,” Felix says, reaching out to clasp Chan’s wrist. “Let’s race before we go home. Please?”
“Think you can beat me this time?”
“Dunno,” Felix says, floating away, head tilted in a challenge. “You gotta come here first. Race you for the sunglasses I borrowed.”
His dad sighs, “You mean the sunglasses you stole,” and in one smooth motion, tugs his shirt off and tosses it towards the chair that Felix has left his stuff on. He’s always been paler than Felix, and it shows under the gleam of the sun, the faintest hint of freckling present along his ribs, trailing under his navel and into the hem of his swim shorts.
Felix blinks, and Chan has already swum up next to Felix, shaking the water out of his hair the same way Felix had earlier. There’s something about the way he smiles when Felix sends a playful splash in his direction.
Fondness.
They do a couple of laps. Chan comments on his technique, and Felix lets Chan have his sunglasses back when he wins their little sprint down the length of the pool. Another casual lap, and the sun begins to move west overhead.
Felix eventually floats back to the same spot they’d started in to watch Chan work his way back up the pool and then twist around to return. He’s effortless in a way Felix has never been able to replicate.
“We haven’t done this in a long time.” Chan finally comes up beside Felix, but pushes himself up onto the edge to sit rather than continue to bob in place, groaning as he plops down on the hard tile. “Shit. My back.”
“Thought I told you not to push it.” Felix frowns, and does the same with far more youthful ease. “Careful, old man.”
Chan snorts. “Terrible child,” he murmurs. “You said the same thing the last time we came here.”
“You still remember?”
“’Course.” His dad smiles. “You, me—Yuen came too, remember? But—she’d been reading, I think. On one of the deckchairs.”
He does remember. She’d been reading some random fantasy paperback that Felix doesn’t remember the name of anymore. It’s probably still at home on one of the countless bookshelves along the walls and will probably never be thrown out. His father is too sentimental that way; he’d indulged her book collection the same way he’d indulged Felix’s everything.
But she’d never gotten into the water with them.
“She didn’t really swim that much.” Felix shrugs. “Bet Paul doesn’t swim either.”
The tone he lets the words slip out in doesn’t go unnoticed. “Why d’you have it out for Paul so much?” Chan asks, sounding amused. Like he doesn’t even care. Like it doesn’t matter to him. Felix doesn’t get why it doesn’t matter, because it should.
It should and it does.
“It’s just… it’s unfair,” Felix finally says, teeth gritted like it’s a burden to admit, “it’s unfair that she left you just like that for some rando, Big Four accountant cunt—”
“Language,” Chan says.
“—who probably has ugly teeth and a really thin hair-line and shitty horn-rimmed glasses, or whatever!” Felix inhales like he’s forgotten to breathe, thoughts spilling out in a rush. “The thing is—I just don’t get it, I dunno, I don’t—why? Why would she leave you?”
Chan blinks. “Me?”
“Yeah,” Felix says before he can stop himself. “Who would ever leave you?”
The words hang between them for a long moment.
A soft flush has risen on Chan’s cheeks. “You’re just saying that because I’m your father.”
“Dad. C’mon.” Felix feels incredulous, that his dad doesn’t realise—he really doesn’t? “Look at you. You’re fitter than I am—yeah, you’re old, or whatever—”
“Hey, hey,” Chan interrupts.
“—but you’re h—ot.” Felix’s voice breaks a little when he realises what he’s just said, but he can’t stop, he can’t find it in himself to stop now that he’s started. “Like, your smile’s really nice, and you could probably lift twice your weight, and you’ve got a nice…” Felix’s gaze skirts across his dad’s shirtless chest, his well-kept abs, the broadness of his shoulders, his dad’s curious expression—before he realises that he’s been caught checking him out. Shit. “A nice body. Yeah. Um, from the swimming. I mean, and you’re kind and funny and you take care of people really well—you’ve taken care of me so well—”
He trails off, fidgeting. He’s said too much.
Chan’s just looking at him thoughtfully.
“I just…” Felix murmurs, “I just think you’re perfect. Not that you’re perfect-perfect, no one is, but, like—you’re perfect in the way that you’re imperfect. Just like this. Anyone would be stupid to lose you.”
He’s said too much.
His dad clears his throat, looking a bit pink-faced. “Well, you’re right that I can lift twice my weight,” he offers, very obviously choosing not to address anything else that Felix has said. “I reckon I could still carry you. Probably.”
The strange mood dissipates. Felix’s head whips up and he gawks at Chan. “You didn’t just call me fat. Dad! I said you were fit—I didn’t say I wasn’t fit!”
Chan laughs. “Then race me again,” he says, and he dives off the edge with no warning whatsoever.
Felix barks a laugh, shocked, and follows a moment later.
Later at home under the coolness of the evening sky, his dad comes to greet him goodnight as he’s working on essays at the dining table. “Thank you,” he says softly, one hand on Felix’s arm, “for saying all of that earlier. Love you.”
