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Felix is lost.
Darkness closes in around him, but the streetlights he knows should be safe burn his eyes. Everything burns, everything aches—there’s too much to distinguish between types anymore. Pain is pain and it is everywhere.
Oh. He knows this door. Felix doesn’t know how he found it, but this door is where he needs to be. He tries to knock, but he can’t put enough force behind his movements, so his knuckles don’t produce any sound. Felix slaps the door instead, over and over, clumsy but certain that if he can make enough noise, someone will come.
This door isn’t home, but it is.
Between one slap and the next, there’s no longer any surface to hit. His hand swings through open air.
Felix opens his eyes. There’s a rusty film over his vision, but he makes out a flash of blue, the blurry shape of something that could pass for a hand.
Someone says his name. He knows that voice. Felix almost misses it with all the drumming in his ears, but when he hears Chan’s voice, he knows that everything will be okay.
It’s safe to let go. Chan would never let him fall.
Felix sits in a huge vat of soup. It should be too hot to sit comfortably in, but he doesn’t register any pain. The warmth is comforting rather than overpowering, like relaxing in a hot tub after a long swim.
He can’t identify the flavor, but Felix knows he needs to keep drinking the broth, so he does, though he only has a straw to eat it with. He’d prefer a spoon, but he’s too hungry to be picky. At least the straw is big. He’s never been this hungry, before.
After a while, Felix feels the gentle pressure of a hand on his hair. Where did it come from? He leans into it. Felix likes to be pet, especially when he’s warm and sleepy like this. His stomach remains a bottomless pit. Will he ever feel full?
Time passes oddly. Felix can’t tell if it’s minutes or hours of drinking before he registers his hunger slowly ebbing away. Awareness dawns as slowly as the hunger drains, his lashes fluttering against the sting of waking in the midst of an intense dream.
Felix is not in a vat of soup at all. He’s on a bed. The sheets below him are cotton, not silk, so he must be in Chan’s room.
Though he’s no longer dreaming, the sucking sensation persists, like he’s stubbornly extracting the last tapioca ball from his boba. Felix’s hand fumbles in the direction of his own mouth. Is that Chan’s wrist?
Memories of what happened before he passed out come flooding back as his brain comes back online. Felix chokes on the blood filling his mouth and shoves Chan’s arm away, panicked by how cold and clammy his skin is. There’s no resistance, no signs of tension in Chan’s body, no sound in response to Felix’s violent movements. Though he’s fighting powerful waves of exhaustion, Felix struggles into a sitting position, scrubbing the sticky sleep from his eyes as he studies Chan’s slumped form.
“Chan-hyung?” He’s so pale, non-responsive and slumped halfway on the bed, half-sitting in his desk chair. “Chris? Chris,” Felix calls, shaking Chan’s shoulder. “Fuck, oh my god, hyung please, please wake up—”
Listening intently for any signs of life from Chan, Felix registers a familiar, tinny voice coming from somewhere to his left. Was Chan on the phone with Minho? When Felix focuses, he hears Minho calling his name, half-exasperated and half-worried.
Felix pats down the blanket until he finds Chan’s phone and scoops it up, holding it to his ear while he feels for Chan’s pulse.
“Hyung,” he sobs, “Minho-hyung, I killed him!”
“Yongbok? Fuck, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Didn’t you hear?! I said—”
“I heard you, Yongbokkie. You didn’t kill anyone. Breathe for me, slowly, in and out, that’s right, there you go.”
Felix instinctively does as he’s told, used to following Minho’s lead during practice. When he’s a little calmer, he feels for Chan’s pulse again. His heart is still beating. It’s sluggish, but it’s beating. Felix squeezes his eyes shut for a moment as tears of relief threaten to overflow.
“Yongbok-ah? Still there?”
He nods, then remembers Minho can’t see him. “I’m here,” Felix says, struggling with clear pronunciation as fatigue threatens to overwhelm him. “He’s not dead. Passed out, I think. Heart’s okay. Beating. He’s cold, though, and too pale. How do I fix it?”
“Not much you can do until he wakes up,” Minho admits, sounding exhausted himself. “Lay him out somewhere, though. I know he didn’t lay down when I told him to.” The more he talks, the more normal Minho sounds, which is more comforting than any soft words might be.
Felix puts Minho on speaker and gets up, surprised by how easy it is to haul Chan out of the desk chair and onto the bed. “Put a blanket on him when you’re done, make sure he’s warm,” Minho says. It’s stupid to need such simple instructions spelled out for him, but Felix is too tired and scared to be ashamed of that right now. There are too many other things to feel guilty over.
“Done,” he reports.
Minho moves on to him, next. “How do you feel? Do you have the energy to stand for a while?”
“Yeah,” Felix says. He’s not sure how long, but he’ll make it work. Whatever he needs to do. “Why am I so tired, though?”
There’s a pregnant pause. “Do you remember anything?”
“I know I’m… like you,” Felix says, embarrassed that he can’t just make himself say the word. It’s not like he’s afraid of vampires. He’s looked up to Minho pretty much since the day they met.
True to form, Minho doesn’t seem offended. “You’re body’s changing. You’re gonna crash hard real soon. Don’t worry; I’ll come by in the morning to help. No point coming any sooner, you’ll pass out again before I can get over there.”
“Okay.” Listening to Minho talk makes Felix relax in increments, though that might be the exhaustion taking its course. He avoids thinking about anything but the present moment. Minho is right—if he’s going to crash soon, everything else can wait until he wakes up again. “What am I standing for?”
“Food. Channie-hyung’s gonna need it when he wakes up, and he’ll be up before you are. If you get hungry again in your sleep, you’re gonna need him, so it’s important he refuels pretty fast.”
There’s no way in hell Felix is feeding on Chan again, but Chan will wake up hungry either way, so Minho’s advice is still sound. He should make something. “Good idea,” he says, wanting to be reassuring. “Thanks. For all of it. I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” Minho asks softly. “Not your fault some asshole attacked you on the street.”
Felix closes his eyes. He’s been trying not to think about that.
“Stop apologizing for stuff you didn’t do. I’ll see you when you wake up, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
After they hang up, Felix plugs Chan’s phone in and sets it on the nightstand. Though he can’t remember what’s in the kitchen, he’s relieved to find leftover fish from the night before waiting in the fridge. Felix throws it together with some rice and kimchi in a bowl for Chan and sets it on the top shelf.
Though his limbs are heavy, Felix makes sure to write a post-it so Chan will know it’s for him:
Eat Me :)
Sorry it’s not much!
- Lix
What he really wishes he could do is cook, but Felix’s eyelids are already much too heavy to operate a burner. He barely has the energy to write another note for the counter (Food in the fridge!! <3 <3 <3 - Lix) before he heads back to his own room, terrified that if he crawls back into Chan’s bed for comfort, he’ll end up sucking on his arm like it’s a juice box in his sleep again.
Felix tosses and turns all night, almost as frustrated by his anxiety as he is about being a vampire in the first place. He’s not even going to be that different. Minho is normal: he walks around during the day, he has a long-term relationship, he runs a dance crew. He makes delicious food and tries to figure out how to make his cats into vampires in his downtime.
He’s only abnormal in all the ways that make someone normal and human.
It’s not like Minho goes around thinking of everyone as a walking sack of meat. You can buy blood at any pharmacy these days, though you have to go to a blood bank for the good stuff. Felix will be stronger and faster, better able to pick up choreography, better equipped for his classes. He won’t live forever, but he’ll never get sick, and he’ll age with incredible grace and agility. Sure, he’ll have to go on the international registry and change his paperwork over, but he was already recorded by two national governments. Every change to his life will be relatively minor, all things considered.
Vampirism has never freaked him out when it comes to Minho or Yeonjun. Why does Felix feel so sick at the thought of being one himself?
“Aaaaaaagh,” Felix groans, throwing the pillow over his face at the last second.
Someone knocks on the bedroom door. “Having fun?”
“No!” He shouts, taking the pillow off his face so that Minho will hear him before shoving it down again.
Minho takes that as permission to open the door.
The guest room is on the wrong side of the house to see the sunrise, but when Felix emerges from his pillow, he catches Minho checking the curtains before joining Felix on the bed.
“Here, this first.” He produces a necklace from his pocket: a round locket with an emblem of the sun carved into it. It looks just like Minho’s, warm, golden, and utterly innocuous unless you’re playing really close attention.
Minho unclasps it and sets it in his palm before holding it out. “Can you control your fangs yet?”
“Haven’t tried.” Felix tries to make them come out, frowning. “How does it work?”
“It’ll come naturally, I think it’s too soon.” Minho sighs. “Sorry, Yongboks. I need a little blood for this.”
Felix winces. “Is that the only thing that breaks skin?”
“One of the few,” Minho says with a smile. “Think of it as payback for all the bites you gave me.”
“It’s not like they hurt!” Felix whines as he holds out his hand. He doesn’t mind Minho needing to bite him, though the reminder of just how different his body has become is unpleasant. It’s not that vampires are bad. It’s just that he didn’t want to be one, and now he is, and no one even asked.
At least vampires still get bruises. Felix isn’t sure he’d know himself if he didn’t have a few bruises at all times, between dance and sparring.
He barely feels the prick of pain as Minho’s fang pierces his ring finger. His blood seems lighter than it should be when it drips into the locket, too pink, like a scene from a cartoon. As soon as he’s got enough, Minho snaps the locket shut again, checking to make sure it’s secure and whispering something to it. A command word, probably.
“Jisungie spent all night on this,” Minho says as he slides a chain through the loop. “Here, come here.” Minho clasps the chain tightly enough around his neck that it won’t annoy Felix by swinging, but not so tight it chokes him or feels restrictive. “He’ll have to tell you the commands when you see him next, since no one except you two needs to know. Now that it’s on, it won’t come off unless you tell it to, and it won’t unclasp. If you can help it, don’t take it off, but if you have to, don’t go outside without it, ‘kay?” Minho pats Felix’s shoulder as he straightens up and touches his throat. “Jisung’s gotten really good at daywalking charms, but it only works as long as you wear it.”
“I’ll remember.” Felix doesn’t know why anyone in their right mind would take it off. What if a brief ray of sun touched you on accident and your entire arm burned away? It’s not worth the risk.
“You’d better.” Minho’s stern expression softens as he studies Felix properly. He must have been worried, to rush over here so fast. The sun’s barely risen. “Are you hungry?”
“A little,” Felix admits. “Is that weird?” He’s a bit embarrassed to be hungry again so soon. Almost killing Chan should’ve been enough to last him more than a few hours. The fact that it wasn’t seems like an injustice.
“No, it’s good. It’s what I expected.” Minho climbs over the covers to sit next to Felix against the headboard, but he doesn’t say anything immediately, letting the silence hang between them.
“Do you want to tell me what happened last night?”
It’s kind of essential that he tell someone, but Felix still appreciates the way Minho asks, like he doesn’t have to do anything unless he wants to. He’s been in survival mode for so many hours that thinking of what happened feels like poking at an old, infected wound.
“I was coming back from the convenience store—shit, I didn’t even bring back the snacks, I probably dropped them. I cut through the same alley every time, but this time someone stopped me?” Felix squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. Just a hand on my arm and then it was…” He shakes his head. “I passed out. And I must have woken up, but I only remember coming to the door, seeing Chan. That’s it.”
There’s another long pause, but it’s not uncomfortable. Felix wants to say so much more, but the thought of opening his mouth, of trying to go back and remember in more explicit detail, all makes his stomach turn.
“Did you see them? Anything about them?” Minho asks.
“No. I don’t think so. It was messy and fast.” The thing he doesn’t say—the thing Minho knows well enough on his own—is that once the vampire attacked, the venom made Felix feel too good to pay attention to anything else.
He tosses the blanket off so he can rest his head between his knees. Minho pats his back a bit awkwardly. Felix is proud of him for trying.
“No offense, but is there any way to un-turn into a vampire?” Felix asks, shaky and quiet.
