Chapter Text
It’s not the whimper that catches Felix’s attention. He doesn’t hear that at all, at first. It’s the cat sitting by the entrance of the alleyway that makes him pause on his way home from the bakery, and he crouches down low to make himself seem friendly. “Hey, kitty. Can I pet you?”
He shuffles a little closer and reaches out his hand. Unfortunately, the cat is shy and skitters off immediately, and he huffs in wry amusement, dropping his hand.
That’s when he hears the whimper.
He snaps his head back up, but the alley is unlit and he can’t see into it. “Hello?” he asks, raising his voice. “Anyone there?”
There’s a low whine, and he stands up, taking a deep breath in. The person, whoever it is, must be farther down into the alley, because he can’t quite pick up their scent. Warily, he squints down into the darkness. The person sounds distressed, but until he catches their scent he can’t be sure this isn’t a trap.
He takes a few slow steps forward. He intends to stay close to the street, but the moment he’s between the two alley walls the person’s scent drifts over towards him, and his nostrils flare. Omega. And a distressed one at that. The scent is sharp and acrid with fear, and it lights up every nerve in his body with the urge to help. They’re either not wearing scent blockers or they’ve been panicking for so long the patches have worn through. Gritting his teeth to stop himself from running headfirst into what might still be a trap, he turns on the flashlight on his phone and shines it down the alleyway.
The alley ends in another wall, so at least he can be sure that there’s no people waiting on the other end of it, but also… there’s no one there.
Confused, he lets his eyes trail over the garbage bins, the boxes stacked along one wall, until his eyes fall on a sneaker poking out from behind a stack of crates.
He takes in another deep breath, and all he can smell is that same sharp tang of panic—no one else. Finally letting himself trust that there are no other people here, he rushes into the alley and towards the omega. The light from his phone catches them huddled up against the crates, and he crouches before them. They’re curled up into a tight ball, face hidden against their knees, whining quietly.
“Hey,” he says, making sure to keep his voice soft and even. “Are you okay?”
They don’t react, and their scent doesn’t change, stuck in that haze of terror. Fuck. This is bad. Is it just a panic attack, or something worse? It could be shock, or even a drop. He doesn’t want to touch them. Touch could go either way, and he doesn’t know this omega, doesn’t know how it would be received. He thinks about calling an ambulance, but hesitates. What if they ran away? Past the stench of fear, he can smell pack on them, and he knows that the omega’s bondmates will be contacted as soon as the emergency services are involved. What if this omega escaped a bad situation, a bad pack, and crashed in this alley to hide? Felix thinks of his own escape, two and a half years ago. He decides not to risk it. Not if there’s a chance he can draw this omega out of their panic enough to talk to them first.
After a moment of hesitation, he removes the patches of scent blockers on his own neck. Without touch, his scent is the most comforting thing he can think of to draw the omega out. The smell of citrus hits the air as the patches are removed, and he reaches out with his pheromones, sending out a cloud of calm in the omega’s direction. From another omega like himself, it should at least not seem like a threat, even if his scent is unfamiliar.
He sits down next to the omega, resting his back against the wall, and continues to release calming pheromones. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m here. You’re not alone. I have no idea if you can hear me, but I’m just going to sit here, next to you, and keep you company.”
He continues talking, nothing meaningful at first, just soothing phrases and quiet, consoling shushing sounds as the omega whines in the back of their throat, but eventually he runs out of soothing nothings and starts talking about his day instead.
At first he thinks it isn’t working. That what he’s doing isn’t enough, that the omega will be stuck in this state until Felix has no other choice but to call an ambulance before they collapse. But slowly, very slowly, as he talks, the omega’s scent shifts. There’s still fear, still panic, but it’s lessening, ever so slightly.
Felix lets his head drop back against the dirty alley wall and keeps talking. “Also, I went to the bakery today. Just now, actually, that’s where I came from. I often stop by after work. I’m friends with the owner and she gave me a whole bag of fresh donuts.”
The smell of fear is less acrid now, much more diluted, and Felix rests his hand on the ground between them, palm up. “You can grab my hand if you want, or not,” he comments idly, before continuing. “They were still warm when I got them. The donuts, I mean. You can have one, if you like. They’re raspberry. I love raspberries. I’d have them all the time if they weren’t so expensive.”
A finger brushes against his thumb, and he very deliberately keeps his voice even. “They go really great in brownies, too. You wouldn’t think so, but they do, if you make them right. There’s this fudge raspberry brownie recipe that halmeoni and I have been talking about, and it’s going to be amazing.” The omega’s pinky hooks across his thumb and Felix keeps talking. “But maybe you don’t like raspberries. What do you think about bananas? They go well with most things. Less expensive, too. Have you ever tried banana muffins? With like, nice crunchy walnuts or pecans? Tastes amazing.” The finger slowly inches across his palm until the omega’s hand is on top of his. Felix slowly entwines his fingers with theirs and gives them a little squeeze.
The scent of fear is almost entirely gone now, making way for the omega’s natural scent. It is lovely. A gentle, warm vanilla that has Felix breathing in deeply and closing his eyes. “I’ll have to make them for you some day. Or something else, if you have a different favourite ingredient. I can bake most things.” He doesn’t actually bake. Not anymore. But he’s talking for the omega’s sake, it doesn’t matter if it’s true.
“Peanut butter.”
The voice is so quiet Felix almost misses it. When the words register, he gives the hand in his another squeeze. “Oh, good choice. Peanut butter goes with almost anything, I love it too. Last month halmeoni gave me these cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream, and I almost died, they were so good.”
There’s a huff of air that’s soft, but sounds almost amused.
“Oh yeah, laugh. You don’t believe me, but I’m not kidding. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll make them and you’ll try them, and you’ll say, ‘I am so very, very sorry, Felix, you were right, this is the best thing I have ever tasted and I owe you my undying loyalty.’”
It’s quiet for a moment, and then the omega asks, “Your name is Felix?”
Felix freezes. He hasn’t given someone his real name in years, and he’s a little shocked it just slipped out without him even realising. He lets out a breath, hesitates for a split second, and then very deliberately does not take it back.
Instead, he lets his head roll to his left and opens his eyes to look at the person next to him. The omega has uncurled from their tight ball of terror and is looking back at Felix with pretty chocolate brown eyes. He’s about Felix’s age, he can tell, and he’s honestly very cute. “Hi,” Felix says. “Nice to meet you.”
The omega takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. It’s a little shaky.
Felix squeezes his hand again. “It’s alright,” he says. “I’m really glad you’re back with me.”
The omega squeezes back tightly and takes another breath. “I’m Jeongin,” he offers, and bursts into tears.
Felix instantly shuffles closer, releasing his grip on the omega’s—Jeongin’s—hand only long enough to wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him in. Jeongin goes willingly, letting himself slump against Felix’s chest and burying his face in his jacket.
“It’s okay,” Felix murmurs. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. You’re alright.”
It’s a little crazy how protective he feels over this omega. He doesn’t usually feel this strongly about people he’s just met, even fellow omegas. Then again, the people he meets aren’t usually curled up with terror in dark, abandoned alleyways.
He lets Jeongin cry himself out, sympathising with how haywire his emotions must be going right now. He still doesn’t know if it was a panic attack he was having or if he was in shock, but the aftermath can’t be pleasant either way.
Eventually, Jeongin’s tears dry, turning into quiet sniffles, although he stays cuddled up against Felix’s side. Felix lets him, sending out comforting pheromones and absently noticing the way his own scent mingles with Jeongin’s, creating a citrusy vanilla that reminds him of lemon cupcakes. It smells good.
“Is there anyone you would like to call?” Felix asks. “I didn’t want to call an ambulance, in case… well. I don’t know who you were running from.”
Jeongin shivers, but he doesn’t say anything.
Felix hesitates, but then decides he can’t not offer. He’s been in this very position himself. “Do you… Do you have a place to stay? If you don’t, you can come with me. I have an apartment nearby, and it’s small but you’re welcome to stay. You don’t have to go back to… to your pack, if you don’t want to.”
Jeongin’s head snaps up, his eyes wide with surprise. “My pack?”
Felix blinks. “Yeah. I… Are they not who you were running from?”
Jeongin’s eyes are still wide. “No! I… I lost them. I was… We were at the mall, and I wandered off to look at some books, and then there was this alpha and he approached me…” He takes another, shuddering breath. “I’m not usually like this, I swear. I just… he felt so wrong. I tried to get back to Minho-hyung, but I was panicking and I couldn’t find him, and the alpha was following me so I ran. I ran… a lot.”
He must have, if he is all the way in this part of town. The nearest mall is at least a few kilometres away.
“Well,” Felix says. “The bright side is that you obviously shook him off. Good job.”
Jeongin’s laugh sounds tired, but it’s a laugh and Felix will take it.
“The other bright side—I don’t actually think there are any downsides here, not sure why I put it that way—is that your pack is… good, I take it?”
“The best.” Jeongin smiles up at Felix. “I wouldn’t run from them.”
Felix smiles back, genuinely relieved that it wasn’t his pack the boy was running from. “That’s great. Can you call them?”
The smile drops. “No. My phone died earlier this afternoon. And I don’t know their numbers.”
“Ah. There’s the downside.” That sucks, but Felix can’t blame him for that. Who still knows numbers by heart, these days? He studies Jeongin’s phone, but it’s a brand new iPhone, and Felix knows it won’t be any use to take him home to offer his ancient Android charger that’s hanging on by a thread.
“Alright then,” Felix says, patting Jeongin’s shoulder. “Up you get. Can you stand?”
“What?”
“We’ll just walk back to the mall. If this Minho-ssi is as great as you say he is, he should still be looking for you.”
“They might all be, by now, if he called the others,” Jeongin mutters.
Felix smiles. “Even better. Should be easier to run into one of them, right?” He stands and reaches out a hand. “How are your legs? Can you walk?”
Jeongin hesitates. “I’m… not sure.” He takes Felix’s hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet, only for his legs to immediately give way. Felix was keeping an eye out for this and manages to catch him, carefully settling him back on the ground.
Damn it. Muscle weakness like this might hint at the first signs of an oncoming drop. Apparently some part of Jeongin feels safe enough with Felix that his body is giving in after the intense panic he just experienced, and while that is flattering, it does pose a bit of a problem.
He regards him, wondering how to best proceed. He could carry Jeongin for a little bit, but not all the way back to the mall. He would never make it. He glances back towards the entrance of the alley.
“Don’t…” Jeongin starts, then bites his lip.
Felix looks back. “What?”
“Don’t leave me. I… I know you probably have places to be and I’m so sorry. But please—please stay, just until I can walk again?” His eyes are a little shiny, and a new spike of fear tints the air.
Felix shakes his head. “Jeongin, I’m not leaving you. I wouldn’t even consider it. But the fastest way for you to recover is to get you back to your pack, and I was just thinking…” He looks out at the street again, and hesitates. “I… Okay, how about a taxi?” He thinks he has enough money to pay for one. Probably. He had carefully budgeted his money so he could still pay his rent next week. But if he can make his rice last through the weekend and skips breakfast and lunch next week, he should be fine. It’s worth it, if it means getting Jeongin back to his pack.
Jeongin relaxes. “Oh! That’s smart.”
Felix can’t help but smile back. “Okay. Let me order one.” He pulls out his phone and orders a taxi, and then slides back down next to Jeongin to wait.
“I'm sorry,” Jeongin repeats, leaning back against the wall. He sounds both frustrated and dead tired. “This can’t be what you had planned for tonight.”
“Its fine,” Felix shrugs. “I really didn’t have any plans other than eating those donuts. Speaking of which…” He reaches out for the paper bag and presses a donut into Jeongin’s hand. “Eat while they’re still warm.”
Jeongin stares at the donut for a second before a small smile plays around his lips. “Thank you.”
Felix can hear the deeper layer beneath the words, and pats the omega’s arm with a sticky hand. “Anytime.”
***
By the time the taxi arrives, they’ve finished the donuts and Jeongin has crashed hard, eyes drooping and body leaning into Felix with exhaustion.
Felix has turned his flashlight off to preserve his battery, so they’re back in the dark. They could have left the alley and found a bench somewhere, but Felix doesn’t want to move the omega to a place out in the open, where there are other people that he might not be able to protect him from in this state. Honestly, he is a little worried. Jeongin needs his pack—needs to be scented so his hormone levels will stabilise. If they can’t find them soon enough, he might be headed for a full drop.
His phone pings with a notification, and Felix gives Jeongin a gentle shake. “Hey,” he says. “The taxi is here.”
Jeongin blinks blearily up at him. “Taxi?”
“Yup,” Felix says, keeping his voice bright in hopes of waking him up a little. “Up you get, Innie. Let’s get you back to your pack.” The nickname slips out before he can stop it, but the omega doesn’t seem to notice.
“Pack,” Jeongin mumbles, hands clumsily reaching out as if his pack will materialise in front of him.
Despite the situation, Felix laughs. The boy is adorable. He rises to his feet and hoists Jeongin up with him, slinging the omega’s arm over his shoulders so he can half carry, half drag him out of the alley. To his relief, the car is waiting only a few metres ahead, and he manages to get them there without too much trouble.
“Oof,” he says as he tips Jeongin into the backseat before crawling in after him. The driver asks him for the address, and he realises a little too late that he should have asked Jeongin for more details before he reached this state. He doesn’t even know where in the mall Jeongin had been, and what if his pack is no longer there? He should have gotten his home address. Fuck.
Well, he can’t do anything about that now, and the mall is still their best bet. He tells the driver and buckles Jeongin in. The man frowns at Jeongin. “He alright?”
“He will be, if we get to the mall quickly.” He speaks the words with more conviction than he feels, worry gnawing at his stomach.
The driver takes them in, eyes lingering on Felix’s neck—faded mark, no collar—and the way Jeongin has slumped into Felix’s side again, barely able to keep his eyes open.
“Please just drive?” Felix asks, his voice sharper than technically polite.
The man snorts, unimpressed, but does drive off. Their timing is unfortunate and they’re stuck in the evening rush, standing still more often than they’re driving. Felix darts regular glances out the window, just to make sure the driver is going where he wants him to go.
As they drive, his concern for Jeongin grows, even as he tries to keep his scent peaceful and comforting. Jeongin has buried his face into Felix’s neck—he’s breathing him in, body instinctively seeking what he needs, even if it would be taboo for Felix to scent him because he isn’t pack. It probably has a greater effect on Felix than on Jeongin—the scent of vanilla is heavy around them, and a part of Felix thinks he would be a lot more worried without it.
“Do you have to do that here?” the driver grumbles. He’s wearing scent blockers, the kind used for betas.
Felix knows scenting like this is considered inappropriate in public, but surely the beta can see the emergency here. He opens his mouth to explain the situation, to tell the man that Jeongin might actually drop if he doesn’t get the comfort he needs and that Felix is the closest thing to it right now—
“You’re stinking up the whole car.”
Felix’s eyes flash and he almost snarls at the man. “Yes,” he snaps instead of explaining, refusing to be cowed. “We have to do this here.” This man clearly doesn’t care about Jeongin’s health anyway, and Felix is not going to change the man’s mind no matter what he says.
The man rolls his eyes, but keeps driving, and Felix notices with relief that they’re finally getting close.
“Just a little longer,” he says, pressing an instinctive kiss into Jeongin’s hair. “You’re doing so well.”
Jeongin whines at the praise, and Felix holds him tighter. “You are,” he confirms, realising how far down the boy already is. “You’re so good. You’ve been doing an amazing job all night, taking care of yourself. Perfect omega. Your pack is gonna be so proud of you.”
Jeongin relaxes even further into his hold, now positively boneless, and Felix knows the car will smell of lemon cakes for hours after this. A part of him that he hasn’t felt in years wants to smile viciously in satisfaction.
The car stops, and Felix leans forward to hand the driver some bills, grimacing at the total on the metre. Yeah. No more groceries for him this week.
He opens the door and tugs Jeongin out of the car with him, barely catching him in time as he slumps. Felix curses and sinks to the ground, the omega in his arms. The car drives off immediately and Felix wants to send it the middle finger, but he has more pressing matters to attend to. He looks around. They’re at the mall’s east entrance. He figures his best bet is to check in with the information desk and hope Jeongin’s packmate—Minho, did he say?—has done the same.
With a grunt of effort, he manages to drag Jeongin up again, this time tugging his arms around his neck and hoisting him up onto his back. He bounces him once to adjust his position and then sets off for the entrance. Jeongin is practically a dead weight on his back, and if it weren’t for the way he is still nosing against Felix’s neck, Felix might have worried he had lost consciousness.
“You’re doing so well,” he says again as they slowly make their way to the doors, and Jeongin whines softly again.
“Alpha,” he whimpers, sounding so far gone, and Felix’s heart clenches.
“I know. I know, honey. Alpha will be here soon.”
He walks through the doors, the noise of people and music more than a little overwhelming even to him, and he rubs his cheek against Jeongin’s as the omega whines in protest. “Ssh, I know. Just a little bit longer. I’ll find your pack.”
He spots the information desk and heads towards it, feeling his own scent spike as Jeongin begins to cry. He isn’t loud, but that’s what makes it worse—the way his tears drip quietly down Felix’s neck, a small, distressed whine in the back of his throat. There’s no denying it any longer—Jeongin has fully dropped, and Felix needs to find his packmates now.
“Hi,” he says to the beta woman at the information desk. “I have an omega who’s lost his packmates, have they contacted—”
“JEONGIN!”
He looks up to see an alpha storm in their direction, eyes wild and nostrils flaring, clearly picking up on the omega’s scent.
Felix instinctively turns to keep Jeongin out of the alpha’s sight. A little too late, he realises the alpha had said Jeongin’s name and is probably part of his pack rather than a crazed stranger intending to take advantage. Before he can fix his mistake, the alpha growls at him. “Give him to me.”
The words are spoken in Alpha Voice, and Felix is completely unprepared for it. Panic screeches in his mind as the vibration rumbles through him, and he’s helpless to do anything but obey. No, he thinks, no, no, not again. His breathing quickens into something sharp and fast that doesn’t get him enough oxygen, but he’s unable to do anything about that, either. His body slides Jeongin down his back and into the alpha’s waiting arms. He would have done that anyway. There was no need for the alpha to do this, and the feeling of his body doing something he hasn’t told it to do makes him want to throw up.
The alpha takes a step back to get Jeongin away from Felix and snarls, “Get down. Don’t move.”
Felix’s knees buckle and he slams to the ground, kneeling in front of the alpha and unable to move an inch. The panicked screeching in his mind grows louder, and he feels tears roll down his cheeks. He can feel his body trying to shut down, to check out and slip into that numb state where it won’t feel so bad when the pain comes. But—but he can’t. There’s… Jeongin, he needs to take care of Jeongin, who said his alpha was good, who had wanted to return, even if right now Felix thinks he’s made a terrible mistake.
“He’s dropping,” he says through gritted teeth, dragging his mind back from the brink of that blank void, providing information this asshole of an alpha needs to know if he is going to help Jeongin. “Aftermath of a panic attack, about an hour ago. He didn’t fully drop until we got here. Help him.” He does not say please. Somehow, somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s found a spark of anger underneath the panic. It’s new—it’s not something he ever noticed before in this state, but he latches onto it with all his might. Anger is good. Anger will keep him here, will make sure he doesn’t float off and lose sight of Jeongin.
Even so, he can’t help the way his scent spikes in fear as he waits for the alpha’s next move.
The alpha doesn’t do anything though, not to him. He merely clutches Jeongin closer to his chest. Jeongin whines again and buries his nose into the alpha’s neck. Without taking his eyes off Felix, the alpha turns his own head towards Jeongin enough to nose thoroughly along his neck and then presses his lips to his scent gland.
Jeongin exhales in a rush and then goes limp, falling bonelessly into the alpha's hold. His breathing slows and Felix watches with relief as some of the colour returns to his cheeks. He knows this won’t be the end, that it will take a while for Jeongin’s hormone levels to stabilise, but at least this should be the worst of it, he won’t slide further into the drop.
“Hyung?” someone asks from behind the alpha. It’s followed by a cry of relief. “You found him!”
The second person comes closer and brushes a hand through Jeongin’s silky black hair, then presses his fingers to his pulse point. The pack bracelet on his wrist marks him as a beta. “Fuck, he’s dropping.” He takes Jeongin’s wrists and rubs his own against them, making the omega slump further into the alpha’s hold. The beta looks towards the alpha. “What happened?”
The alpha doesn’t answer, eyes still wild, focused solely on Felix. Felix is still kneeling on the cool tiles of the mall, terror swirling nauseatingly inside him, but a part of him has a strong hold on that spark of anger now. People are watching them, and the woman at the desk is holding the phone as if she’s about to call for security. Felix is on the floor in front of them like he’s some sort of criminal, and while a part of him still wants to run or clock out, there’s a new, fierce urge that wants to spit in the alpha’s face for reducing him to this state. “Let me go,” he growls.
“What happened?” the beta repeats, looking from the alpha to Felix.
“I already told him,” Felix grits out, fighting against the urge to bow his head and submit. Submit, to become the plaything of another alpha. He clings to his anger, and fights. Never again.
“Why is he dropping?” the beta asks, when the alpha doesn’t answer.
“He had a panic attack,” Felix gasps. “Fucking—have him release me and I’ll tell you, alright? I’m not your enemy here.”
The alpha actually growls at him, and the beta looks between the two of them with wide eyes. “Hyung. Did you use your Voice?” The alpha doesn’t react, and the beta places a hand on his shoulder. “Minho-hyung.”
So this is Minho. Jeongin had been adamant that his pack was a good one, but right now, Felix can’t see it.
“What did you do?” the beta asks him. “He would never have used his Voice if you hadn’t—”
“I didn’t do anything!” Felix snaps. “I found Jeongin, miles away, and I brought him here. And he saw me and he just…” He tries to wave his arm and breaks off with a pained whine as the pressure of Minho’s command increases.
The beta stares at Minho, at the look in his eyes, and hesitates. “I… Fuck, I’m calling Chan-hyung. Hyung, let him go. He brought him back to us, yeah?”
Minho doesn’t look like he’s registered the beta’s presence at all, and the beta slowly looks more and more disturbed. He steps closer to Felix. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on, I think he’s been scared out of his mind ever since Jeongin disappeared, maybe it all just hit him.”
That’s nice, but Felix doesn’t have room for empathy. He’s too busy fighting the instinctive urge to bow, to flatten himself to the ground to placate the alpha, to plead for forgiveness so the command will end. The anger is still there, and it’s the only thing keeping him sane, but he’s also terrified, as much as he tries to shove down the fear, the memories, the flashbacks. He’s trapped under this alpha’s command, forced to his knees in a public mall in front of countless other people, and all he wants is to get out before he’s hurt further.
He darts a look to the side. There’s quite a few spectators, but they have left a wide circle around them, and as Felix sees the looks on their faces, he knows they’re not going to step in. It’s not illegal for a pack to dispense their own justice when wronged, even in public, and that’s clearly what everyone thinks is going on here. He knows nobody will come to his aid.
“Hyung!” the beta says, this time speaking into his phone. “No, we found him. But we need your help, Minho-hyung is— No, east entrance, by the information desk. Yes. Yeah, please hu- okay. See you soon.”
Despite his resolve, Felix feels himself slump a little further under Minho’s glare. It’s hard to fight back against an alpha, especially one as intensely furious as Minho is right now, and after carrying Jeongin and worrying for his safety for the past few hours, he is not sure how much energy he has left. It hurts.
To his surprise, the beta kneels down next to him. “Are you okay? Shit, I’m so sorry—hyung, let him go.”
Felix already knows the man won’t. Judging by the look in his eyes, by this point there’s nothing that will drag the alpha out of his state other than the command of a higher-ranking alpha. He sags forward, hoping to god this Minho is not their pack alpha.
There are footsteps running in their direction, and the crowd of onlookers parts as four more people rush in. There is chaos for a minute as they try to figure out what happened, taking in Jeongin’s slumped form in Minho’s arms and the beta’s position at Felix’s side. Another alpha, a man with black hair, looks from the rage in Minho’s eyes to Felix’s pained expression. For a moment, rage flashes in his own eyes as he looks at Felix, but then he frowns at the way the beta is trying to support him. “Seungmin, what’s going on?”
“He brought him back,” the beta next to him says. “He brought Jeongin back, I think, but Minho-hyung just—hyung, he used his Voice.”
The alpha stares at Minho for one incredulous second and then snaps into action. “Minho. Release him, now.”
The words fill the space around them, the air suddenly thick and so heavy with command that Felix shudders anew, even though the words are not directed at him. Minho blinks, shakes his head a little, and then the pressure of his commands drops away as a hint of clarity returns to his eyes.
Felix slumps forward, catching himself with his hands on the floor and sucking in deep breaths of air. Sweat breaks out on his forehead as a rush of heat floods his system, his body adjusting to being in control again. Fuck, he hates Alpha Voice so much.
The beta is still next to him, a hand on his shoulder and leaning forward to try and get a better look at him. He’s saying something, but Felix can’t hear anything through the roaring of blood in his ears. God, he’s going to throw up. His hands are clammy against the tiled floor and his stomach rolls.
“-lright? Hey, take it easy.”
Oh, sound is coming back. His breathing is still too fast, and he shakily draws in a deeper breath, trying to get himself together. He needs to get out of here.
“Good,” another voice rumbles from his left. “Deep breaths. That’s it.”
Felix squeezes his eyes shut and takes a few more deep breaths. A hand lands on the base of his neck, and he flinches violently away.
The hand disappears. “Sorry,” the voice murmurs. “I won’t touch you again.”
Felix doesn’t trust the words. Doesn’t trust these people, doesn’t even trust his own body in the aftermath of the power play that just happened. He needs to get out of here, away from these people. There’s only one thing stopping him, and he raises his head, eyes darting wildly across the group until they land on Jeongin. The omega is still curled up in Minho’s arms, head pressed against his neck. He looks pale, but relaxed. He’s no longer crying.
“Jeongin,” Felix gasps. His voice is hoarse and he barely recognises it. “Is he—is he safe. Please.”
“He’s safe,” the alpha to his left says. “He’s safe. Thanks to you, I believe.”
“Promise,” Felix insists. “Promise he won’t—won’t get hurt—”
“We promise.” The alpha gestures to where three other pack members are already crowding around the omega, scenting him and pressing frantic kisses into his hair. “He’s safe. I swear it.”