“Love you too, daddy,” Felix says. His face is near enough to his dad’s arm to nuzzle against it in response. As his dad pulls away, he brushes Felix’s cheek lightly with the back of his knuckle, lets his hand slide up to rest on his nape, and then ruffles his hair before he heads off, humming.
His touch burns for hours.
Felix jerks off twice in bed before he falls into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of swimming pools and a hand on the back of his neck, comforting, safe.
The summer heat flare finally shifts, giving way to less humidity and slightly more sunshine instead. Light streams in through the windows, every little notch and hole between doors and walls, brightly illuminating each room.
Dust, too.
Felix feels around on the highest shelf for the last book that he’s yet to collect, and the stool under his feet just barely wobbles. “Dad!” he yells, giving into dramatics just for the hell of it, “m’gonna fall off!”
“You’ve said that three times now.” But Chan still appears at his elbow, ready to catch him if he does trip. “Last one?”
“Yeah.” Felix hands the book to him, and lets the feather duster switch hands. “It’s so dusty. How long’s it been since you cleaned up here?”
“A while,” his dad says dubiously. “You know I’ve been busy.”
“Mm,” Felix mumbles, voice muffled by the mask that he pulls up over his mouth and nose as he dusts lightly, eyes narrowed to avoid getting any specks in his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
His dad’s always busy. He’s been busy since Felix had been a kid, working multiple jobs to keep them both afloat. It’s gotten better now that Felix is only a couple of years out from finishing his degree and his dad doesn’t have to worry about paying for his schooling. At least he’s only got the coaching job now, even if it’s still a seven-day work week.
And ever since then, it’d always been Felix doing most of the cleaning, most of the laundry. He’d never cook, but he’d bake whenever he’d felt like treating his dad to something nice.
Chan has worked so hard to take care of Felix.
This is the least Felix can do to take care of him in return.
“Careful.” His dad takes hold of his arm when he finally steps down, and smiles at him in thanks, cheeks dimpled. “I’ll put the books back, yeah? Don’t want you to fall.”
Felix doesn’t mind doing any of it, if it means his dad’s got one less thing to worry about.
They continue cleaning, shifting furniture around to get the vacuum in places that’ve only had shadows for company for months on end, airing out drawers and cabinets and wiping down every surface, tossing out things that are taking up too much space.
“Marie Kondo says you can have fifty of something if they make you happy,” Felix insists stoutly at one point, attempting to shove a shoebox back into the cupboard by the shoe rack.
Chan raises an eyebrow. “Does your rock collection from when you were seven really spark joy?”
“Yes!” Felix shuts the doors on it. “It’s on you for not throwing it out before I came home. Now I’ll know if you get rid of it.”
“It’s yours,” Chan says, shaking his head in amusement, “I wouldn’t ever.”
Felix beams.
The hours pass easily. Felix has just put the vacuum cleaner away when he returns to his father sat on the floor, setting old photo albums back into a box. He watches, paused in his movement, as Chan runs a hand over the cover of one of them and then sets it down slowly. He doesn’t open it.
Felix sits down beside him, and looks. There are some albums he knows by heart. The one with the cartoon bananas on the cover that are photos of him from kindergarten, from the early days of primary school. The small plastic one that’s filled with pictures of the time Chan took him to his first theme park at age eleven. The square leather-bound album of photos from their last visit to his father’s side of the family back in Sydney, years and years ago.
There are some he’s only looked at a few times. One of them is the one Chan’s just put back in the box.
“Do I look like her?” Felix asks, catching his attention. “Mum, I mean. My real mum.”
Chan looks very intently at him for a while, his eyes sweeping over Felix’s features. He says, “You have her eyes.” His hand comes up to cup Felix’s cheek. His thumb strokes over his skin, gentler than anything. “Her nose. But—no. You don’t look like her. You look like you. Lee Felix Yongbok.”
“Still hate that she gave me that name.”
Still hate that you didn’t give me yours.
“Do you? I love it, y’know.” Chan’s thumb brushes over Felix’s lip, and then rests on his chin. “My little lucky dragon.”
Felix’s eyes flutter, but he doesn’t let them shut. He wants to see—want to see how his dad looks at him when he says it. When he says what Felix wants to hear. “As long as I’m yours.”
Chan exhales. “Of course,” he murmurs, “you’d never be anyone else’s.”
It sounds like a promise.
Felix smiles. And then, he asks, “Do I look like you?”
Chan’s hand falls back down. “Well,” he says, grinning. “You got my height, I s’pose.”
Felix groans. “I knew it was your fault.”
His dad laughs, bright and sunny and fucking beautiful, and Felix knows that he’s going to hell.
(And he doesn’t even care.)
The blanket drags along his bare foot, a faint tickle.