The silence after he asks isn’t promising. “Maybe,” Minho admits. “Don’t register yet. I’ll look into it.”
“But if I don’t register, no one’s going to look for the person that bit me. What if they do it again?”
“Jisungie and I will figure it out faster than they would anyway. Just lay low and stay put. Chan-hyung will take care of you.”
“No!” Felix is vehement as he turns to properly face Minho. “I can’t, what if I hurt him again? Maybe you should lock me in until you get back. Hannie can do it, right?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Yongbok.” Minho pats his head until he calms down a bit. “You’re not gonna get that hungry again. You were dying.” Felix’s annoyance wanes at the bleak look on Minho’s face. “You were dying, and I was stuck on the phone.”
No one Felix knows would begrudge him wallowing in self-pity for a bit, but it dawns on him how hard it would be to listen for news while Minho was dying and wonder if there was anything more he could do. He darts forward and traps Minho in a hug; it’s a mark of how much he needed it that Minho hardly hesitates before hugging him back.
“Sorry I scared you,” Felix murmurs, forcing himself not to cry. He can do that later. Preferably when he’s alone.
“Don’t,” Minho scolds as he continues to let Felix cling. “Just… Let Chan-hyung keep helping, or else he’ll be totally miserable.”
“Fine.” Felix pulls away and gives Minho a stern look. “But no one else, okay? Not until I can control it. You have to help me.”
“I’ll put Changbin on guard duty while Hannie and I figure out how to hunt down the person that bit you, but they’ll still blow up your phone.”
Felix would be hurt if they didn’t. “That I can handle.”
Minho shrugs, clearly trying to put his feelings away for the day. “And? What are you going to do?”
“Stay inside where I’m safe and let Chan-hyung help me,” Felix recites dutifully. Minho pats his head again. It’s much less annoying this time.
It takes Felix a while to work up the courage to face Chan again, but a promise is a promise, so after a long wallow in bed and a solid cry in the shower, Felix emerges from the guest room to hunt Chan down.
Not that it’s much of a struggle. Chan has made it easy by working in the living room, headphones in, head very slightly moving to the rhythm of whatever song he’s working on. The cold block of anxiety in Felix’s chest thaws a little under the weight of his fondness.
“Hyung?” he asks, putting a hand on Chan’s shoulder.
Chan jumps and shoves his headset off, head whipping around with an expression like he hasn’t seen Felix in weeks.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Felix says, the anxiety returning with a vengeance.
Chan shakes his head and stands up, work forgotten as he reaches out and rubs Felix’s shoulders. Did he always do that? Sometimes Felix catches habits they’ve slipped into that belonged to the other person originally, especially since Chan let him move in for the summer. It’s such a normal, habitual thought that it actually lifts his spirits a bit.
“Hey, Lix, I’m glad you’re up! Minho told me not to worry, but you know how I am. How you feeling?”
Felix ducks his head, then steels himself so he won’t avoid eye contact. “I’m fine. Listen, I’m so sorry about—about last night. For hurting you.”
“Me?” Chan blinks a few times, like his brian is glitching. “I’m fine, Felix. More than fine, as long as you’re okay. You were the one in danger—after I promised your mum I’d look after you! What am I gonna tell her, hm?”
Of course Chan would find a way to feel responsible for something he had nothing to do with. Felix can’t help the way his lips twitch at the corners, fighting the urge to smile when they’re discussing something so serious.
“You’re not responsible for that, though. I could have killed you.”
“Who told you that?” Chan asks with a scoff. “You might’ve killed a human, but dragons are tougher than that. Can’t you see I’m just fine?” He squeezes Felix’s shoulders and moves his hands out to his sides, body language open and receptive as he shows off the apparent benefits of being a dragon shifter.
Chan does seem surprisingly hale for someone who was passed out cold from blood loss less than a day ago. The patches of blue scales that dot his arms, face, and neck have returned to their usual iridescent glow, no longer lifeless and dull as they’d been the night before, and there’s a healthy level of color to his cheeks. If Felix didn’t know how bad he’d looked last night, he might never have guessed.
But Felix does know. He’d been the cause.
Remembering Minho’s words, Felix does his best not to reject Chan’s assurances entirely. “Since I can’t register yet, Minho said you’d help me feed.” The word is bitter on his tongue, but he can’t avoid it, not forever. “I promise now that I’m conscious for it, I won’t go overboard, but you have total permission to, like… I dunno, knock me out? If I do.”
Chan shakes his head and ruffles Felix’s hair. “Felix. I’m not gonna knock you out. Seriously, don’t worry about it. I’m not kidding when I say dragon blood is strong. You know that I give it to Hannie and other witches sometimes for spells, right? It’s the good stuff.” Chan can’t help a bashful laugh. “I let Minho drink from me one time when he got curious and I think he was full for like, a week? I’m telling you, there’s no way you could drink enough from me to kill me before you got full, even being as new to this as you are. The next full moon’s in, what, three days? Minho said your appetite will chill after that, so don’t worry about it.”
Although Felix is still skeptical, he didn’t actually know that Chan’s blood was capable of all that. His research on dragons after he met Chan was mostly related to their physical features.
“I still don’t like it,” Felix says, mostly for the record. “I don’t like hurting you.”
“Don’t think of it like that. It feels good, and it’ll help me remember to eat more.” Chan gives him a sweet smile, his ears reddening as he realizes what he just said. “Thanks for the food, by the way. I woke up starving.”
“Minho-hyung said you might,” Felix says absently, rolling over Chan’s words again and again in his mind. He hadn’t been thinking about the euphoric effect before, but now that Chan’s brought it up, it’s all he can think about. Vampire venom is a powerful aphrodisiac. Chan might be fine with it, but what if Felix forgets himself and takes advantage? It’s not like he’s been subtle about his appreciation for Chan’s, well, everything. Isn’t that a concern for Chan at all?
It doesn’t seem like it. Still, Felix adds it to his list of things to be anxious about, which is several kilometers long at this point.
When Felix manages to break free from his brief anxiety spiral, Chan has pulled out his phone, his thumbs tapping rapidly across the screen. “Your phone’s probably gonna overheat when you charge it,” he teases, finishing whatever he was sending and sliding the phone back into his pocket. “Just from the groupchat, let alone whatever they were sending you individually.”
“Oh, shit.” With all the commotion, Felix forgot about his phone altogether, maybe for the first time since his parents gave him one. “What do you think? Video call?”
“Probably best?” Chan agrees in that questioning way of his. “I’ll set it up if you want.”
“Please! If you can. I’ll go plug it in while you set up, let it overheat in my room.” As much as Felix is thankful they won’t be coming over to worry him about his appetite and lack of control right now, he misses their friends. There’s nothing more comforting than everyone being together, and without them, he’s been set adrift with only Chan to cling to.
Not exactly a good idea for someone already inclined to bear the weight of the world.
Felix hefts a chair from the dining room into Chan’s room so they can both sit at the desk. He then turns to Chan, who is still setting up the video call.
“Do I look okay?” Felix bites his lip. “I don’t want to worry anyone more than I already have.”
“It’s okay to let people worry, y’know,” Chan says. He must be finished, because he straightens up, wrapping an arm around Felix’s shoulders and give him a squeeze. “What happened was pretty fucked up. You look great! I mean, it’s just, that might not change whether people worry, right?”
“Right.” It’s one thing to know that and another not to internalize the responsibility, shame and regret pooling in his gut. “Yeah.”
He feels Chan’s eyes on his cheek, but Felix closes his eyes, taking a deep breath.
“Ready?” Chan asks.
Felix shrugs. “Yeah, let’s do it, then.”
Chan drops his arm from Felix’s shoulders and starts the call.
Felix sits down and opens his eyes just as a burst of movement appears on screen, everyone repositioning themselves as their cameras jolt to life. Jisung and Minho are shockingly not in bed, though from how they’re holding the phone, Felix would guess Jisung is in Minho’s lap on their couch. Seungmin appears to be walking somewhere, the sun shining behind him as much as he tries to angle the camera to avoid it. Jeongin and Hyunjin are both at their desks at home, and it looks like Changbin and Yeonjun are in the kitchen, with Changbin in front of the laptop as Yeonjun monitors whatever’s on the stove.
He notes all of this through the barrage of noise as everyone speaks at once, meaning there’s no way for him to parse what anyone is saying. Chan holds up his hands and shushes everyone until they calm down.
“Instead of talking all at once, how about age order? Jeongin-ah, you first.”
Everyone laughs, the tension broken so smoothly that Felix can’t help looking at Chan in wonder. It amazes him how easily Chan handles people sometimes. While Felix is an outgoing person on the surface, his anxiety easily overwhelms him in situations with more than one person, and he’s far better with people he already knows. Chan seems born to lead in a way that’s always engaged his curiosity.
Nothing’s as bad as Felix thought it would be. Mostly everyone wants to know that he’s okay, or apologize for blowing up his phone, or make sure that he isn’t lonely. Changbin and Yeonjun give Chan a joint speech about not ignoring Felix for work, but Felix eagerly testifies that Chan has dropped everything to take care of him when he needs it, ignoring how red Chan flushes all the way down to his chest in response. Other than that, it seems everyone feels better just being able to see Felix alive and in motion, which makes him feel like a jerk for waiting this long.
“I’m really sorry I can’t see any of you yet. I just don’t think it’s safe… I don’t feel safe. For other people.” His eyes flick over to Chan’s side-profile, nerves still floating in the back of his mind, before forcing himself to stop thinking about that for now. “I’m okay, though, really. Just want to figure out if there’s anything I can do.” Felix gives the camera his best smile. “Save up your hugs for me. As soon as I can, I’m coming to collect.”
“Eomma knew a little,” Minho says, changing the tone of the conversation to something more somber. “It’s not much, and you’re not gonna like it.”
Felix instinctively reaches for Chan’s hand, squeezing it tightly where no one can see. “I’m ready.”
“Apparently, the Federation still has a law stating that a person turned against their will can kill their sire before the next full moon without facing legal action? Doesn’t say why, but from everything I can find, that’s the most likely bet for reversing the process.” Minho’s frustration is obvious. “This is pretty rare, actually. Most people that are attacked aren’t genetically capable of surviving, that’s why we have the application process in the first place. So no one has to die.”
“Lucky me,” Felix says weakly.
The call goes quiet for a moment. “I’ve heard of that,” Yeonjun says. “When I was applying. There were forms about it, in case you got cold feet later. I really thought they were full of shit.”
Minho’s face is grim. “If I find anything else, I’ll tell you. I’ll keep looking. I know it’s not… Well, I know it wouldn’t be your first choice.”
“No,” Felix whispers, stomach churning. It wouldn’t even be his last.
How can he sentence someone to death? It’s not like Felix died. Sure, his life was irrevocably altered beyond his control, he almost killed his best friend, and he’s going to have to tell his mom and make her cry. But is that really enough to kill someone for?
Chan squeezes his hand a few times.
“You wouldn’t be alone,” Seungmin chimes in, voice soft but very certain. “We’ll help you. If you want to, we’ll help.”
Horror claws through him. “I couldn’t ask that of you,” Felix says, eyes stinging.
“You don’t have to,” Minho says. “You’ve got our help whether you want it or not.”
“We’ll keep looking, though, right?” Hyunjin asks. “We’ll keep trying to find something else. We can all look, since we can’t go see Yongbokkie in person yet.”
“Yeah,” Changbin agrees, sounding relieved. “We can all keep looking.”
“Not us,” Jisung says, turning everyone’s attention his way. “There’s not enough time. If we want to find the guy, we need to start looking now, or we won’t find him by the time the full moon hits. Minho-hyung and I will focus on that while you guys see if there’s anything else we can do. Chan-hyung, did you wash Yongbokkie's clothes from that night?”
“Not yet,” Chan admits. “Thought they might come in handy.”
“I’ll send hyung over to get them, see if whoever got you left traces behind.”