Felix slumps forward again. Jeongin is safe. He is back with his pack, and he will be fine. That is good. Now he can go. Without warning, he scrambles to his feet, clearly catching the others by surprise. Taking advantage of their moment of stunned stillness, he rushes off, half-stumbling at first, but breaking into a run as he gets his legs back under him.
He hears people calling out behind him, but he ignores them, focused only on the need to get. out. He darts through the front doors and back onto the parking lot, heaving in grateful breaths of the cool night air. He presses himself against a wall and rummages in his pocket, fishing out his emergency scent blockers. With shaking fingers, he slaps them onto his scent glands, exhaling in relief when the scent of lemons, now acrid with panic, is neutralised by the patches and changed into a cheap artificial cotton scent.
With his scent mostly concealed, he takes a deep breath, drags his hood up over his blond hair, and starts walking with the crowd, urging himself to match their slow pace instead of running off again. He can hear someone shouting behind him, but he doesn’t look up. He’s wearing black and blending in with the crowd, and without his scent, they won’t find him.
His hands are still shaking. His entire body is shaking. He can feel the familiar post-Alpha Voice exhaustion kick in, and he wants to do nothing more than collapse and sleep for a week. But he needs to get home first. He nearly cries again when he realises he’ll have to walk back. He definitely doesn’t have the money to get another taxi. It’s either walk back or end up homeless if he can’t pay his rent next week. He grits his teeth against his trembling muscles and starts walking. This is going to be a long night.
Chapter 2
Notes:
Thank you so much for your response to the first chapter! I was so nervous to start posting this so I'm so relieved you're all liking this! Have the second chapter as a little gift :)
As for future updates, I'm thinking Wednesdays and Saturdays (and I'll do my very best to stick to that, but if I ever miss one, I promise there will always be at least one weekly upload). Welcome aboard everyone, I can't wait to share Felix's journey with you!
Chapter Text
The next few days are terrible. Felix collapses onto his mattress as soon as he gets home, shivering with cold. His body is reacting to the stress of the night—taking care of Jeongin, worrying for him, and then trying to fight back against an alpha’s orders, an alpha’s Voice. He’s dropping himself now, he realises somewhere in the back of his head. He managed to save Jeongin from this fate, but his own body betrays him now, and he whines pitifully into his pillow as the first wave of sadness hits, feeling suddenly very, very lonely.
He drifts in and out for the following two days, his mind a haze of despair. When he’s up, he’s barely aware enough to get himself something to drink before crashing back onto his sheets, body racked with shivers and tears leaking down his cheeks.
Some tiny part of his brain recognises that this is not a full drop; that he’s under, but has managed to retain a sliver of awareness. If he’d dropped fully, he would have been comatose by now, his body unable to fix the hormone imbalances without the help of other people. That doesn’t mean it’s any less painful though. He feels horrible, feverish and freezing all at once, every bone in his body aching. He sobs into his sheets, body and mind protesting the lack of companionship, of pack, of other pheromones. He knows he has had worse, but it’s been a long time since then, and he hasn’t felt this awful in years.
When he wakes on Monday morning, everything is still. He doesn’t move at first, just lies there and blinks up at the ceiling. He can think coherent thoughts for the first time in days, and he tries to search back, to remember what happened. He dropped, he knows that. His head aches, and he isn’t sure whether to attribute that to the crying, dehydration, or the drop itself. Probably all three.
Why had he dropped?
His memories come back in painful flashes that match the pounding headache. The mall. The alpha. Jeongin. He presses a hand into his eyes and groans. He needs painkillers. And water. But mostly painkillers, right now. As he drags himself out of bed, his muscles scream in protest and he nearly falls right back to the ground. If he weren’t so dehydrated he is certain he would cry again.
An hour later, mercifully, the painkillers have kicked in and he has even managed to drag himself into the shower and eat something. As he takes stock of his situation, still feeling a little floaty but slowly coming back down to earth, he realises that as horrid as the experience was, there are two upsides to this whole debacle. The first is that he’s barely eaten this weekend. Which is not exactly an upside for his body, but it’s great for the meagre amount of money he has left, and he finally feels reassured that he’ll make it to his next pay check. The second is that he didn’t have any shifts this weekend, and hasn’t missed work. He remembers how frustrated he’d been when he’d got the schedule last week. How he’d begged for more shifts, in desperate need of the money, but there was supposed to be an official kitchen inspection, and Felix couldn’t be there for that. He’s grateful for it now. If he’d missed work without even calling in sick, he definitely would have lost his job.
He has a shift today, though. He knows he isn’t fully recovered from the drop yet. Not even close. His mind might be clear again, but he nearly collapsed in the shower when his muscles spasmed, and he knows his body will need longer to stabilise. Unfortunately for him, he is not in a position to miss out on any shifts, and he’s going to have to somehow drag himself through it.
As he rises and feels the way his back screams in protest at the movement, he drops his head to his chest with a sigh. This is going to be a terrible week.
***
He’s right. It’s one of the worst weeks he’s had since he moved to Seoul. There is only so much painkillers can do for the deep ache in his bones, and he moves around the restaurant kitchen miserably, slowing down every time he is out of sight of the chefs. The muscle spasms keep striking unexpectedly, especially in his legs. He is supposed to be quick and stay out of anyone’s way, but on Wednesday his legs buckle and he crashes so hard into a stack of chafing dishes that the entire stack topples over in a loud series of clangs. More than one chef pokes their head around the corner to see what is going on, and he keeps his head down in apology, mumbling something about losing his balance. He is lucky the head chef and his boss weren’t around.
He scours omega websites for advice on post-drop symptoms, but none of them are much help. His symptoms don’t quite match up with the ones that are listed, and they are all written for mated omegas anyway, assuming he’ll have access to an alpha to help his body restabilise. A few of them mention specific foods that will help. Avocados. Red meat. Saffron. None of which he can afford, and he resigns himself to dealing with the after-effects as they come.
He hadn’t received more than a raised eyebrow and a scoff from the head chef, Dong-soo, when the man caught sight of him as he returned to work on Monday. It’s clear what the alpha thought he’d been up to—his scent blockers hid the lingering anguish he knows is still part of his scent, and the only thing the man had to go on was his bedraggled appearance. Mercifully though, he did not comment, and simply pointed Felix to the rack of silverware that needed to be polished.
Felix’s job doesn’t really have a name. Technically he doesn’t even have a contract. He’s paid in cash and he could be kicked out at any moment if he displeases anyone. The owner of the restaurant, a thick-set alpha named Gwan Man-sik, had been ready to turn Felix away when he’d applied for a job, but once he realised that Felix was an unmated omega and would not have an alpha to back him up in any legal matters, he’d come around so quickly it had nearly given Felix whiplash.
“Alright,” he’d said, lips stretching into an oily smile. “I guess I could find a use for you.” Felix had not liked the look on his face, but by that point he hadn’t eaten in three days and he’d been desperate enough to accept.
It hasn’t been as bad as he’d feared. It’s hard work—the restaurant is large, and he does anything and everything people want him to. He washes dishes, runs errands across town, and cleans anything he is pointed to. He works long days and he’s paid little, but nobody has touched him. More than a few people have looked, but in the past two years, no one has actually done what he’d been afraid of. That’s not to say he feels comfortable at work, considering nearly eighty percent of the staff are alphas, their scents thick and heavy in the humid kitchen air.
There are a few omegas working at the restaurant, but they’re mated, with an alpha or a pack to support them. Felix knows they get paid properly—that they get paid sick leave, even for drops, should they happen. He, however, does not. Not working means no money, no matter how sick he is. Felix knows it isn’t right, that his working conditions are not legal. But every time Man-sik assigns him even longer shifts or heavier chores, he merely smirks when Felix looks up at him, as if to say, “Well, omega? What are you gonna do about it?” And they both know he is right.
Even if he knew enough about the law to fight back, hell, even if he had a pack, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Felix gave Man-sik a fake name, and he suspects the man knows it. Felix has been living off the grid for two and a half years now, and he would never go to the police of his own accord. He is powerless here.
And so he struggles on, gritting his teeth whenever a cramp hits and burying his head in his sleeve when his mind slips back into despair and tears drip down his cheeks. This won’t last forever, he tells himself. He’s had worse. Hell, he survived a bond severing when he was still living on the streets. He can handle this. His body will stabilise. He just has to tough it out until it does.
***
Felix has been standing next to a potted plant for ten minutes. It’s ridiculous. The exit is right there, he just needs to walk across the atrium and leave so he can get back home and catch some sleep. It’s been two weeks and his body is still recovering from that drop, muscle spasms still making his knees give way every once in a while. It’s not as bad as it was last week, but the fact that it’s still happening at all is getting more frustrating by the day.
If it hadn’t been absolutely necessary, he wouldn’t have come to the mall at all. The phone charger is an expense he would rather have avoided, but his old charger had finally given up the ghost. He needs his phone for work, so there was nothing else for it. At least he got paid a few days ago.
He was a little surprised by how reluctant he’d been to come back here. He hadn’t realised the incident had impacted him this badly. Sure, the situation had been unpleasant, but not exactly nightmare-inducing. Nobody had actually hurt him. He’s had much worse.
Still, he had entered from the mall’s south entrance, rather than the east. It had been a detour, but he hadn’t been able to force himself to go there again. Now, though, on his way back…
He stares hard at the revolving doors on the other side of the east-side atrium. He doesn’t want to let that one night dictate all of his future comings and goings. He wants to just move on and forget about it. He needs to get over this. He needs to walk across the hall and prove to his traitorous mind that there is nothing to worry about. Because there isn’t.
He lets out the breath he was holding in a rush of air, and steps forward. His eyes flick to the information desk in the centre of the hall, chest tightening for a second before it registers that no, the alpha isn’t there. He huffs, annoyed with himself for being this jumpy.
Slowly, he approaches the desk. He lets his eyes trail across the ground in front of it, as if looking for... There. That’s the spot. That’s where he’d crashed to his knees, where he’d been pinned in place like an insect, too weak and terrified to move.
He takes a breath. Then another. Then takes a step forward. He can move, this time. He’s not stuck. He moves until he’s standing where the alpha had been. Minho. Where Minho had looked down at him, with a gaze so intense that it sends phantom pressure prickling along the back of Felix’s neck even now.
But he isn’t here. Of course he isn’t. See, it was ridiculous to even think he would—
Someone taps him on the shoulder.
Felix spins around so violently he nearly knocks himself over.
The woman standing there lets out a yelp of her own at Felix’s unexpected flailing and takes a hasty step back. She shoots Felix an irritated look. “Excuse me,” she says snippily. “Are you the omega from that… altercation two weeks ago?”
Felix stares at her, heart still trying to jump out of his throat, and it takes him a moment to register the uniform and recognise her as the beta receptionist who’d been at the information desk that night. “I-I…” he stutters, and she rolls her eyes.
“Come with me, please.”
Alarm bells start ringing in Felix’s head and his entire body locks up. Fuck. Shit, are they here after all? Did they… are they going to arrest him, or something? Technically, he didn’t do anything that should warrant arrest, he only brought their omega back to them, but he’s a lone omega and society has never been on his side. If Jeongin’s pack claims he wronged them, nobody is going to believe Felix.
“Sir,” the woman says, having paused as soon as she realised Felix wasn’t following. “I only need to give you something. Could you please just follow me to the help desk?”
Give him something? What on earth does that mean? Felix’s mind is spinning with possibilities, each worse than the last.
“Sir,” the woman repeats pointedly, sounding impatient. People are starting to stare.
Mechanically, Felix follows her to the desk. The last thing he needs is more attention on him. The woman walks through to the other side of the desk and bends to rummage through a drawer. “After the scene you caused that night,” she says as she comes back up. “The pack alpha came back the following day and gave us this, to pass on to you in case we saw you again.” She pushes something towards him across the desk.
It’s an envelope. White, nondescript, but it has his first name on it, underlined once. His real name. He shivers and snatches it off the desk as if the name will be erased from the woman’s memory as soon as she can no longer see it.
“Did he say what it was.” His tone is flat, would have bordered on rude if his voice hadn’t been ninety percent air.
“He did not.” She pauses to look at him. “But I’m sure you know what it is you did.” Her eyes are sharp and he sees no sympathy. Whatever she thinks had happened, she is convinced it was his fault.
Like he thought. His side of the story will not matter to anyone but himself. It’s the pack’s word that will be held as truth, and there’s nothing he can do against it.
Suddenly, he feels exhausted. “Alright,” he mumbles, pocketing the envelope and stepping away from the desk. “Thanks.”
He leaves, heading straight for the exit. It means he walks right across the spot again. The fear is gone now, replaced by a bone-deep weariness.
The envelope burns a hole in his pocket all the way home.
***
Felix-nim-gge,
This letter is a long shot, and most likely you will never read it. Still, I have to try.
First of all, on behalf of all my packmates, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking care of Jeongin. I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn’t come across him when you did, or if he had been found by anyone but you. He told us what happened, and how well you treated him. We are so thankful you brought him back safely.
Secondly, and more importantly, I would like to extend an equally heartfelt apology for what happened when you returned him to us. My packmate was at the end of his tether when he saw you carrying Jeongin, but that is not an excuse. What happened was inexcusable, and I am deeply, truly sorry for how poorly we have treated you.
We tried to find you, afterwards, but you had already gone. We didn’t want to chase you and make the situation worse, as well-intended as our actions would have been. We are all very shaken up by what happened and we can only hope that you’re okay. Please, if you can, let us know how you are doing. We are very worried for your health. If there is anything you need, financially or otherwise, please do not hesitate to let us know. We are in your debt.
With eternal gratitude,
Bang Chan, Pack Alpha (+82-XX-XXXX-XXXX)
Felix has been staring at the letter for the past thirty minutes. He… doesn’t know what to do with this. Whatever he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. An apology. From a pack alpha.
It’s so confusing that it makes his head ache. In a way, the gratitude he can sort of get. If Jeongin was right and his pack is good, then it would make sense they’d be happy to have him back.
But Minho hadn’t been good. Minho had taken one look at Felix and pinned him to the floor, and the kindness of this letter clashes so violently with his behaviour that Felix has no idea what to think.
And they know his name. They might not know where he lives but they know his name, and that sends ice creeping through Felix’s veins. He doesn’t want anything to do with these people. He can’t let them find him again.
It’s fine. What happened had happened. It’s in the past. It’s done now, and they can’t find him, because they don’t know anything about him besides his name.
He rips the letter into tiny pieces and tosses them in the bin. There. Matter closed.
He plugs his new charger into his phone and heads to the bathroom to take a shower. He twists the tap open fully and turns the water up as hot as it will go—still barely a lukewarm trickle—and sits down on the floor, letting the water rain down his back and ease the tremors that have afflicted his muscles once again.
We are all very shaken up by what happened.
He closes his eyes, tipping his head back into the stream.
We’re very worried for your health.
He presses his fists into his eyes.
Please, if you can, let us know how you are doing.
He growls, long and frustrated. He doesn’t owe these people anything. He doesn’t trust them. He can let this go and he’ll never have to see them again.
The phantom scent of vanilla hits his nose and he drops his head with a long, resigned sigh. It’s no use lying to himself. It’s not about the pack, it’s not about the letter. It’s about Jeongin.
He’s been unsettled for the past two weeks, and it’s more than just the aftereffects of the drop. He’s worried. He’s still afraid for the omega. He tried to tell himself it was stupid. Jeongin told him his pack was good, that it was the best pack, even. But the way Minho acted… best pack certainly weren’t the words Felix would use.
And Bang Chan hadn’t mentioned Jeongin’s health directly. His letter implied that the omega had been well enough afterwards to tell them the full story, but Felix hasn’t seen Jeongin safe. The last Felix saw of him was when he lay pale-faced and half-delirious in his alpha’s arms, tear stains still wet on his cheeks. And as much as he tries to tell himself that Jeongin is fine now… he simply doesn’t know if it’s true.
He needs to know. He knows he won’t be able to drop this until he does. He needs to know for certain that Jeongin is well.
He turns off the water, frustrated with himself beyond belief. Back in his living space, he grabs his phone and enters the number that’s been burned into his retinas. Just one text, he tells himself. The alpha won’t be able to find him with just his number. He’s safe. Just one text. There’s only one thing he needs to know.
[9:17 pm] Felix: How is Jeongin?
The response comes surprisingly quickly.
[9:18 pm] Bang Chan: Felix?
[9:18 pm] Bang Chan: This is Felix, right?
Felix flinches. His real name again. Well, it’s not like he can deny it—the alpha already knows him by that name. He almost doesn’t text back, but then he sighs. He’s already gone this far. One more text won’t make a difference.
[9:21 pm] Felix: Yes. How is he
[9:21 pm] Bang Chan: Jeongin is well. He never dropped deeply enough to get hurt, thanks to you. He came to about an hour later. We’ve been coddling him ever since. To be honest I think he’s getting rather sick of us.
Felix breathes out, but his shoulders don’t relax. It could still a be a lie. The alpha could write anything, and it would—
[9:22 pm] Bang Chan: [picture attached]
In the photo, Jeongin is sat on a large living room couch, tucked between two people Felix doesn’t recognise but who must be his packmates. Each of them is holding a gaming controller and Jeongin is laughing. There’s a clock on the wall behind them that says it’s almost nine thirty. The photo was taken just now.
This time, something loosens inside his chest. It wasn’t a lie. Jeongin really is fine. Before he can do anything else, his phone buzzes again.
[9:22 pm] Bang Chan: How are you doing, Felix-ssi? I’m so glad you got the letter. It felt like a fool’s errand, but I had to try. We have all been very worried about you.
Felix stares at the screen. Yeah, he’s not going to respond to that. He didn’t text to talk about himself, and he doesn’t want to. He puts his phone down and only picks it up ten minutes later when it buzzes again.
[9:34 pm] Bang Chan: If there is anything we can do for you, you need only ask. We owe you more than I could ever put into words.
[9:34 pm] Bang Chan: You’re well within your right to sue, and if you choose to go down that path I promise we will all cooperate to our fullest ability.
What the fuck. He nearly chokes on the snort of ugly laughter that escapes him. The very idea of a nameless, packless omega like him suing what is clearly a well-established pack is so ridiculous he laughs again. Yeah. He won’t be doing that.
In fact, he won’t be doing anything else. He tosses his phone to the side again and gets up to get ready for bed. He’s got his confirmation that Jeongin is okay, and that was all he wanted. Now he can put the whole situation behind him.
***
He’s on his lunch break the next day when his phone buzzes. Lunch break is a bit of a stretch, in all senses of the word, considering he’s still unpacking boxes in one of the store rooms and he doesn’t actually have any lunch to eat. Still, this is usually the quietest part of his day and the closest thing to a break he gets. There’s no one around, so he pulls out his phone.
[1:12 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: felix-ssi?
[1:13 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: channie-hyung gave me your number i hope you don’t mind
[1:13 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: i wanted to talk to you so badly and i may have used his lingering guilt over what happened to me to wheedle your number out of him
[1:13 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: i’d say i’m sorry but i’m not really
Felix can only blink at his phone as the messages keep coming.
[1:14 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: unless you really don’t wanna talk to me in which case tell me to stop and i will
[1:14 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: oh this is jeongin btw
Felix stares at the screen. Jeongin?
[1:15 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: i wanted to apologise for my behaviour that night
[1:15 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: i know i was out of it but i was still all over you and i think i even scented you without asking and ugh i’m so sorry
[1:15 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: i feel really guilty about that
[1:16 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: and you still dragged me all over town to get me back to my pack
[1:16 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: god you’re the best person ever i’m sorry
It’s the apologies and guilt that has Felix typing out a reply before he can even remember he wasn’t going to interact with this pack again.
[1:17 pm] Felix: That was not your fault
[1:17 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: felix!
[1:17 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: oh thank god you replied
[1:17 pm] +82-XX-XXXX-XXXX: no i know i didn’t have much control over the situation but i’m still sorry to have made you uncomfortable
[1:18 pm] Felix: You didn’t
[1:18 pm] Felix: I didn’t mind
He hesitates for a second before adding:
[1:19 pm] Felix: You were dropping. I wanted to help. I’m glad I could get you back to your pack in time. I was a little scared we wouldn’t make it really. Don’t feel guilty. I’m glad you’re okay
There. That was completely honest. He looks at the screen, but he can’t see if Jeongin has read the texts because he’s not a contact in his phone. Sighing, he saves his number. The ‘read’ marks appear, but there is no reply.
Oh. Well, that is fine. He’s said what he wanted to say and hopefully reassured Jeongin that there is no need for guilt of any kind. He goes back to the box of wine he is unpacking. After a few minutes, his phone buzzes again.
[1:26 pm] Jeongin: can we maybe meet up? you don’t have to if you don’t want. just tell me no if you’re uncomfortable. but i would love to see you again and thank you in person
Felix’s first reaction is no. It doesn’t matter how much he liked the other omega—meeting up with this pack again is unsafe, they know his real name and he doesn’t want to. But then the next text comes in and he pauses.
[1:26 pm] Jeongin: i’ve been worried about you and to be completely honest i’ve been feeling a little off ever since that night. i think i just need to see you’re okay in person or sth
[1:27 pm] Jeongin: but again that’s not your problem it’s mine and you can say no
Jeongin has been feeling uncomfortable too? The idea of Jeongin feeling anxious over Felix is preposterous, but still leaves a bitter taste in Felix’s mouth. He doesn’t want Jeongin to feel bad, especially not over him. He bites his lip, uncertain. If they meet up, what’s the worst that could happen?
An image of dark eyes flashes through his mind, the echo of a Voice, cool mall tiles under his knees.
He shakes his head roughly to clear it. No. No, he won’t let that happen again. He should say no. But… everything in him yearns to make sure Jeongin is happy. It’s a little startling, how strong the feeling is. He hasn’t felt this protective about someone in a very long time.
He puts his phone down and tries to distract himself. He finishes unpacking another two boxes before he picks it up again with a sigh.
[1:48 pm] Felix: We can meet at Paik’s in the mall. No alphas though
The reply comes in immediately.
[1:48 pm] Jeongin: oh my god thank you, yes of course no alphas
[1:48 pm] Jeongin: can i bring seungmin-hyung though? he’s the beta you met that night
[1:49 pm] Jeongin: it’s just that i think it’ll stress everyone out if i go alone
He supposes that’s fair. Felix can’t recall what the beta looks like, but he remembers he had tried to help. He’d knelt down next to Felix.
[1:50 pm] Felix: That’s fine. Friday at 2pm okay?
[1:50 pm] Jeongin: yes! see you then!
Felix pockets his phone and turns back to his boxes, unsure if he’s just done the right thing or made a terrible mistake.
Chapter Text
Felix feels his hands tremble a little as he enters the mall again on Friday. Perhaps he should have chosen a different location to meet Jeongin again. But the mall had been the first public place that had popped into his mind, and he hadn’t really been thinking past that when he’d suggested it.
The coffeeshop Felix picked is on the cheaper side. He doesn’t really want to spend money on coffee at all, but he is nervous enough about this meeting as it is and coffee dates are predictable. They have a structure. Meet up, order coffee, drink coffee at a table while having a chat, and then leave. Simple. Safe. If he’s not comfortable, he can leave.
When he arrives at Paik’s, he’s at least five minutes early, but it appears Jeongin still got there before he did. The black-haired omega is talking animatedly with a vaguely familiar-looking boy that Felix assumes must be Seungmin. He gets closer, and Seungmin spots him over Jeongin’s shoulder. The beta gives Jeongin a little nudge, and the omega turns around. His eyes light up.
“Felix!”
It’s jarring to hear his name, his real name. He hasn’t been addressed by it in years, and certainly not with so much enthusiasm. Felix walks forward until he is in front of them, his hands nervously shoved into his pockets. “Hi.”
Jeongin smiles at him. “I’m so glad you came.”
Felix lets his eyes trail down Jeongin’s body, taking him in. He’s wearing a black leather jacket and light blue baggy jeans that look worn but somehow still expensive. His shirt is cut low enough to show off the collar around his neck, a black one with a shiny silver tag that Felix knows has his pack’s name on it. He looks good. Not just the outfit—Jeongin looks good, smiling and healthy and so very different from how Felix last saw him.
“You look good,” he says, before realising how it sounds. “Well, I mean. You look well. Healthy.”
“I am, thanks to you.” Jeongin looks him in the eyes and then bows to him, a full bow, holding the pose for a few seconds to show gratitude and respect. Felix feels awkward and is about to tell him it’s alright, but then the beta next to him bows too, an equally deep bow of respect.
“Thank you,” Seungmin says after rising, his voice quiet. “For taking care of him.”
Felix’s cheeks flush, even more flustered. “I-it’s nothing,” he says. “Really, you don’t have to—I just did what anyone would have.”
“No,” Seungmin says, and Jeongin shakes his head in agreement. “Most people would not have.”
Felix remembers Jeongin’s glassy-eyed stare and dazed state and grimaces, knowing he’s right. “I did what any decent person would have done, then.”
The corner of Seungmin’s mouth quirks up. “That I can’t argue with.”
“How are you?” Jeongin asks, concern seeping into his voice. “I don’t really remember what happened, but the others said that you… that… that Minho-hyung—” His hands clench.
Felix feels his shoulders tighten involuntarily. “I’m fine.”
Seungmin studies him. “You look tired.” It’s not an accusation. His voice is soft, and his tone is casual enough that it doesn’t make Felix’s hackles rise.
“I’ve had a busy week at work.” He knows he looks tired. Knows that while the patches on his neck mask the lingering notes of drop in his scent, he can’t hide the bags under his eyes, or the pallor of his skin. He doesn’t have the money to indulge in the luxury of makeup.
Seungmin doesn’t reply, eyes still studying his face, but Jeongin clears his throat and gestures towards the coffeeshop. “Do you want to go in?”
“Yes,” Felix says, grateful for the out. They head for the door, but then Jeongin pauses, stopping Felix with a hand on his arm.
“Oh, before we go in, I should tell you—we didn’t come alone.” Felix tenses, and Jeongin pulls a face. “No—I… shit, okay, wait. I mean, Seungmin and I are the only ones here with you and I promise nobody else will bother you. It’s just that the incident really scared everyone and I haven’t really been out much since that day except to go to school. Me coming here today had everyone so on edge, even when I said I’d bring Seungmin—”
“Which was insulting, frankly,” Seungmin says dryly.
“—so Changbin-hyung and Jisung-hyung came with us, but they’re not here,” he stresses, his eyes almost pleading. “They’re shopping in a different part of the mall.” He bites his lip. “Changbin-hyung is a beta, and Sungie is… Well he’s an alpha but he won’t come close, I swear. I’m sorry. I know you said… I’m sorry.”