Felix tugs it back up and contemplates turning the air-conditioning off. Even though it’d been scorching during the day, the night has brought the temperature down low enough that Felix feels chilly to go without something around his shoulders while they watch the movie that Chan had put on after dinner just to pass the time.
It’s an old one. A Ghibli one that Felix has seen far too many times. He watches Chihiro stumble across the flooded floor of the bathhouse, almost dropping the birch bucket in her hands, and he shivers when a cold tendril of air ghosts across his toes.
On the other end of the couch, his dad shifts in place. “Felix,” he calls quietly, “you cold?”
“A little bit.”
Instead of offering to turn the air-conditioning down, Chan moves closer towards the middle of the couch instead, and holds an arm out. “C’mere.”
Felix perks up, and scoots over to meet his dad’s partial embrace, curling up along his side as Chan tugs him close and lets him rest his head against his broad shoulder. Chan has always run hot like a heater. Felix loves it; he recalls an infinite number of nights where he’d clung to Chan just wanting to be warm, and tonight is no different.
“Mm.” Felix tosses his blanket over their knees, and tucks his toes under Chan’s thigh. “Cheers.”
Chan just pets Felix’s hair, gaze fixed on the screen where the once-muddied River Spirit is slowly rising out of the water, clean once again. He doesn’t respond, but there’s a relaxed expression on his face. Less wound-up lines at the corners of his eyes, along his brow.
This close, Felix can feel the soft, steady thump of his heart syncing up with Felix’s own pulse. It’s soothing. A lullaby that loops endlessly. Thump, thump—like the knock of a closed fist against a door. A request for entry into Felix’s own chest.
Thump, thump.
A train speeds across a tranquil sea, the sky reflected in its crystal surface.
Thump, thump.
Chihiro and Haku, falling, falling, falling.
Thump, thump.
The quiet postlude of a recurring melody.
An arm slides under his knees, and another under his shoulders. Felix doesn’t move, too warm and too comfortable and too unwilling to let the song end. It carries in his ears even when he’s lifted up and allowed to let his head roll back against a shoulder. Felix breathes in, and lets one hand curl into the back of his father’s shirt. He smells good, like freshly-cut pears and warm cotton. He smells like home.
He dreams it, perhaps. Floating across the floor, held securely in the arms of the one person he would trust with his life. The only person. He’s rocked along with each step, a soothing motion that keeps him teetering between the edge of almost-asleep and just-awake. The back-and-forth rumble of a train across an ocean railway.
Finally, when his back meets soft sheets and a cold pillow, Felix moves. The warmth threatens to leave him, arms pulling back to tug a blanket up over him instead, and so he reaches out.
Felix, with his small fingers loosely curled into his dad’s shirt, leans up to press a kiss to his mouth and sleepily murmurs, “Goodnight, daddy.”
Thump, thump.
“Goodnight, baby.” A kiss, just as soft as the one he’d given, is pressed to his forehead in return. The light goes out, and the door closes.
Felix drifts.
He’s convinced that it’d been a dream the next morning, because he doesn’t remember anything about last night beyond falling asleep before the movie ended and then ending up in bed.
Maybe his dad had just helped him up and then led him back to his room. Maybe Felix’s mind had just filled in the blanks with things he wanted and not things that really happened. Like being carried. Like the ki—
Felix stumbles down the last stair, and swallows a massive yawn.
It’s too early for this.
The scent of toast wafts through the air. Felix follows his nose into the kitchen where his dad is buttering some rather burnt pieces of bread. “Mornin’,” his dad greets, smiling at him over his shoulder like it’s another normal start to the day, and Felix is just about to relax, convinced that it really had been a dream, when Chan says, “I haven’t had to carry you to bed in years.”
Felix freezes. “You—did?”
“You don’t remember?” Chan makes a quiet, considering noise. “You fell asleep. But, y’know, my back survived. Told you I could still carry you.”
“Haha, yeah,” Felix says, sitting down at the table. There’s a couple of pieces of toast already ready on a plate waiting for some peanut butter, some jam, some Vegemite. “You were right.”
“Yeah,” Chan says. “It was pretty adorable.” A note of something fond tinges his voice, along with something else Felix is too dazed to recognise. “Even gave daddy a goodnight kiss.”
The toaster dings.
Felix takes a bite, chews, and swallows. “Yeah,” he echoes. “Guess I did.”
He thinks about Chan’s mouth. The way his mouth had felt so soft under his own.
He thinks about his dad kissing him back. Kissing him more than goodnight. Letting his tongue slip past Felix’s lips, opening him up. Arms braced above him, knees on either side of his thighs.
The dildo feels just as good this time as it did the first, the second, the third and fourth times. He’s lost count. Felix pushes it inside himself with barely any prep, a soundless moan trapped in the back of his throat when he shoves it in down to the base. It fits snug in his ass, and he grinds down onto it as he works his wrist, feeling the ridge of its rubber head rub up against the spot that makes his dick throb harder than anything else ever has.