As nauseating as it is, Felix reluctantly nods. “It’s not… I don’t want to kill anyone,” he says, needing to say it, needing to be heard. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Chan promises. “Whatever we need to do, we’ll figure it out.”
Felix is sure that they will. That’s also the part that scares him.
Sleep comes in fits and starts again that night. Felix’s dreams are drenched in blood; whether inspired by guilt or something more primal, he can’t tell, but Felix wakes hungry, sharp fangs poking gently at his lips as he winces.
He stumbles into the bathroom, curious to see what they look like. There are four of them extending from his upper and lower canines, curving outward so that they overlap with his teeth when he shuts his mouth. When his mouth is closed, he kind of looks like he did when he had braces as a kid. Felix’s mouth is just a little too full, awkward until he opens it and reveals the weapons hidden inside.
The hunger pangs aren’t enough to stop him from brushing his teeth and washing up—no way he’d ask Chan to feed him until he’s at least decently presentable—but they’re worse than anything he felt as an average human. By the time he’s ready to seek Chan out, Felix’s whole body aches.
His movements are sluggish as he lets himself into Chan’s bedroom, unsurprised to see him passed out over his keyboard. He probably worked himself right to sleep trying to make up for the time he spent on Felix yesterday.
The weight of his guilt threatens to overwhelm him, but Felix forces himself to shake Chan awake. Usually the sound of the door is enough, but Chan fell asleep with his earbuds in. Felix takes them out and gently sets them on the desk by the monitor before squeezing his shoulders.
He’s so warm. Or maybe Felix is cold. Either way, he shivers as Chan stirs.
“Lix?” Chan’s voice is groggy as he blinks himself awake, looking confused. Felix is startled by just how clearly he can see Chan’s features through the darkness. Another reminder of the ways he’s changing, his humanity slipping further and further from his grasp.
“Hey.” He goes to say more and flushes as he realizes just how hard it is to speak around these new teeth. “I, uh. Sorry to wake you, it’s just—” Felix stops speaking altogether, unable to say I really need to suck your blood and too embarrassed and frazzled by his stupid lisp and stupid hunger to think of any other way to say it.
Thankfully, Chan is the opposite of Felix, not needing any time at all before he’s alert when he wakes. “Hungry?” Chan asks as he stands and stretches.
“Yeah.” Felix stands rooted to the spot while Chan moves to the bed, rolling out his neck and getting comfortable in the middle, legs crossed.
He holds out a hand to Felix. “C’mere.”
It’s always been easy to listen to Chan. He has this way of speaking sometimes, like he’s been sure of the outcome for so long that you have to be certain, too. He doesn’t sound scared at all.
Though Felix can’t control his nerves, that level of faith in his control is staggering enough to drag Felix closer. He takes Chan’s hand and allows him to pull Felix onto the bed.
“How do you want me?”
Felix blinks. “Huh?”
“Like, uh, wrist? Neck? I dunno if it matters to you, but since it doesn’t to me…”
He hasn’t really thought about it. Felix’s eyes fall to the strong column of Chan’s neck. He thinks of what it would be like to lean so close, breathing in Chan’s scent as he bit down on the crook of his neck, fangs piercing the vein. It would feel much too intimate. Even imagining it makes him feel greedy.
“Wrist seems safe,” Felix says, laughing a little at how ridiculous he sounds. “How does Minho-hyung talk around these? Ugh.”
“It’s cute,” Chan coos with a laugh of his own. He holds out his arms. Felix’s stomach cramps. “Right or left?”
Felix chooses the left, remembering that it’s the hand further from a dragon’s heart. Everything he can do to take less blood seems like a good idea, no matter what Chan’s said about dragon blood and its properties.
He traces his thumb over the winding path of blue scales that trails like a river from Chan’s wrist all the way up his inner arm. Felix has always been amazed by how soft they are, how warm.
“I won’t hurt you, right?”
“No, Felix.” Chan pats his head. “Don’t worry so much.”
“‘Kay.” Felix takes a deep breath, swaying forward when he realizes part of why Chan smells so good. He smells like he tastes good, like walking into a barbeque place when you’ve been hungry all day.
It should make Felix sick. Mentally, it sort of does. Physically, all he feels is need.
Felix lifts Chan’s wrist to his mouth. “Sorry,” he murmurs.
He bites down quickly, before he can second guess himself. His fangs scrape carefully over Chan’s skin before finding what he needs, muscles moving on autopilot as he bites through Chan’s skin and releases a flush of venom.
Chan makes a tiny noise at the back of his throat that makes Felix’s cheeks heat.
Once they’ve given Felix access to the vein, the fangs recede and allow the steady flow of blood to enter Felix’s mouth. His eyes slide shut as he drinks, surprised by how much better it feels this time. He knew that the bite would feel good to Chan once the venom entered his system, but Felix had thought it would be just the same as eating regular food for him, satisfying that hunger pang and little more.
Instead, Felix is almost immediately light-headed, the urge to be closer steadily becoming overwhelming. Chan is so, so warm, so alive. Felix knows vampires aren’t really dead, but it feels like the closer he gets to Chan, the more alive Felix will become, and he wants it so badly he aches.
When Chan shifts absently in his grip, Felix can’t help tightening his hold. “Ah,” Chan says quietly, not quite a moan but something close to it. Felix’s whole body throbs. He looks up at Chan and has to shut his eyes almost immediately, the sight of Chan’s half-lidded eyes and damp, parted lips too much to handle when Felix feels this good.
That’s what Chan looks like when he’s inside me, Felix thinks to himself, dizzy with want. It doesn’t make sense, but the inside of his brain is a mushy ball of need and more and yes.
Eventually, the hunger vanishes, replaced by a complacent, sleepy fullness. Felix stops sucking quite so hard at the wounds on Chan’s wrist, lapping at them instead, wanting to leave them as clean as possible. As a dragon, Chan heals quickly anyway; he only has to work over them for a minute or so before the bleeding stops, leaving four pink marks that Felix is sure will be gone by morning.
He traces his thumb over his handiwork, almost unable to believe he’s the source of such a thing. When Felix looks up, Chan’s eyes are closed and he’s smiling—though his expression is a bit more vacant than usual, it doesn’t look like he’s on the verge of passing out. Felix will call that a win.
“You okay?” Felix asks, relieved that his fangs have once again receded enough for him to talk normally. “Channie?”
Chan’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks as he opens them. He’s ridiculously handsome, but Felix can’t quite appreciate it the way he wants to, too busy checking Chan for signs of permanent damage. “Mm, fine. Feel good. D’you feel good?”
Since Chan doesn’t drink or do anything else that might put him in this state, this is the first time Felix has seen Chan out of it from anything other than lack of sleep. He can’t stop himself from smiling. Chan only smiles bigger in response.
“I’m great,” he says, only half a lie. He’d be better if he wasn’t still worried about Chan, but he has ideas on how to fix that. “Now that I’m fed, you hungry?”
“Sooooo hungry,” Chan agrees, giggling at nothing before he’s finished speaking. He’s high, Felix realizes with a jolt. He’s so, so high.
And so, so cute.
Felix gets to his feet and tugs on Chan’s wrists. “Up, Chris. I’ll make you breakfast. How do you feel about pancakes?”
“I love pancakes.” Chan wraps his arms around Felix from behind and walks him into the kitchen, cuddling against his shoulder. “Love your pancakes.”
It’s stupid how happy that makes him. “I’ll have to make them for you more often,” Felix says, rocking toward the table with Chan clinging like a koala to his back. “Chocolate chips?”
“I shouldn’t,” Chan says, utterly forlorn.
Felix deposits him in one of the chairs at the table, reminding himself to retrieve the other one from Chan’s bedroom before he cooks. It’s impossible not to smile at Chan’s pout, so he doesn’t resist, leaning down to squeeze Chan’s shoulders and grin.
“Why not? You fed me well, I’ll feed you well.”
Chan’s whole face brightens at that. “If you want to,” he says, seeming more pleased for Felix to do what he wants than anything else.
“Cute,” Felix coos, forcing himself to retrieve the chair before he does something stupid, like kiss Chan on his cute little mouth. “Sit tight. Tell me what you’re working on?”
The explanation ends up being a bit difficult for Felix to follow, but he doesn’t mind. It’s nice just to hear Chan talk about things he’s excited about. To cook in their kitchen and forget, for just an hour or so, that everything in his life has sort of gone to hell.
Felix spends the rest of the morning clearing his notifications and calling his parents. It’s a considerable amount of heartache to lie to them like this, telling everyone he forgot to charge his phone, but it’s better than scaring them for no reason if they can find a way to reverse the change.
All he can hope is that he’ll know what to tell everyone sooner rather than later. Whatever the outcome.
Minho calls just as Chan stumbles into the living room, rubbing sleep from his eyes after a long nap.
“Good news or bad news first, Yongbokkie?”
The couch dips as Chan sits next to him and slides an arm around his shoulders. Felix puts the phone on speaker.
“Nevermind,” Minho says as Felix opens his mouth to reply. “The good news will only explain the bad news: the vampire we’re looking for didn’t leave any traces behind on your clothes. But! Jisungie has a new idea.”
It feels like there’s a rollercoaster in Felix’s stomach. “What else is there?”
“You!” Jisung’s voice chimes in. “Lix-ah, you’ve still got vampire venom sloshing around inside you, messing with everything.”
Felix wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”
“Yeah, well. I thought of this before, but most of the ways I can get to it are busted. Like, your blood has some, but I can’t really get it out of your blood, so I’d just track you down, not them. But then I was thinking—”
“I was biting him,” Minho says, loudly enough that he drowns out whatever Jisung is saying. Chan buries his face in Felix’s shoulder so he doesn’t interrupt with his giggles.
“—thinking for no reason at all that if you can’t control your fangs, maybe the other vampire’s venom is still doing most of the work. If there’s more of their venom than yours, I can use it. Worth a shot, right?”
“Better than nothing.” Felix bites his lip, a thought occurring to him. “You don’t want me to bite you, right?”
“No,” Minho says sharply into the receiver. Chan actually can’t muffle his laughter this time, head tossed back as he laughs openly. Even Felix cracks a smile. “We’re not that different from snakes. Just milk it out.”
Felix blinks, then cracks up, unable to stop himself. “I’m doing what?”
“Look, it’s only weird if you make it weird. Venom pumps aren’t legal for anyone who isn’t registered to purchase, but I’ll snag one and drop it off. It’s pretty straight-forward. Next time your fangs come out, just stick it in your mouth and turn on the machine for a couple hours.”
“Why is this a thing? Why do you know it’s a thing?”
“When you aren’t feeding from anything living, your venom glands can get blocked up. That’s the official reason for using them. Unofficially? Selling it is a decent way to earn a side income.”
Now that the shock has worn off, the process sounds simple enough. “I didn’t know hyung knew so much about milking himself,” Felix can’t help saying, smiling down at his phone.
“Yongbok-ah, I’m actually an expert manual milker. It’s all about the right touch—”
Chan grabs the phone out of Felix’s hand. “We’re hanging up on you.”
“Channie-hyung!” Minho calls. “You don’t have to be ashamed if you need me to teach you, everyone needs a little help milking at first—” Felix catches the sound of Jisung cackling in the background before Chan abruptly ends the call, tossing the phone back into Felix’s lap like he’s been holding a hot potato.
Felix is grateful, as his own laughter subsides, that Minho hasn’t treated him differently in the wake of the attack. He still makes stupid jokes to push Chan’s buttons, still acts casual even about serious things. It helps keep Felix’s hopeful.
His phone vibrates with a text from Minho. Go as long as you can, just to make sure we have as much venom to work with as possible. And tell Chan-hyung to eat well before so he can feed you after. You’ll be really hungry.
“What’s wrong?” Chan asks. Felix’s face must have dropped.
“Nothing,” Felix says with a sigh. It’s not like he can do anything about it. Chan is determined to feed him, and this last time went alright, which probably only makes him more certain that it’s the right thing to do. No matter how much Felix worries about hurting him, he isn’t going to back down on it. “Just wish there was some other way, I guess. Minho-hyung says I’ll be really hungry after.”