Felix is silent, trying to gauge how he feels about this. It makes sense, what Jeongin says. Even he can understand that after Jeongin’s drop, the pack would want to keep him close until their instincts settled again. And Jeongin hadn’t needed to tell him. He could have just pretended, and Felix would have been none the wiser. But he’d been honest instead. That means something.
Besides, he thinks. This is not a big deal. They’re not even here. He’s actually a little amazed they’ve agreed to stay so far away. He blows out a breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Jeongin’s face floods with relief.
“Yeah.” There is, however, one thing he can’t help but check. “So. Your, um… Minho-ssi is not…?”
Something complicated flashes across Jeongin’s face, and even Seungmin’s expression shifts. “No,” Jeongin says. “He’s not here. I promise.”
Felix looks at them, but whatever the flash of emotion was, he doesn’t think they’re lying. He nods again. “Okay.”
Seungmin gestures to the door. “Let’s go in. We can talk over coffee.”
They walk in and head for the counter, where a barista dressed in a black apron looks at them expectantly, ready to take their order. Felix isn’t a huge fan of coffee and simply gets a tea—the cheapest thing on the menu. As he gives the girl his order, however, Jeongin points to the pastry case. “Which cake do you want?”
“Oh, I’m good. Just tea is fine.”
“You have to have cake! Come on, look how good they look!” He darts a glance over his shoulder at Felix. “We’re buying, obviously.”
Felix blinks. Before he can say anything, Seungmin nudges him lightly. “We are, and you’re not changing our mind. We owe you far more than just cake.”
Felix shakes his head. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“We really do. But cake is a good start.”
It’s clear that they’re not going to take no for an answer, so eventually Felix points to a chocolate cake in the centre of the case. Seungmin tells them he’ll wait for their order, and Jeongin leads Felix to a booth in the back. There are a few other customers, but the shop is not busy and the low-fi music playing will give them some privacy.
When they sit down, they sit in silence for a minute. Felix has no idea what to say. Right when he’s about to make a stupid comment about the music just to break the silence, Jeongin takes in a breath, and Felix looks up.
Hesitantly Jeongin says, “Can you… Will you tell me what happened that night? It’s… my memory is fuzzy.”
Felix nods, glad to have something to talk about. “How much do you remember?” He can sympathise. He barely remembers anything from the weekend that followed due to his own drop, and even over the past few weeks some nights are cloudy as his mind relapsed into a state of depression.
“I remember the running, and the panic. I don’t remember hiding in that back alley. But I remember you.” Jeongin meets his eyes. “I remember you pulling me out of it. It really felt like I was drowning, but then I slowly started feeling more grounded. You were talking about baking.”
Felix gives him a small smile. “I just thought talking might help. It was the first thing I thought of. We talked for a bit, afterwards. Do you remember that?”
Jeongin nods. “I do, most of it. You shared your donuts with me. They were so good.”
Felix chuckles at the look of longing on his face.
“After that is where things get hazy again. I think you ordered us a taxi? But I don’t even remember getting into it.”
"I did," Felix says, but before he can say anything else, Seungmin returns, placing a tray on the table.
He slides into the booth next to Jeongin and waves a shiny black credit card in the air. “I love it when hyung is paying,” he says, as he starts handing out their drinks and cakes. “Things always taste better when they’re free.”
Jeongin elbows him, and Seungmin laughs. “Hey, he told us to get Felix the best thing on the menu. I’m just following orders.”
Jeongin rolls his eyes, but then stares at the chocolate cake with a near-feverish expression. “That looks so good.”
It does look good. The cake is tall, with alternating layers of cake and chocolate cream. Jeongin digs in and moans as the first bite hits his tongue.
Felix’s lips quirk up, amused. “Better than the donuts?”
“No.” Jeongin doesn’t even hesitate. “No, nothing can beat those. You have to tell me where you got them.”
“You really do,” Seungmin says, taking a sip of his coffee. “He’s mentioned them at least twenty times over the past few weeks. You’d do us all a favour.”
Felix shakes his head. “Oh, they’re from a small bakery in Heukseok-dong. It’s not really well-known but nobody does pastries like she does.”
“Well, I think we’re going to have to start visiting Heukseok-dong more often then.” Seungmin gestures at Felix’s cake. “Dig in.”
He does, letting the first bite roll around in his mouth for a bit. It’s a good cake. The dough is soft and moist in a way that is just sticky enough to be satisfying rather than annoying. It’s slightly too sweet though, and he knows exactly the kind of criticism halmeoni would have unleashed if she’d tasted this. In his head, he runs through the steps they must have gone through to bake it, and what he’d need to change to fix it. He wonders how it would taste if he added a layer of something fruity. Cherry compote, perhaps.
Jeongin turns to Seungmin. “Felix was telling me what happened after he found me. We did get a taxi, like I thought.”
Oh, right. That’s what they’d been talking about. He swallows and puts his fork down. “Um, yeah. I got us in and told the driver to get us to the mall.” He pulls a face. “I realised too late that I should have asked you where in the mall you’d been, or even your home address. But you were so out of it by that point that I didn’t think you could answer me.”
“I really don’t remember a thing. All I know is that I felt safe. Safety and lemons.” He smiles ruefully. “I guess that must have been because I scented you. Sorry.”
Felix shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. I practically drowned you in my pheromones in that back alley. I can’t blame you for leaning in for comfort afterwards.” Jeongin grimaces, and he adds, “And I didn’t mind. I promise. I wanted to help, and… You, um. Well. You smell nice.”
He flushes, but Jeongin brightens. “Lemon cakes! I thought maybe I dreamed it, but our scents matched well, right?”
Felix nods, a little surprised Jeongin is mentioning it openly. Even now, Jeongin’s vanilla scent drifts around him. It’s gentle this time, content, not soured by panic or the effects of drop. It mixes pleasantly with the hint of sage he’s able to pick up from Seungmin. They must have noticed Felix’s lack of scent, but neither of them comments on it.
“I think the taxi driver was the only one who minded,” Felix notes absently as he lets his mind drift back to that night. “You were clearly in distress and he was such an ass about it. I was a bit worried he would kick us out, but he got us to the mall in the end.”
It’s silent for a bit and he looks up to find Jeongin’s eyes on him. He looks worried. Not for himself, Felix realises—for him. It surprises him. “Did he do anything?”
“Oh. No,” he manages. “No, he was fine. Just made a few bitchy comments, that’s all.”
“Did you bitch back at him?” Seungmin asks, raising an eyebrow.
“What? No!” Then Felix remembers the way he snapped at the driver, and amends, “Well... A little. He was very rude, and I was stressed.”
Seungmin grins. “Good. I know I would have.”
Felix can’t help but smile back. It’s surprisingly comfortable, this conversation. Despite their topic of discussion, the boys in front of him are easy to talk to. “Well, we got to the mall and I paid and he drove off,” he continues, “And—”
“Shit, wait,” Jeongin says, nudging Seungmin. “I almost forgot, hyung, the money.”
“Oh, right.” Seungmin grabs his bag and rummages through it before presenting Felix with an envelope.
Felix stares at it. “What?”
“For the taxi!” Jeongin explains. “I couldn’t really remember how we got to the mall, but I thought we took a taxi, and then Channie-hyung said you must have paid for it. So we’re paying you back, obviously.”
Felix doesn’t make a move to grab it, stunned.
“You would never have been in that taxi if it weren’t for me. You shouldn’t have had to pay.”
Felix is still staring. He’d never expected them to think of that, and then to actually do something about it. With the exception of Jeongin, his first impression of this pack hadn’t exactly been a good one. For a moment, he thinks of refusing. It feels almost like a trick, and he doesn’t want to owe them anything. But that’s silly, right? Because they’re right—he wouldn’t have been in that taxi if it hadn’t been for Jeongin, and besides, based on what Seungmin said earlier, it seems they think they owe him. Slowly, he reaches out a hand towards the envelope.
“Fair warning,” Seungmin says, and Felix freezes. “There might be a bit more in there than the taxi fare. I think we managed to hold Channie-hyung back from giving you half our bank account, but he still had that manic glint in his eye so I don’t think we stopped him entirely.” He catches Felix’s expression and laughs. “Just take it. He’ll only get sad if you don’t. Please save us from having to watch Finding Nemo on repeat this weekend.”
Felix chokes on a laugh, and slides the envelope into the pocket of his jacket. He still feels a little uncomfortable, but as much as he hates to admit it, he’s not really in a position where he can refuse money. His mind is still reeling from the way these people never quite react the way he expects them to. Half their bank account. Surely that had been a joke.
“How did you know where in the mall to go?” Jeongin asks around another mouthful of cake.
“I didn’t.” Felix bites his lip, remembering how worried he’d been at that point. “You were… You could no longer stand, so I carried you in. You had already dropped and I was really scared we wouldn’t get to your pack in time. I had no idea how to find them. The only thing I could think of was the information desk, so I went up there to ask if anyone had asked after a missing omega, and then, well…”
He falls silent and Seungmin grimaces. “Then Minho-hyung found you.”
“Yeah.” Felix doesn’t say anything else. Then Minho found them, and made Felix kneel and freeze in public like he owned him, and nearly killed him afterwards with the drop he put him through. He doesn’t want to discuss it. He’s still mad about it, but he doesn’t want to take it out on Jeongin, who had nothing to do with it, or Seungmin, who only tried to help.
“I still can’t believe he did that,” Jeongin says. There is a sour note in his scent and the complicated look is back on his face. Seungmin shoots him a look, but Jeongin shakes his head. “I just don’t get it. He’s always so in control, and…”
The snort escapes Felix before he knows it, and he looks away. In control. Yeah, the alpha had sure liked his control that night.
His sentiment must be clearly visible on his face, because Jeongin’s expression falls. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m sorry.”
“For what it’s worth,” Seungmin adds, “Ever since that night Minho has been—”
“Can we not talk about this?” Felix cuts in, a little snappier than he intended. The other two fall silent, and he sighs. “Sorry. I just… I don’t want to discuss it. It happened. It sucked. I’d like to forget about it, if that’s okay.”
They watch him for a long minute. Eventually, Seungmin nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. If that’s what you want.”
Felix nods, relieved. “Thanks.”
Slowly, Jeongin raises his hand. “I… Can I ask one thing?”
Felix isn’t sure if it’s because this is Jeongin or because of the fact that he raised his hand like he’s in primary school, but it lowers his guard enough that he huffs out a laugh. “Yeah.”
“How are you really?”
Felix blinks.
“I mean,” Jeongin continues before he can say anything, “I know you said you’re fine. But the others told me that after… that, you ran away, and I just… I think after what happened to me earlier that day, I know a little bit about how that feels. So I guess what I’m asking is if you were okay, after.”
Jeongin’s voice is soft, but his eyes are perceptive. They don’t leave Felix’s face.
Felix knows he is silent for a beat too long before he says, “I really was fine, afterwards. I used the walk back to clear my head and calm down.” He is once again thankful for the scent blockers that hide the sour undertone in his scent. Jeongin and Seungmin still don’t look convinced by his words, but if they could smell him the lie would have fallen through before the words even passed his lips.
Jeongin looks like he’s about to press further, but he is interrupted by the ping of an incoming text message. It’s Seungmin’s phone, and the beta checks it. “It’s just Changbin-hyung.”
“Are they okay?” Jeongin asks.
Seungmin snorts. “He’s being dramatic. Apparently Sungie’s bought half the equipment in the music store, and hyung says he might collapse if Jisung adds any more bags.”
Jeongin laughs. “But he’s usually just as bad in music stores?”
“Oh yeah, at least half the bags are definitely his,” Seungmin agrees, sending a text back.
Felix feels himself relax again now they’re back to casual banter instead of probing questions into his well-being.
Another ping as the response comes in, and Seungmin checks it. “He says not to rush and to have fun. He’s going to drag Jisung to a different café.”
“Why a different one?” The words are out before Felix knows it.
“What?” Seungmin stares at him.
Felix had spoken without thinking. He can’t believe the words just came out of his mouth, but there is something about the obvious shock on Seungmin’s face that is satisfying enough to make him go on. “This is a café, right? The cake is good. They can come here.”
“Seriously?”
“Is this Jisung planning to use his Voice on me?”
“What? No!” Seungmin protests, at the same time Jeongin says, “He would never.”
“Then tell them to come over. I’m not that fragile.” He’s not. He isn’t fragile, and he’s annoyed with the tightness in his chest that grabs hold of him every time he thinks of this pack’s other members.
“Okay,” Seungmin says slowly. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” Felix says, resolutely ignoring the fact that he does not feel sure at all. He does not know the alpha they call Jisung, and he certainly doesn’t trust him. Jeongin’s and Seungmin’s conviction that he won’t do anything doesn’t mean much, considering they were both clearly still shocked by Minho’s actions. But Felix needs to get over this. He needs to prove to himself that he’s fine.
Seungmin watches him for another few seconds, but Jeongin smiles radiantly at him, looking so grateful that there is no way Felix would take it back now.
Seungmin fires off another text and then puts his phone down. “They’re on their way. Do you want another drink? I’m gonna order for the others too.”
When he leaves, Jeongin hesitates. “Do you want… Maybe I can come sit next to you? So the others can sit on this side of the booth? I don’t have to! We can also just drag some chairs over if you want.”
The question is so thoughtful that Felix is taken aback for a moment. He hadn’t even thought about where everyone would sit. But Jeongin is right, there’s no way all four of them would fit on their side of the booth. And the idea of this unknown alpha sitting next to him, blocking his way out of the booth, is enough to make his stomach twist. But Jeongin... If Jeongin moved to his side, he doesn’t think it would feel claustrophobic at all. “Yeah,” he says honestly. “You can sit here.”
The scent of vanilla spikes with joy, and Felix breathes in. Jeongin truly has a delicious scent, warm and soothing. The omega stands to slide in next to Felix, and as he sits down, Felix suddenly longs to lean in closer. To bury his head in Jeongin’s neck, to remove his own scent blockers and recreate that lemon cake scent he’d loved so much that night. The urge is so strong that it takes him completely by surprise, and he gives an odd little shudder as he tries to get a hold of himself.
What the fuck. That would be so inappropriate, and if Jeongin himself didn’t slap him, his packmates would make sure he regretted it. Still, this close up, Jeongin’s scent curls around him, and he can’t help but relax into the red cushioned seat.
When Seungmin returns with more drinks and extra slices of cake, he raises an eyebrow at Jeongin’s changed position, but only asks, “So where are you from, Felix? Have you always lived in Seoul?”
“Uh, no.” Felix rubs the back of his neck. “No, only a couple of years.”
If Seungmin notices he avoided the first question, he doesn’t comment on it. “Like Innie then. He only moved here three years ago.”
Felix looks to the omega on his left, and Jeongin nods. “I grew up in Busan. I miss the beach sometimes.”
“Me too,” Felix sighs. It’s probably what he misses most about Australia. The weather, for sure, but especially the sea. The smell of salt and the sound of the waves had never failed to soothe him when he was a kid.
“You’re from Busan?” Jeongin asks, excited.
“No, somewhere else. I meant I miss the beach. I’ve never been to Busan.” He quirks a smile at the omega. “Sounds like I should, though.”
“It’s the best.” Jeongin smiles back at him. “Most places are pretty touristy, but there are a few more remote spots that are great for watching the sun set.”
“Aww, I.N-ah, I had no idea you were such a romantic!”
Felix jumps as someone leans in to squeeze Jeongin’s cheek. Jeongin leans back with a sound of irritation and slaps the hand away. Before Felix can decide if the omega is being attacked or not, the stranger straightens and shoots him a wide grin. “Hi. I’m Changbin, it’s nice to meet you.”
Not a stranger then. His eyes are partially covered by his fringe, and he’s carrying several large bags on his arms. And oh. That’s a lot of muscles. Felix watches as Changbin slides the bags to the ground, making a big show of shaking out his arms and groaning in relief. The person standing behind him smacks his shoulder. “Hyung, you could lift twenty of those. Don’t pretend you even noticed the weight.”
“Yah,” Changbin says, “These are your bags I was carrying, brat. Show some gratitude.”
Jeongin laughs at the pair, giving off another pleasant burst of vanilla, and the pack members exchange greetings. Felix takes advantage of their momentary distraction to take his first good look at Jisung.
He’s still standing partially behind Changbin, one hand now curled around the beta’s arm. Dark brown curly hair falls across his forehead, nearly covering his eyes, and as he smiles at Jeongin, Felix catches a glimpse of round cheeks. He’s dressed casually, but much like Jeongin, his clothes look expensive. All of their outfits do, Felix thinks, and between that and the countless bags from the music store he wonders again just how rich this pack is.
Changbin and Jisung slide into the booth next to Seungmin, who grumbles as he’s forced to shift to make room for them. Changbin’s eyebrows shoot up as he sees the cake that’s waiting for them, and he looks over to Seungmin with suspicion. “You bought us cake? You?”
Seungmin looks offended. “Hey. I buy you things.”
“Not food. I don’t think you’ve ever gotten me food.”
“Hyung gave us his card,” Jeongin pipes up, laughing at Changbin’s “ahh” of understanding and Seungmin’s betrayed pout.
Felix is still focused on Jisung, who hasn’t looked at him yet. The alpha has wrapped his hands around the coffee Seungmin had bought for him and is staring down at the table. It’s almost like he’s… avoiding Felix?
Changbin follows Felix’s gaze and smiles when he notices. He leans over and whispers something in Jisung’s ear, and the alpha finally looks up. “Hi,” he mumbles, meeting Felix’s eyes for a second before looking away again. “I’m Jisung.” The introduction is so short that it’s almost a dismissal, and it would have seemed rude if he hadn’t also been nervously biting his lip, his anxiety so obvious that Felix doesn’t even need to catch his scent to tell.
This… is not what he expected. The alpha was so confident in his banter with Changbin just a minute ago, but now it’s like a switch has been flipped. He’s staring into his coffee again and there’s a faint dusting of pink staining his cheeks. He’s actually blushing.
Curious, Felix breathes in, and the first smell he’s hit with is Changbin’s, who has a soft smoky campfire scent, subtle as all beta scents are. Jisung’s scent is a little muddled due to his anxiety, but underneath that, Felix catches a whiff of something warm and spicy. Cinnamon. Nearly forgetting to be subtle, he breathes in again, and suddenly he’s back in a bright, sunlit kitchen. Remembers the smell of cinnamon buns rising from the oven, remembers laughter, and his mom’s singing, and being spun around by safe, loving hands.
Lost in memories, he doesn’t realise he’s staring until Changbin speaks. “Don’t mind Hannie,” he says, slinging an arm around the alpha’s shoulder, and cinnamon mingles with the smell of woodsmoke. “He’s just shy. But only because he doesn’t know you yet. Give him time, and you’ll long for this level of peace and quiet.”
Jisung’s shy, downcast look is replaced by a gasp of offence and he punches Changbin in the shoulder. “Hyung!”
The punch doesn’t move Changbin even an inch, but both he and Seungmin laugh. Jisung darts another glance at Felix and blushes again.
As Felix watches him, he feels the tension drain out of his shoulders. He had been dreading this meeting, wondering if inviting the other two over was a mistake, but suddenly he can’t fathom how this alpha could ever be a threat. Unless it’s all an act, he is not like Minho at all. And it doesn’t seem like an act. His shyness is… pretty cute, actually. Before Felix knows it, he says, “It’s okay. My sister was super shy as well when we were kids. She had to give her order at McDonald’s once and she burst into tears.”
Changbin chuckles, but the others look at him in surprise. Felix can’t blame them. Even he is surprised he just shared that. He can’t remember the last time he talked about his sister. A pang of hurt shoots through him, and he averts his eyes.
“You have a sister?” Jeongin asks from beside him.
The hurt grows stronger. “I… used to.” He doesn’t elaborate, and the others don’t press. The mood has soured a bit, though, and Felix wants to kick himself. Why. Why on earth had he brought her up? It must have been the flashes of memory Jisung’s scent had brought to the surface. Stupid. Quickly, he says, “Seungmin said you bought equipment? Do you make music?”
The question is abrupt, but Changbin lights up and the tension vanishes immediately as he launches into an explanation of their jobs. Apparently they do make music, him and Jisung and their head alpha Bang Chan. When Felix asks if they are any good, Jisung colours again, but Changbin smirks and gets his phone out to play him some songs.
They are good. Felix doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. His jaw drops as he listens, and Seungmin and Jeongin laugh at him. He catches a glimpse of the Spotify page as Changbin scrolls through his phone, and they have an insane number of monthly listeners. No wonder they’re rich.
“Hyunjinnie does all our cover art,” Changbin says, showing him some album covers. “He’s crazy talented.”
Felix can’t disagree. The covers are stunning. They’re painted, abstract pieces that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern arts museum, silhouettes merging into backgrounds in bold strokes of colour. Whoever Hyunjin is, Felix hopes they paid him well.
From there, somehow, the conversation flows smoothly. Changbin is charismatic and he’s incredible at monitoring the mood, always subtly making sure they never stray away from light topics. Hobbies, observations about other people in the shop, funny anecdotes about their lives. The name Hyunjin is dropped again, and Felix finds out he is their final packmate, another alpha. At some point, Jisung gets them more drinks and a second round of cake, snatching up the credit card a grinning Seungmin holds out to him.
None of them bring up the night they first met. Felix doesn’t know if Seungmin texted them not to or if they sense it themselves, but he’s grateful. He’s… actually enjoying himself. These people are easy to talk to. They laugh and tease and are completely at ease with each other, and somehow they just accept Felix into their midst as if they’ve known him for years. For the most part, he doesn’t even say much. The other boys are entertaining, and he feels content to just listen to them banter. Their scents mingle pleasantly across the table, and Felix relaxes a little further into his seat, breathing them in.
Changbin is regaling them with a story about the time Jeongin spilled orange juice on Jisung’s headphones—and having a lot of fun telling it, to Jeongin’s dismay—when he gets a phone call. “Ah, Chan-ah,” he says as he picks up. “Yeah, still at the mall, we’re—what? Wait, really?” He removes the phone from his ear and shoots a surprised glance at the screen. “Wow. Hadn’t realised it was that late. Sorry, yeah, we’ll be home soon. Do you need us to pick anything up while we’re here?”
“Overprotective alpha,” Seungmin mutters, rolling his eyes, but there is a fondness to his voice.
Jisung, who has relaxed considerably as conversation flowed, laughs quietly, shaking his head. “Don’t, he’s been so good about this.” His eyes flick to Jeongin, more serious now. “We combed the place for any trace of the dude that bothered you and we told hyung he wasn’t there, but well. Can’t blame him for worrying anyway, all things considering.”
Felix is confused for a second before he pales. The alpha. Jeongin’s alpha. The one that kicked off this whole mess to begin with. That had happened here. Somehow, he forgot he is not the only one with bad memories in this mall. Guilt washes over him for forcing the omega to come back here without even thinking about it.
As if he can smell it—impossible, with the scent blockers, but he must see something in his face—Jeongin takes Felix’s hand under the table and gives it a squeeze. “It’s fine,” he says. “I wasn’t… well, I’m not scared anymore now. It was good, I think, coming back here.”
Felix’s face twists. “Still. I’m sorry I didn’t ask.”
“I could have suggested a different location,” Jeongin shrugs, then huffs out a laugh. “The others definitely wanted me to. But I didn’t want to let one bad experience ruin this place forever, you know?”
Felix does know, and Jeongin knows that he does. They share a look, and Felix flips his hand so he can squeeze back.
“Thank you,” Jeongin says. “For coming today. I was… I was really worried about you.”
Affection blooms in Felix’s chest. “I was worried about you too,” he says honestly. “Your pack alpha sent me a picture, but… yeah. This meeting was as much for me as it was for you.”
“I’m glad the two of you decided on this place,” Seungmin says, and Felix looks up. He had almost forgotten the others were here. Changbin has finished his phone call, and they’re all looking at the two of them. Felix almost snatches his hand back even if they can’t see it, but Seungmin simply continues with a grin, “We wouldn’t have gotten cake this good if we’d met at the park like Channie-hyung wanted.”
Changbin flicks a sugar packet in the beta’s direction. “Yah. Is that all you think about?”
Seungmin laughs, eyes sparkling. “Hey. Just saying. Would have been a waste of Minho-hyung’s credit card if all we were able to get were shitty coffees from the stand at the park.”
Felix blinks. Minho-hyung’s credit card? He had assumed Bang Chan was the one who gave them the card. Seungmin’s words from earlier drift back to him. “Hey, he told us to get Felix the best thing on the menu. I’m just following orders.”
Minho said that? Why? It was clear the alpha didn’t give a fuck about Felix, so why bother? Was he just trying to appease his packmates?
Another squeeze of his hand shakes him out of his thoughts, and he realises Jeongin asked him a question. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you wanted a lift home?” Jeongin repeats. “It wouldn’t be a bother.”
Felix shakes his head, mind sharpening. “No, thanks, I’ll walk.” The idea of the long walk back has him wincing in advance at the strain it’ll put on his sore muscles, but he will not budge on this. There’s a difference between meeting this pack in a public space, and letting them know where he lives. They know far too much about him already, and as nice as this afternoon has been, he knows it needs to end here.
Jeongin takes in the resolve on his face and nods. He gives his hand a final squeeze before letting go. “Alright,” he says as he slides out of the booth. The others are standing too, putting their jackets and scarves back on. The sun is out today, but it’s still only February, and winters are cold in Seoul.
Felix follows Jeongin out of the booth, grabbing his own jacket. It’s thin, not warm enough for this weather, but it’s the only one he owns. He’ll just have to walk fast and create some body heat.
Felix doesn’t realise how peaceful he was feeling surrounded by the others’ scents until they vanish as they move away from the table and leave the coffee shop. The comfortable atmosphere of the shop is replaced by the noise and rush of people in the mall, and new scents rush in and break the bubble of contentment he’d been in for the past few hours. He hadn’t realised it, but he felt safe in there, and now that it’s gone, it’s like his entire body protests the switch.
He feels it happening.
The spasm comes on strong, stronger than it’s been all week, and he clamps a hand down on his leg, gritting his teeth so he doesn’t cry out. But while he manages to not make a sound, he can’t prevent the way his leg gives out, first the right, and then the left as those muscles, too, seize up. He stumbles sideways into Jeongin, who cries out in alarm. His attempts to catch him are in vain, and Felix crashes to the ground.
He’s back on his knees on the cool tiles of the mall, once again surrounded by Bang pack members, and if he weren’t in so much pain he’d probably laugh at the irony of it all.