Only his dad’s cock could do this for him, he realises hazily. He can’t even think of anyone else he’s ever fucked who could make him feel like this with just a toy. Only daddy.
Daddy kissing him, sucking on his lip, tugging at it with his pretty teeth. Felix strokes himself harder to the thought of it, to the thought of his dad’s mouth on his and then on his jaw, his neck. Sucking a bruise right into his skin. His fingertips press shakily under his jaw, mapping out the perfect place for it to be imprinted with teeth and tongue. Right there.
Right where everyone would see. Right where everyone would know that his dad left it there on him. Claiming him, saying that Felix is his—he’s Chan’s, he’s daddy’s.
I’m his. I’m his. Felix hits a sweet spot and comes, nails digging into the side of his neck as he squeezes his eyes shut and gasps, “Yours, yours, daddy.”
Faintly, a footstep sounds outside his door.
(He’s just hearing things, he tells himself later. It was no one.)
Felix’s summer holiday passes in ebbs and waves. A stuffy bedroom with tangled sheets. The acrid taste of burning pavement. Fresh, cool water against his skin, the back-of-tongue tinge of chlorine. Dust lining his fingertips, dry blades of grass brushing against his palms. Bubble tea. Ice cream. Chicken nuggets. A laptop screen illuminating the darkness late into the night. Riotous laughter. The quietness of time spent with someone loved, who loves you.
Propped up on a couple of textbooks is his laptop, the faces of his friends onscreen as they chat away. Felix leans back in bed, only half-paying attention as he tosses a ping pong ball at the wall, wondering when his dad’s going to get home, aching to be in his presence again. Dinner, and maybe they can play some Super Smash Bros—he could watch that series about those guys going to random haunted houses on YouTube—not quite Ghost Hunters but good enough—
“Felix!”
He startles, and the ping pong ball beans him in the forehead to the amusement of his friends. “Fuck,” he says, rubbing at his face, “shit, what?”
His Discord app is lit up with the laughter of all four of his friends. “You’ve been zoning out like crazy, dude,” Hyunjin says, the aftermath of a cackle caught on the start of his sentence, “you good?”
“He just got hit in the head with a ball, pretty sure he’s not good.”
“It’s made of hollow plastic,” Seungmin says, “you couldn’t concuss a hamster with it if you tried.”
“Hey, Han-ah, what’s your address?”
“Fuck off!”
Felix huffs, and tugs his laptop closer to him. “It’s nothing,” he says, “just… thinking. About stuff.”
“You’re on holiday, what’s there to think about?”
“Nothing.” Felix shrugs, face scrunching up. He doesn’t think he could tell them even if he wanted to. “Just family stuff.”
“Oh. Sorry, bro. Your mom?”
“My dad,” Felix says, heart twinging a little the way it does every time he thinks about him, “I just… don’t really wanna leave him alone again after the summer, y’know?”
“Your dad’s a grown-up. He’ll be fine.” Jeongin pauses his game to look over at them. “Maybe you should hook him up with someone.”
Jisung perks up. “Ooh, any hot neighbours? Asking for a friend. I’m the friend, by the way.”
“No,” Felix says immediately, the word coming out a bit too brusque, and he clears his throat, hoping no one’s noticed. It’s a bit silent on their ends for a second, so he hastily adds, “it’s—it’s too soon, yeah? Like, he’s just getting used to it and all.”
“Oh,” Hyunjin says, nodding like he gets it (he doesn’t, no one does, not really). “Makes sense.”
“Besides.” Felix glances over at his desk where there’s a framed photo of him and his dad from a year ago, right before he’d left for university. His dad’s arm around his shoulders, smile wide and handsome. “I d—he doesn’t need anyone else around. He’s got me.”
Seungmin gives him a weird look. “Alright,” he says, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“Hey,” Jisung adds, “can I still get the hot neighbours’ numbers though?”
Felix snorts. “Yeah, you can have my old babysitter’s number,” he says, “she’s sixty-eight and likes knitting sweaters for her dogs.”
“Oh, hell yeah, GILF time,” Jisung cheers. A chorus of grossed out noises from the rest follows, and Felix goes back to tossing the ping pong ball back at the wall, allowing the sound of their voices to wash over him again.
It’s true, though. What he’d said. Chan doesn’t need anyone else. He has Felix.
And Felix has Chan. He doesn’t need anyone else either.
He says as much to his dad later that night at dinner as they split a massive plate of katsu curry between them, miso soup and some nigiri sushi as accompaniments. They’re talking about how Felix’s friends are getting along—how Hyunjin’s recent art exhibition went, whether Seungmin made it into his mooting finals, if Jeongin’s decided on a major yet, when Jisung’s going to start taking his studies a little more seriously.
“Never,” Felix says, dipping his sushi into the little bowl of soy sauce between them. “You know Jisung. He’s never gonna stop wanting to drop out and do music.”