Chan squeezes Felix’s shoulder, ducking his head to catch Felix’s eye. “Don’t worry. I always eat well, don’t I? It’ll be fine.”
If people keep telling him that, the word fine might just cease to mean anything. Felix forces himself to nod. Whether it’s fine or not doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s the only path he can take.
When Chan asks if he’ll be okay a few hours on his own while Chan works, Felix feels much too guilty about all the time Chan’s had to spend on him to say no, but that doesn’t make it true. As soon as Chan is locked in his room working on music, his apartment feels more and more like a cage, and Felix nothing more than a pacing animal on display.
This is the best thing for everyone, but that doesn’t make it easy to bear. Frustrated by his own grumpiness, Felix locks himself in his room and texts Yunho: valo????
There’s no better stress relief than spike rushing with Yunho and whoever else they match up with. Usually, they spend most of their time either heckling their anonymous teammates or rejoicing and praising them; the element of surprise is part of the fun.
It works for a while. Game nights with Yunho are a common enough occurrence that Felix can pretend, for a little while, that he’s still normal. When he’s doing something like this, it feels like nothing’s changed, but the relief doesn’t last.
His mind understands that Minho and Yeonjun behave the same as any other person aside from the thirst for blood, but the rest of him can’t stop panicking. What’s going to change the longer this goes on? What is Felix going to lose, and what has he already lost?
Like, what would Felix look like with wrinkles? Now, he might never know. If he has kids someday, his grandkids will know him with a face that barely ages, maybe a streak or two of grey hair well into his hundreds. How is he going to tell his parents, who barely allowed him to go to school overseas in the first place, who’ve worried enough for him already? What about when his baby sister looks older than him?
“Lix-ah,” Yunho says, snapping Felix from his thoughts. “You good?”
Felix winces. There goes his normalcy. The moment he tells Yunho what happened, they’ll spend the rest of their time focused on that. Can’t Felix catch a break?
“Just caught up, I guess,” Felix answers. He can’t really get away with saying he’s fine; he’s not great at lying. He also doesn’t want to lie. But Felix doesn’t have to tell Yunho the thing that’s actually bothering him right now, either.
It’s not like vampirism is Felix’s only problem. It has sort of exacerbated the biggest problem he had before that…
Yunho pauses the interrogation to save his ass on screen, but the reprieve doesn’t last long. “Come on, you haven’t played this bad in ages.”
“Hey!” Felix shouts through laughter. “Fine, skill master, riddle me this: how exactly does one make a move on someone they live with?”
“That’s it?” Yunho chuckles. “You should’ve asked sooner, that’s basically what Mingi did. It worked out fine.”
Felix snorts. “Please. You and Mingi have been dating since middle school.”
“It feels that way sometimes,” Yunho admits. Felix is surprised by how genuine he sounds. Is he losing his mind?
“No, wait,” Felix starts, so distracted he misses an easy shot. “Fuck, wait, I’m not joking, Mingi-hyung told me you’ve been dating since middle school. I think.”
“One of his favorite jokes,” Yunho says, dismissing it easily. Felix doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s usually good at reading people, and Mingi definitely didn’t seem like he was joking, but Yunho moves on before he can ask further. “We were barely roommates for like, two weeks before he sort of just kissed me without warning. He’s lucky I was into it.” Yunho interrupts himself for a brief victory celebration. “Chan-hyung would probably be into it, too.”
“I think Channie would be very stressed out if Mingi-hyung kissed him,” Felix says, deliberately obtuse.
“Ha, ha. Seriously, it’s not like he’d kick you out. Worst that happens is he lets you down gently and you have a few awkward breakfasts.”
Yunho has no way of knowing that regardless of whether Felix makes a move or not, he’s stuck sticking his teeth into Chan’s body—for a few more days, at least. If he makes a move, he’ll be stuck sticking his teeth inside Chan while he’s very much aware that the person injecting him with an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac also wants Chan to blow his back out. Lovingly.
“They’d be really awkward breakfasts, though,” Felix whines.
Yunho laughs. “Be brave, Yongbokkie. Hwaiting!”
Though the advice isn’t very helpful, it seems to have gotten Yunho off his back. Felix immerses himself in the game and forces the rest of his thoughts from his brain. He doesn’t exactly have a back-up plan problem if Yunho asks again.
Minho drops the pump off late that night, but Felix avoids it until the next day, when the space behind his teeth starts to itch.
Chan doesn’t say anything when he spots Felix at the table with the box open. He just heats up one of the meals he’d prepared for when Felix got hungry and takes a seat across from him.
“I thought it’d have more setup,” Felix admits. “Seems pretty ready to go.”
“Does it need batteries?”
“No, it plugs in.” Felix holds up the plug and makes it do a little dance in Chan’s direction. The part that goes in his mouth is like a strange mix between a night guard and a chair massager, with round pieces designed to rotate in tiny circles and press on the venom glands in his gums. At the end of the parts attached to his teeth, thin tubes run down to a bottle that screws on and off of the pump. It even has milliliter markings and a cap for when he’s done. Very official.
“I feel like I’m breastfeeding,” Felix says after staring at the pump for a while. Chan chokes on his noodles.
His teeth are getting itchier by the minute, so Felix stops being a coward and goes to the living room to plug it in and make sure the pump turns on. The cord is long enough for him to sit all the way on the opposite end of the couch if he wanted to, so he won’t be utterly unable to move, which is a bit of a relief. Everything appears in working order.
“Ya good?” Chan calls from the table.
Definitely not. “All good,” Felix calls anyway. Last time he got hungry, Felix was asleep, so it’s the first time he’s been aware for the experience. He hopes it gets less unpleasant when you’re a real vampire, just in case he’s stuck like this forever. His mouth is really itchy now, and his stomach is slowly hollowing out, palms cold and clammy when he presses them against his cheeks.
Chan coming around the couch makes him jump. “Hungry?” he asks, grabbing Felix at the wrists and carefully lowering his hands to his lap for him.
Felix sighs. Chan smells so good again. The scent of him finally prods Felix’s fangs out of hiding. The pop! as his canines extend makes Felix cover his mouth on instinct.
Chan touches his arm. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says softly. “I’ve already seen them, remember?”
Of course he has, but they’re still embarrassing. It might be easier to handle if Felix had any control over it, but he doesn’t, and it’s terrifying.
“C’mon, you’re like, halfway through a Demon Slayer rewatch, right? I’ll watch with you, we can just vibe for a while.”
Felix can’t help laughing. “Just chill and normal?” His voice is slow and awkward, and no matter how precisely he tries to speak, he still has a lisp, but Chan doesn’t seem to mind. He thinks it’s cute, Felix remembers, abruptly wishing he could become one with the couch, though it’s half from bashfulness and half from overwhelming delight.
“Very chill,” Chan assures him. “Super normal.”
“Well, if Chan-hyung says so…”
Felix still turns away to fit the pump over his teeth. Chan busies himself with the TV, considerate enough to give him plenty of time. It’s a little awkward to fit his fangs in. The fit is tighter than Felix expected. Should he have washed this? Probably, but he knows if he does it now, he’ll only find some new way to delay when he’s done. Best just turn it on and get it over with.
“Okay,” Felix says, horrendously lisping around the pump at this point. He was going to say more, but that’s probably all he needs. Chan looks over and makes a very valiant attempt not to laugh.
Felix rolls his eyes, but he’d smile if he could. Chan’s always such a dork.
He leans over and steals the remote from Chan’s hand, pressing play and settling in before flipping the switch on the cord with his foot. The pump beeps three times in warning before it starts.
What follows is the weirdest sensation Felix has ever experienced.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” he says, mostly in confusion.
Chan gives him worried puppy eyes. “Does it hurt?”
Felix shakes his head, glad for the excuse not to talk. He can’t quite explain that it feels good, but also weird, and it’s also making his mouth water, which is going to get embarrassing really fast. Since he can’t close his mouth to swallow, Felix turns and carefully lowers himself down onto Chan’s thigh.
He probably should have grabbed a pillow, but he was panicking about drooling all over the couch, so Felix considers it a win just to be laying down and kind of able to swallow. It’s not like Chan minds. He smiles down at Felix like this is the most normal thing in the world—which it kind of would be, if not for the venom pump in Felix’s mouth.
If he rests his head at an angle, he has a decent view of the TV. Good enough to read the subtitles at least. Watching something he’s already seen was a good choice; as exciting as Demon Slayer is, Felix is able to drift in focus as it plays, and while he doesn’t get used to the feeling of the pump, exactly, it becomes manageable the longer it goes on.
Sleep calls to him, but it’s annoyingly elusive. The pump is just uncomfortable enough to keep Felix from truly resting. He dozes lightly instead, opening his eyes on and off. At some point, Chan starts running his fingers through Felix’s hair, sometimes massaging his scalp. Felix makes a vaguely pleased noise to encourage him to continue.
Drifting in and out like this, it takes Felix a while to react to the discomfort. It’s easy to ignore it for a while. He’s a dancer and a martial artist, so injury isn’t a rarity in his life. Ignoring the aches and pains of existence in his chosen field is basically par for the course. Felix can manage the increasingly hollow feeling in his stomach, the tickly, sort of itchy feeling as the pump massages his glands. He can even handle the increasing sensitivity of his teeth, at least for a few episodes.
It helps that Chan is there. His touch soothes Felix as easily as his laugh and quiet comments do. With Chan holding and petting him, Felix lets himself slip into a part of his mind that feels most distant from physical sensation, focused on the safety he feels when Chan takes care of him—as well as the determination not to worry him.
Of course, that serenity can’t last forever. Somewhere in the midst of dozing, Felix moans in quiet distress as a stomach cramp surprises him, threatening to jolt him from his daze. He didn’t feel such sharp hunger when he was human, but he supposes his hunger was less desperate, then.
Humans take a long time to starve if they have water. Vampires can starve to death in less than a week.
Chan rubs soothing patterns into Felix’s scalp in response to his discomfort. It works surprisingly well; Felix feels tension begin to drain from him again, even though he knows more pain will follow.
“Not much longer, little one,” Chan assures him in English, likely aware he’d find Korean harder to follow right now. “Just a little more, that’s it.”
Felix shifts against his thigh and makes another discontent noise, but it’s softer now, muddled by Chan’s absolute clarity. He sounds so sure, so calm. Felix finds it impossible not to believe him, though it feels like he’s been doing this forever already.
When that sharp pain rolls through him again, Felix instinctively tries to sit up, but Chan puts a hand on his chest and presses him down, keeping him there. Something about the way Chan keeps him trapped as the pain crests and falls makes Felix shudder and go limp, thoughts splintering until he can no longer follow them.
Chan starts talking to him after that, soothing nonsense that Felix can barely follow. He catches praises and reassurances here and there, but it’s the steady sound of Chan’s voice that tethers him to reality, the only thing that reminds him he’s still attached to his body. Without that, Felix might have floated away altogether. There’s a lightness in his head he’s never felt before. The pain increases, but it only pushes Felix further toward that weightlessness, keeping him separate from the trembling in his limbs and the tingling in his fingertips.
“Lix-ah,” Chan says, sounding very far away, “I’m going to turn this off, okay?”
Though he isn’t sure what this is anymore, that sentence on its own is a bit scary. Felix makes a small sound in the back of his throat.
“It’s okay, baby, stay still. Just be good for me a little longer.”
Felix shivers and forces himself not to move as the pressure behind his teeth grinds to a halt. His mouth feels all wrong, too much and not enough; if Chan wasn’t here, he’d be overwhelmed for sure.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to think about what to do next. All he has to do is listen.
“Open,” Chan murmurs, thumb tapping twice on Felix’s lower lip. His mouth has stayed a little open this whole time, but he relaxes his jaw, opening as wide as he can and waiting for further instruction. When Chan removes the pressure from his teeth, Felix wants desperately to move, to close his mouth or find something to close it around, but Chan said to open, so he keeps open and waits, wanting to be good, fixated on listening above all else.