“Damn it,” he grits out, digging his fingers into his thighs and sucking in sharp, shallow breaths.
“Felix?! What’s happening?” Jeongin is clutching his arm with wide eyes.
It’s less than a second before Jisung and Seungmin, too, drop to the ground beside him.
“What hurts?” Seungmin asks calmly, more authoritative than Felix has ever heard him.
“’S fine,” he gasps, leaning forward, “Will pass.”
“Seungmin, what’s happening, help him—” Jeongin sounds scared. He squeezes Felix’s arm tighter. “Felix, please—”
Changbin crouches down next to Jeongin and wraps an arm around the omega. “Ssh, Innie. Let Seungmin do his job.”
Seungmin takes one more good look at Felix, and then acts. With a gentle but firm hand, he pushes at Felix’s shoulder until he’s no longer folded over his knees, and then digs his own fingers into Felix’s right thigh and starts kneading. “Sung, grab his left thigh,” he orders, and again, if Felix weren’t about to sob from agony, he’d marvel at the way Jisung simply obeys the beta, without question.
“Can I help?” Changbin asks, but Seungmin shakes his head.
“Muscle spasm,” he says. “He has to ride it out.”
Strong hands massage his twitching muscles for long, agonizing minutes, and Felix feels tears leak down his cheeks, eyes screwed shut and face twisted in pain. He’s half-slumped against Jeongin and Changbin, unable to move through the burning in his legs. Jeongin is still holding his arm, brushing a hand through his hair.
Finally, finally, the pain lessens. The spasms ease from pure agony into slower, spaced out twitches, and Felix sobs in relief. “Fuck,” he pants. “Fuck.”
A cool hand wipes the sweat from his brow, and he leans into the touch, closing his eyes. Shit. That’s the worst one he’s had since just after his drop that weekend.
“No, stay here for a bit,” Seungmin says when Felix tries to straighten up, patting Felix’s thigh. Now that the muscles have given way, he switches to a deeper massage that helps even out the final contractions. Without saying a word, Jisung follows his lead.
He is once again surrounded by their scents, all of them instinctively pushing out calming pheromones to try and help. It’s tempting, so tempting, to fall back into it. To lean into Jeongin’s arms and breathe in the scents around him, let it soothe him back into that comfortable feeling of safety. But he can’t. It won’t last, and if it was this bad when he pulled away last time, he doesn’t want to do it again.
“Don’t,” he says, eyes still closed, breathing shallowly through his mouth. “Don’t use scents.”
There is a gasp, and he thinks he hears Changbin say, “Shit.” Then the scents disappear—not entirely, but enough for Felix to take in a deep breath without pheromones.
“Sorry,” he whispers, embarrassment flooding his face now there is room for something other than pain.
“Don’t apologise,” four people say at once.
A hand touches his cheek to wipe away tears, and he opens his eyes. It’s Jeongin, and Felix catches a whiff of worry even as the omega tries to hold back his scent.
Before he can say anything, Seungmin says, “That was over ten minutes. That’s a long one, Felix.”
Felix lets out a shuddering breath. Seungmin is right. That is long. This past week, the spasms hadn’t lasted longer than a few minutes.
“How did you know?” he asks, trying to divert attention away from himself. A futile effort, really, considering they’re all so focused on him it’s a wonder their gazes haven’t burned holes through his clothes.
“I’m a med student,” Seungmin answers. “And I may not have graduated yet, but I know a muscle spasm when I see one.” His eyes are sharp. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had one.”
“No,” Felix agrees.
Seungmin studies Felix carefully. “You dropped.”
Felix’s head snaps up.
“That night we met. You dropped, didn’t you? When you got home?”
“…No,” Felix tries, but he knows he has been silent for too long. It doesn’t sound convincing.
Beside him, Jeongin gasps, the hold on his arm tightening. “You said you were fine. Felix, you said—”
“I am fine,” Felix grits out. “I’m fine. I’m handling it.”
Jeongin loses control of his scent for a second, the air flooding with worry.
“How bad was it?” Seungmin still sounds clinical, calm. There’s no judgement or emotion in his voice, and it’s the only reason Felix answers him.
“I’m fine. It wasn’t a full drop. If it had been, I wouldn’t be here.” He shouldn’t have added that last bit, as Jeongin’s eyes really do well up now. Felix turns to him, guilt flooding his system. “Sorry. Jeongin, I’m sorry, please don’t cry.”
He shifts an arm to draw the omega closer, and Jeongin leans into him immediately. The move reminds him of that night in the alley. It’s familiar. The slap to his chest Jeongin gives him, however, is not. “Stop. Apologising,” Jeongin hisses. “You went through a—you could have, you could have—” He stops hitting and curls his fingers in Felix’s shirt. “Felix.”
Felix is just about to bury his face in Jeongin’s hair when Seungmin says, “Control your scent, Innie.” His tone is soft, but firm. He looks to Felix. “That’s what set this off just now, right? Our scents?”
Immediately, Jeongin draws his scent back in, although he doesn’t loosen his grip on Felix’s shirt.
Felix nods slowly in response to Seungmin’s question. It hadn’t been their scents themselves so much as having their scents, feeling safe in them, and then being suddenly ripped away from that, but something in Seungmin’s eyes tells Felix he knows that without him saying.
“How long did the drop last?”
“The weekend,” Felix admits, and Jisung hisses.
“You came out of it on Monday morning?” Seungmin checks, and Felix nods. “Two full days, three nights. Damn, Felix. That’s not a light drop.”
“It wasn’t a full one,” Felix insists weakly. He wishes they would stop acting like this. He survived the drop. He’s fine.
“You were alone?” Changbin asks. He looks troubled. “Why didn’t you get help?”
Felix shrugs. “I didn’t… I wasn’t really thinking clearly. And I wouldn’t have had the money, anyway.”
Jeongin looks heartbroken, and against all logic Felix is starting to feel guilty about something he had absolutely zero control over.
“How often do you still get them? The spasms?” Seungmin asks, still in professional mode. His face is unreadable.
“I—look, guys, I’m fine,” Felix repeats. “It’s getting better.” Well, with the exception of today, but he’ll worry about that later. He doesn’t feel like telling them all about how miserable the past few weeks have been—it would only upset Jeongin further, and it’s not like they can do anything about it.
He tries to get up, but Jisung’s grip on his thigh tightens, preventing him from moving. Felix looks up at him, and as soon as the alpha realises what he’s doing, he lets go. “Sorry,” he says, holding his hands up. “Sorry, I’m not… I didn’t mean… I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself again.”
“It’s okay,” Felix says. The action hadn’t felt controlling. Jisung’s scent had spiked, yes, but with worry, not with anger.
“No, it was a good idea, Felix,” Seungmin says. “You should stand, stretch your muscles out a bit. Can we help you up?”
He waits for Felix to nod before he looks at the others and counts to three. They all rise, heaving Felix up with them.
Pins and needles sting along Felix’s legs like a thousand tiny pinpricks, and he pulls a face, shaking his legs out. They still feel a little shaky, but they hold his weight this time. He lets Seungmin guide him through a few stretches that help more than he thought they would. The others are standing around him, keeping close, hands hovering in case he needs help. Worry is written all over their faces, and it’s… it’s too much.
Once he feels steady enough, he takes a step back and bows. “Thank you for your help. I’m good now, I promise.”
He needs to go. He only came here today to see for himself that Jeongin was okay. He should never have stayed this long in the first place, but the way they treated him, how they talked and laughed with him, had felt so nice that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave. But this… the way they’re looking at him now, with actual concern, the way they’re caring for him… it feels too good. He has to go now, or something inside him will crumble. He can already feel it weakening, and if he doesn’t leave now, it will come down, and he’s too afraid of what that will look like. Of what he’ll do.
“It’s late, and I should get home,” he says, giving them a polite smile but taking another step backwards.
Jisung stares at him incredulously. “What, you are just going to leave? After this?”
“I don’t think you should,” Seungmin says. “I’m not even saying this as a friend. From a medical perspective, I’m saying that I think it’s dangerous for you to be alone right now.”
As a friend.
Felix firmly shoves those words down, pretends he didn’t hear them. Instead, he channels defensive anger, because that’s easier. “What, because I’m a weak, helpless omega and I can’t take care of myself?”
Seungmin doesn’t even blink, unfazed. “Because I think you never fully resurfaced from your first drop, and if you leave now without getting the proper medical attention, you could drop again. If you drop a second time, it will be worse, and you will not be able to get yourself out of that one on your own.” His words are serious, his tone grave.
There is nothing but professional neutrality in his voice, and Felix’s anger deflates as soon as it had come up. He closes his eyes. “Then what should I do, according to you?”
“I think you should give in to the drop that’s still there in the back of your mind.”
Felix’s eyes snap open.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve been dropping in and out for the past two weeks.”
Has he? He hasn’t been feeling well, but surely he hasn’t been actively dropping.
“You’ve clearly been experiencing physical symptoms. With muscle spasms this bad, there must have been headaches. Tiredness, dizziness, nausea.”
Yes. There had been all of that.
“How have you been mentally? Not stable, I’d imagine?”
Felix stares at Seungmin, whose eyes soften a little.
“Feeling depressed? Crying? More fogginess?”
His words are like perfectly aimed punches, and Felix can only stand there and take it. It’s true. It’s like Seungmin can look right into Felix’s brain. The air leaves him in a shuddering breath, and he gives a small nod. What use is there denying it? He clearly already knows.
A small, familiar hand curls around his own. Jeongin. The hand is shaking. Or maybe he is. He can’t tell, at this point.
He wipes his other hand across his eyes. “But it really was getting better. I thought it would be fine.”
“Maybe it will be,” Seungmin says. “It’s not completely impossible for your body to stabilise over time. But it’s a dangerous gamble, and I’m not sure I like your odds if you go about this alone.”
Felix suddenly feels very tired. “Then what do you suggest I do?” he asks again.
“Exactly like I said. I think you need to drop fully. Let it happen, and let people help you stabilise. We’d do it. Any one of us would.” Seungmin doesn’t even look at the others when he says it, but Felix sees them nod immediately.
Felix stares at them. Seungmin said it so casually, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. They’d guide him through a drop, no need to even think about it.
And it’s tempting. He’s tired. It hurts, and he’s been so, so lonely. It would be so easy, to say yes. To give in, and lean on other people for a bit.
But… he can’t. He can’t, for two reasons. Firstly, because if he did, that would mean he would let them in, let them close, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to tear himself away afterwards. And secondly… there are three other people in their pack, three alphas, and one of them is Minho. He doesn’t know how their pack works. Doesn’t quite understand how these caring, easy-going people can also be with an alpha like Minho. But he refuses to go anywhere near him ever again.
“Or,” Seungmin says, clearly seeing he’s about to refuse, “If you’re not comfortable with that, we can give you money to visit a clinic so professionals can help you out.”
Felix shakes his head. He can’t accept even more money from them.
Jisung steps forward. “This happened because of us. Not just today. The entire drop, it only happened because of… because of our pack.” He carefully omits Minho’s name, and Felix doesn’t know whether to scoff or be grateful. “We owe you a lot, but we definitely owe you this.”
Changbin nods. “If you don’t want us to help you personally, we’re paying for your treatment.” The words are final.
“Alright,” Felix sighs. It’s clear he’s not going to change their mind. Between going home with them and them giving him money, money is the safest way to go.
“Thank you,” Seungmin says. “Can we drive you to a clinic?”
Felix blinks. “What, now?”
“Well, the sooner the better.”
“I… no, I need to go home first.”
Seungmin takes him in for a moment and then nods. “We’ll drive you home then.”
Felix shakes his head. “No. I can walk.”
“You want to walk home after what you just went through?” Jisung sounds incredulous again.
Well, no. Not particularly. But there is no way he is telling them where he lives, so this is the only option. “I’m fine,” he says.
Jisung and Jeongin open their mouths to protest, but Changbin cuts them off. “You don’t have to give us your address,” he says, and Felix’s head snaps towards him. Changbin smiles. “You don’t have to tell us. Just order a taxi. We’re paying.”
The others relax when Felix nods, too tired to argue further. A taxi would be amazing.
“Here, take this,” Seungmin says, holding his hand out. Felix lets his eyes slide down to the shiny black card in his hand. “For the taxi, and the treatment.”
Felix stares. “What?”
“Take it,” Seungmin insists, shaking his hand. “You don’t want us to come with you—which is fine and none of us will push it—but that means this is the easiest way for us to pay for things.”
“That’s a credit card.” Worse, it’s the same credit card he’s seen them use all afternoon. It’s Minho’s credit card. “I can’t take that.”
Jeongin’s eyes have lit up. “Of course you can!” He snatches the card out of Seungmin’s hand and tries to press it into Felix’s lax fingers.
“But it’s… it’s not even yours, right? That’s literally—I could do anything with that.”
Seungmin snorts. “Oh, please go wild. He’d deserve it.”
Changbin laughs, releasing a burst of smoky scent like the pop of a campfire before he draws it back in. “Oh, for sure. What would you like, Felix? A PS5? Balenciagas? Diamond earrings? Treat yourself.”
Felix’s eyes grow wide. What the fuck. “I—no, I don’t… I wouldn’t—”
“He’d want you to have it,” Jisung says, quiet and serious. Felix looks at him and the others fall silent. There is a complicated mix of emotions in his eyes that Felix can’t quite decipher. Jeongin shoots him a warning glare, but Jisung ignores him. “How he was that night… that’s not who he is. I… I won’t say anything else, but just... take the card. Please. Do what you want with it. He’d want you to.”
It’s the most words Jisung has spoken to him in one go so far, and Felix looks at him for a long while. He doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to think. Doesn’t want to think about Minho again either, feeling far too tired for it, so in the end he gives up. He takes the card.
“Thank you,” Jisung says, and Felix nods. Rationally, he knows the card weighs barely anything, but it lays like lead in his palm. Quickly, he slips it into his pocket—the one that already contains the money they gave him earlier, and god, who are these people? He should not have accepted this. In an attempt to hide his discomfort, he pulls out his phone and orders a taxi.
They move to a bench outside the mall, the others refusing to let Felix wait alone. A little to his right, Changbin is on the phone with their pack alpha again, Jisung standing next to him, and Felix can just hear them explain they’ll be a bit later (but that “Everything is fine, everyone is fine, no, hyung, just stay put for god’s sake, we’ll explain when we get back”).
“How are you feeling?” Jeongin asks. He’s sitting next to Felix, still carefully controlling his pheromones. He’d asked if he could hold Felix’s hand though, and despite knowing better, Felix had been too weak to say no.
It has been so long since he touched someone.
Jeongin shifts, and Felix remembers he’d been asked a question. “I’m fine,” he says automatically.
Seungmin rolls his eyes. “You’re really not. Try again.”
Felix huffs. “Are you this bossy with your patients, too?”
“Only when they’re lying to me.”
“I’m not feeling bad,” Felix insists. “Just tired.”
“Any dizziness? Nausea?”
“No.” Felix closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall behind them. It’s clear that the beta is concerned he might drop at any moment, but Felix doesn’t think that will happen. He’s exhausted, but he doesn’t feel shaky like he did that night two weeks ago. Still, he lets Seungmin continue his examination, answering his questions even as his brain tries to direct all of its faculties to the feeling of Jeongin’s hand in his. This is the last time he’ll get to do this, he knows. He can’t see them again after this.
When his phone pings to let him know his taxi is here, it takes him longer than he’d like to admit to let go. But he does, and the group walks with him to the car.
“I’ll text you a list of good clinics in the area, if it’s okay for Jeongin to give me your number,” Seungmin says. “Please visit one tonight.”
Felix nods, tightening his hand around the credit card in his pocket.
“It was good to meet you, Felix,” Changbin says. One of his arms is wrapped around Jisung’s shoulders, who still looks worried. “Thanks for inviting us over. We should do it again, when you’re feeling better.”
“Yeah,” Felix says. His throat feels tight.
The taxi driver knocks impatiently against the window, and Felix startles. “Sorry,” he mutters, grabbing the door handle. He glances back at the others. “I have to go. Thank you, for…” He trails off, not quite knowing what to say. “Thank you.”
He turns to the car, only to stumble in surprise as arms wrap around him from behind in a tight hug. He smells vanilla and closes his eyes, clenching his fists in an effort not to lean back into Jeongin’s embrace.
“Please be careful,” Jeongin whispers in his ear, tightening his arms around Felix. “Text me, okay?”
Felix doesn’t say anything—a yes would be a lie, and it sticks in his throat like tar. He manages a weak nod though, and he knows Jeongin can feel it. The omega lets go and takes a step back.
Felix opens the door and gets in, giving the others his most convincing smile. He’s not very successful, but he hopes they will blame it on his exhaustion. “Bye,” he says. “It was nice to meet you.”
As the driver starts the car and drives off, he clenches his teeth to suppress the whine he can feel building up in the back of his throat. The urge to turn back and beg them to let him stay just a little bit longer gets pushed down even harder. Giving in would be useless—it’s not like he would be satisfied with just a little bit longer either. He knows he’s doing the right thing. He has to cut this off now, before he gets in too deep.
He lets his head fall against the cool window. It’s better this way, he tells himself. But as the city lights flash by and his chest aches, the words don’t feel as convincing as they have been for the past two and a half years.
Notes:
Like I said, this story will come with a great many bonus scenes. They can all be found in part 2, but I'll also try to link them directly so it's easy to go back and forth as you read. For anyone who's interested, here's your first bonus scene! It's from Chan's POV and describes what happened after the pack got home the night everything went wrong at the mall. It also depicts Jeongin learning about Minho's actions, the results of which are... not pretty.
Chapter Text
Felix climbs the dirty stairs of his apartment building—the elevator has been broken since he moved in and he’s given up hope of it ever being fixed. He unlocks the door to his apartment and steps inside, giving a little shiver. It’s cold. The heating barely works, and his landlord always makes him pay three times as much as what he actually uses. Felix is overcharged for rent, too. He pays more for this shitty studio than someone would for an apartment twice the size. But it’s a miracle he’d found someone who would accept cash and keep everything off the record, and Felix knows he is powerless.
His mind is still reeling from the fact that he just paid for a taxi with an actual credit card instead of cash. He’s been living off the grid for so long that he can’t even remember the last time he didn’t pay in cash. He locks the door behind him and stares at the room. His apartment is bare. He has no table, no chairs, no closets or shelves. He just has a dingy old mattress and a cardboard box where he keeps the few clothes he owns and a few necessities.
He drops onto his mattress with a sigh, not even bothering to take off his coat. He sleeps in it more often than not these days, anything to get a little extra warmth.
That… was a lot.
He lets his head fall into his hands. An extended drop? Has he really been dropping all this time? He doesn’t know. If he has, it’s not been a deep one. He’s managed to go to work and shop for groceries and keep himself alive as usual. But he can’t deny that he has been feeling off, and his symptoms didn’t match the ones mentioned on the websites. And Seungmin seemed to know what he was talking about.
As if he’s summoned him, his phone buzzes.
Seungmin has texted him a list of clinics in the area. They all seem to specialise in omegan healthcare only, and Felix’s heart clenches at the thoughtfulness behind it.
He stares at the list for long, long minutes, barely noticing as twilight shifts into night.
He doesn’t know what to do next. He had told them he would visit a clinic. And he wants to. He does. He believed Seungmin when the beta told him it could be dangerous to leave this… this drop untreated. He even has the money to go now.
But… a clinic would ask for his personal details. Visiting a clinic would mean being asked for documentation, and he knows he wouldn’t get away with a flimsy false name at a professional health institution the way he does at the restaurant or with his landlord. If he goes, he would end up right back in the system, and he would be notified. Kwang-ho would find him, and he would never be able to escape a second time.
His breath is coming in quick, sharp pants, and his chest feels tight. He can’t do that. He can’t, he won’t, not ever again.
He cannot go to a clinic. It’s the one thing he knows for certain.
But… maybe he doesn’t have to?
He takes stock of himself. He’s not dropping right now. Not like he was last time, not in the way Seungmin feared he would. He doesn’t even feel shaky, other than his trembling breaths, but he knows that’s just memories. He had been honest with Seungmin when the beta had questioned him. He doesn’t feel dizzy, or nauseous, doesn’t even have a headache. He’s just tired, but that’s nothing new.
And Seungmin had said that it was possible his body would stabilise on its own, right? Felix had mentioned that he thought it was getting better over the past few weeks, and Seungmin hadn’t outright dismissed that.
He can’t go to a clinic. So… he’ll keep going as he has been. It was getting better before. Slowly, perhaps, but it had definitely been improving. His body will just have to do that again.
A second text comes in.
[7:14 pm] Jeongin: did you get home safely?
Felix hesitates, and then sends:
[7:15 pm] Felix: Yes, I made it back, don’t worry I’ll be fine!
[7:15 pm] Jeongin: you’re going to a clinic tonight right? pls let us know how it goes, we’re all still really worried
Felix swallows. His fingers ache with the urge to text back, to reassure, to prolong their connection in any way he can. Just a little longer, his brain begs. Surely that can’t hurt. Just one more text.
His fingers tremble, and he clenches his jaw.
Then, with stiff, resolute taps on the screen, he blocks Jeongin’s number. Seungmin’s and Bang Chan’s, too. This is for the best, he reminds himself harshly. Being alone keeps him safe, and that’s all he needs.
It has never felt as much like a lie.
***
Surprisingly—almost anticlimactically, after all the fuss that was made about it—Felix makes it through the next few days with barely any issues. He still gets a few muscle spasms, but none of them are as bad as the one he got in the mall.
He goes to work as usual, works long shifts being bossed around in the kitchen, but everything is fine. He’s still tired, but he’s always tired, and he wasn’t expecting to suddenly feel great. But there are no bouts of dizziness and to his amazement he doesn’t even feel the urge to cry for the entire week.
He receives several more texts from Bang Pack members. First Changbin, followed shortly after by Jisung. He blocks both numbers, fiercely ignoring the pang in his chest as he presses ‘Yes’ in the confirmation box that pops up. A new text arrives the next day, from the alpha Felix hasn’t even met yet. Hyunjin’s message is polite, apologising for texting without invitation, but explaining that his pack members are worried and would really like to know if Felix is okay. Felix takes a deep breath and blocks this number too.
The only pack member he doesn’t hear from is Minho. Not that he’d expected to, and not that he minds. He’s more than fine with the alpha not reaching out.
After that, he is left alone.
Felix tells himself he’s glad about that.
***
The credit card is mocking him.
It’s not even in sight—Felix knows better than to leave anything of value out in the open, knows the lock on his apartment door is more of a joke than anything else. His landlord Seojun will barge in for inspections whenever he wants to. Felix has shoved the card into the stuffing of his mattress through a rip in the seam, but he can sense it. It’s like it’s burning a hole through his flesh whenever he tries to go to sleep.
He’s angry they gave it to him, and he feels guilty for having it, and he’s angry with himself for feeling guilty. It’s all coiled together into a tight ball of emotions that leaves him tense and frustrated.
What’s he supposed to do with a credit card?
They gave it to him so he could pay for the clinic, but since he’s not going, there’s no reason for him to have it. He shouldn’t have it, especially since it doesn’t even belong to the four people he met up with that afternoon. It belongs to Minho instead, and that’s worse. He doesn’t want it. He won’t use it, of course. That’s not even a question. They may have joked about him treating himself, but he knows they didn’t really mean it, and even if they did, Minho certainly wouldn’t.
So he won’t use it, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has it in his possession right now, and it scares him. He silently vows he’ll find a way to get the card back to them, at some point. At least if he doesn’t use it, he’s not stealing their money, and he keeps telling himself that in an attempt to ease the guilt and trepidation.
It’s bad enough he’s using the cash they gave him. He’d opened the envelope when he got home that night and nearly thrown it across the room at the amount of money it contained. It was at least twenty times the amount the taxi ride had been, and Felix had to count it three times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. And this was after they’d convinced Bang Chan not to give him more? What the fuck. Nobody just gave money away like this, not without expecting something in return. He may to some extent trust the boys he’d met up with, but he doesn’t have any reason to trust Bang Chan.
He doesn’t trust this money.
So he vows not to use it, and to find a way to get it back to them along with the credit card. But then Seojun stops by unexpectedly, claiming a sudden spike in Felix’s electricity bill that Felix needs to pay for. Felix knows it is a lie, but he doesn’t have a leg to stand on and judging by the wide grin on Seojun’s face, the man knows it. If Felix doesn’t pay, he’ll be out of a home before the day is done. So in the end, he ends up reluctantly, guiltily breaking into the money.
He promises himself that he’ll only use it in case of emergencies. It doesn’t ease the fear of what will happen when Bang Chan finds out, especially as he has to break into it two more times after that, but that’s a price he’s willing to pay for a roof over his head.
***
For a while, he thinks he’s going to be fine, that his body really is stabilising. And then, a week after his meet-up with Jeongin and the others, the headache returns.
It’s not too bad, at first. Just a pressure in the back of his head, more of a nuisance than anything, but it gets worse as the day goes on. He blames it on the humidity in the kitchen, on the rising temperatures as the cooks turn on the stoves and the steam from the dishwasher fills the room.
But he walks home that night in the cool February breeze and gets a full eight hours of sleep, and the headache is worse when he wakes up the next day.
Over the next week, the headache isn’t the only thing that gets worse. The muscle spasms are back with a vengeance, and he nearly drops an entire stack of plates on Wednesday when his right leg buckles underneath him without warning. He grits his teeth against the pain and continues working, determined to ride out the return of these symptoms until they subside again.
Except they don’t. He starts feeling nauseous and is barely able to keep anything down beyond broth and some rice. He feels woozy again too, and he doesn’t know if it’s from the lack of food or if it’s another symptom.
Extended drop, a voice whispers in the back of his head. You didn’t get past it at all. It’s still happening.
He tries to ignore it, tries to pretend everything is fine, but when the end of the week comes and he gets home and can’t stop crying, he starts to worry. What if he can’t get past this? What does he do if it only gets worse?
With a growing feeling of dread in his stomach, he spends some of Bang Chan’s cash on multivitamins and the foods that the internet said were supposed to help, and tries to keep as much of it down as he can. He has to get through this on his own. His body has to stabilise.
It has to.
***
It is the need for comfort buzzing underneath his skin that makes Felix step into Kim & Kang’s bakery two days later. He usually visits every week, but he hasn’t been here since the night he met Jeongin, and the smell of warm bread and sugar that hits him as soon as he crosses the threshold is almost enough to make him cry.
This is his favourite place in all of Seoul.