“Too bad his parents won’t let him,” Chan says, looking a bit bummed. Felix knows he’s the only one who’s ever really encouraged Jisung to go for it. “Also, like, I’ve let you do whatever you wanted since you were a kid and you’ve turned out pretty great. Even if I do think you should’ve listened to your grandmother and become a doctor. Or a lawyer. Or an engineer.”
“That’s why Seungmin is everyone’s parents’ favourite,” Felix mumbles.
Chan laughs, and promises, “You’re still my favourite, okay?”
Felix beams, and takes a bite of his food before continuing to speak, words muffled. “Oh, and Jeongin already has a girlfriend. I can’t believe it. He’s there for like, less than half a year and he meets someone.”
Chan raises an eyebrow. “And you haven’t?”
A flush rises on Felix’s cheeks. No, he’s not going to tell his dad that he hooks up with dudes on the regular. “A couple of times,” he says, looking away. “Nothing really stuck.”
“Well. I’m sure you’ll find someone. A boyfriend,” his dad says, “or a girlfriend. Whoever.”
“Nah,” Felix says, not giving it much thought when he says, “why would I need one anyway? I could just come home.” The words register approximately half a second later, and he glances up at Chan, who’s looking at him curiously. “I mean,” he adds, shooting for casual but failing miserably, “who could take care of me better than you?”
(Who could take care of me better than you?
Why would I want anyone else to take care of me, when there’s you?
I don’t need anyone else.)
A beat.
“Oh,” Chan says softly. “Yeah?”
Felix meets his eyes. “Yeah,” he says.
Chan lets out a soft breath. “Good, then,” he murmurs, and something zips up Felix’s throat and hovers nervously, fluttering on wings sharp enough to slice him open. “good.”
There’s a strange sort of tension between them for the rest of the night, after. It’s not negative tension by any means, but the kind that keeps you in the same room, not wanting to leave the other alone.
Felix lets it ball up in his chest, and settle in place. Yours, he thinks, like if he says it loud enough in his own head that it’ll eventually find its way into his dad’s. Yours.
Chan catches his gaze right before they part for sleep, and says, “G’night, Felix.”
Mine, Felix imagines him saying. Mine.
(My boy. My son. Just mine.)
He blows his friends off for the next few days; he tells them he’s got to catch up on assignments and get his notes together, and instead coaxes his dad into spending time with him. His dad doesn’t think they’re strange requests, doesn’t turn him down even once. He even catches Chan speaking to someone on the phone in Korean one afternoon, telling the other person, “… maybe next week, yeah? My son’s back for the holidays—yeah, I’ll tell him you said hi. Thanks, Changbin. Yeah. Mm. See you then.”
Felix is inordinately pleased by the fact that his dad’s blowing off his own friends too. Just for Felix. Just for his son.
They watch more movies together. Go out to the somewhat deserted shopping mall nearby, sneaking sips of bubble tea and juice cups under their masks. They browse records at the local music store and Felix attempts to get Chan to buy him a ukulele just because he doesn’t have the attention span to learn the guitar.
(Chan gives in, because of course he does.)
It’s a fun few days. It feels like when Felix had been a kid and had spent almost all his time with his dad whenever he was off work on a long weekend.
Naturally, it leads to Felix asking him for something he’d used to ask for back then, too.
His dad drags the old rattan recliner into the bathroom and chucks a couple of towels around it to avoid flooding the floor in case water gets everywhere. “Been a while,” he remarks once Felix has set his head against the edge of the tub and has begun to stare up at him expectantly. “Comfy?”
“Mmhmm,” Felix hums, letting his eyes close as the water turns on. His dad doesn’t aim the shower head straight at him, but lets water pool in his cupped hand and then gently allows it to puddle against Felix’s hair. It’s lukewarm, and then warm, and then just a little warmer and then just hot enough, and Felix makes a little noise to let his dad know that it’s good.
Chan gets his hair soaked before he turns the water off and starts working the shampoo in. “Your hair’s still so soft,” he muses, running the tips of his lathered fingers along his scalp. Felix has always liked getting his hair played with, and so the motion lulls Felix into the most relaxed state he’s been in since coming home.
And then, his dad wiggles his fingers under his ears and Felix jerks, letting out a shriek.
Chan laughs. “You’re still ticklish here?”
“Yeah, ‘course I am,” Felix says, settling back down. “Dad, c’mon.”
“Alright, alright.” Chan smiles indulgently, and switches to rubbing along his temples instead. “D’you like that?”
“Yeah.”
Another gentle massage along the nape of his neck. “And here too?”
“Yes, daddy,” Felix says obediently, and there’s a soft laugh above him.