“Fuck,” Chan mumbles. It’s not a command, so Felix doesn’t respond, but he’s pleased by the warmth and awe he can read in Chan’s tone. He doesn’t know what he did, but Felix must have done well.
“C’mon, little one, sit up for me now, that’s it.” Chan levers Felix into a sitting position, then holds him at the shoulders. “You ready?”
Felix blinks at the wall for a couple of seconds, trying to understand what the desired answer is. His brow furrows. Slowly, he turns to look at Chan, then remembers that’s not what Chan asked for and makes himself face the wall again.
“Dunno,” he says, his voice as slow as his thoughts feel, syrupy and strange. “For - what?”
There’s an extended pause, but it doesn’t bother Felix like this. Chan will tell him what to do next. He trusts Chan to know. He just needs to be patient.
“Turn around,” Chan says. This is much easier for Felix to comply with. Chan’s so handsome in the flickering light from the television. Felix is so happy that he finally gets to see Chan’s face properly, so grateful to be asked to look this way.
Chan looks him over, then tilts his head back and looks at the ceiling for a few seconds. Felix waits and tries to be still.
Eventually, Chan sits up and reaches out, strong hands gripping Felix’s hips. “Swing your leg over my lap,” he instructs. Felix goes easily, thighs trembling as he settles there, hovering without being asked to sit down.
Chan strokes a hand up and down his back, eyes wide. “You can sit,” he says. “That’s it, good, you listen so well, baby.”
Felix settles in and grins. It feels weird with his new teeth.
With the sensation of that strong hand still on his back, it takes Felix a moment to realize Chan is speaking, and by then, he can’t catch the words. Chan has such a soothing way of speaking sometimes. Not really because of what it sounds like, but because of how sure it sounds.
He’s been looking at Felix for a while. Was it a question? Felix opens his mouth to ask, then closes it, not sure if he should. He wants to know what to do next, but what if Chan told him to be quiet and he missed it?
Chan reaches up and cups his face, brushing his thumbs over Felix’s scattered freckles. He sighs, relieved. This is normal enough that Felix knows how to respond to it: he smiles, because he’s happy and because Chan likes his smile so much.
“C’mere,” Chan says, pulling him closer.
Felix whimpers when a wave of Chan’s scent overwhelms him, the pain in his stomach cresting and ebbing away as his head fills with cotton-candy sweetness. He’s too close to Chan. There’s something wrong about that, but the thought escapes him when Chan squeezes the nape of his neck and tilts his head to the side, baring his neck for Felix.
“You should eat now, Lix.”
It takes him a moment to remember that means using his fangs, but once he does, Felix doesn’t hesitate. Chan told him to eat. He leans forward and closes his eyes, kissing Chan’s throat first. A thank you, since talking around these teeth is so hard and remembering how talking works seems even harder right now.
Biting Chan is a singular sensation. He’s never felt like this, so satisfied and needy at the same time. His fangs finally go away, allowing him to drink deeply as Chan’s blood flows onto his tongue. He wishes that he had words for how Chan tastes, but blood doesn’t taste like normal food, and it doesn’t taste like anything else Felix has ever had in his mouth.
Chan just tastes like Chan. Like warmth and humor and love, always love, so much love Felix is overflowing with it.
The pain he felt earlier is replaced with a rush of euphoria as Chan’s hand slips down from his back to the curve of his ass. He’s been waiting for Chan to touch him like this for ages. What took him so long?
Felix’s moan is muffled where he’s sucking furiously on Chan’s neck, but he rolls his hips back into the touch, so there’s no way Chan will miss it. He feels Chan’s answering moan where their chests are pressed together, relishing in the way Chan’s fingers tighten their grip.
He wants it, too.
This time, Felix rocks forward, groaning when he grinds down onto Chan’s cock. Chan’s hard already, or maybe he has been for a while? Both options make Felix’s whole body buzz. He scoots forward as much as he can, though Felix isn’t sure he can get any closer, given how much of Chan is pressed against him already. He radiates heat even through his clothes, only the scales on his neck cool against Felix’s cheek.
Felix needs.
It’s that need that finally pulls him from the warmth of Chan’s neck and the satisfaction of his blood. He licks his lips, but Felix can’t catch all of it, a rapidly cooling trail of blood running down his chin and staining his neck. “Chris,” he slurs, reaching up to hold Chan at the neck, uncaring for the still-bleeding wounds beyond the pleasure they bring him to see. They’re his marks. Felix marked Chan up. But blood is no longer the hunger that drives him.
Their first kiss is messy and raw. All Felix can taste at first is Chan’s blood, to the point where he wonders if Chan’s tongue tastes the same as his blood, deliciously addictive as he overtakes Felix’s mouth. Chan’s hungry too, pressing up when Felix rolls his hips down onto Chan’s cock. His grip is almost painfully tight on Felix’s ass as he moves like they’re fucking through their clothes.
Felix has pictured this a thousand times, usually with three fingers inside himself, but the reality of Chan’s heat, the scent of him, the gasp he makes when Felix bites his lip with human teeth—all of it is very much worth the wait.
He’s known how strong Chan is since he looked up how strong are dragon shifters compared to humans on his phone ten minutes after they met, but aside from when he can get Chan to carry him around, Felix has never been able to feel it like this, to know he’ll bruise just from the press of Chan’s fingertips through his clothes.
There’s too much sensation. He wants to rock back on Chan’s dick as much as he wants to thrust forward and get some friction on his own. Felix’s inability to choose between them throws his rhythm as he whimpers into Chan’s mouth, frustrated and unsatisfied.
Chan laughs. It probably should embarrass Felix, but the shiver that runs through him is far from embarrassed.
“Please, Channie, I—” He can’t articulate in detail what he wants, head still stuffed full of sugar. Instead, Felix finds Chan’s hands where they’ve migrated to Felix’s hips and presses down on them, fucking down onto Chan’s cock in a filthy grind at the same time. He blinks lazily at Chan, but can’t really tell if he’s got the message, distracted by how handsome Chan is with his cheeks flushed. Even the blue of his scales has deepened.
Felix licks his lips, sad he can barely catch the taste of Chan’s drying blood. “Please?”
The kiss Chan gives him is barely a peck, more a threat than actual touch. “Like this?” he asks, moving Felix easily, his arms and hips doing all the work as he brings Felix down to meet his cock.
Felix sobs and throws his arms around Chan’s neck. “Uh-huh,” he manages as he nods fiercely, face buried in the mess he made of Chan’s neck. The wet friction on the head of his cock every time he’s pushed against Chan’s abs almost hurts, but it’s the good kind of hurt, the kind that makes Felix’s spinning head even fuzzier, the kind that steals his breath and renders him speechless.
Shameless moans and breathless whimpers spill from his mouth, driving Chan harder. It feels like he might even be as desperate as Felix is. As Chan drives Felix closer and closer to orgasm, overwhelming him with pleasure, desperation has him sinking blunt human teeth into Chan’s neck. The taste of Chan’s blood hits hard. His mouth waters as his hips jerk forward in Chan’s grip, fighting him and needing him in the same moment, then Felix comes with a wounded animal noise, something he didn’t know he was capable of as he shudders through it.
Felix is glad Chan doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t slow down or ask him how he’s feeling, if it’s too much. He likes being capable of nothing more than weakly twitching in Chan’s grip as he uses Felix’s body to get off. It should be too rough, too much just after he’s come like this, but the pain of it is part of what Felix needs. He wants Chan to use him. Felix wants to make him feel good so badly that the ache of it combines with the overstimulation, until they’re all one pain and all one pleasure, all part and parcel of what he wants Chan to take from him.
Chan is silent when he comes, which shouldn’t surprise Felix as much as it does. It’s just like him to be afraid of sharing so much.
Felix coos over him as Chan rides out his orgasm, alternating between kissing his face and lapping at the blood-soaked scales on Chan’s throat. They’re rougher on his tongue than Chan’s skin if he tilts his head, but if he turns the other way, they’re smoother, a texture that fascinates him almost as much as Chan’s sweet taste.
He’s not sure how long he zones out like that, cleaning Chan’s skin like a cat might. It’s soothing. Felix doesn’t have to think at all to do this. Taking care of Chan is easily his favorite thing in the world. At some point, Chan moves him, but it doesn’t really register until he sits on the bed and Felix realizes they’ve moved to Chan’s bedroom.
Does this mean Felix will have to go back to his room? He clings to Chan tightly even when Chan tries to free himself.
“Nonononono,” Felix says, repeating it again in Korean just in case.
“Baby,” Chan says, sounding out of it. That’s not good. If they’re both out of it, who’s going to do things? Surely things need to get done. “Let’s get you out of this,” Chan continues, tugging on Felix’s shirt.
Suddenly, Felix perks up. Staying and taking his clothes off sounds like a perfect plan.
Under Chan’s instruction, Felix gets naked and wipes himself off with his sweatpants, then helps Chan with his clothes since Chan’s hands are a little clumsy. When Chan tries to clean himself off, Felix bats his hands away and uses his tongue, surprised he likes the taste of Chan’s come as much as he does—though it’s not as good as his blood was.
It feels so good to let Chan pet him through it, so easy to let him say all these things Felix only half pays attention to as he basks in the warmth of Chan’s voice and lets the words fade away.
After, when he crawls into Chan’s lap and clings, he doesn’t make Felix leave. He tucks them both under a thin sheet and lets Felix fall asleep sprawled across him, lulled into dreams by the steady thump of Chan’s heart beneath his ear.
Felix wakes consumed by warmth and surrounded by darkness. He realizes where he is from how Chan’s scent clings to the pillowcase, but there’s no one’s weight on the bed with him, just the rumpled sheet twisted around his legs and the dreadful quiet as his memories come rushing back.
How can the best thing that’s ever happened to him also be the worst thing he’s ever done?
He rolls over to bury his face in the pillow with a miserable groan. What’s wrong with him? He’s not the one intoxicated by drinking blood, so how could he lose it like that?
God, Chan probably left because he can’t stand to be around Felix right now. Who would? Friends or not, Felix had essentially spent the afternoon injecting Chan with a narcotic and taking advantage of him when it took effect. He hadn’t even waited until sunrise to get as far away from Felix as possible.
Worst of all, violating Chan’s trust had made Felix happy. He’d been so happy he was floating on a cloud, as though any of it had been reciprocal or real.
Felix stumbles into the bathroom and gags over the toilet for a while, but he knows it’s a phantom reflex, something his human self would have done that the vampire body he now inhabits has no reaction to. He’s nauseated on a mental level, not a physical one, so there’s no satisfaction to be had from purging the sick feeling from his body. Felix waits there anyway, until the tile warms beneath his knees. He tries not to cry and fails horribly.
He can’t stay here in Chan’s space like this. Vision blurred by his tears, Felix fumbles out into his own room and gets dressed, combing his hair flat enough that no one will look twice at him. He knows he isn’t supposed to go outside, but it’s not like Felix is hungry right now, and he isn’t supposed to do any of the things he’s done lately. What’s one more betrayal in the grand scheme of things?
Felix tosses a bucket hat on and heads out, hoping that will largely hide the tears that refuse to stop flowing as he meanders out of the apartment building and heads north. It doesn’t really matter where he’s going. He just needs to walk until he figures out how to apologize and make things up to Chan, if that’s even possible.
How can he? Even if, by some miracle, Chan doesn’t feel violated and used, he still knows what Felix wants in some capacity. He knows, and he didn’t want to be there when Felix woke up. There’s no reading of the situation that ends in a salvageable friendship, let alone Felix’s recently burgeoning hopes for more.
With his head down and concentration shot, Felix doesn’t see the person in front of him until it’s too late. Their shoulders collide and he catches her on instinct, setting her back on her feet so she won’t fall. “Sorry,” he mutters, stepping around her to leave.
She catches his arm.