He first came here about six months after he moved to the city, when he got caught in a sudden downpour on his way back from work. He’d been drenched within seconds, and the bright green door had been the first thing he saw. He had stood just inside the door for a moment, dripping water and dragging his wet hair out of his face, when a voice tutted at him, “You’ll catch your death, child.”
Felix blinked at the woman. “Oh, I’m… not a child.”
The elderly woman behind the counter chuckled. The sound was scratchy but her smile was wide. “I’m old. You’re a child to me.” Her black hair was streaked with grey and she was dressed in a blouse and skirt and a striped apron. The scent of dark cherries drifted around her, and Felix realised she was an alpha at the same time he realised he was creating a puddle around his feet.
He flinched. “S-sorry. I’m- I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”
“No need for cleaning, it’s just water. Can’t get much cleaner than that.” The woman stepped around the counter and handed him a tea towel, pausing a few steps away as he flinched again. “Dry yourself off, sit down. I’ll get you a cinnamon roll.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to—”
But she had already bustled off through a doorway behind the counter. Felix had stared after her, bewildered. After a minute of hesitation, he’d slowly perched on one of the chairs at a table near the wall. Even just her scent made him wary, but it was still pouring outside and the bakery was warm. He kept enough distance between his chair and the table that he could jump up and run any time he needed too, his hands clenched and ready to cover his ears at the barest hint of Alpha Voice.
He needn’t have worried. A minute later, he was handed a steaming cinnamon roll regardless of his protests or lack of money, and half an hour later he had even breathed out a laugh at a dry comment she’d made, surprising himself more than anything. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even smiled.
Kang Aera was an elderly alpha who had been running the bakery since, “Oh, forever. Let’s not think about how old I am.” Her mate Kim Jihye had passed five years earlier and some of her neighbours had expected her to close the shop, but she had adamantly refused. “What would I even do all day? If I can’t bake, I don’t think I’d even recognise myself.”
Those words made something clench painfully in Felix’s chest, and he nodded in agreement. How long had it been since he last baked? He couldn’t even remember.
Perhaps the woman had seen something in his eyes, because she studied him for a minute before telling him to stop by anytime he liked.
He hadn’t planned to take her up on it. He’d honestly intended to leave it at that first visit. Because as kind as she had been, she was still an alpha, and every instinct screamed at him to stay away, images of Kwang-ho flashing through his mind. But then he’d happened to walk past the same street the next week, whether by accident or through subconscious longing, and he’d decided to chance it.
It had not been a smooth ride. But eventually, over the course of many visits and hesitant conversations, the woman had started reminding him of his own alpha father instead, whose eyes had always been kind and who Felix had never heard raise his voice. And slowly, his nerves had eased.
Aera had offered him a job multiple times, and as much as Felix longed to accept the offer, he knew he couldn’t sign a contract that would be officially filed, and he refused to work for her illegally. She could lose her bakery if the government found out, and that was not a risk he was willing to take.
He suspected she knew why he refused; she was a sharp woman, and occasionally she would send him a look that made Felix feel like she saw right through him. But she never said anything. Instead, she fed him bread and pastries and endless cups of tea, and sent him home with meals big enough to feed him for days. She even gave him a hand-knitted scarf and pair of gloves last winter when it had been particularly cold.
She is the only person in Seoul Felix would consider a friend.
Today as he walks through the door, Aera is sliding a tray of freshly baked red bean buns into the glass display. She looks up at the tinkling of the bell, and a wide smile spreads across her face. “Yongbok-ah! Strawberries, cream cheese, baking soda. Not a cake.”
Felix feels himself smile in return, despite the ache in his bones. “Not a cake?”
She shakes her head. “No cake-like textures. Cream cheese can’t be used for icing. Be creative.”
They’ve been playing this game for years. She’ll name ingredients, and he needs to come up with a recipe that matches the requirements she sets for him. “Um. Cookies?”
She raises an eyebrow, not falling for the cop-out. “How would you make them?”
He thinks about it. His head is pounding, but this is the first welcome distraction he’s had all week, and he’s determined to put the effort in. “If you… If you make normal cookie dough and add chopped strawberries, maybe you could add a cheesecake filling?”
Aera hums, still sorting out the display. “You could. Go on.”
Felix frowns. “I don’t know how you would keep the layers from mixing. It would get sloppy.”
“You would have to make the cheesecake mixture first. If you scoop out small balls and freeze them while you make the cookie dough, they’ll harden enough for you to press them inside the dough before baking.” She finishes and straightens. “Not a bad idea, child. We’ll make them sometime.”
Felix smiles and shakes his head. He won’t bake with her, and she knows it.
“Now where have you been?”
He feels a prickle of guilt for not visiting for so long. “I’m sorry. I was… something came up. Sorry.”
Aera studies him for a minute, and then gestures for him to join her. There’s a table near the counter that has become theirs, and Felix takes a seat, relieved to get off his trembling legs. They’ve starting aching perpetually now, even outside of muscle spasms.
“How are you doing, Yongbok?” she asks as she slides one of the bean buns onto a plate and sets it on the table in front of him. Her tone is casual, but Felix can feel her sharp eyes taking him in.
He sighs, knowing he won’t get away with a lie. “I’ve been better.”
She hums, disappearing into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When she comes back, she asks, “Have you been ill all this time?”
“I—” Felix starts, before realising that it will be easier to roll with that. “Yes.”
“You look it,” she says, and the words would be harsh if it weren’t for the hand she brushes across his forehead as she sits down across from him. Felix sways into the touch, helpless to resist. “The flu is going around, many of my regulars have been sick too. Should you even be out of bed?”
“I’ve been working,” he mumbles, eyes fluttering shut. Aera’s hand feels wonderfully soft against his skin.
She tuts. “Of course you have.” She slides her hand down to cup his cheek. “Hey, Felix?”
“Yeah?” he sighs, before freezing. He never told her that name. His eyes snap open to find Aera watching him, a faint quirk to her lips.
“I always wondered what your real name was. Felix, then? It suits you.”
“I… wait, no, I’m n-not… what?”
She laughs her dry creaky laugh and pats his cheek. “I’m old, child, not senile. I always knew Yongbok wasn’t your real name.”
He stares at her. “You never said anything.” He’s not upset that she knows his name—if there’s anyone he would trust with it, it’s her. He’s just confused. How did she find out? “How?” he asks. He probably looks ridiculous, mouth dropped open in shock and still leaning desperately into her hand, but he can’t bring himself to care. “How did you know?”
She hums again, rising from her seat with a final gentle pat to his cheek so she can make him some tea. “I had some visitors,” she says when she’s retrieved the kettle. She grabs a mug from a shelf. “They asked me if I knew a young, blond omega called Felix. The way they talked about you described you to a T.”
Felix feels the colour drain from his face. It’s him. It’s Kwang-ho, he’s found him, he brought a friend and they’re in the city looking for him. They’re going to bring him back—
“They seemed rather intent on finding you,” Aera continues. “Desperate even.”
Felix can’t breathe. No. No, no, no, no—
“Said they were concerned about you. Their names were Jeongin and Hyunjin, I think. Do you know them?”
He can’t go back, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—
Wait.
“Jeongin?” He doesn’t even recognise his own voice with how faint it is, but it doesn’t matter. “Jeongin?” he repeats, eyes frantically searching Aera’s face to check if he heard her right.
“Yes,” she says, leaving the mug in favour of coming closer so she can put a hand on his shoulder. “Breathe, child.”
Felix sucks in a breath. Jeongin. The band around his lungs gives way, and he can breathe again.
“They’re the ones you’ve been running from then?” Her eyes flash. “I didn’t tell them anything. You’re safe with me.”
Felix chokes on a laugh. “No,” he says hoarsely, head spinning with a relief so vast that he feels like he might pass out. “No, it’s not them.” He drops his head to the table, feeling tears come to his eyes. This switch of emotions is too much for his exhausted brain to handle. His mind feels too slippery these days, and he has zero control over the sobs that suddenly rack his body.
It’s not him. He’s safe. He’s safe.
Aera’s hand rubs little circles into his shoulder as he cries. She hums. “Ah. Well. I probably shouldn’t have sold them burnt pastries, then.”
Felix laughs through his tears. It comes out wet, and gross, and too hysterical, but he’s past the point of caring. “You didn’t.”
Aera scoffs. “Of course I did. I played my part so well, too.” Her lip twitches, and when she next speaks her voice is a perfect example of a shaky, creaky old woman’s voice. “Pilix? I have never met a Pilix, gentlemen. But oh, I have just baked some excellent scones, if I could beg you to try some? Rent is not cheap these days, you understand…” She frowns. “In hindsight, they were oddly polite for a couple of punks trying to kidnap you. They even tipped, and those pastries were inedible. The oven malfunctioned.”
Felix laughs again, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. The tears have stopped, and all that’s left is the relief. “They’re good people, I think,” he says.
“Well, I didn’t know that. I wasn’t about to let anyone get to you.”
The protective edge in her words warms him. “Thank you,” he says. “I appreciate it, a lot.”
She smiles in a way that makes her eyes disappear into a hundred tiny wrinkles, and squeezes his shoulder again. Then she tilts her head. “So, if they’re good people, is there a reason they are coming to me looking for you?”
Felix grimaces and stares at the untouched red bean bun in front of him. “I met them recently,” he starts slowly. “Something happened, and things… escalated. I do think they’re good people.” Most of them. “I just… they know too much. About me. It’s… it’s not safe.”
Aera doesn’t say anything, merely continues watching him. Felix wonders what she can see in his face. He doesn’t meet her eyes.
It’s a long time before she speaks again. “You cannot spend the rest of your life on your own, Yongbok-ah. At some point, you will have to let someone in.”
Felix snaps his head up, shocked. In all the time they’ve known each other, she’s never been so direct and personal with him.
“I know it’s difficult. I know it’s scary. But we’re social creatures, us humans. As much as we like to convince ourselves, we cannot survive alone. I don’t know who those two were, and I don’t know what happened between you. But if they are good people like you said… it might be worth giving them a chance.”
She holds his gaze, seeming to sense he doesn’t know what to say. She smiles and pats his arm as she stands up to get his tea. “It doesn’t have to be now. Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
***
When Felix comes home that night, he has a bag full of steamed buns and a head full of thoughts.
They had not given up on him. Jeongin and Hyunjin, who Felix had never even met, had visited the bakery. Felix hadn’t even told them the name, just that it was in Heukseok-dong. He can’t even imagine how many bakeries they must have visited before coming to this one.
They told Aera they were concerned about him. They are concerned about him still, even after he made off with their credit card and broke off all contact. Felix shakes his head slowly, trying to clear it. He doesn’t know what to do with that information. His head aches, and his stomach protests painfully at the lack of food.
The steamed buns are filled with vegetables and fragrant pork, and Aera had pressed them into his hands with a concerned squeeze of his thinning shoulders. He knows he’s been losing weight. He should eat. She made them especially for him this afternoon. He manages to eat two, and feels relieved when his stomach doesn’t protest.
Maybe the worst of it is behind him after all.
When he shoots out of bed three hours later to be violently sick in the bathroom, his hope leaves him along with his meal. He cries brokenly over the toilet bowl. He doesn’t know what to do.
***
It all comes to a head on Tuesday the following week, when he’s halfway through another kitchen shift.
Things have not improved. The headache and nausea are his constant companions now, and he barely manages to keep down more than a few bites of food at a time. He’s cold. He’s cold all the time, and he doesn’t have enough clothes or blankets to fix it, although he suspects he’d still feel cold even if he did. The feelings of depression and despair have returned as well, and by now absolutely anything can make him burst into tears. He dropped his toothbrush on Sunday and had been unable to do anything but curl up and sob into his knees for a full fifteen minutes.
Every day, there is still a desperate hope that this day will be the worst of it, that he’ll wake up tomorrow and realise that his body is finally starting to get a hold on itself again. But with every day that passes and he feels worse, that hope is dwindling.
When he gets to work that Tuesday, he doesn’t feel entirely present. His head feels stuffed full of cotton, which on the one hand is nice since it partially muffles the pounding headache, but it makes it harder to maintain his usual caution around the other kitchen workers.
He’s returning a stack of pots that have gone through the dishwasher when he sees one of the chefs making filling for apple pies. He catches a glimpse of the mixing bowl, and without thinking he blurts, “That’s not cinnamon.”
The chef—Wonjae, Felix thinks his name is—looks at him and frowns, as if he hadn’t realised Felix was there. His confusion is understandable; Felix doesn’t think he’s exchanged a word with the man before. “What?”
Felix’s foggy brain momentarily forgets that there’s a reason he’s never exchanged a word with the man before. “You put in nutmeg. Not cinnamon.”
The words come out flat, almost rude, and somewhere in his mind Felix’s common sense is screaming at him, but he feels too hazy and all his focus has zeroed in on the mixing bowl on the countertop.
He’s right, he knows he is. Nutmeg is grainier than cinnamon, and what the chef added to the bowl is clearly nutmeg. He steps closer and inhales. Yeah, he is right.
Wonjae sniffs, doing the same. He must realise Felix is right, because his jaw clenches and his hand tightens around the spoon he is holding. He is one of the younger chefs, a stocky alpha in his mid-twenties who hasn’t worked here for very long. He knows, just as Felix does, that the head chef will have his head if he has to restart the filling this close before dinner prep begins.
His cheeks colour with a high flush of embarrassment that quickly shifts to anger. “What do you know, omega? You think you know better than me? Think you can—” His eyes fall on something behind Felix and quick as lightning, he shoves the mixing bowl into Felix’s hands.
Normally, Felix would grab it without issue. It was a rough movement but it’s not like the man hurled the bowl at him. Today, however, it’s like there’s a hundred-mile distance between his brain and his fingers, and by the time he moves them enough to grab it, the bowl has already slipped through his hands and clattered to the floor.
Apple slices and raisins fly back up from the bowl and all around the kitchen.
For a moment, it is quiet. Then, loudly from behind Felix, a voice booms, “What is going on?”
Wonjae’s eyes are wide, like even he didn’t expect that to happen. It only lasts a second, though, before the shock is replaced by a calculated gleam. He turns to head chef Dong-soo and rolls his eyes at Felix. “Fucking omega ruined my filling.”
Dong-soo looks at Felix, then to the apple pieces on the ground, and back up at Wonjae. His eyes bore into the man for a second, and it is clear Dong-soo knows exactly what happened. The alpha has run this kitchen for over twenty years, and there is very little that gets past him on his own turf.
Unfortunately for Felix, there is only one thing Dong-soo hates more than insubordinate chefs, and that is Felix himself.
“Yongbok?” the man asks, voice deceptively quiet. “Care to explain yourself?”
Felix sways a little. The clang from the bowl is still echoing through his head, and he can barely form thoughts around the ringing resonations, let alone words. He stares blankly at Dong-soo’s white chef jacket, vaguely aware that this is bad, that he is supposed to do something to fix this, but the urgency feels far away.
“Yongbok!” Dong-soo barks, and Felix jumps, realising that’s him. He snaps his eyes up to meet the man’s gaze.
“Yes, chef?” His tongue feels thick in his mouth.
“Explain.”
“I…” Felix blinks. “There was nutmeg.”
Dong-soo stares at him like he’s sprouted horns. “What the… are you drunk?”
Wonjae sees his chance. “I think so, chef. He dropped the—”
“Shut up,” Dong-soo snaps. “I’ll deal with you later. Yongbok. Yah.” He snaps his fingers in front of Felix’s eyes and growls. “Fucking hell—omega.”
It’s nothing. It’s nothing at all, barely a hint of an alpha rumble behind his voice, but Felix… breaks.
His knees hit the floor so hard the crack reverberates up through his kneecaps. He doesn’t feel the pain. He doesn’t feel anything aside from the urge to submit, submit, submit. There’s a whine stuck in his throat as he tilts his head, baring his neck. His eyes are closed as he waits for alpha to do something, to help him, to tell him he’s good—
“Damn, look at that,” an awed voice says above him, a grin evident in the words, even as someone else mutters, “What the fuck—”
The whine breaks free, loud and filled with desperation. He needs help, he needs—
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is my kitchen, not a whorehouse.” There’s a hard kick to his hip, and this time the pain does break through the haze in his head. “Get the fuck up.”
And with the combination of the pain and those words, not a full command but close enough to it, Felix stumbles to his feet, mind clearing just enough for exactly two thoughts to form.
Not here.
Not safe.
His brain repeats them, one after the other, taking up more and more space in his mind until he can’t hear anything but the thoughts. Not here. Not safe.
He sees an arm reach for him out of the corner of his eye and flinches away, stumbling backwards. His knees almost give out, pain lancing up and down his legs. He’s shaking violently and his vision is so blurry all he can see are shapes and colours. All he wants is to give in to the pain and the desperate urge to lie down and hope that maybe this time he’ll be good enough—
But.
Not here. Not safe.
Felix turns, swaying hard into the countertop and crying out at the sharp ache in his hip where Dong-soo kicked him. He uses the pain to clear his head a little further. He’s… he’s dropping. Fuck, he’s dropping, he needs to get out, get out, get out—
He runs.
He dashes out of the kitchen, ignoring the shouts and cries of alarm, the shattering of plates as he knocks something to the ground. He crashes into someone and they drop something over his head, cool liquid spilling down his front, but he’s already gone.
He’s out the door and onto the streets within seconds, the cool air hitting him like a slap in the face. He doesn’t stop to think about where he’s going, barely registers the turns he’s taking and alleys he’s sprinting down. He just runs.
He doesn’t know for how long he runs. All he knows is fear, and the desperate need to get away. It simultaneously feels like forever and the blink of an eye, but eventually his legs stop moving and he slumps forward, panting heavily. He blinks the blurriness from his vision and realises with a wave of relief he’s made it back to his own front door. Thank god. Thank god for muscle memory.
It takes him three tries, but he manages to unlock the door with shaking fingers.
Once inside, he locks it again and collapses onto his mattress, dragging the blanket over himself in a vain attempt to drive out the cold that has taken root deep inside his chest. He’s shivering, teeth chattering so loudly it almost drowns out the low whines he can’t hold back.
Safe. He’s safe now.
But he doesn’t feel safe.
His head is spinning and everything feels wrong. The wet clothes on his skin, gross and sticky. The air around him, stale and reeking of the sour citrus scent that his scent blockers can no longer hold back. His nest, which is supposed to bring him the comfort he so desperately needs but which is barely a nest at all—he doesn’t have any real pillows or nesting blankets, only a few tattered clothes and towels. They’ve smelled like the lingering notes of his drop for weeks, now topped with the fresh, acrid scent of a new drop. He can smell it as much as he can feel it.
It’s going to drag him under, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. It’s going to drag him under, and he’ll be all alone, and it will kill him. He knows it with a certainty that should rattle him, but he feels nothing but exhausted, broken resignation. This will be it.
The shivering gets more violent, until he can no longer tell if it’s shivers or muscle spasms. There’s an all-encompassing sadness clawing his body open from the inside, hollowing him out.
He cries.
He feels horribly, overwhelmingly alone.
The hole in his chest grows until the emptiness is all he can feel. He can’t. He can’t do it. He can’t bear it, and he sobs brokenly into his pillow. He wants it to be over. He wants it to stop, to no longer hurt, he wants to be warm, to be whole again. He wants…
Vanilla.
The phantom scent flashes so clearly through his mind that he gasps, inhaling desperately. There’s nothing but bitter citrus, but the memory, the memory is there.
Vanilla, and a warm hand in his, and a smile. Jeongin.
A stab of want lances through him so sharply that he keens, the images in his head contrasting painfully with the emptiness in his chest.
He doesn’t want to be alone. He doesn’t want to die.
His hands fumble for his phone, fingers shaking and vision blurring so badly he can barely see what buttons he’s pressing. It hurts. Everything hurts, and all he wants is for someone to stop it. He drops the phone. It’s not working. He can’t see. He just wants…
“Felix?”
Yes, that’s what he’d sounded like. That’s the exact tone of Jeongin’s voice, and Felix tries to fall deeper into the depths of his brain that have conjured this up.
“Hello? Felix, is that you?”
Felix whines. It’s like the sound is right next to him, and for a moment he can pretend that the omega is really there. That he can just roll over and be held, be safe.
“Felix? Are you okay?”
No. No, he’s not okay. “I-in,” he cries. “J-Jeongin.”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.” Phantom Jeongin sounds alarmed now. “What’s going on? Felix, I’m putting you on speaker, okay? Jisung is with me.”
Jisung. Warm, sweet cinnamon. The ache in Felix’s heart intensifies, and he keens again, needy and desperate.
“Felix?” That’s Jisung’s voice, and Felix doesn’t know what his brain is doing, but he’s grateful. “Felix, what’s happening? Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” Felix breathes, eyes filling with more tears, and then, “Hurts.”
There’s a curse, and then more voices, ones he can’t make out. “What hurts?” Jisung asks.
Felix doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how to explain the all-consuming ache that threatens to roll over him like a tidal wave. He’ll be swept away into the darkness, and he’ll be all alone.
“Felix. Felix, honey, are you dropping?” Jisung sounds different now. Gentle, caring, and the words light a tiny spark in the void in Felix’s chest.
“Hurts,” he gasps.
“I know. I know, jagiya, it’s okay. You’re doing so well. Do you know where you are?”
“Home.” The word doesn’t feel right. Home should be safe, right? Felix does not feel safe. “Alone.” There, that’s the truth. He’s never felt more alone than he does right now.
“Okay. That’s good. Good job. Felix, do you need help? We can call an ambulance, or—”
“No,” Felix chokes out, “No ambulance.”
“Alright. No ambulance. Good job, thanks for telling me. But you sound like you need help, honey, is there…” The voice goes muffled for a second, and it’s joined by other quiet voices again, sounding urgent. “Felix, can we come and help you? You can say no, we can leave you alone—”
Felix cries. “Please,” he sobs, and it’s like something breaks inside him. “No. Please don’t leave. Please, Alpha, I can be good, I can be good—”
There’s another muffled curse, and then Jisung speaks. “You are good, Felix. You’re so good, and we’re not leaving. We’re coming to get you, okay?”
Tears are still dripping down his face, but the sobbing stops.
“Can you tell us where you live?”
“That’s a difficult question,” someone else says. “I don’t know if he—”
“No, he can do it,” someone says, and that’s Jeongin again. “Felix? Lixie? Can I call you that? Can you tell us your address?” When Felix doesn’t immediately respond, he adds, “You’re so good, such a perfect omega, you can do it, right? We’ll be right there, Lixie, as soon as you tell us where you live.”
The nickname makes the spark grow into a tiny flame, and Felix curls in on himself in an attempt to get closer, desperate for more warmth. “Yes,” he says, and gives them his address. He stumbles over the words a few times, his tongue still lying heavy in his mouth, but Jeongin and Jisung don’t seem to mind. They’re full of praise as they thank Felix and tell him how well he’s done.
He’s done well.
There are more noises, people talking and doors slamming. There’s a low rumbling sound and then Jeongin speaks again. “Can you talk to us, Felix?”
Felix hums.
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“Didn’. Threw up.” He turns his head into his pillow. “Sorry. ’M sorry.”
“Oh, Lixie. It’s okay. We’re coming.”
Felix closes his eyes and lets himself drift. They’re coming. He doesn’t know if it’s real or not, but the thought feels good, and he lets it settle over him.
They keep talking. There are more questions. He tries his best to reply, but at some point he loses his battle for control over his tongue and he slurs out a final apology. A brief stab of fear shoots through him. He was supposed to talk. Will they leave now?
He doesn’t realise he’s whining until Jisung says, “Almost there, jagi. You’re okay, Lixie, just hold on. We’re coming.”
He relaxes again, muscles going slack at the reassurance that they’re not abandoning him. And maybe he blacks out for a while, because the next thing he’s aware of is a tapping noise.
“Felix? Felix, can you hear us?”
The sounds continue, louder now. They’re still coming from beside him, but also… behind him?
“He said 84, right?”
“He sounded pretty out of it. He may have gotten it wrong.”
“Felix? Felix!”
Dazed, Felix lifts his head. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard, why he’s so tired.
“Felix, we’re at your door. We think. Probably.” Jisung sounds unsure, and Felix whimpers.
There’s a shuffle, and then someone else says, “Hey, Felix. It’s Changbin.”
Woodsmoke, warm and comforting.
“I know it’s hard. But I need you to open the door for us, okay? We’re right here. We just need you to unlock the door.”
Felix blinks at his front door with blurry eyes. Now that he’s focusing on it, he does think he can hear noises. His brain is all muddled and for a moment, fear strikes him at the thought of strangers trying to get in, of him finding him. He cries out. But then Changbin says, “I heard him. This is the place. It’s us. Lix-ah, it’s us. You’re safe with us, I swear it.”
Felix’s head is spinning and he feels weak. His muscles are still contracting painfully and he’s not sure he’ll be able to make them do what he’s supposed to. But that’s Changbin, that’s Changbin’s voice coming from behind that door, and it’s soon joined by Jisung and Jeongin, gentle and coaxing. They’re right there, behind that door, and Felix wants.
He’s tries to get up, but he crashes to the floor just as quickly, knees completely unable to bear his weight. More pain stabs through his legs, and he sobs. He wants them, he needs them, and they’re so close but he can’t—
“Fuck this,” someone says. “I’m breaking down the door. Innie, get back.”
There’s a loud bang that makes Felix scream, and then another, and then the door splinters and comes clear off its hinges, crashing against the floor.
Felix has time for one more terrified scream at the noise, and then he’s no longer alone.
Arms encircle him, and his nose is flooded with the scent of vanilla so strong he doesn’t know what his brain was thinking earlier. The memory didn’t even come close. There’s no mistaking it—this is real.
They’re really here.
“Oh, Felix,” Jeongin says, and hugs him tighter.
Vanilla mixes with cinnamon, and then woodsmoke, and there are arms around him from all sides now. Felix is surrounded. He is held.
His brain thinks, Here. Safe.
And Felix lets go.
Notes:
This chapter has a little bonus scene of Hyunjin and Jeongin's visit to Aera's bakery. Because when Aera said she played her part well, she meant it.
Chapter Text
Felix drifts.
Vaguely, he’s aware of being carried. Of people talking around him. But his nose is buried in someone’s neck, and all he can smell is warm, soothing cinnamon. He’s still cold, and he’s still shaking. But the arms that hold him are steady, and he’s not afraid of falling.