Soon, he’s getting the shampoo rinsed out of his hair and the excess water wrung out. He’s led out to the living room where his dad starts drying his hair with a towel, careful to avoid his piercings. Felix doesn’t even know if his dad’s aware that his last piercing was long enough ago to not need this amount of caution, but it makes him feel warm regardless.
(That, and the fact that Felix is sitting right between his dad’s knees.)
“There we go,” Chan murmurs, speaking just to fill the silence, “all dry. You were so good.”
“I’d hope so,” Felix says, and their eyes meet. Idly, Felix lets his knuckles brush along his dad’s calf. “Thank you.”
“Yeah.” His dad lets his hands fall, and one of them comes to rest on Felix’s shoulder for far longer than it needs to. “Anytime, baby.”
It feels so much like flirting that Felix feels electrocuted with the knowledge of it.
But he doesn’t want to stop. There’s a thrill that comes with seeing Chan respond to these things. These little touches and smiles and suggestive words.
Even though he’s his dad. Especially since he’s his dad.
Later that night, they’re in their set places in the living room. Felix curled up on one end of the couch, his favourite crocheted blanket draped over his lap. His dad on the other end, a glass of water perched on his knee as he alternates between looking at the screen and looking at Felix every time Felix says something.
To be fair, neither of them are really paying attention to the show that’s playing. Felix doesn’t even know what show it is, at this point.
“Gonna miss this,” Chan says suddenly.
“Yeah.” Felix rubs at the screen of his phone. “Me too.”
“It’s already July.” There’s a turn to Chan’s mouth that suggests he’s less than happy about the revelation. “I can’t believe you’re going back to school in less than a month.”
“That’s fake,” Felix immediately says, and his dad snorts. “Time is fake.”
“Sure is. Feels like you’ve just gotten here.” A long pause passes between them, and then Chan asks, voice completely even, “Will you be taking it back with you?”
Felix glances up at him. “Taking what?”
“What you found in your mother’s drawer,” his dad says.
His heart stops. The last of his confusion dies in his throat, withering away with any sort of pleasure he’d gotten out of the last couple of hours. His dad is looking at him neutrally, like he’s waiting to see how Felix will react—but Felix doesn’t, he doesn’t know, he’s—
How long has his dad known?
He knew, and has been waiting for Felix to—he doesn’t know what. Say something? Do something?
“She’s not my mother,” Felix finally says, voice a wisp.
Chan doesn’t reply.
The tension scales. Felix swallows. Doesn’t look away from Chan. Says, words sticking to the roof of his mouth, “I might. If I miss you too much.”
His dad’s fingers curl into the arm of the sofa. “And how often have you missed me? While you’ve been here?”
Felix takes a breath. Licks his lips, and answers, “Every night since I found it.”
There’s no response from his dad beyond the tightening of his mouth, and the loosening of his hand. Felix feels like he’s waiting for a pin to drop, for something to set off and explode this fragile silence enveloping the room. He can’t blink. He can’t do anything but stare.
Then, Chan gets up slowly from his seat, like a weight’s bearing down on his shoulders, adding gravity to each step. Without looking back at Felix, he walks in the direction of the stairs and then stops.
He’s gone too far, Felix thinks, maybe this is it. His dad was just waiting for him to admit it so that he can throw Felix out. To do—something. His stomach curdles, and he draws back into himself. Waits for his dad’s lip to curl in disgust, for his eyes to harden.
But, Chan turns, holds a hand out and says, softly, “C’mere, baby.”
The feeling in his stomach flattens. The roar of his pulse is loud in his ears.
As if he’s in a dream, much like the night he’d fallen asleep right here, Felix gets up and floats over, one small step at a time.
And his dad waits, patient as ever.
Felix takes his hand. Takes stock of his face. The little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. The lines in his lip. The open understanding in his eyes. Felix wonders how much of Chan he truly shares. Wonders whether Chan’s thinking about it too.
“Chris,” Felix whispers. The name feels foreign on his tongue. He doesn’t want to say it again. He’s not Chan. He’s not Chris. He’s dad. “Daddy.”
“Yeah, Felix.” Chan reaches up and strokes his cheek. “Daddy’s gonna take care of you. But I wanna see how much you missed me, first.”
They end up in Felix’s room. It’s a strange, sick thrill that rushes through Felix rather than anything else at the thought of doing this in his bedroom with the outdated calendar and the plushes his dad bought him as a child and all his stupid teenage things. The posters on the wall seem to mock him, and Felix wishes he’d had the foresight to turn them backwards.
Chan settles in Felix’s chair and crosses his ankle over his knee. This time, Felix allows himself to believe the look in his eyes is hungry and not purely fascinated. The way his eyes keep slipping towards Felix’s fingers as he works his shirt and shorts off, the tint of cherry-red across his cheeks that matches the flush across Felix’s everywhere when he crawls onto the bed, bare as the day he came into this world.