“Wait, wait!” With a tug that’s stronger than it should be, she pulls Felix back into her field of vision, ducking under his hat and peering at his face. “It’s you,” she whispers. Felix has never seen this woman in his life. “It’s you! Fuck, I thought you were dead!”
Felix’s brain struggles to catch up with what he’s just heard, his whole body frozen. “What?”
“I’m so glad you’re alive,” she sobs, clutching his shoulder much too tightly. “Is there somewhere we can talk? I just, I want to explain, but it’s not safe out here like this—”
“Yeah,” he says, dazed but certain. Felix may not be welcome in Chan’s home right now, but someone else is scared and lost in front of him, and Chan would never turn away someone that needs help. Not even Felix. “Yeah, c’mon, it’s not far.”
“Chan-hyung?” Felix calls as he lets himself back into the apartment, glad he remembered to grab his keys with the state he was in earlier.
Chan vaults over the back of the couch, practically running to the door before skidding to a halt at the sight of the stranger Felix brought with him. “You’re back,” he says, sounding far more relieved than Felix deserves. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Felix admits, assuming the question refers to the girl behind him. The only thing that he learned on the walk over is her name: Park Eunji. She refused to say anything more until they were ‘safe’.
He grimaces apologetically at Chan, unwilling to do more with a stranger present, and leads them both into the living room before turning to face her.
“You’ll be safe here,” Felix says, jumping when Chan steps up and snakes an arm around his waist. He doesn’t have time to read into it, but no matter how unsafe Felix has become for Chan, the scent and warmth of Chan still bring him comfort. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”
Eunji wrings her hands, looking nervously between Felix and Chan, and starts to pace. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know how to start… I just, a few nights ago, no, maybe more, I don’t know, I was out—”
She screams when a loud pounding comes from the front door, immediately diving behind the couch while Chan rushes to the door. Felix walks around the couch slowly, trying not to spook her. “It’s alright,” he says, “it’s probably just one of our friends. They’re the only ones that would come in here. It’s okay, really.”
He crouches down and peers around the side of the couch. Eunji’s reddened eyes are much too bright when she looks up, the movement of her head a little too fast. Her teeth are too big for her mouth as she bares her fangs and hisses, stumbling backward at the same time Felix scrambles further away.
“Felix!”
Chan’s call barely registers before Felix is being dragged backward. He fights instinctively, overwhelmed and scared, but whoever is dragging him by the arms is much stronger than he is.
“Yongbok, it’s me,” Minho says lowly in his ear, firm as he continues to pull Felix to the far side of the room. “Jisungie’s calming her down, nothing’s going to happen to you. It’s okay.” Hearing Minho’s voice makes Felix stop fighting, but he’s still on edge, mind whirring as he connects the dots.
“Is she… Did she—”
“We tracked her here,” Minho says when Felix struggles to finish the question. He tugs Felix to his feet and hooks his chin over Felix’s shoulder, keeping him stable with a back hug while making sure he’s in a good position to move if necessary. Felix relaxes a little more now that he can watch Chan restrain her as Jisung talks, though his voice is low enough that Felix can’t really understand what they’re saying.
“Not sure when she got here, but Chan-hyung brought us the venom a little while ago and we narrowed down her location to your general neighborhood. Jisung and I rode over with him and left to track her down while Chan-hyung went to warn you. Was she already here?”
Shame overwhelms Felix.
“No,” he whispers. Felix was the one that left the house. Felix was the one that invited the monster into his home. If he’d stayed and waited for Chan to get back, he’d have been safe.
How many times can a person fuck up in one twenty-four hour stretch?
“Babe, I think we’re good,” Jisung calls over his shoulder. “Lix-ah, you okay with coming over here? Park Eunji-ssi wants to talk to you, but only if you’re feeling it.”
Felix really doesn’t want to. This isn’t someone who tried to help him when he was bleeding out, not some innocent witness to the attack. Park Eunji is the vampire that took his choices away. The person who attacked him from behind on the street like an animal. Why should he listen to anything she has to say? She knew that he wouldn’t let her in if she told him up front, so she lied and tricked her way inside, taking advantage of Felix’s kindness.
We should kill her and be done with it. That’s what we were going to do before. There was nothing in the plan that said we needed to talk to her.
“Yeah,” Felix chokes out, horrified by the winding path of his thoughts. He didn’t want to be a killer in the first place. If there’s any option that doesn’t involve that, it’s the one he wants to take.
You didn’t want to be a vampire, either, remarks that snide voice in the back of his head.
Minho lets Felix hold his hand as they approach, giving him strength. Chan is holding Eunji’s hands behind her back while Jisung stands to one side, prepared to work magic if necessary, but she isn’t fighting, and her fangs have receded into her gums. She stares limply at the floor. Felix slows to a stop when he’s a meter away, unable to make himself get any closer.
Eunji looks up at him and gulps.
“I’m so sorry,” she starts, voice rough with emotion. “You have to know, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t know, I should’ve realized what was happening but it was all just a blur…” Eunji shakes her head. “I didn’t even know I was a vampire at first. I just wanted to get out of my head for a night. Bad break-up, you know? I remember going out, and I must have rebounded with someone, but I don’t remember any of it. When I woke up, I was in my own bed, by myself. There was blood, but it’s not—abnormal, to wake up with blood on the sheets, right? So I just showered it off and cleaned up.”
Felix doesn’t want to hear this. His free hand balls into a fist at his side, barely containing the childish urge to cover his ears.
“I ate my way through the fridge and cupboards, made myself totally sick.” Eunji catches a tear on her own cheek, wiping it away with the viciousness that comes with shame. “Sorry, you don’t want to hear this, it’s just. I’m not a monster, okay? I didn’t know. I was just so hungry, and nothing helped, and I was so out of it at that point that I didn’t even realize there were fangs in my mouth, I just needed more than what I had. I was dark again when I tried going to the convenience store, but I saw you first.” Eunji looks at Felix with desperation. “You were the first person I got so close to all day, and you smelled good—like food, and I—I couldn’t—”
Eunji chokes on the rest of the sentence, shaking her head. She can no longer meet Felix’s eye.
“I realized what was happening when I was full, but you were so cold, and so pale… I don’t really know a lot about vampires, but I figured you were better off that than dead, right? So I made you drink my blood.”
Her voice has quieted to a whisper, but Eunji speaks like she’s incapable of stopping. Felix takes a step back, as though more distance can make him stop hearing the horror of it.
“You were choking for a while, but then… You held my wrist.” She laughs, a desperate, relieved sound with no humor in it. “You held on and drank on your own, and I was so relieved, but after a minute, you just stopped. You were so limp. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to find someone that could help, but it was late, and no one would stop to talk to me.” She rubs at her eyes again. “When I got back, you were gone.”
There’s a long pause, as though Eunji is waiting for something. Felix has nothing to give her. “Then what?” he asks, prodding the last of the story from her. He’s squeezing Minho’s hand so tightly that it probably would fall off if he wasn’t a vampire.
“I got scared.” Eunji’s voice takes a bitter turn. “I’m not brave, okay? I was afraid if I told anyone or registered, they’d arrest me for what I did to you, especially if someone found you. So I stayed inside until the sun went down and went out at night to look for you. I thought… Well, maybe if I found you, we could work something out. Some way for me to make things right that doesn’t involve spending the rest of my life in jail.”
Felix wants to stay mad. He wants to be someone that can cling to bitterness to protect himself from pain, wants to be the kind of person that would rather make it easy on himself than reach out in kindness and understanding.
Just once, Felix wishes he was cruel.
His mother has always said Felix’s heart is too soft. Hearing the fear in Eunji’s voice drains the fury from him. If he didn’t have Minho to ask about all this, if Chan wasn’t a dragon able to feed him and recover… If he was all alone with no one to turn to, what might he have done? If Chan hadn’t answered his door that night, would Felix have been aware enough to stop himself from feeding on the first person he crossed paths with?
Since he can’t be sure, Felix is in no position to judge. As much as he wants to.
“It’s okay, hyung,” he says, meeting Chan’s eyes over Eunji’s shoulder. “You can let go. She won’t hurt anyone, right?” He directs the question at Eunji, who shakes her head no with fervor.
“I never wanted to! It’s not… I’m not, I guess, like, the best person in the world—” Eunji winces when Chan lets go, massaging feeling back into her wrists. “—but that doesn’t mean I want to go around attacking people. I don’t know about you, but I never wanted this. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Not like that, anyway.” She looks between Felix and the others with a hint of wistfulness. “Though it seems like you’re managing better than I feared.”
In the end, Eunji is just as much a victim as Felix. It’s not fair to punish her for it. Given how close they are to the full moon, they won’t even be able to track down whoever turned her. It’s obvious just by studying her a moment how exhausted she is. How long has she spent terrified of herself, hiding from the sun and hunting for Felix at night, just hoping he was still breathing?
“How did you feed?” Minho asks. There’s no judgment in his tone, but the utter flatness of it is almost worse to Felix. He winces.
Eunji snorts, her expression sour. “Badly. When I got too hungry to avoid it, I went to the closest blood bank and waited in my car until I spotted a junkie. It was risky, but I remembered what it felt like to feed from him—” she says, jerking her head in Felix’s direction, “—and knew when to stop. I only did it a couple of times.”
“Huh,” Minho says. “Smart.”
Felix takes a deep breath, gathering his courage. He takes a shaky step forward, then another, fingers slipping from Minho’s grip with the utmost reluctance.
“I’m so sorry,” Eunji repeats, eyes wide with fear the closer he gets.
“I know.” Felix is surprised to find he means it. “It’s not—okay. But I get it.” He tries for a smile and is relieved that it’s not as hard as it could be, though it’s still a bit weak. Eunji won’t know the difference. “You and I, let’s register together. We got attacked by the same person. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
Eunji remains frozen for a second, then drops to her knees, covering her face as she shakes. She’s been scared for even longer than Felix has—not just of whoever did this to her, but of what happened to Felix and who she’d become. It’s that thought that makes Felix sink down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder, just as he would with anyone in pain.
She’s not the monster Felix has been having nightmares about—even if she is, in the very literal sense. Eunji is just a girl as scared and traumatized as he is. Right now, she could probably use a few good friends.
Though Jisung and Minho offer to walk her home, Eunji declines, exchanging numbers with Felix and Minho before disappearing. As soon as she’s out the door, Jisung opens his arms and lets Felix fall right into them. It’s been day since his last Jisung hug, and Felix barely keeps himself from crying again as Jisung rocks back and forth, humming a soothing little melody in his ear.
Minho sighs somewhere to Felix’s right. “Jisung-ah…”
“Ah.” Jisung springs back, a bit sheepish, and squeezes Felix’s shoulders twice before letting go. “Hyung said it’s probably not a good idea for me to stick around here long, since your hunger’s still unpredictable for now.”
Felix isn’t hungry, but given how much control he lost with Chan last night, he doesn’t want to risk anything either. “He’s right.” Brushing a few stray tears off his face, Felix waves both of them in the direction of the door. “Go on, I’ll be fine. Full moon’s tomorrow night, right? Just one more day until I make you hug me forever.”
“Ooh, baby, threaten me more,” Jisung teases. Minho puts a hand over his mouth and begins to drag him bodily toward the door, ignoring Jisung’s muffled sounds of protest.
“We’ll call you, Yongbokkie,” Minho promises. “Relax and let Channie take care of you!”
Felix is careful not to confirm that, knowing Minho won’t notice as he finishes dragging Jisung outside. The sound of the door shutting in their wake is the only sound in the now-silent apartment. Do vampires have any powers that will get him out of this situation? Minho’s never mentioned an ability to walk through walls or evaporate into fog, but that sort of thing would be useful just now.
The brush of Chan’s fingertips on his back make Felix jump. They fall away as soon as he moves.
“Lix?”
He’s going to have to face this. There’s no way around it. Bracing himself, Felix turns slowly, eyes already burning again. He shouldn’t cry. It’s not his place to be upset, but he’s so frustrated with himself and what he’s done.