“He’s so light,” someone says from above him. “Hyung, he’s—”
“I know. We’ll fix it. Keep doing what you’re doing, Sungie. When we get to the car, scent him. Seungmin says it’ll help.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to—”
“He says we’re past that point. As long as his body is accepting us, we keep going. We can’t bring him back up now, it’ll kill him.”
A burst of panicked vanilla spikes the air, and Felix whimpers.
“Jeongin, don’t—oh, Innie. I know. You have to stay calm, okay? He needs us stable right now. He’ll be alright, I promise. Seungmin is on his way back.”
The fear recedes until the scent is soothing again, and Felix relaxes back into the arms that hold him. A door opens, and he shivers violently as cold air hits his skin.
“Just a few metres, Lix-ah, we’ve got you.”
The sound of another door, and then the world tilts as he’s shifted sideways. The movement would be scary if the arms around him didn’t hold him tighter. The cold air disappears, and he’s enveloped in scents again, tucked into someone’s lap.
“Innie, can you take the backseat with Jisung? Text Channie-hyung we’re on our way and then scent him too. I’ll drive.”
A car rumbles to life, and then there’s a hesitant hand on his cheek.
“I’m going to scent you now, okay Lixie?” a voice murmurs. “I’m… I’m sorry for not asking permission.”
Someone peels off his spent scent blockers. His hair is combed aside, and then there’s a nose brushing against his neck. It tilts, jaw rubbing once, twice, and then his system is flooded with cinnamon.
Felix melts. He goes slack so quickly that two people yelp in surprise, and he’s quickly steadied by another pair of hands.
“Oh, good job. There you go.”
“Holy shit,” someone says. “Was I like that when…?”
“You were adorable,” a voice says from farther away. “So clingy. If we hadn’t all been so scared, it would’ve been the best night of our lives.”
“Oh, shut up.”
The person that’s holding him chuckles lightly. “I think you broke Channie-hyung’s heart when you told him to let go after a few hours. Here, you scent his wrists?”
Someone takes hold of his hands and they’re rubbed against a surface that adds vanilla to the cinnamon coursing through his veins. Felix sighs in relief, head lolling against someone’s shoulder, and a kiss is brushed against his temple. “That’s it. We’ve got you.”
It’s quiet for a while, the only sound the rumbling that vibrates underneath them. Felix drifts in and out of focus.
*
“What do you think happened? Why didn’t he go to a clinic?”
“I don’t know, Sungie. He’ll have to tell us once we get him through this.”
“We should never have let him go.”
“It was his choice. We had to respect that.”
“I know, but…”
“I know. We’ll get him through this.”
*
“He’s covered in… Innie, what is this?”
“I don’t know. When we first saw him, I thought it was blood.”
“God, me too. I thought he got stabbed.”
“I think it’s cranberry sauce?”
Someone shifts, as if looking over their shoulder. “Cranberry sauce?”
“I—yeah. It smells like it.”
“This boy has one hell of a story to tell.”
A nose presses into his hair. “I’m so glad we found him.”
“Me too, Jisung-ah.”
*
“He’s still shaking. Do you think he’s cold? Hyung, should we turn up the heat?”
Felix is tugged closer against someone’s chest.
“I’ll turn it up. But with the state he’s in, it might as well be more muscle spasms.”
“But he doesn’t smell like he’s in pain.”
“…He may not feel it. I don’t know. We’ll ask Seungmin when we’re back. He left the hospital as soon as we texted him, he should get home before we do.”
*
“We’re almost there. Has hyung texted you back, Innie?”
“Oh. Yeah. He says they’ve de-scented the guestroom and the hallway.”
“Text him to get some clean clothes ready, too. And to stay back once we’re there.”
“Okay.”
*
They slow, then stop, and the rumbling sound cuts off. Immediately, a door opens, and a rush of cold air wafts in.
“How is he?” a new voice asks.
“Stable, we think? We don’t know. He’s… It’s bad, Seungmin.”
“Is that blood?”
“Cranberry sauce.”
“Cranberry—” There’s a hand on his forehead, then his neck, and someone tsks. “He’s freezing.”
“We… we tried to warm him up, but—”
“No, it’s not you. It’s the drop, at least Stage 5. He must have been fighting it for weeks. Who’s scented him?”
“Me. And Innie. He went all floppy.”
A snort. “Excellent report. Let’s get him inside, warm him up.”
“Is everyone—”
“I told them to stay back. He won’t smell their scents. Good thinking, picking him up with just the three of you. He liked our scents.” A sniff. “You neutralised the car, even. Good job.”
Someone huffs. “I had to practically fight hyung for the car keys. He was dead set on coming before Innie talked sense into him.”
“Good job, I.N-ah.” The door opens wider.
“Should I carry him again? Or pass him to you?”
“No, he’s stable because of you. Keep him close.”
The arms around him tighten, and Felix lets out a soft, grateful sound. A kiss is pressed into his hair, along with a fresh wave of cinnamon. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
He’s being moved again, and his body spasms involuntarily as the cold air hits his skin. Felix cries out as his muscles contract painfully. Someone curses, and the arms lose their grip on his body, causing Felix to tumble sideways out of their grasp. He only drops a couple of centimetres before a second pair of arms wraps around his body. Together, they hold him steady as the spasm passes. The scent of sage fills his nose, sweet and soothing.
“There you are. Let it pass, you’re doing well.”
They keep moving, and it’s only a minute before the cold breeze is replaced by warmth and the cottony smell of scent neutraliser.
“Seungmin, where do you want him? Bed, or bathroom first?”
“No, skip the bathroom. We can get him clean clothes, but a bath can wait until he’s more stable. Jeongin’s and Jisung’s scents are helping, but I want to add yours, hyung. Mine, if he’ll accept it. The more people to stabilise him, the better.”
Whoever is holding him continues walking, and they enter another scent-neutral room.
“Hyunjin-hyung texted to say there’s new pillows and blankets in the closet, and unscented pyjamas on the bed.”
“God, we all made fun of him, but I’ve never been so glad for how meticulous he was in decorating this place.”
The scent of vanilla drifts past him. “I’ll build him a nest. He needs the best nest.”
“Wait, scent his pyjamas first? Scented clothes will be better, if it’s a scent his body accepts.”
The person holding him shifts. “How do we change him? I can’t let him go.”
“No, sit down, just hold him. Changbin-hyung and I will help you.”
With a quiet “oof” the person holding him bounces lightly on a soft surface, and then Felix is back in someone’s lap.
“You got yourself into a real pickle, hm, Felix?” someone asks softly. “Whatever possessed you not to go to a clinic, huh? So dangerous.” They click their tongue, but it doesn’t sound harsh. “Never mind now. We’ve got you.”
Someone else steps closer, and there’s a whiff of woodsmoke. “We’re going to get you into clean clothes, alright Lix-ah? I’m sorry we can’t ask you properly.”
“Just the things that are covered in food. Leave his underwear.” A hand strokes through his hair. “Cranberry sauce, honestly. What have you been up to, hm?”
Someone lifts his arms to remove his shirt. It drags Felix’s nose away from the source of the cinnamon scent, and he whines.
“I know, honey. Just a moment. Innie, are you done?”
“Here.”
A new shirt is pulled over his head, and Felix goes limp with pleasure as he is bathed in vanilla. “Whoa,” someone says from above him, at the same time someone else goes, “See? Floppy!”
Another snort of laughter. “Pheromone-induced muscle relaxation, technically. But well, you’re not wrong.”
Someone pulls down his trousers and hisses, brushing a thumb against his hip. “That’s a nasty bruise.”
“Can we do anything to treat it? Seungmin?”
“No, leave it. The drop is more important right now.”
His trousers are quickly replaced, and then Felix is clothed in soft cotton, warm and dry against his skin. The scents of vanilla and cinnamon mingle pleasantly around him. He knows nothing except that he’s safe.
“Should I…?”
“Wait, hyung. Before you scent him, I want to do a quick check-up. Can someone grab my bag from the hallway? I brought a few things.”
“Did you steal from the hospital?”
“Of course not. I just happened to be in a supply room when you texted and merely… tripped into a shelf on my very hasty way out. Those things simply fell into my bag.”
“…”
“Alright, I stole from the hospital. Borrowed. I’ll return most of it, eventually. But they had a pheromone analyser, and that’s going to be invaluable in monitoring a drop this bad.”
“Did you even tell them you were leaving?”
“I did. Family emergency. I told them our omega was dropping actually, so, well, Jeongin is stuck here for the foreseeable future.”
“Like I would go anywhere. I’m not leaving him. Oh, Hyunjin-hyung is the best. There are so many pillows in here.”
“Here’s your bag, Seungmin.”
The sound of a zipper, and then there’s a hand on his cheek. “Can you open your mouth for me, Felix? Yes, good boy.”
Something slips under his tongue. It beeps, and is removed again.
“34.1. Definitely too low.” The voice lowers into a mutter. “Might be looking at Stage 6, actually. Damn it.”
“What… what does that mean?” The arms around him tighten.
“It means this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We’ll get him through this, but it’s not going to be pretty.” Something is clamped onto his finger, and then a band is wrapped around his arm. A low buzzing sound starts. “Oxygen is normal, that’s good. Blood pressure… Hyung, can you write down the numbers? I want to be quick, he needs blankets.”
Something cool presses against his neck, and Felix flinches away from it. The cold moves with him, and he whines.
The voice is light and apologetic. “Sorry, honey. I need to check your pheromone levels. Just a little bit longer, sweetheart.”
“I’ve… never heard you talk like that, Seungmin. Not even to Innie.”
“Hey. I have bedside manner. Besides, Innie doesn’t want me to talk like that.”
A snort. “I really don’t.”
“What about me? I want you to talk to me like that.”
It’s silent for a second, and then a saccharine voice croons, “Really, sweetheart? You should have said. My darling Binnie-hyung, such a perfect beta—”
Someone gags, and a strained voice chokes out, “Stop. I’ve changed my mind. Don’t ever do that again, that’s creepy as shit.”
There’s quiet laughter, followed by three soft beeps, and the cold is removed from his neck. There’s a soft touch of skin instead, and Felix relaxes into a cloud of cinnamon.
“That’s it. Well done, Felix.” Someone hisses through their teeth. “Yeah, definitely Stage 6. Alright. Okay. We’ve got this. Let’s wrap him up. Hyung, can you scent him now?”
“Of course. Where do you want me?”
The arms holding him tug him closer. “I can lie down, if the nest is ready. He can be the little spoon. You can take the other side, hyung?”
The surface beneath them dips and Felix’s head lolls as he’s shifted around. Then someone takes gentle hold of his wrists and the cloud of cinnamon is suddenly joined by the wonderful warm smell of a campfire. Felix inhales deeply, and someone murmurs into his hair, “There you go, Lix-ah. Good boy.”
Felix melts. A blanket slides over him, and he burrows further into the warmth that surrounds him.
“I’m so glad he’s accepting our scents. Based on what happened in the mall, I thought he would, but you never know. I’ll add mine in a minute.”
“He looks so peaceful,” someone observes from above them. “Are you sure it’s going to get worse?”
“His body has effectively shut down. It’s more or less gone into stasis, he’s… Don’t be alarmed, but I don’t think you realise how close he came to dying. From Stage 7 onward, a drop is practically irreversible.”
The scent of smoke intensifies, before pulsing even stronger with calm and reassurance.
“He’s peaceful now because our scents are slowly filtering into his system, gradually stabilising him enough for his system to reboot. Once he reaches that point, once his body’s own processes are kickstarted again… He’s going to have a rough time.” There’s a pause. “I don’t think I need to say this, but—we can’t leave him. This is going to take weeks, probably at least a month, and we’re his only shot at survival right now.”
Felix is sandwiched even more tightly against two bodies, and someone settles near his head, pushing another burst of vanilla in his direction.
“We’re not leaving. This was our fault. He’s got us now.”
A wrist rubs gentle circles over his neck, and the soothing, sweet scent of sage drapes over him like the softest of sheets.
Felix drifts.
***
Felix is burning.
His body is on fire, hot coals pressing in from every side and burning away his skin. Someone is screaming. He twists painfully, trying to get away from the heat, but he’s in too deep. The flames are everywhere. The screams get louder until he gasps for breath and chokes on it, and then everything goes black.
“Fuck, he’s—ow, fuck, do we hold him down?”
“No, he’s seizing. Keep pushing pheromones, but give him space. I’ve started a timer.”
“Sung, are you bleeding?”
“I—yeah, he hit me in the nose. I’m fine, hyung, I’m not leaving him—”
“I know you’re not. But you’re still bleeding. Innie, go grab him some tissues?”
“Yes, Changbin-hyung.”
There is a surface beneath him again, and Felix lands, right back in the sea of flames.
“One minute, thirty-six seconds. That’s good.”
“Good? Seungmin, he had a fucking seizure!”
“And he’ll have more. Hyung, I need you calm. It was under two minutes, I promise it’s normal at this stage.”
“He still has a fever.”
“I know. He’s 38.7. That’s normal, too.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“How can you stand this? Is this what you do all day?”
“Well, not anymore now I’m in gynaecology. But the omega clinic internship I just finished? Yeah, this happened a lot there.”
“I could never do what you do. Shit, sorry Innie, I think I bled on you.”
“It’s fine. Can I do anything?”
“Get him some more water. We’ve got to keep him hydrated.” A hand presses against various points of his face. “I’d feel more comfortable if we had an IV, really.”
“He said no ambulance. No hospitals.”
“I know. I know. He… he might be fine. We’ll try this first.”
***
Felix is still burning. How long can a person burn? Maybe he isn’t a person anymore. He can’t even feel his body. He might be nothing but ash, the human long since burnt out of him.
“He doesn’t look good. Minnie, he’s so hot.”
“Yeah. Sometimes you can get dropped omegas to eat and drink, and I was hoping that we could… But it’s not working. He needs an IV. And an NG tube.”
“A what?”
“Feeding tube.”
“Oh. But how—”
“Can you call Chan-hyung? Please pass me my phone, too.”
“On it.”
“Changbin? Is everything okay, do you need anything?”
“Hyung, you’re on speaker. Seungmin wants to talk to you.”
“How is he?”
“Dehydrated. Hyung, he needs an IV and an NG tube. Among other things. I need you to pick them up.”
“…Where.”
“Can you drive to the Golden Hour Clinic? Park around the back, don’t get out of the car. Stay away from the security cameras. I’ll get someone to bring you what you need.”
Someone in the room lets out a shocked laugh. “Who is he, Pablo Escobar—”
“I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of very attracted to him right now.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“Thanks, hyung. I’ll call you back as soon as I know more.”
A beep as the call is ended. Then there’s more taps and another dial tone. “Wooyoung-hyung? Hi, it’s me. You’re working today, right? I need help.”
***
Felix was consumed a long time ago, but the fire still burns.
His ashes drift through the flames, up and down, backwards and forwards as the breeze stirs them up. It still hurts. He thought death would be more peaceful. Is this hell?
Occasionally, there are voices. Touches, brief stabs of pain that send his ashes scattering around the sea of red. He’s tired. He’s so tired.
The fire rages on, and Felix drifts.
***
Felix continues to burn, but something changes. It takes him a while to realise that his limbs are back. He thought he was ash. Have they regrown?
He twitches one experimentally and immediately wishes he hadn’t. It sends a stabbing pain all up and down his body, and he screams as the flames try to reclaim him.
“Ah—shit—Seungmin!”
Rushing footsteps.
“He’s seizing, can you time?”
“This is not a seizure. It’s a muscle spasm. It’s just his legs, see? You can touch him Innie, let’s start a massage.”
Another voice. “Should I hold his arm? It’s just, the IV—”
“Yes, thank you hyung. Don’t let him rip it out. Mind the catheter too.”
“Ssh, Felix, it’s okay, you’re alright.”
Someone sobs, and Felix doesn’t know if it’s him or someone else. Before this, he didn’t think he still had a voice.
“God, the screaming—I hate this. I hate this so much. It’s been eight days, how much longer does he need to suffer?”
“He’s doing really well, Innie.”
“Seungmin, he’s in so much pain he’s sobbing.”
“I know. But he’s having a muscle spasm, not a seizure, for the first time in days. His fever is lower, too. It’s a good sign.”
Slowly, the flames recede, and Felix gasps for air in the reprieve.
There’s a shuddering breath next to his ear, and a kiss to his brow. He has ears, now, too. And a face. He wonders how long it will last before they burn away again.
***
His ears are still there, and they catch a conversation. The words are nothing but meaningless sounds, but the voices are quiet and float pleasantly through his head.
“—left you guys breakfast at the door. Have you slept?”
“Innie and Hannie did, they’re still out. They have Felix, he’s out too. Minnie and I took turns monitoring last night. He’s in the shower now.”
“Any progress?”
“Seungmin says there is. I don’t know, I can’t see it. But I trust him.”
“He would know.” A sigh. “I hate that we can’t be there to help him. To help you.”
“You’re doing enough. Without you getting us those supplies, he would have died. Hell, without you, we would have starved.”
A chuckle. “There’s coffee on the tray too, we stopped by the café.”
“Oh thank god. Bless you, Channie-hyung.”
“You’re welcome.”
It’s quiet for a minute. Then, “Have you talked to…?”
“No. He’s… He’s shutting us out.”
“Has he been home at all?”
“No.”
“Shit. This is more than just guilt, isn’t it.”
“Yeah. I… I don’t know what’s wrong, Bin. I’m worried.”
“Me too. God, I wish it was safe for us to leave, just for an hour. Hannie could drag him back, you know he could.”
“I… yeah, I hope so. He will try, once Felix gets through this. Did Seungmin say how long it will be?”
Another voice, from farther away. “Hey, hyung.” It gets closer, keeping quiet. “He’s improving. His pheromone levels are stabilising, and he’s no longer solely relying on ours to keep him alive.”
“He hasn’t woken up yet?”
“No, and he probably won’t for another few weeks. But he’s recovering well. His fever is gone and there’s only been one seizure since that first muscle spasm. His body reacts to our voices sometimes. All good signs. He’ll get through this.”
“I don’t know what we would’ve done without you, Seungminnie.”
The surface beneath Felix dips, and there’s a hand on his arm. “Panicked like idiots, for sure.”
A huff, but the voice doesn’t disagree.
“Is there anything I can get you guys?”
“Yeah, could you stop by the clinic again? We need some more formula, and I’ve been texting Seonghwa-hyung about a rash. He’s prescribed an ointment.”
“Should I wait until it’s dark and park in a shady corner again?”
A soft laugh. “No. Seonghwa-hyung has prescribed the ointment for Jeongin, so you can go in this time. The other things I need will be in the same bag, so don’t open it until you’re home. And you need to talk to Yunho at the reception desk, no one else. He’s working and he should recognise you, I sent him a picture.”
“Alright. Love you both. Give Sungie and Innie a kiss. And hug Felix for me.”
“We will, hyung. Talk to you soon.”
***
There are gentle fingers carding through his hair, occasionally pausing and replaced by the quiet sound of a spray bottle. He’s surrounded by cinnamon.
“Innie, can you pass me that cloth?”
“Don’t soak him, Sung.”
“I won’t. I just want to clean his hair up a little. I think there’s still cranberry sauce in it.”
“I wonder where he was before he called us. There was definitely no sauce in his apartment.”
“There wasn’t much of anything in his apartment.”
It’s silent for a while. The fingers continue combing. Someone is snoring softly a bit to his right.
“Did you know he offered me a place to stay?”
“What?”
“When I… when he found me in that alley. He thought I was running from you all. He said I could come with him. That I’d be safe.”
“That’s… wow.”
“I didn’t think about it before, but now we’ve seen his apartment. He had nothing. He had nothing and he would have taken me in anyway.”
The fingers pause in his hair.
“He didn’t have to sit with me, but he was so kind. I remember actually feeling safe, even after everything that happened. He gave me food, even though he must have barely had any himself. I owe him so much, and now he’s…”
There’s a sniffle, and a rustle of clothes as someone shifts.
“He’ll be okay. Seungmin promised, yeah? He’ll be fine, and you can thank him again in person.”
“I just want him to wake up.”
“I know, Innie. Me too.”
***
Someone is singing.
The words don’t register, but the melody does, slow and achingly beautiful. It cracks open something in Felix’s chest that he hadn’t realised was still there. Tears drip down his cheeks.
There’s a gasp and abruptly, the singing stops.
Felix whines. No. No, he wants it back.
“Lixie? Are you okay? He’s crying. Changbin-hyung!”
“No,” Felix mumbles, and suddenly, he’s found his tongue. He turns his head in the direction the singing had come from. “Song.”
For a few seconds, it’s dead silent.
Then, “Did you… Did you hear that! Oh my god, hyung—”
“I know, Han-ah, I heard… Felix? Lix-ah? Can you hear us?”
There are hands on his arms and voices around his head, but that’s not what he wants.
“Song,” he repeats, the sounds tumbling clumsily out of his mouth. “Song.”
“…Think he wants you to keep singing, Jisungie.”
“I… Okay. Okay, Lixie.” A breathless laugh. “I’ll sing for you.” A kiss is pressed into his hair. “I’ll sing for you as much as you want.”
The singing starts again, just as beautiful as before, and Felix releases a contented sigh as he lets the melody carry him away.
***
His nose is pressed into a soft cloud of vanilla, and there’s a hand in his, playing with his fingers. A little farther away, a door opens and closes.
“…claimed that she was entitled to issue preclusion on the issues that 1) FuelTech’s drilling was negligent and caused 200 million won worth of damage to Lot 15; and 2) that she, not Junsu, was the lawful owner of Lot 15. How should the court rule on Mirin’s motion?”
A thumb strokes Felix’s own.
“What do you think, Lixie? Pretend you’re in court with me. We’re judges. Is she right?”
There’s a snort from across the room. “Are you seriously reading him your law textbook?”
“I need to study! Besides, I think he finds it relaxing.”
“Of course he does, Innie. This shit could send even Chan-hyung to sleep.”
There’s a sigh. “Damn it. I just wanted him to talk to me like he did to Sung.”
The snort turns into a burst of laughter. “Perhaps you should reconsider your choice of reading material, then. Oh, sorry hyung. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Someone yawns to Felix’s other side. “’S okay. What time is it?”
“Like eleven a.m. We tried to let you sleep, you were up all night. I’ve collected our breakfast, if you want any.”
“Where’s Hannie?”
“Shower. He woke up just before you.”
A phone starts buzzing, and there’s a rustle of sheets as someone searches for it.
“Hyunjin-ah! How are you doing?”
“I feel like I should be asking you that. Did a bird nest in your hair?”
“Yah. I just woke up.”
“Clearly. Did you find the food?”
“Seungminnie just brought it in. It looks good.”
“Thanks. I’ve added some skincare products too. I found this new brand that’s supposed to have really good sheet masks.”
“Hyung, have you been stress shopping again?”
“…Listen, Innie. Don’t you dare judge me. You guys have been gone for nearly two weeks, and Channie-hyung is going crazy, especially with Min—”
“Hey, hey. Hyunjin-ah. It’s alright. Innie didn’t mean anything by it. We know it’s been hard on you too.”
“I just… I just really want a hug. Your scents are fading. I don’t like it.”
“Oh, Jinnie. It’s the first thing I’m doing when we’re out, okay? I’ll come straight for you. Mark my words.”
“…Why do you have to make it sound like a threat. I don’t know if I want it anymore.”
More laughter, and then, “Hey, what do you want for your birthday?”
“Oh, shit, you’re right. That’s coming up so soon. What day is it?”
“Today’s the 12th.”
“I just want you guys back. I don’t want to celebrate my birthday if you aren’t there.”
There’s a long silence, and someone brushes a hand over Felix’s forehead.
“Seungminnie, is there any way…?”
Another long pause. “He’s recovering faster than I expected, but even if he wakes before your birthday, he’ll be really vulnerable. I… there’s no way we’ll be out in time. I’m really sorry, Hyunjin.”
“Yeah. No, that’s what I thought.” There’s a quiet sniffle. “I’m fine, sorry. I’m fine. This is important, you’re doing the right thing. I just miss you.”
“Jinnie. We’ll just celebrate your birthday twice, okay? Once like this, and then for real as soon as we get out, okay? We’ll organise the biggest party and get you all the balloons. Like, at least a hundred.”
Another sniffle and a quiet, wet laugh. “Two hundred.”
“Deal.”
***
It feels like he is underwater.
He was fire before, he is pretty sure. He was fire, and then ash, drifting through the flames.
But sometime after that he must have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, because he feels heavy and sluggish under the weight of it. His head feels murky, as if he’s not just in the ocean, but the ocean is in him too.
He’s floating upwards, though. It’s taking an eternity, but he’s getting closer to the surface.
He isn’t sure what will happen once he gets there. He hopes it will be sunny. But maybe the waves will punish him for trying to escape and sweep him under again.
But he’s so, so tired of being dragged down, and the drift upwards feels pleasant.
Pleasant, that is, until he once again becomes aware of the fact that he has a body, and every single part of it is aching.
He gasps, and is surprised when his mouth does not fill with water. He sucks in a deep breath. Air. It tastes like cookies baked over a campfire, out in nature. Did he make it to the beach?
Everything is dark. Maybe he lost his eyes in the fire. He doesn’t think he can feel—wait. He does have eyes. He can feel them moving, but his eyelids are glued shut. The flames must have melted them together.
He needs to see. He’s not afraid, but he needs to see where he is. It smells good. It smells safe. He wants to see.
With a movement that should be effortless but feels like it takes all his remaining strength, he manages to break the seam where his eyelids have melted together.
Light. Blinding, agonising light, and he squeezes his eyes shut again after barely a second. His head pounds painfully, and he moans.
“Felix?”
Yes. That’s right. That’s his name.
“Felix, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can understand me.”
A whiff of sage, and then a hand slips into his own, warm and dry. It takes Felix another minute to figure out how his fingers work, but then he manages a twitch against the sage-person’s hand.
“Good job, Felix. Sung, dim the lights.”
A click. “Seungminnie, is he—”
“Let me work for a second, yeah? Don’t crowd him.” A hand squeezes Felix’s own. “Can you do it again, Felix? Squeeze my fingers?”
Felix tries again. This time, the movement is a little easier, even though his fingers ache.
“Great. You’re doing a fantastic job. Do you think you can open your eyes for me?”
“Hurds.” His voice is raspy, and his tongue feels thick and clumsy.
“Not anymore, honey. The lights are off. Can you try for me?”
It had hurt before, a lot, and Felix doesn’t think he can take the pain a second time. But he trusts this voice, trusts this scent, and so he peels his eyes open again.
The voice was right. It doesn’t hurt this time.