He’s watching, Felix repeats to himself as he slicks himself up, he’s watching Felix touch himself, it’s not just Felix anymore—
“You look so good, Felix,” his dad says, the words slurring slightly. Felix looks to his side as he works a third finger into himself, mouth hanging open when he sees the way his dad’s pressing the heel of his palm to the crotch of his sweatpants, like just seeing his son like this is going to make him come.
Seeing Felix like this.
Felix has never felt so in power before. It’s heady and delicious and Felix craves more of it, and it makes him keep his eyes on Chan as he grips the dildo tight in one hand and edges it into himself, his other arm barely able to hold himself up with how good he feels fucking himself on it. The entire time, his dad’s gaze remains. Eyes dark, cheeks flushed. He’s pretty like this, Felix thinks, he’s always been pretty, but like this, aroused and flustered?
“Daddy,” Felix says, groaning when he starts thrusting the dildo in quicker, shallower. He doesn’t want to come without Chan touching him, not like this, but he can’t help it, he’s so close and it feels too good—
He’s not prepared for his dad to get out of his chair, or come closer. He’s far less prepared for his dad to cover his hand with his own and push the dildo in deep in one swift stroke, making his knees wobble, before pulling it out completely. Felix whines at the loss, clenching hard around nothing, but a loud, shaky moan tears itself out of his throat when he feels Chan’s fingers feel at him instead, probing and curious.
And then—
—Felix’s brain shuts down. It’s not fingers anymore. It’s not the toy.
It’s the overwhelming hot press of the head of his dad’s cock at his hole.
A sob hitches in his chest. It’s better. It’s so much better. He’s thicker, hotter, real. Felix feels split open on him. His voice breaks when he repeats, “Daddy,” unable to say anything else. His dad’s cock throbs inside him, sating the hunger that’s been gnawing at the pit of his stomach for longer than he’s ever been aware of it.
“Felix, baby.” The words swim in his head, a fantasy becoming memory. “Oh.”
There’s an erratic twinge in his chest. Abruptly all Felix wants is to see the way Chan is reacting to finally getting to touch him, to finally being inside him, and he shifts and wriggles around and pushes and pulls at Chan until he’s flat on his back instead of on his knees.
His dad’s still got his shirt on, but it’s hitched up around his stomach. His thighs and hips are bare, gorgeous, and Felix clutches at him, tugs him back in with a whine until his dick is rubbing at his rim again. He feels it like every single one of his nerves has lit up. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to survive if Chan fucks him the way he’s been dreaming about.
He wants it so badly he can’t breathe.
Chan hikes Felix’s knees up to his chest, leaves fingerprints on his waist, the underside of his knees. Looks at Felix like he can’t believe he’s real. Every little thrust makes Chan’s eyes flutter like he’s the one being fucked, little sounds escaping his mouth like he can’t help it. He’s so sensitive, Felix marvels. He never knew. He never would’ve known.
He knows now. He’s never going to forget it.
His dad looks at Felix like he can’t believe he’s real. Touches him the same way. Strokes his thumbs over Felix’s cheekbones, pinches the nubs of his nipples and sweeps his palms down across the span of Felix’s body, cradles his balls in his hand and rubs the pads of his fingers along where his cock is joined with Felix’s hole. Felix wants to cry at how good it feels—how good all of it feels. His dad’s firm, familiar hands in the most unfamiliar of places. Fitting over him, around him, just right.
It feels just right because of who he is. It couldn’t be anyone else.
“Baby,” Chan says, over and over. “Baby, I can’t believe—you’re so beautiful. You turned out so beautiful.”
Felix drags his nails up his dad’s back. Prays they leave marks. “You made me,” he says, and his dad lets out a wrecked noise against Felix’s throat, wet and desperate.
“I made you perfect,” Chan whispers. “Your eyes. Your little freckles, your mouth.”
Felix opens up, and Chan takes.
His mouth is just as soft as Felix thought it’d be. Plush and hot and slick with spit, kissing him deep, as deep as his cock can grind into Felix. His dad sucks at his tongue, swallows his moans, bites at his lip. Just like he knew he would.
They pull apart. “Tell me,” Felix begs. He doesn’t even know what he’s begging for. “Please. Please, please.”
“Love your mouth. Love your freckles.” His dad kisses each one sweetly until Felix feels breathless. “Love you. I’m so sorry. I love you.”
Felix clutches tight at him, eyes squeezed shut. If he opens them right now he might not come back to himself again. Hiccups, "Feels good." Feels better that it’s real.
It’s real.
Chan gets him on his knees again, draping himself over him until he’s covering Felix’s entire body, making him feel small, safe. He fucks Felix until all Felix hears is the obscene slap of skin against skin, the mixing of their breaths, their moans. His dad kisses his neck and groans against him, pushes in deep and comes.
He’s so close, so close. Felix pleads, something unintelligible and rushed. In English, in Korean, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. His dad flips Felix back over and pushes his fingers into him, into the mess of his own come, and bends down to lick at Felix’s cock like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted on his tongue.