As soon as their eyes meet, Chan’s face crumples. Before Felix can apologize or do anything at all, Chan reaches forward and pulls him close, into a hug so tight it would be suffocating if not for the fact that it’s Chan, who gives Felix’s favorite hugs in the world.
He doesn’t deserve it, but Felix melts, burying his face in Chan’s shoulder and clinging just as tight.
“You did really well, Lix.” Chan says, stroking Felix’s back. “That must have been really hard. You’re so strong.”
At any other time, in any other context, this would be exactly what Felix needs to hear. It’s tempting to sink into this warmth and forget about what happened yesterday. What if he doesn’t have to face it? If Chan is willing to forget, isn’t that good enough?
But it isn’t, and Felix knows it isn’t. Ignoring the problem would be unfair to them both. The thought of what he’s done still tears him up inside. There’s no way Felix could continue living with Chan or even seeing him without confronting it.
Felix forces himself to pull back, blinking his tears away as he looks at Chan in confusion.
“How can you say that?” he asks.
Chan frowns. “Because it’s true.”
“But it’s not!” Felix steps back as panic sets in. “I did well today with a stranger, but I couldn’t do right by my best friend.” His voice breaks over the word, the emotional weight of the night so heavy Felix is close to collapsing beneath it. “How can you stand it?” he asks, half desperate for an answer and half hoping Chan won’t say anything at all. “Chris, how can you even look at me right now?”
The question rings in the air between them. “What are you supposed to have done, exactly?” Chan asks.
Felix checks his expression for a long moment, but he seems genuinely confused, though he’s taking it seriously. Did Felix hallucinate the entirety of the previous night? He can’t have, he woke up naked in Chan’s bed.
“We had sex,” Felix says, slow and deliberate with his words. “We had sex while you were high on vampire venom and wouldn’t say no.”
Chan’s eyes widen in obvious horror. “Felix—”
“I drugged you and had sex with you!”
“Felix, stop, just wait a sec—”
“Oh, god, I drugged you and had sex with you—”
“Hey, hey! It’s okay.” Chan finally manages to get through to him by taking Felix’s face in hand, forcing eye contact. “Breathe, Lix. Just listen.”
Chan waits for Felix to settle into the silence. Only when he’s satisfied he won’t be interrupted does he speak, thumbs stroking reassuringly over Felix’s freckles as he does.
“You didn’t do anything to me I didn’t want,” Chan says, shutting his eyes like he’s bracing himself. “And nothing happened that I wouldn’t say yes to again. Now. Without anything affecting my judgment.”
“Oh,” Felix says, voice small.
Then he fully processes what Chan just said.
“Oh.”
Since Chan’s eyes are still closed, Felix is bold enough to sway forward and press a cautious kiss to his lips. “Yeah?” he asks, dazed. The adrenaline still hasn’t faded from his system. Everything feels a bit like a dream.
With a relieved smile, Chan opens his eyes. “Yeah.” His hands slide down to Felix’s neck as his expression grows serious again. “If anything, I should apologize to you. Have you ever gone under like that?”
Felix frowns, trying to puzzle out what that means with the vague clues he’s been given.
“I didn’t think so,” Chan says, grimacing and tapping his fingers in an anxious pattern on the back of Felix’s neck. “It’s been a while for me too. I didn’t expect you to submit like that, but you got pretty out of your head, huh?”
“Is that what it was?” Felix is just glad to have an explanation, though it’s a bit embarrassing. Is he so easily handled? “I thought maybe I made that up to make myself feel better about the whole thing.”
Chan pulls him into a hug. This time, Felix is more than happy to accept, melting into it as he finally allows himself to take comfort from Chan’s warmth.
“I wondered if it spooked you,” Chan murmurs. “Thought maybe I was the reason you left.” He huffs a laugh under his breath. “Guess I was right, but not in the way I thought.”
“I was being stupid,” Felix says, burying his head in Chan’s neck and inhaling. He’s not hungry, but Chan still smells like something delicious, like when cookies are cooling on the rack and all you can smell is how wonderful they’ll be to bite into later. “Just leave a note next time, alright?”
“I did!” Chan pinches Felix’s side, making him laugh. “I stuck it on my door so you wouldn’t miss it!”
Felix doesn’t remember that, but leaving Chan’s room was a bit of a blur.
“Oh,” he says sheepishly, nuzzling closer like that will hide him from embarrassment. “Well, I was a little busy freaking out. I know it sounds crazy, since I’ve been biting you and all, but I really didn’t think I had a shot.”
“What do you mean?” Chan asks, pulling away. “You liked me before that?”
Now it’s Felix’s turn to punish Chan, punching lightly at his chest. “Of course I did! It’s not like I was hiding it.”
“You hid it well enough from me,” Chan retorts, but he’s smiling too much to sound angry about it. “Without knowing anything, how could I make a move? I was giving you a place to stay. That didn’t seem fair.”
Of course. Of course Chan would worry about something like that. Felix pulls him into a long, thorough kiss.
“You’re adorable. I want you to take advantage of me as often as possible. You didn’t even ask me for rent! Would you take payments in alternate forms? I’m very flexible.”
Chan’s laughter in response to his flirting is infectious; though Felix couldn’t have predicted he’d be laughing by the time the sun rose today, he’s glad for it.
“It’s the least I can do,” Felix continues, “especially if you’re going to keep feeding me for a lot longer than we thought.”
“For you, my blood’s always free,” Chan jokes, but his smile fades rapidly. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find a way out of it.”
“It’s not so bad,” Felix says. “Knowing she couldn’t help it… It doesn’t make it better, exactly, but it makes it acceptable. I can accept it.” He shrugs. “I still hate that I couldn’t choose, and I probably always will, but there are worse things.” Felix presses his forehead to Chan’s. “Like dying before you fucked me stupid? Before I sucked your dick? That would be really bad.”
Chan chokes on air and turns away. Felix can’t help laughing as he tilts Chan’s embarrassed face back toward his, squeezing Chan’s heated cheeks.
There’s been so much heaviness in his life the past few days. It probably will take a long time for him to bounce back from it entirely, but right now, what Felix wants more than anything is a distraction. He wants fun, and he wants Chan to be the one to remind him that he can have it.
“What if something goes wrong on the full moon? Just in case, let’s not waste time.”
Felix pushes Chan back toward his bedroom with a kiss, unsure if being in Chan’s will remind him too much of his panic from this morning. Chan laughs as he follows Felix’s lead, stumbling backward and catching himself with his hands on Felix’s shoulders.
“I dunno, Lix,” he teases, very clearly trying not to break before he can get the words out. “What if you get hungry?”
Briefly, Felix’s heart stops, but the reaction fades as quickly as it came in the face of Chan’s clear exuberance. He’s teasing, Felix realizes. For the first time since they met, Chan is joking around without walking on eggshells after, trusting Felix to know the difference between when he’s teasing and when he’s serious.
Felix lunges forward, drinking in Chan’s laughter when he stumbles back a few more feet with the force of Felix’s hug. His arms are warm and strong around Felix’s waist, neck hot against the press of Felix’s cheek as he murmurs in Chan’s ear.
“You’d let me blow you anyway,” Felix teases. “You trust me so much it makes you stupid.”
Chan runs his hands down Felix’s back until he can hook them under Felix’s thighs and tug. Getting the hint, Felix hops up to wrap his legs around Chan’s waist, doing a happy little wiggle as Chan holds him with relative ease. Dragons are so strong. Felix makes such good life choices.
“Some things are too precious to be cynical about,” Chan argues as he walks them inside Felix’s room and sits on the bed.
Felix bites his neck with blunt, human teeth.
“Hey!”
“You made my meme all mushy,” he chastises, cupping Chan’s face and trying to arrange his own in a frown.
Chan leans in until their noses are touching. “I’m a mushy guy,” he says through a grin. “You mad?”
“Obviously.” Felix darts in for a quick kiss, face hurting from how hard he’s smiling. “Can’t you tell?”
The room swirls as Chan flips their positions, tossing Felix down onto the bed and keeping him there with the firm press of his body. Chan leans on one forearm and uses the other to trace Felix’s smile with his fingertips, half-grinning, half-amazed.
“If you look like this when you’re mad, I’m gonna make you mad all the time.” Chan trails his fingers down over Felix’s throat, ducking his head toward his own shoulder when Felix bares his neck in response. “Every day. More than once.”
“Lucky me,” Felix breathes. “Now stop flirting and take off your shirt.”
Chan laughs as he obliges, stripping his shirt with one hand over his head. “Can’t I do both?”
“Faster not to multitask,” Felix argues. He reaches down and tugs on the strings of Chan’s joggers. “These too.”
Rather than obliging, Chan slides down from the bed onto the floor, tugging Felix’s pants with him. “You first,” he says, unable to make it through the words without giggling and pressing his face to the side of Felix’s bare knee.
Felix has half a mind to try scolding him, but his face won’t make the right shape. He’s too happy. Chan’s giggles are filling him with helium, and his ability to act has utterly floated away. Felix strips his shirt off and leans back on the bed, watching Chan palm his thighs for a couple seconds.
“You have some kind of plan I’m not aware of, hyung?”
“Y’know, it’s weird, ‘cause I don’t, actually.” Chan hooks his fingers under the hem of Felix’s underwear, so Felix lifts his hips, allowing Chan to pull them off easier. “I like being in the moment with you. Spontaneous. Doing whatever.”
He’s adorable. Felix tilts his chin up with two fingers and leans over to kiss him, unable to stand it.
“I’m changing my name to ‘whatever’,” Felix says, cackling when Chan tackles him back onto the bed. In the ensuing struggle, he manages to get Chan’s pants halfway off using only his feet; after a while of hampered mobility, Chan gives up and shucks the rest of his clothes, tugging Felix by the thigh so that he’s perpendicular to the pillows rather than lying parallel.
Kissing Chan when no one tastes like blood and their dicks are pressed together like this is the best thing ever. Felix is enamored with the taste of Chan and the little noises he makes whenever Felix’s tongue pushes against his or brushes the roof of his mouth. He rocks up against Chan’s rapidly hardening cock, chasing the haze of pleasure, and whines when Chan forces them to separate long enough to breathe.
“Lix, Lix,” Chan murmurs into his mouth. “Lube?”
Felix moans from the question alone. It’s so embarrassing he immediately turns away and squeezes his eyes shut, but Chan’s laughter holds no judgment, only delight. He drops kisses all along Felix’s jaw, nose brushing the sensitive hollow behind his ear.
“Me too,” Chan whispers in his ear, like a kid sharing a secret. “I want you that bad, too.”
The lube turns out to have fallen between the nightstand and the bed, which is only mildly embarrassing. Chan holds it in one hand to warm it up, ever-considerate, and focuses his attention on Felix’s body instead, sliding down the bed to acquaint himself with Felix’s thighs.
“You have freckles here, too,” Chan notes, delight evident as he kisses one on his knee, then another low on Felix’s inner thigh. The freckles on his legs are harder to see, especially now that he doesn’t shave them for swim meets anymore, but Chan makes a happy little hum every time he finds a new one, mapping uncharted territory with kisses that turn into soft nips and lingering bruises as he moves higher and higher on Felix’s legs.
No one has ever dedicated so much attention to his thighs. Felix is surprised by the sensitivity of his skin as Chan marks him, the throbbing ache making him shudder and twitch, but he doesn’t want Chan to stop. He runs his fingers through Chan’s hair and closes his eyes, giving in and letting the tide of sensation pull him under.
When the sharp press of Chan’s teeth is accompanied by the wet warmth of a fingertip at his hole, Felix jumps, eyes flying open. Was he so out of it he missed the click of the cap? Chan sits up to give himself more leverage, using his other hand to push one of Felix’s knees back toward his chest.
“So flexible, baby.” Chan pours lube directly onto Felix’s hole as he speaks, making him gasp. “Wanna bend you in half.”