Everything is blurry though, and he can’t make anything out.
“Try blinking a few times.”
Felix does. The blurriness slowly makes way for some undefined shapes.
“Good job. I’m holding both of your hands, can you feel that? I want you to squeeze your other hand.”
Felix complies with the order, and then the next, and the next. The requests are easy, and they help to pull him further onto shore. It no longer feels like he’s floating in the water so much.
There’s a paleness above him that slowly transforms into a face, looking earnest and kindly into his own. His eyes focus on it, and the face smiles. “Hey there, Felix. Welcome back.”
Notes:
I got a request to write a bonus scene of the pack's pov of Felix being in this much pain during his drop, which you can find here.
Chapter 6
Summary:
Felix wakes up.
Chapter Text
There’s the quiet sound of buttons clacking as Felix blinks his eyes open. He stares blankly at the ceiling for a minute, trying to gather his bearings. This is the second time he’s woken up to this ceiling, he knows. He doesn’t remember much from the first time aside from a face hovering over him and… a beach? Maybe he hadn’t been awake after all.
He feels much more lucid this time, his mind clear even if his head throbs painfully.
He doesn’t know where he is. It should worry him, but everything about the room feels safe. It smells safe, he realises. He’s surrounded by scents that are comforting, familiar.
He breathes in slowly, trying to get a better sense of what’s around him. There’s a smoky scent to his right, and cinnamon to his left. Not just scents—bodies. He’s sandwiched in between two people who smell incredibly familiar.
There’s a flash of memory—people laughing in a coffeeshop, easy smiles and teasing banter.
He blinks again. Changbin. Jisung.
There’s no doubt in his mind. He knows it’s them. But… how? Why are they here? Why is he here?
The sound of clicking buttons intensifies, followed by a quiet curse.
“Hyunjinnie knock you off the rainbow bridge again?” a voice chuckles to his right. Changbin.
“Shut up. He’s cheating.”
“As much as you like to think so, using banana peels is not actually cheating.”
“It is when he knows I’m bad at dodging,” the person to his left whines. Jisung.
There’s another chuckle, and an arm wraps a little tighter around Felix’s waist. Tingles dance across his skin. He’s being held. Is he still dreaming? His mind feels clear, but he must be.
He closes his eyes again. It feels so good, and he’s weak. He leans into it, ignoring the ache in his bones and letting himself roll closer into Changbin’s chest. If this is a dream, he’ll make the most of it before he wakes up.
Dream Changbin doesn’t push him away, instead rubbing his cheek gently against Felix’s hair. The smoky campfire smell intensifies, and Felix sighs in contentment.
Across the room, there’s a groan and a quiet thud. Felix hadn’t even noticed the sound of a keyboard clacking until it stopped. “Do you think I could convince them to let me redo this quiz?” This voice is familiar too.
“I don’t know, Innie, you’re the lawyer,” Changbin replies, his chest rumbling against Felix’s back. “Make your case.”
Innie. Jeongin. Suddenly, as if his brain zeroes in on it, all he can smell is the scent of vanilla in the room, and he yearns for it.
“I’d say you stand a good chance,” Jisung comments over the sound of the gaming console in his hands. “After all, you’re still recovering from a Stage 4 drop.”
Felix’s eyes flash open. Jeongin had dropped? Panic crashes into him so hard that he nearly chokes. He struggles against the arm on his chest, ignoring his screaming muscles and trying to sit up.
“Felix? Hey, hey, calm down, it’s alright—”
Immediately, Jisung throws the console aside and his hands run over Felix’s arms in alarm. “What is it? Muscle spasm again?”
“I don’t know, he’s—watch out, the tubes—”
Felix grunts. He needs to get to Jeongin. Even if this is a dream, he needs to help him, he was supposed to keep Jeongin from dropping, he remembers that— “Lemme go!”
His voice is raspy and his mouth is so dry the words emerge in a half cough, but he gets them out. His throat hurts and there is something in it, it’s uncomfortable, but that’s not his priority right now.
“Let me go!” he repeats, and the arms around him drop away immediately.
Felix shoots up into a sitting position, eyes flying wildly around the room in search of Jeongin. The omega is sitting at a desk, but is already halfway out of his seat, concerned eyes focused on Felix.
That’s the moment Felix’s body catches up with him, and he moans as a wave of agony crashes over him. He wants to collapse back onto the bed, but he can’t—he has to—
“Jeongin,” he gasps.
The omega races towards him, practically diving onto the bed. “I’m here. I’m here. Felix, you’re alright. Be careful—”
But Felix doesn’t care if he is alright. It’s Jeongin who matters, Jeongin who— “Drop… You dropped?” He clutches Jeongin’s arms, although he doesn’t know if he’s offering comfort or just trying to keep himself from falling backwards. “Jeongin—”
“What? I didn’t… oh. Oh, Felix, no…” A cloud of gentle, reassuring, healthy vanilla blooms around him, and Felix’s head spins.
“I’m alright,” Jeongin continues. “I didn’t drop. I’m fine, I promise. Jisung was joking. I didn’t drop.”
There’s a gasp and a muffled curse from behind him, and the scent of cinnamon intensifies as Jisung sits up as well.
“Promise?” Felix asks, eyes still boring into Jeongin, almost begging. The omega doesn’t smell like drop. He smells fine, he smells healthy. He looks healthy too. A little tired maybe, but not sick.
“I promise,” Jeongin says, stroking a thumb across Felix’s cheek. “Can I… Will you lay back down with me? You’re shaking, Lixie.”
The nickname takes him by surprise, and he doesn’t resist as Jeongin pulls him back to the bed. Nobody has called him that in years. Jisung shuffles to the side so that Jeongin can take his place, and then Felix is once again tucked between two bodies.
He’s confused. This no longer feels like a dream, but he doesn’t understand what’s happening.
“Where am I?” he says, figuring that’s a good place to start.
“You’re in our home,” Jeongin says, hand still resting on his cheek. “Felix, you… I didn’t drop, but you did. You dropped, and it was bad.”
He hears the words, but it takes a while for them to register. They don’t feel real. He doesn’t… he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t know how he got here, he doesn’t know what happened. His breath quickens and his chest constricts. Why can’t he remember?
“Felix?”
His head is spinning, and suddenly, he can’t breathe.
“Get Seungmin,” someone orders. “Lix-ah?” It’s Changbin, at his back again. A hand presses him closer against the beta’s chest. “Can you feel me breathing? You’re okay. Breathe with me, alright?”
“Can’t,” he wheezes, and a hand slips into his own, squeezing lightly.
“You can. Follow my lead, okay? Take a breath in.”
Felix squeezes his eyes shut and tries to follow Changbin’s voice as best he can. Despite his panic, despite his confusion, the room still smells safe, and every time he sucks in a breath, he gets another whiff of calming pheromones. It helps.
Slowly, the tightness around his lungs eases up, and he can breathe more freely. He shudders, and a hand traces gentle circles across his chest.
“Hello, Felix,” a new voice says. “I hear you’re having a bit of a rough morning.”
Felix opens his eyes, but the scent of sage tells him who’s speaking even before his eyes land on Seungmin. The beta is still wet from a shower, clothes clinging to his skin and a towel slung around his neck to catch the water that’s dripping from his hair.
“If you’re feeling disoriented, that’s normal,” Seungmin continues, not breaking eye contact. “If you can’t remember what happened, that’s normal too. It’ll probably come back as your mind readjusts, but there’s no need to worry if some things stay fuzzy. There’s an IV in your arm and a feeding tube that goes through your nose, and you’ve got a catheter. They might feel a little uncomfortable, but they won’t hurt you. You’re safe, and you’re recovering well.”
The words are calm, simple facts delivered in a neutral tone of voice. Slowly, Felix relaxes back against Changbin’s chest.
Seungmin pauses, still watching him but seemingly giving Felix time to process.
“Why… why am I here?”
“You called us when you dropped,” Seungmin replies. “You called Jeongin, technically. He, Jisung and Changbin-hyung came to pick you up when they realised what was happening.”
Jisung clears his throat, and Felix looks at him. “We would have taken you to a clinic, but you said no hospitals. Sorry for just… bringing you here without asking.”
Right. That was right. That was why he hadn’t gone before. There’s another flash of memory, his head throbs, and then suddenly he remembers the desperation. The knowledge that he was going to die, and still, underneath that, the persistent, all-consuming feeling of not here, not safe that hadn’t left him until… until they had come for him.
“You… you were talking to me,” he mumbles, trying to piece things together. “On the phone?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was a dream.”
“You were already pretty out of it,” Changbin says. “I’m sorry I kicked down your door.”
Felix squeaks. “You kicked down my door?”
“Hyung!” Jisung smacks Changbin on the arm. “Stop upsetting him!”
“Sorry! Sorry! I did not kick down your door?” Jeongin groans, and Changbin amends, “Fine. I may have kicked down your door. But in my defence, it was a very shitty door.”
Felix can’t help it. He giggles. It’s the shock, and the confusion, and more than a tinge of hysteria at everything that’s happening. But suddenly, the idea of Changbin being offended by his very shitty door is the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and he giggles so hard he shakes with it.
Someone else joins in, and within seconds everyone’s laughing and smiling around him.
Felix doesn’t realise he’s crying until a blurry Jeongin wipes his tears away. “It’s okay. Let it out. We’ve got you.”
Apparently, that’s all it takes. Felix breaks down into deep, gut-wrenching sobs that feel like they’re going to tear him apart. But he’s still being held, and the arms around him don’t let him crumble. Instead, they tighten, and Felix clutches onto them desperately, shaking so hard he can hear his teeth chatter. Someone is keening painfully.
It takes him a long minute to realise it’s him, and then another long few minutes to wrestle back control over his voice enough to stop.
All throughout, there are people holding him, touching him, and it feels so good that he cries harder. He’s surrounded by scents, and gentle shushing sounds, and nearby someone starts humming, low and soothing.
He doesn’t know how long he cries before his sobs turn into sniffles and his tears stop flowing. He’s exhausted, and everything hurts. If he thought his muscles hurt before, it’s nothing compared to the way they ache now. He releases a shuddering breath, and realises his nose is tucked into someone’s neck. He breathes in, melting into a pool of vanilla.
“There you go. Take what you need, Lixie,” someone murmurs, and Felix feels himself slip back into comforting darkness.
***
The next time he wakes up, he’s cuddled up against Jeongin. His head is lying on the omega’s chest, and he hears the quiet sound of pages turning. It smells like Jisung is curled up against Jeongin’s other side, but he doesn’t turn his head to check. His breathing sounds deep enough that the alpha must be asleep. There’s whispers from across the room, and he opens his eyes to see Changbin sitting at the desk, phone against his ear.
In the nest, Seungmin is sitting cross-legged at his feet, a book turned open in his lap.
The nest.
He realises for the first time that that’s what this is. Someone has built a nest on the bed, using countless pillows and blankets to make it sturdy and able to withstand the tossing and turning of five people. There are… a lot of pillows, in varying colours and sizes, and the nest feels… cosy. Comforting. The way a nest is supposed to be.
Gently, he lets his fingers drift across the sheets, rubbing the soft fabric of a fleece blanket between his fingertips. It soothes some deep part of him that hasn’t felt at ease in a very long time.
He should feel more panicked that he is here. Rationally, he knows there was a reason he kept them at a distance. But the room smells like them, the nest smells like them, he smells like them, and it’s like their scents have seeped so deeply into his marrow that every inch of him feels safe. He can’t quite muster up his previous wariness.
“How long was I out?” he rasps.
Seungmin looks up, tucking a bookmark in between the pages before closing his book. “Hello. Only a few hours this time.”
Felix takes a deep breath. “And… and how long since…?”
“It’s been two weeks.”
He gawks. “Two weeks?”
Seungmin shuffles forward a little, resting his hand on Felix’s ankle. “Felix, you went through a Stage 6 omega drop. I’m not exaggerating when I say you nearly died. Frankly, it’s a miracle you’re back with us this fast. I’ve seen this take a month before.”
It’s been two weeks. They’ve been taking care of him for two weeks. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “You’ve… You’ve not been missing work or anything, right?”
Jeongin sounds confused when he speaks. “Felix, we’ve been right here.”
“Yes, but… but not all the time, right?” Right? Oh god, please don’t let them have been stuck with him all this time.
“Of course we have,” Jeongin replies.
Before Felix can panic, Seungmin tightens his grip on his ankle. “Breathe.”
Felix automatically sucks in a breath.
“The four of us have been here with you, in this room, for the past two weeks. No one else has entered, and none of us have left.” The beta regards him seriously, squeezing his ankle as a reminder to keep breathing. “This is standard protocol for omega drops—no scents present except for the ones the omega’s body has accepted. Your body accepted all four of our scents. I had hoped it would, after the way you responded to us at the mall, but we still got very lucky. Adding any other scent would have been a risk that I wasn’t willing to take in your condition.”
Felix stares at the beta, horrified. None of them have left? “But… your pack?”
Seungmin shrugs. “They’ve been around. Just not in this room.”
“So… You’ve been separated from your pack for two weeks?” That’s long enough that they must be feeling side effects by now, and it is all because of him. Worse, the missing members are all alphas, and they must be so angry. “You… You shouldn’t have done that, you need to go back to them—”
“We didn’t mind,” Seungmin continues, interrupting his panicked spiral. “None of us minded. We told you before that we’d guide you through a drop. We meant it then, and we mean it now.”
Felix’s head is still spinning, and he looks from Seungmin to Jeongin, noticing that Jisung has woken up and is sitting up, watching him. Changbin has ended his phone call and is slowly settling on the foot of the bed, smiling at him. They all seem calm. They’re nodding in agreement with Seungmin’s words, as if it’s not a problem at all that they’ve shut out their three other alphas for two weeks.
But it is. He knows it is. Surely when they get out of here there will be punishment, and he feels icy fear drip down his spine and lock itself around it like a vice. He’s terrified of what the alphas will do. To him, but also to them. Somehow, the idea of the four people around him being hurt because of him is much, much worse.
They must smell the sour note of fear that billows around him like a cloud, because Jisung is on his other side in a flash.
“Felix. Lixie, you’re okay. You’re safe.” Jisung worms his way under the tubes sticking out of Felix’s body in a practised movement and settles to his left, pushing a steady cloud of reassuring cinnamon in his direction. And despite himself, Felix leans in and buries his nose in Jisung’s neck for comfort. He exhales shakily, and Jisung pats his hair as he trembles.
He should protest. He should push Jisung away, and leave before anything else can happen. But he feels dead tired again, his bones like lead, and Jisung is warm and he smells safe. Still, Felix feels guilty. Guilty for leaning in, guilty for being here, guilty for endangering them.
But Changbin says, “We’re glad you’re here. We’re glad you called us.”
“I don’t even remember doing it,” he mumbles, exhaustion dragging his eyelids shut. “Calling you, I mean.”
Jeongin, plastered to his other side, pulls back a little. “I’m… We’re really sorry. If this isn’t what you wanted.”
“No, it is.” The words are out before he knows it, and he shouldn’t have said them, but he’s too tired to lie. Despite his shame, and fear, and guilt… he’s glad it was them. Whatever the alphas are going to do to them all later, these people feel safe. His next words are no louder than a whisper when he confesses it out loud. “’M glad it was you.” He just wishes they wouldn’t have to pay for it.
And with that, he ignores the swirling guilt in his stomach and allows the darkness to pull him back into oblivion.
***
“—Hyunjin-hyung will like this one?”
“Didn’t we give him a coat last year? I just feel like we can do better, Innie.”
“Oh. Yeah, you’re right.” A sigh. “Why is this so hard. I just want to get him something that will cheer him up. He’s been so down.”
By now, Felix’s head has cleared enough to recognise Seungmin’s voice when he speaks. “I know. But Changbin-hyung said he had some ideas, we’ll ask him later, okay?”
It’s still an effort to blink his eyes open, but it feels slightly easier than last time. The room is bright with morning sunlight, and Felix takes a moment to let his eyes adjust. For the first time, he’s not being touched. Seungmin and Jeongin are sitting side by side on the opposite side of the nest, a tablet in their laps. They haven’t noticed yet that he’s awake.
Felix looks around the room. Changbin and Jisung sitting at the desk in front of a laptop, sharing earbuds and pointing at something on the screen as they converse quietly. He takes in the space they’re in for the first time. The bedroom is large. Larger than his entire studio apartment, without question. The bed he’s on is huge, taking up nearly half the space, and then there’s the desk and a closet against the wall. There’s a door standing ajar that leads to a bathroom, and another door on the other side of the room that must lead out into the house.
With a quiet grunt, he wrestles himself up on his elbows, not wanting to lie down anymore.
Seungmin and Jeongin look up. “Oh, hey, you’re awake!” the omega smiles.
“Is it…” He coughs, trying to clear his dry throat. “Is it morning again?”
“Yes. Your body needed the rest.” Seungmin studies him. “How are you feeling?”
Felix blinks at him. “Um.”
“Without our touch, I mean.” The beta opens a notebook. “I’m trying to determine where your body is at in terms of pheromone regulation. It’s been about fifteen minutes since Innie and I pulled back. It’s probably what woke you up.”
Felix takes stock of himself. He’s sore all over, just like yesterday. He feels a little shaky, and a little dizzy, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. “I’m fine.”
Seungmin narrows his eyes. “Yeah, I’m going to need a real answer. I need you to tell me if something feels off, and I mean anything. You feel a twitch in your toe, I need to know about it.”
Felix stares at him, and Jeongin lets out a burst of laughter. “Damn, Seungmin. Let him live.”
“That’s the goal,” Seungmin deadpans, and raises an eyebrow. “Felix?”
“Oh. Um. I’m… a bit dizzy, I guess?”
Seungmin immediately starts scribbling. “Any nausea? Headache?”
Felix answers his questions as best he can. It isn’t until his hand spasms that Seungmin says, “Alright, get back over there, Innie. That’s enough distance for today.”
Jeongin is at his side in a flash, enveloping Felix in a cloud of vanilla before he has the time to say anything. Instantly, his muscles relax, and oh. He hadn’t realised what a difference this would make. Seungmin registers his sigh of relief and shakes his head, amusement quirking his lips. “I’ll take that to mean everything was just a little bit worse than what you just told me.” His words are dry, but his tone sounds fond, and he starts amending his notes.
Jeongin helps Felix sit up against a stack of pillows and then tugs his head onto his shoulder. He takes one of Felix’s hands and plays with his fingers, relaxing Felix further every time their wrists rub together.
“Alright,” Seungmin says when he finishes. He checks something on his phone and then steps out of the nest. “I’m going to wash my hands and then we can take out your NG tube and IV.” He looks around. “We’ll also need some… Hm. Innie, can you call Channie-hyung? Put him on speaker.”
He disappears into the bathroom as Jeongin takes out his phone.
“I.N-ah!” a tinny voice says through the speakers a moment later. The voice sounds warm, but Felix freezes. This must be Bang Chan. This is their pack alpha.
“Hey, hyung. You’re home, right?”
“I’m in the studio. I’m working on a track with Changbin and Jisung, but you probably know that. Are you alright? How’s Felix?”
Felix jumps at the mention of his name.
“He woke up again.” Jeongin smiles at the screen, then at Felix. His phone is angled in a way that the camera catches only Jeongin, but Felix can still see his screen. It shows the black-haired alpha from the mall. He’s sitting at a desk in front of a wall covered in art and posters.
“Really?” The man’s smile broadens. “That’s fantastic. How’s he feeling?”
Jeongin looks to his side. “How’re you feeling?”
Felix’s panic spikes. The pack alpha doesn’t sound angry, but he has to be. Felix has been asleep in his house and hogging over half his pack members for two entire weeks. There’s no way he isn’t angry.
“Felix?” Jeongin repeats, placing a concerned hand on his arm.
“I’m fine,” he manages. His throat feels tight.
There’s a gasp across the line. “Oh! I heard that. Felix? It’s so good to hear your voice. We’ve been really worried.”
Oh god. He’s been addressed directly. He doesn’t want to talk to the alpha, but he’s in his house and the man spoke to him directly. He can’t just ignore him, he has to say something, but his throat is closing and he can’t—
“Lixie, are you okay?”
“Jeongin? What’s going on?” There’s an edge to the alpha’s voice now that Felix can’t read over the phone, and he flinches.
Jeongin ends the call without another word and tosses the phone to the side, shifting onto his knees to face Felix. He takes one of Felix’s hands and presses it against his own chest. “Lixie. Breathe with me, okay? You’re alright.”
Jeongin hung up on his pack alpha. Oh god, he just hung up—Felix can feel himself spiralling. Jeongin presses harder down on his hand, and he can feel the omega’s heartbeat under his palm. His harrowed mind zeroes in on it, desperate for something to grip onto.
“What happened?” Seungmin’s voice.
“I don’t know. I was talking to hyung and he asked how Felix was doing—”
Seungmin curses. “Shit, that’s on me. I didn’t think—damn it.” He kneels down next to Jeongin and gently tips Felix’s chin up with his hand. “Look at me, Felix? Good job. You’re safe. Whatever you’re afraid of, it’s not going to happen. Channie-hyung is not going to come in here, and you don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry,” Felix gasps.
A thumb strokes his chin. “What are you sorry for, hm?”
“He’s angry,” Felix manages through panicked gasps. “I… You’re all… I got you in trouble…and Jeongin hung up…” The thought of what the alpha might do to the boy is enough to make his stomach roll. He knows how creative alphas can be. Kwang-ho had taken pride in his ability to keep Felix guessing. He would have… He would have…
The grip on his chin tightens gently as Seungmin frowns. “Felix,” he says slowly. “Channie-hyung is not angry with you. He’s not angry with Jeongin, either. Or any of us.”
Felix’s eyes shoot up to meet the beta’s, searching for the lie. The concealed fear.
He doesn’t find it.
“He’s not angry that you’re here. In fact, I’ve been reliably informed that Changbin-hyung had to fight him for the car keys because he was so worried about you that he was ready to pick you up himself. He’s glad that you called us, just like we are.”
Jeongin squeezes his hands, equally unafraid. “Yes. Didn’t you hear how happy he was just now?”
He had. Bang Chan had sounded cheerful. But Kwang-ho had been good at sounding cheerful too, when he wanted to, and Felix can’t trust it. “You won’t… you won’t be punished?”
Jeongin looks heartbroken, and Seungmin says, “No. Hyung would never. He’s not that kind of alpha.”
Felix feels dizzy. Seungmin taps his chest, and he remembers to suck in a breath. It’s a little easier than it was before. Not much, but a little.
“He’s been taking care of us from the outside,” Changbin pipes up. Felix flicks his eyes over to find that he and Jisung have removed their earbuds and are watching the scene in the nest with concern. “He and Hyunjin have been bringing us food, and anything else we might need. They’re not angry at all.” His words are slow, calming, and Felix feels some of the tension subside.
“Can we call him back?” Seungmin asks, sharp eyes scanning Felix’s face. “We don’t have to put him on speaker, but we could. You don’t have to say anything, but you could listen. See that we’re all fine and nobody is angry.”
Felix’s hands are shaking. He still doesn’t believe that Bang Chan is not angry. He doesn’t want to hear it when the alpha snaps. But the others are looking at him so hopefully that after a minute, he relents with a tight nod.
“Great. Innie, call him back?”
Felix tenses. The alpha can’t use his Voice over the phone, but he could if he came in, and Felix’s heart pounds as Jeongin dials. He braces himself for what will follow. Explosive fury, or an ice-cold hiss that promises pain.
“Hey,” Bang Chan greets, voice barely audible. “Is everything okay? Was it… was it me? Did I do something?”
Felix blinks.
The man sounds… he sounds timid. Felix risks a glance at the screen—again angled in a way that allows him to watch, but doesn’t capture him on screen—and sees the alpha still seated at the desk, one hand fidgeting with his sleeve in a way that seems almost nervous.
Felix doesn’t know what he expects the others to say, but it certainly isn’t for Changbin to call out, “Hyung. Reassure the kid that you’re not angry with us, will you?”
Bang Chan drops his phone with a clatter. Felix flinches and looks away, but Jisung and Jeongin laugh. “Sorry,” he says as he appears on screen again. “I—what? Why would I be angry?” He sounds so genuinely baffled that Felix’s wariness drops just enough for him to watch the screen again.
“I hung up on you,” Jeongin says, the laugh still audible in his voice.
“Yeah? Sure. Because something was happening, right?”
“Yeah, it was important.” Jeongin’s face sobers a little, but his words remain so light and flippant that Felix stiffens. “But I hung up on you without permission, you know. You being pack alpha and all. We’re wondering if you will punish me for it.”
“What?”
“You know, because I’m a lowly omega, and I disrespected my superior. We need to know if you’re angry and if you’re planning to smack me around for it.”
“Jesus, Innie,” Jisung mutters from across the room, but Seungmin nods approvingly.
Bang Chan is silent for so long Felix would have thought the call dropped if he couldn’t still see him on screen, staring into the camera with a look of frozen bewilderment. “Jeongin, what…?”
“Answer the question, hyung,” Changbin calls out.
“Wh- no. No, of course I don’t plan to—god, what…” He pauses and takes a breath to collect himself. “Innie. I love you. I would never hurt you. You know that. You do know that, right?”
Jeongin smiles. “I know, hyung. I love you too. We just needed to hear it.”
“And you didn’t even do anything. You hung up the phone. Why would that make me angry?”
“If you were angry with him, what would you do?” Changbin breaks in. “If he really pissed you off. Like, spat in your face and cussed you out.”
“Wow, thanks,” Jeongin mutters, but Felix’s eyes are on the screen. He can’t move.
“But he didn’t—”
“If he did,” Changbin presses. “If you were really fucking angry with him. What would you do?”
Bang Chan throws up his hands. “I don’t know, walk away? I’d need some time to cool off, and so would he. And then we could talk it out.”
“And if it was me or the others you were angry with?”
“You know that wouldn’t matter. The same goes for you.”
“Even though you’re pack alpha? You wouldn’t show us who’s boss? Hit us, kick us, withhold food, use your Voice?”
Bang Chan actually looks horrified, like every word Changbin is throwing at him is a physical slap in his face, and Felix watches as if in a daze. The questions have so obviously been throwing the alpha for a loop that he can’t possibly be acting. His bewildered hurt is genuine. It can’t be anything else.
“Guys. I have never raised a hand to you in the past, and that won’t ever change. You know that. I may be pack alpha but that doesn’t mean I’m somehow above you. We’re equals. The only reason our bond is this strong is because we all trust each other. The trust you place in me is an honour, and I would never break it. I love you.” There are tears in his eyes by the time he finishes.