Felix sobs, and finally, he comes too.
Falling, falling, falling—
—but warm arms catch him and lower him back down. Felix is exhausted and sticky, unable to lift his head long enough to stay awake. He gets glimpses and flashes of his dad running a wet towel over his skin, pushing his hair back off his face, tugging a pair of shorts and one of his own shirts onto him. Taking good care of him the way he always does, the way Felix trusts he always will.
His dad’s about to leave when Felix’s hand shoots out to grab his sleeve. “Don’t go,” Felix whispers, pleads, begs. “Dad. Stay.”
Chan looks at him for a long, long moment, and then says, “Okay.”
Felix feels like he’s just asked for more than he knows, but at this point of time, he doesn’t care. All he cares about is the way his dad tucks his face against Felix’s hair and holds him close, whispering, “Sleep.”
The morning sun bleeds through the curtains.
They’re unfamiliar ones. Felix blinks up at them for a long, confused moment before realising he’s tucked into blankets that also aren’t his.
He’s in his father’s bedroom. In his father’s bed.
Felix stretches lazily and kicks his limbs across the rest of the bed. Chan isn’t there, but there’s a sound coming from downstairs that suggests he’s probably in the kitchen.
He slips out of bed and stretches again. Chan’s oversized sleep shirt falls around his hips. He drags the collar of it up to his nose and takes a breath. It smells like him.
Padding down the steps and into the kitchen, he discovers his dad standing at the stove, poking at some eggs in a pan with a little spatula. Felix immediately goes over to him, curls up along his side and says, “You should call off work today.”
His dad turns to kiss his hair. “Good morning to you too,” he says. “Toast?”
“Yeah. Please,” Felix murmurs against his shoulder, “thank you.”
“Anything for you,” his dad says, and he sounds like he means it.
The eggs are done just as the last of the toast crisps. Felix daubs an excessive amount of Vegemite onto all the slices and pours his dad a glass of orange juice as they both come to sit at the table.
They eat in the quiet of the morning for a little while.
Then, Felix says, “This is probably really fucked up, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” Chan says simply. “It’s pretty fucked up.” His hands are shaking only minutely as he sticks his fork into his eggs. “But you can still forget this ever happened. You’ve got your friends to go back to. Your stepmum, even.”
“And you can’t?” Felix shoots back.
“I don’t have anyone else left, Felix.” Chan gives him a smile. It says more than it needs to. “It’s just you.”
It’s true. Felix’s stomach sinks. His dad doesn’t see his family often, having moved a distance away once he got married the first time around. He’s divorced now. Felix’s grandparents have all passed on.
He’s all Chan’s got. His son. Him, Felix.
And Chan has always deserved better.
He deserves Felix. Because Felix isn’t ever going to leave him.
Felix hops down from his chair, rounds the table in a few unsteady steps and throws himself into Chan’s lap. His tears drip wetly into the shoulder of Chan’s shirt. “I don’t wanna forget. I love you, dad,” Felix whispers. It’s a promise. “I don’t wanna forget.”
“Then we’re not gonna forget. We’re not gonna forget.” Chan clutches at him, fingers tight in the back of Felix’s shirt, holding onto him like it’s a promise, too. “I love you too, Felix.”
Felix pulls back to search his eyes, hands clutching at his face. Their noses brush together. Then, Felix kisses his father, who licks the tears off his lips and doesn’t let go.
The door to the boot slams shut.
Felix hauls his suitcase up onto the curb, and rushes back to the passenger side window that’s been cranked down. “Bye,” he says, breathless with cheer at finally being back on campus, but also unwillingness to let the car drive off just yet. “You’ll call me later when you reach back home?”
“’Course, kid.” Chan reaches out to pet his cheek, a casual gesture. “I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Go on, then.” Chan slips his sunglasses back on, smiling. “Don’t let your friends wait on you.”
Felix walks backwards, and waves.
Chan lifts a hand in farewell, and smiles at Felix’s friends too, who’ve been waiting on Felix before returning to their dorms. They wave back, a little shy.
The window rolls up, and Felix watches the Mazda slowly amble on out and down the street again until it disappears into the mass of traffic on the main road.
“Your dad looks so young,” Seungmin, who’s seeing Chan in person for the first time only today, says with surprise. “You sure you’re not adopted?”
Hyunjin thwacks Felix in the arm with his duffel. “Ask your dad what skincare he uses.”
“Dude,” Jisung says, ignoring the other two, “can’t believe your dad loves you enough to drive you all the way here. Mine wouldn’t even pay for a train ticket.”
It’s funny. Everything’s still the same, but everything’s different now, too.
One thing stays the same. It’s the one thing that’s never really changed.
“Yeah. Guess he does,” Felix says, thinking about the burn of a kiss his dad had given him just moments before they’d left the house. “He loves me a lot.”