“Please,” Felix agrees, breathless as Chan finally pushes one finger inside him. It’s been so long since he bothered with anything besides his own fingers, and even one of Chan’s fingers feels like two of his, riding the line between too much too soon and exactly as overwhelming as Felix needs.
It feels like no time at all before Chan teases him with a second finger. Felix shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut, but he rocks forward, too, greedy for it. He wants Chan not to hold back with him, even if it means biting off a little more than he can chew.
Chan’s customary chuckle is dark and strained as he lifts Felix’s leg over his shoulder, opening him up before pressing that teasing finger inside. “Breathe,” he says, but Felix can’t, arching up in a silent cry as he tries.
“Too much,” Felix chokes out. “Don’t, ah-ah-ah, don’t stop, fuuuck.” He squeezes down much too tightly on Chan’s fingers as they push inside him, but Chan doesn’t complain.
“Too much?” he asks, not quite as sympathetic as usual. Felix doesn’t have time to suss out what lurks in the depths of Chan’s tone before Chan fucks him hard with his hand, palm quietly slapping against Felix’s skin. “So small, my little one.” Every slow drag of Chan’s fingers as they pull out places agonizing pressure on Felix’s prostate, while every sharp thrust in makes him cry out, the contrast in speed and intensity unpredictable enough to drive Felix insane. “How you gonna take me, hm? Maybe we’ll have to stick to fingers for now.”
It’s not a real threat, Felix knows it’s not, but he can’t stop the frantic noise that bursts from his throat.
“No,” he pleads, too desperate to be embarrassed by how needy he sounds. “No, I can take it, I can. More. Gimme more, c’mon, you gotta—”
This time, Felix hears the click of the lube, but his brain isn’t firing fast enough to prepare him from feeling a third finger so soon. And it is too soon this time, way too soon, but Chan’s giving him what he asked for. Felix isn’t about to back down.
“I can,” he gasps, stopping short when Chan actually starts pushing inside. He goes slow, but it doesn’t matter. Felix’s voice cracks halfway through a whine that’s closer to pitiful than sexy, but he rocks down onto Chan’s fingers, trying to let him know it’s okay, that he wants this. This hurts in a good way, the kind of hurt that fills him up and makes him float.
When Chan’s fingers bottom out inside him, he stops moving, trying to give Felix a second to adjust. Felix laughs, teetering on the edge of euphoria.
“If you’re chickening out now,” he slurs out, pronunciation falling by the wayside in the face of pleasure, “how’re you gonna fuck me for real?”
There’s a moment of silence. Felix purposefully tightens on Chan’s fingers, moaning when just that puts just enough pressure on his prostate for pleasure to flare through him. Chan’s answering laugh is breathless.
“Brat,” he chastises, sounding so fond that a dopey smile spreads across Felix’s face.
Then Chan starts to finger him for real, and Felix forgets how to breathe altogether. He definitely isn’t holding back; Felix wonders if he would’ve gone easy had he still been human, but since he’s not, Chan uses every bit of added dragon strength to fuck him stupid with his hand alone, punching useless whimpers and moans from Felix as he fucks more and more lube inside him. Felix starts to lose track of time, only aware of the slick sensation as Chan stretches him, the wet slap of skin on skin paired with the flares of pleasure as his cock dribbles precome onto his stomach.
Felix only realizes how close he is to coming when Chan points it out, fingers trailing through the mess of precome in and around his belly button. “Gonna come like this, baby?” he asks. “Just from this?” It could be derogatory, but Chan sounds more awestruck than disparaging.
He’s only come without a hand on his cock a handful of times, but Felix recognizes it coming now, nodding furiously.
“Really, Lix?” That’s definitely delight evident in Chan’s voice. “You love getting fucked so much?”
“Yeah, ye-ah,” Felix answers, choking on his words when Chan actually manages to pick up speed. “Love you, love when you—fuuuck, fuck me, Chris Chris ChrisChrisChris—”
He doesn’t know how many times he says Chan’s name when he comes, but it feels like a million, maybe more. Chan fucks him through it, not slowing down until Felix is a shuddering, whining mess, hands curled weakly around Chan’s wrist as he tugs and begs without words.
Chan relents, pressing hard on Felix’s prostate when he slides his fingers from Felix’s body and laughing fondly at the broken whimper torn from his throat.
The lube is a little cold when Chan squeezes it out onto Felix one more time, but Felix is too exhausted to jump, limbs heavy as he tries to recover from the force of his orgasm. He goes willingly enough when Chan curls a damp hand around his thigh and lifts the other leg over his shoulder, blearily opening his eyes and blinking until Chan swims into focus.
“Gonna bend me in half?” Felix asks, not sure how understandable he is at this point and not sure he cares.
Chan drops a kiss on his inner thigh. “Like a hot dog bun,” he says, muffling a high giggle against Felix’s skin. “Baby bun Lixie.”
Felix reaches clumsily up to push at Chan’s face with his hand. If he won’t facepalm for that, Felix will do it for him.
“Dweeb,” Felix accuses, ignoring the butterflies in his stomach.
“You love dweebs,” Chan says as he lines up with Felix’s hole. “Dweebs are your type.”
“You’re my type,” Felix says, fairly certain that’s going to be the last coherent statement he can make when he feels the blunt head of Chan’s cock start to press inside him. Three fingers was probably enough, but it doesn’t feel like enough as Chan splits him open.
Felix tugs Chan closer by the neck and kisses him.
As a distraction, it doesn’t really work, but it presses them as close as possible while Chan pushes inside him for the first time. Who needs to breathe, anyway? Not Felix. Not as often as he used to.
Chan does, which Felix only remembers when Chan breaks away from their kiss to gasp, forehead pressed against Felix’s sternum. With one final push, he bottoms out.
“Oh,” Felix squeaks. He clears his throat, shifting his hips a little and moaning lowly. “Full,” he says, trying to remember how to say anything else.
“Relax, little one,” Chan murmurs, huffing out a laugh when Felix tightens instinctively instead. “Take a big breath for me. That’s it, good. Now let it all out.”
Felix sighs, only realizing he’s getting hard again when his belly rises and falls beneath his rallying dick. Chan repeats the exercise with him a couple more times before testing a little movement, grinding his hips in a slow circle that has Felix’s eyes rolling back into his head.
When he manages not to tense against the pleasure, Chan rewards him with a kiss to his jaw as he pulls halfway out. His thrusts start slow. Felix realizes that Chan is trying to work his angles and fumbles behind his head, smacking Chan with a pillow.
Chan’s hips freeze as he laughs, startled. “Let me guess. You want a pillow fight?”
Felix can do nothing more than smack him, as the pillow’s been taken out of his hands, but Chan got the message whether or not he admitted it aloud. He carefully lifts Felix’s hips enough to shove the pillow under the small of his back, then pulls out altogether. Felix makes a wordless noise of protest.
“Shh.” Chan adjusts the pillow and the weight on the bed shifts, but since he hasn’t freed Felix’s legs, he can’t really see what’s going on down there. He doesn’t leave Felix wanting for long, which is all Felix cares about. He’s panting by the time Chan bottoms out again.
“You breathing?” Chan asks, pressing forward little by little.
His actions make it harder for Felix to do so, but he manages, nodding in jerky, awkward motions as Chan presses him deeper into the mattress.
“Good,” Chan says, low and sweet. “Don’t stop, no matter what.”
Felix tries to nod, but when Chan thrusts into him properly for the first time, he can do nothing more than cry out. The next thrust is even better. By the third, Chan tags his prostate hard enough for Felix to see stars. He’s having all kinds of new experiences today.
“Look at you,” Chan croons, ignoring the stuttering moans Felix can’t help making as Chan builds to a steady rhythm inside him. “So wet for me, baby. Your cock’s so pink and pretty like this.” Felix flinches when Chan runs the back of one finger down the length of his cock, shuddering and curling forward, but there’s nowhere to go. If Chan wants to touch him, he’s going to. Nothing Felix can to do to stop him in this position.
“Where you going?” Chan asks, laughter in his voice as he catches Felix trying to wriggle free. He presses Felix even further into the mattress, until the backs of his thighs are touching his chest and he has to fight for every breath. It shouldn’t feel good, it can’t, there are tears in Felix’s eyes and the stretch in his muscles burns and he sobs as the tears spill over, catching on his eyelashes and trailing down his cheeks.
“Felix,” Chan murmurs, sounding genuinely worried for the first time. “You okay?” He slows just a little, but that only makes Felix cry harder. He flails desperately, clawing at Chan’s back to pull him closer and digging his heels in for good measure.
He’s been through a lot over the past few days. Maybe some of that is bubbling to the surface. Maybe Chan’s just fucking him so well that there’s no other way to release the pressure building inside him. Whatever it is, Felix doesn’t care.
“Don’t stop,” he pleads, voice hoarse. “Hyung, I need you, I can take it, promise promise promise.” The next sob torn from his lips is grateful as Chan fucks him harder, but he doesn’t want Chan to think anything’s wrong, so he babbles, desperate to keep Chan fucking him.
“S’good, so good, Channie Channie ah, deep, fuck, gonna feel you forever, forever and ever and ever, every day, fuck me every day? Will you? Please, god, oh my god Chris—”
If he says words after that, Felix can’t interpret them and doesn’t remember what they were before he said them. Chan responds to his encouragement with vigor and intensity, groaning as his thrusts get slower and harder.
He’s close, Felix thinks, suddenly wanting nothing more than to feel Chan come inside him. He wants to be so full of Chan in so many ways that they become indistinguishable. Inseparable. Two halves of the same messy whole.
Chan’s rough palm presses flat against Felix’s dick, trapping it against his stomach. The barest amount of friction is all it takes for Felix’s every muscle to tense, suddenly hovering on the brink of orgasm, but it’s Chan’s groan of pleasure that does him in. The rough, jerky thrusts and rush of heat inside him as Chan comes is more than enough to push Felix over the edge, and he wails as he clings to Chan, shivering long after his cock stops twitching against his stomach.
Two orgasms leave Felix’s brain foggy enough that he barely registers the next few minutes, though he distantly registers just enough of Chan pulling out to whine miserably in response. When he finally pulls himself out of the mist in his skull, Chan is carefully wiping him off with a warm washcloth, expression tender.
Felix gives him maybe the dopeyest smile he’s made in his entire life.
“Cute,” Chan murmurs, tapping Felix on the nose with his finger. Felix sticks out his tongue and licks it, making Chan yelp and snatch his hand back with a laugh.
The few seconds it takes for him to rinse the washcloth in the bathroom are agonizing, but Chan eases the pillow out from under Felix and hops into bed next to him as quickly as possible, tossing said pillow somewhere off to the side.
Felix wrinkles his nose and giggles. “We’re gonna have to wash the whole thing.”
“Worth it,” Chan says, warm nose pressed against Felix’s shoulder. Normally, Felix likes to be the one holding someone else when he falls asleep, but there’s something perfect about how Chan spoons him from behind, so natural he sighs with the rightness of it. When Chan’s leg slips between his thighs, it’s almost like sleeping with a body pillow.
Though Felix is utterly exhausted, he fights sleep long enough to pull Chan’s hand up to his, dropping a kiss on his knuckles.
“Meant it,” he says, slow but careful, wanting to be understood.
Chan kisses the nape of Felix’s neck. “Meant what?”
“Love you.” He’d almost forgotten how it slipped out in the heat of the moment, but Felix knows this is the type of thing Chan would agonize about all night after Felix fell asleep if he allowed it. They’re similar that way.
Chan is quiet for a few breaths. “Oh.” Felix smiles when Chan kisses him again, first on the neck and then the back of his shoulder.
“Don’t tell me now,” Felix says when he hears Chan inhale. “Tell me tomorrow. Too tired to kiss you properly for it now.”
The smile Chan presses into the skin of his shoulder almost makes Felix turn around and try. “Alright,” he whispers. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Felix agrees. It’ll be his last day as a transitioning vampire, but it’ll be better to remember it as the day Chan told him I love you for the first time.
And when he thinks about it like that? Felix can hardly wait.