Seungmin nods. “Ah, there’s the sap we all know.”
“Love you too, hyung!” Jisung calls out, happy and smiling.
“One more, hyung,” Changbin says, unrelenting. “Are you angry that we took Felix in and have been locking you out for the past two weeks? Angry with us, or with him?”
Felix tenses up again.
“Of course not. I’m glad he’s here. Well—not that he’s sick, that’s not… the circumstances could have been better. But...” Bang Chan takes a breath and looks straight in the camera. “Felix? If you’re listening… I’m glad it was us you called. I’m not upset with you, or with any of my packmates. You have done nothing wrong. I’m really sorry you had to go through all this, because it’s our fault to begin with. But we want you here, okay? You’re welcome in our home.”
And Felix believes him.
There’s no lie, no hidden threat. Somehow, this pack alpha is like Jisung, like Aera. Like his dad. A good person. Around him, the others are smiling, and Jeongin gives his hand a squeeze as he feels Felix relax against him.
“Great. Now that we’ve established that,” Seungmin says, stepping out of the nest again, “Can you bring us some things?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“A few of those immunonutrition shakes Yunho-hyung gave you, and we could use some more bottles of water.”
“I’m on it. Should I still leave them at the door, or…?”
“Yeah, don’t come in yet. Adding new scents would shock his system right now, that’s not a good idea.” Seungmin disappears back into the bathroom.
“Got it.” The feed turns shaky as Bang Chan stands and starts moving through the house.
Jisung perks up. “Oh, can you add some cookies?”
“Channie is our best delivery boy,” Changbin tells Felix with a grin, completely uncaring about the lack of honorifics. He immediately follows it up with a whiny, “Chan-aaaah!” that’s so loud that Bang Chan might actually hear it from where he is without the aid of the phone. “I want sushi tonight. Can you order us sushi?”
Bang Chan sends such a long-suffering look into the camera that Felix almost laughs, surprising himself. “Just fix the timing of the bridge adlib, you brat. I’ve marked where it’s wrong.” A pause, and then, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Changbin grins, turning back to the computer with a mock salute that Bang Chan can’t see. “Yessir.”
Felix is distracted when Seungmin comes back and starts removing the IV and NG tubes. It’s uncomfortable, but he’s quick, and it’s only a few minutes before the tubes are gone and he has a nice little bandage on his hand.
There’s a muffled knock on the door. The door is pretty well sound-proofed, but over the phone, Bang Chan deadpans, “Delivery, since apparently that’s all I’m good for these days. I’ve added snacks for all of you except Changbin.”
“Yah!” Changbin turns to throw an eraser at the door, and it bounces back to hit him in the face. “Fuck.”
This time, Felix does laugh. So do Jeongin and Jisung, and the mood lightens considerably as Seungmin goes to the door to pick up the tray.
Over the next few hours, Felix enjoys the first “meal” he’s had in two weeks in the form of a special nutrition shake, and lets himself be dragged into light, teasing conversation. When his eyes start drooping again, Jisung joins him and Jeongin in the nest, and Felix closes his eyes amidst the scent of cinnamon rolls.
And it’s only when he slips over the edge into sleep that he realises that throughout their entire conversation, nobody had made any mention of Minho.
***
“Hey, we brought your phone when we picked you up,” Jisung tells him the next morning over breakfast. Well—they’re having breakfast. Felix has been handed another immunonutrition shake, which is supposedly banana-flavoured but really just tastes chemical and a bit chalky. But his body kept the previous one down without protest, so he can’t complain.
Felix stares at the phone Jisung is holding out to him across the desk-turned-table. He’s actually out of bed. Well, he’s still sitting in Seungmin’s lap, but it feels good to be up for a bit. “Oh, thanks.” He hadn’t even thought about his phone.
“We’ve kept it charged, but we didn’t know if there was anyone we needed to contact. If there’s anyone you want to call, we can give you some privacy.”
He shakes his head. “There’s no one.” That sounds a little more pathetic than he intended, and he quickly buries his face in his phone so he doesn’t have to see the looks the others will be exchanging. There’s Aera, of course, but he doesn’t have her number. He checks his notifications. He has two voicemails and a text message, all from Gwan Man-sik at the restaurant. He ignores the voicemails and opens the text.
Gwan Man-sik: You’re fired. Don’t bother coming back.
Simple. To the point. He sighs, but he’s not surprised. Man-sik had hired him because he was cheap and easy to exploit, but he’d told Felix more than once that the moment he got in the way of his business, Felix was out.
He’d expected this after what happened. He remembers it now, his memory much clearer today than it was yesterday.
“Anything important?” Jisung asks hesitantly.
Felix shrugs. “I got fired.” It doesn’t bother him as much as he always thought it would. After what happened, he doesn’t particularly feel like going back there himself.
Jeongin drops the bowl he’s holding, spilling rice all over the table. He’s chastised by Changbin, who stands to sort the mess. Jeongin doesn’t seem to notice, concerned eyes focused on Felix. “Because you didn’t show up for work? Shit, Felix, I’m sorry.”
Felix snorts. “I think it’s more because I dropped to my knees and tried to submit in the middle of the kitchen before the head chef kicked me hard enough that I snapped out of it.” He grimaces. “I ran off after that. Knocked some things over. I imagine they weren’t too happy with me.”
Changbin, in the middle of scooping up the rice, promptly tips the bowl over again. “He kicked you?”
“I’m actually kind of glad he did. It woke me up. I don’t like what could have happened if he hadn’t.” He remembers the leering face of Won-jae, and shivers. No, he really doesn’t want to know what would have happened if he’d dropped fully right then and there.
“But you were dropping. They can’t fire you over that, that’s illegal.”
Felix looks at Jeongin, contemplating. He could keep it vague. Could talk around it, could pretend everything is fine. But they’ve already seen the way he lives. They know he refused to go to a hospital even when he was on the verge of death. They must already suspect a lot, and Felix… Felix finds he doesn’t want to lie to them.
You cannot spend the rest of your life on your own, Yongbok-ah. At some point, you will have to let someone in.
So he tells the truth. “Yeah, I wasn’t exactly a legal employee. No paperwork. No rights.” His mouth twists into a humourless smile. “They didn’t even know my real name.”
Jeongin gapes at him. “Felix isn’t your real name?”
“No, it is.” Felix huffs. “You were the first person to call me by my real name in years. I didn’t mean to say it that night, it just slipped out. It scared me afterwards, that you all knew. But I can’t deny that it was… nice, to hear it again.”
Jeongin’s hand finds his, and Felix curls his fingers around it.
“What do other people know you as?” Jisung asks, sounding curious.
“Yongbok. But to be honest, I don’t know a lot of people.”
“So you’ve been living off the grid?” Seungmin tilts his head. “That’s why you didn’t visit a clinic.”
Insightful. Felix nods. “Yeah. I couldn’t… I can’t go back into the system. I can’t.” He looks around at all of them, fear spiking despite his decision to trust them. “I… Please don’t tell anyone, please don’t make me—”
“Hey. Felix.” Changbin’s hand settles on his shoulder, pressing down enough that Felix can focus on the steadying grip instead of his racing heart. “Look at me? We’re not sending you anywhere you don’t want to go. You’re safe with us, alright? I promise.” He looks at Seungmin, and laughs. “Hell, I think Seungminnie and Channie-hyung have committed at least five crimes since we took you in. At this point, we’re just as shady as you are.”
Jeongin and Jisung laugh, and Felix stares back at Seungmin with his mouth open. “You—what?”
The beta briefly removes his arm from around Felix’s waist to wave dismissively. “He’s exaggerating. I only bent a few rules.”
“Minnie, you set up a drug deal in a corner of an abandoned parking lot.”
“What?”
Jeongin, Jisung, and Changbin laugh harder, and the tension breaks. Despite his confusion, Felix feels himself relax. Changbin had smelled earnest when he said they wouldn’t turn him in, and the rest of them look just as determined. He lets his eyes trail over them, not quite certain what he’s feeling.
“Hey,” Jisung says, when they’ve all calmed down and resumed eating. “I have a question.”
“Yeah?”
“Does that kitchen fiasco have anything to do with the mysterious cranberry sauce? Because we’ve been trying to figure that out for days, and we have theories. There’s a betting pool.”
Felix blinks. “Cranberry sauce?”
Changbin leans forward. “Lix-ah, you were covered in it when we found you. Now, Jisung’s bet is that you’re secretly a vigilante who fought a giant cranberry monster, and—”
“Yah! That was a joke, that’s not my real bet!”
“—of course I said it was because you’re secretly a five-star chef who had a run-in with your four-star chef rival, and Seungminnie said—”
“Leave me out of this.”
“—alright, Innie said you’d probably just spilled something but that is boring so Hannie and I ignored that when we made our spreadsheet. Anyway, the suspense is killing us. Please tell us what really happened.”
And Felix laughs. He laughs and laughs, feeling lighter than he has in weeks.
Chapter Text
Felix rests. He sleeps more than he’s slept in ages, and definitely more than he wants. But as hard as he tries to stay awake, his body just drifts off, whether he likes it or not.
“You’ll be low on energy for a good long while yet,” Seungmin says. “Let it happen. Your body knows what to do.”
And so Felix sleeps, and naps, and rests some more. When he’s awake, there are nutrition shakes, and his catheter is taken out as Seungmin deems him well enough for trips to the bathroom. He still feels like he’s been hit by a truck. His head aches and unfortunately, the muscle spasms are still a frequent occurrence. But he’s keeping his food down, and his mind feels more stable than it has in weeks.
It’s a little scary, leaning on other people like this. But they genuinely don’t seem to mind that he’s here, and well, with how miserable he still feels it’s not like he’s longing to go back to his apartment. If he even still has it. He’s been trying not to think about it too hard, but if he’s been here for two weeks, he’s missed a rent payment. Between that and Changbin kicking down his door… yeah. He knows there’s no way Seojun would just welcome him back after this.
His head still hurts too much to think about it for long though, and he’s decided that it’s a problem for later Felix. There is nothing he can do about it right now anyway. It’s already happened. He’ll figure it out once they kick him back out. For now, they seem determined to take care of him until he’s better, and as wary as he still feels about their other packmates, he can’t bring himself to say no. His body still feels so weak, and they smell so good. So safe. And he’s already here. For now, he might as well take what they’re offering.
*
“Can I please, please wash my hair?” Felix begs Seungmin. He feels gross, and his hair feels more like a giant greasy chunk than the separate strands they’re supposed to be.
Next to him, Jisung lights up and the air spikes with cinnamon. “Bath time!”
Jeongin perks up from where he’s bent over a textbook. “I want to help!”
“I thought you had a quiz you needed to study for,” Changbin says from the other side of the desk, peering over his laptop screen. There’s a pair of round wire-rim spectacles perched on his nose that he pushes back up absently.
Jeongin waves a hand. “I’ll study later. One more mention of res judicata and I’m going to claw my eyes out.”
“What are you studying?” Felix asks. He knows the omega is a student at SNU, but he realises he never asked what his major is.
“Law. I’m in my fourth year. And I like it, and it’s definitely what I want to do, but right now I need a break.”
“It’s cool,” Felix muses. “That your alphas let you study.”
Jeongin bristles. “They don’t let me do anything,” he snaps. “I’m my own person. I can decide for myself what I want to do with my life.”
Felix stares at him, startled. “Sorry.”
Jeongin’s anger deflates as soon as it had come. “No. No, I’m sorry. It’s…” He huffs. “It’s a bit of a sore spot. I get it so often from asshole alphas at school that I just reacted. It wasn’t you.”
Felix doesn’t say anything else, a little unsure how to respond.
“It’s just… not how this pack works, you know? I could never be with people who think they can control me just because I’m an omega. That I need guidance or some shit. If any of my pack members ever tried that with me, I’d make sure they regretted it.”
“Oh, we know.” Jisung shivers dramatically, breaking the tension. “You really don’t want to get on Innie’s bad side. The last time he was mad at Hyunjin, he convinced him the den bathroom was haunted. Wrote messages on the mirror and everything. Jinnie didn’t set foot inside for a month.”
The others laugh, and Felix can’t hold back his own smile, even though he feels confused. There it is again, the notion that in this pack, everyone is equal. That there is no hierarchy, and that nobody controls each other. And he’s glad for them, if it’s true, but if it is, then why had Minho…
“Innie is sly, and super smart,” Jisung continues. “He’s going to be a great lawyer, one of those people everyone will be in awe of. Did you know he practised cases with you while you were out? He’d pretend you were his client, or the judge, or the opposing counsel.”
Felix looks up, pushing his thoughts aside for another time. “Really?”
Jeongin flushes, but doesn’t deny it.
“Of course it’s very impressive, winning your cases when your opponent is unconscious,” Seungmin says dryly, not looking up from the pheromone analyser he just jabbed at Felix’s neck. “A real victory.”
Changbin and Jisung laugh, and Jeongin grumbles. Felix lets his lips curve into a true smile. “Give me a script next time, and I will play a more active role.”
Jeongin brightens and sends him a grateful look.
The analyser beeps and Seungmin hums. “You’re doing well. Even with the small breaks in us touching you, your pheromone levels have remained steady.”
“Well, it’s not like I’ve gone more than two metres away from you.”
But Seungmin’s face remains pleased. “No, I’m serious. This is great, Felix. Maybe it’s because our scents all match so well, but you’re recovering faster than I expected. Faster than the omegas at the clinic did during my internship.”
“They really do, don’t they?” Jisung says. “Our scents matching I mean. Felix smells great.”
Felix blushes.
“You do!” Jisung insists. “I couldn’t smell you that day we met up in the mall, but you have a nice scent, especially now you’re awake. I love citrus.”
“I was wearing scent blockers that day,” Felix mutters, trying to get his heated cheeks to cool down. “My scent was still sour from the first drop. I didn’t want you to notice.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and then Jeongin says, “Oh, Lixie.”
He sounds sad, and that is not what Felix wanted. Quickly, he turns to Seungmin. “So does that mean I can have that bath now?”
Seungmin’s sharp eyes look right through him, but he lets it go. “Yup. As long as Jisung and Innie come with you to make sure you don’t drown, you’re all clear.”
Felix would be offended at the assumption that he might drown in a bathtub, but yesterday a muscle spasm had struck him on his way back from the toilet and only Changbin’s quick reflexes had saved him from cracking his skull open on the edge of the desk. He nods.
Jisung jumps out of the nest and holds his hand out for Felix. “Come on! I’ll run you the best bath you’ve ever had.” Felix lets himself be pulled up and over to the bathroom as Jisung chatters excitedly about bubbles and bath bombs.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s stretched out in the white bathtub, marvelling at how large it is. The entire bathroom is big, shiny and spacious. Between that and the bedroom it makes him wonder what the rest of the house looks like.
Jisung is kneeling behind him, massaging shampoo into his hair, and Felix lets his head drop back against the towel that’s folded over the edge of the tub. He felt a little awkward at first, hadn’t expected the alpha to want to be involved past running the bath for him, but Jisung had assured him Felix couldn’t make him happier than letting him wash his hair.
Jeongin had snorted. “If you’re comfortable with it, please let him, I beg you. He’s been talking about it ever since he picked the first cranberry out of your hair.”
Felix had flushed, but hesitantly agreed when he saw Jisung’s hopeful expression. He’d been a little shy undressing, too, but they’d both turned around to give him privacy. It’s silly, because he’s sure they’ve all seen him naked while he was out and they were taking care of him, but it’s different now that he’s awake. At least the bath is filled with so many bubbles that even he can’t see his body.
“This tub is so big,” Felix comments, stretching his hand out to trail along the side of it.
Jeongin is perched on the edge of the tub, which has a ledge that’s wide enough for him to lean comfortably against the wall. He smiles at Felix. “You should see the upstairs bathroom. Not the den one, I mean the larger bathroom down the hall. The tub there is so big it can fit all seven of us. We’ll show you, once Seungmin lets us out.”
Felix takes a breath. “I’m sorry. For keeping you cooped up here. You must be going crazy by now.”
Jisung pokes his arm with a soapy finger. “Stop apologising for that. We all wanted to help you.”
“But it’s been more than two weeks. Don’t you miss your packmates?”
Jeongin sighs. “Of course we do. But you were more important.” When Felix starts to protest, he says, “Lixie, you were… you don’t know what you looked like when we brought you here. Seungmin said that if we’d been half an hour later, you could have died. We were so relieved when you started getting better. We miss the others, but we all made the decision to stay, and none of us regret it.”
Felix stares at the water, not knowing what to say to that. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again eventually.
“Yah,” Jisung mutters, with another poke. “What did I just tell you?”
“Sorry.” This one is on purpose, and Felix smiles as Jisung lets out a dramatic sigh.
“It really was good to have people on the outside, though,” Jeongin continues, lightly trailing his fingers through the water. “Channie-hyung and Hyunjin-hyung brought us everything we needed, and we facetimed a lot.”
Again, there’s no mention of Minho. Felix doesn’t know if they’re omitting the alpha from their stories for his sake, or if there’s another reason. Suddenly, he needs to know. Nerves shoot through him as he readies himself and he knows the others can smell the spike of anxiety in his scent. He takes a breath. “Where’s Minho-ssi?”
Both Jisung and Jeongin freeze. It lasts no more than a millisecond before they purposely let their bodies relax again, but Felix has learnt to become very good at picking up small signals like that. They’re both tense.
“He’s out,” Jeongin says. “You don’t have to worry.”
“Is he… angry?” Felix guesses. “That I’m here?”
“No,” Jisung shakes his head. “He’s just… working.”
Felix frowns. He can tell it’s a lie. Bang Chan might not be angry, but Minho clearly is. Still, he doesn’t press any further. They clearly don’t want to talk about it, and well. He doesn’t particularly want to hear about the alpha’s anger either.
***
Felix wakes from a nap to nails scratching across his scalp and quiet voices talking on either side of him.
“…correct tense. Pamela [blank] diving for seashells ever since she moved to the coast.”
“I don’t know. Was?” Changbin sounds distracted.
Jeongin hums. “I think it’s has been.”
“Yah, what are you even asking me for then? It’s your homework. Do it yourself.”
Felix keeps his eyes closed, content to listen to them bicker.
“Because I hate that I let Channie-hyung talk me into this stupid English course. It’s a dumb language.”
“A useful one, though,” Seungmin pipes up from across the room. He must be seated at the desk.
“Look at this sentence. I don’t even know how to pronounce half of these words.” A shuffle as, presumably, Jeongin shows Changbin his book.
“…Jesus.”
“Try it,” Seungmin presses, voice already laced with amusement. “I want to hear.”
“The sea any-anymoan has veenomoos tentaycles that can be retrac-retracted inside the body cave-cayvity.”
Felix can’t help it. He laughs and speaks up, his voice rough and low from sleep. “The sea anemone has venomous tentacles that can be retracted inside the body cavity.” He opens his eyes to grin up at Jeongin, switching back to Korean. “You’re right though. It’s a nightmare language.”
The omega gapes at him. “Are you native?”
The bed shifts as Jisung jumps into the nest. “You sound like Channie-hyung!”
“I do?”
“Yeah. But he’s from Australia.”
Felix blinks. “Me too.”
“Really?”
Well, he’s told them more incriminating personal details before. This is nothing in comparison. He shrugs. “Yeah. Sydney.” He grins at Jeongin again. “Lots of sea anemones.”
Jeongin grumbles at his book. “That doesn’t even look like the same word.”
“Hyung is from Sydney too!” Jisung is practically bouncing with excitement, and Changbin complains as his pen rolls off the little pillow table he has in his lap.
“We figured you weren’t born in Korea,” Seungmin comments thoughtfully. “Given your name. But that’s quite the coincidence.”
Bang Chan is from Sydney? Since the phone call, Felix has tried not to think about the pack alpha too much. But somehow, knowing they’re from the same city… it’s almost like it creates a link between them in his head, one Felix doesn’t quite know what to do with. During that call, the alpha had proven to be very different than Felix expected. He still isn’t entirely sure how to feel about the man, but the idea of meeting him no longer fills him with dread.
He lets the idea go for now, distracted as Jeongin begs him to please help him with his homework. The next sentence involves sea “cuckumbers” and he lets the grin spread further as he starts taking the omega through the questions.
***
That night, Felix can’t sleep. There’s a blanket sticking out from the side of the nest. He has been staring at it for the past ten minutes, growing increasingly restless. His fingers itch to straighten it, to fix his nest, but—
It isn’t his nest. It’s Jeongin’s, and he can’t just touch another omega’s nest, even if he’s been allowed into it. So he clasps his hands tightly together and tucks them between his knees so they won’t reach out and touch.
He can’t look away though, the blanket a niggling frustration in the back of his mind.
At least nobody has noticed his unease. It’s still relatively early and the others have yet to go to bed. Changbin and Jisung are still working, facetiming Chan about something that involves a lot of producer terms that go right over Felix’s head. Jeongin is in the bathroom and Seungmin is sitting next to Felix in the nest, a book open in his lap.
Felix’s head is right next to his thigh, and he can smell his subtle sage scent. Even that, however, isn’t enough to distract him from the blanket. It’s really just a corner of it that isn’t properly folded around the pillow below it. It must have gotten untucked as someone climbed out of the nest.
You’re being stupid, he tells himself. He literally spent years sleeping in something that could barely be called a nest, lacking the materials to give it proper sides or height or structure. He’d long since gotten used to the feeling of wrongness every time he went to sleep. But he’s been here in this nest for weeks, and clearly his body has become spoiled. It has grown accustomed to how safe this nest is, how large and beautiful and perfect. Enough so that he’d noticed the moment something shifted out of place, and it’s ridiculous, he will just ignore it like he used to and stop fixating on something that doesn’t even—
“What’s wrong?”
Felix jumps. Seungmin has lowered his book and is gazing down at him, a small frown between his brows.
“Nothing.”
“You’re tense. Are you in pain? Do you need us closer?” Seungmin is waving a hand at Jisung before Felix has a chance to protest. “Sungie, can you come here?”
“No,” Felix says, “I’m fine—”
But Jisung is already there, taking Felix’s hands to rub his wrists over his neck, flooding his system with sweet, heavy cinnamon. It trickles through his veins like syrup, and he feels his body relax involuntarily, limbs growing heavy as he’s soothed into that soft space right on the edge of sleep.
But… the blanket. He can’t sleep yet, he needs… he needs to…
He whines pitifully, blinking his eyes open to fight the pull of sleep.
“Let go,” Jeongin says suddenly from behind Jisung, pulling him away from Felix. Felix hadn’t even noticed he’d come back into the room. “He needs something else. What is it, Lixie?”
The trickle of cinnamon stops as Jisung reins in his pheromones, and Felix’s mind clears a little. With that, the blanket comes back into sharp focus, and he actually growls at it.
If he had the energy, he’d probably be embarrassed by the primitive reaction, but as it is he can only glare balefully at the fabric.
“Oh,” Jeongin says, following his gaze. “Yeah, ew, that’s not right at all. Of course that’s bothering you.”
“What?” Jisung asks. “What are you talking about?”
Beside him, Seungmin looks just as puzzled. As an alpha and a beta, they can’t see what’s instantly obvious to Jeongin. They lack the nesting instincts omegas have, and to them the bed probably doesn’t look any different.
Jeongin ignores them, still frowning at Felix. “Why didn’t you fix it?”
“Yours,” Felix mutters, still a hint of whiny frustration to his voice. “Can’t touch.”
Jeongin kneels beside him on the bed, smelling so confused that Felix actually manages to tear his eyes away from the blanket.
“Felix,” Jeongin says slowly. “This is your nest. I built it for you.”
Felix blinks at him. When it becomes clear that Jeongin is waiting for a reply, he croaks, “What?”
“It’s your nest, not mine. If you want to change something, you don’t have to ask.”
Felix feels a little dizzy, and this time it has nothing to do with Jisung’s scent. His nest? Even just thinking it feels surreal.
“I built it the way I would want it to feel, if I were in your shoes, but I didn’t know what you like. It might feel completely wrong to you. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned it sooner. You can change things. Hell, you can rebuild it from scratch if you want.”
“No,” Felix protests, the thought of dismantling the beautiful nest enough to cause a physical ache. “No. It’s perfect. Just the…” His eyes dart back to the offending blanket, and Jeongin’s face screws up in agreement.
He doesn’t reach out though. “Fix it,” is all he says.
Felix shoots one more glance at him to check if he’s sure, and when Jeongin simply tilts his chin to the blanket again, he stops hesitating. He gives in to the urge in the back of his head and sits up in a mess of sheets, scrambling towards the corner of the nest. With frantic hands, he tucks the blanket back in, folding it properly around its pillow and then leaning in to rub his jaw against it for good measure. The scent of citrus drifts around that corner of the nest, and oh, that’s better. The nest had already smelled like all of them—the blankets and pillows had clearly been scented by all of them, and he’s spent enough time in the nest for his own scent to suffuse the centre of it. But creating a blend of their scents along the edges like this… It’s good, it’s perfect.
He moves to the right, continuing the process, lost in the need to complete something he hadn’t even realised was missing. Seungmin and Jisung step out of the nest to let him do his thing. Jeongin stays kneeling in the middle, but doesn’t interrupt. When Felix is done, he sits back, more satisfied than he’s felt in a long time.
“You sure you don’t want to change anything else?” Jeongin checks. “There are more materials in the closet, Hyunjin-hyung bought like, so many.”
Felix just makes a pleased sound in the back of his throat, and Jeongin laughs. “Okay. Alright.” He hooks his head over Felix’s shoulder and Felix leans into him. “Our nesting styles match then. That’s nice.”
Felix is still looking at the nest. His nest. His first nest in years, and his best nest in, well, ever. He certainly hadn’t had anything like this at Kwang-ho’s or at his uncle’s place, and he hadn’t needed to properly nest yet when he still lived with his family in Australia. He hadn’t expected how good it would feel.
It’s enough to make him emotional. His scent must change into a confusing mix of happy and sad, but Jeongin seems to understand. He simply wraps his arms around Felix’s waist and holds him closer. “It’s okay,” he murmurs into Felix’s ear. “This is all yours. You deserve it.”
***
“One more rep… Good. You can relax.”
Felix flops back onto the yoga mat, legs trembling. He huffs out a breath, both in exhaustion and frustration. He’s used to working fourteen-hour shifts—doing a few glute bridges should not be this hard.
Changbin has been guiding him through a light workout routine. Seungmin is the doctor, but once he decided it was time for Felix to build up his strength again after two weeks of bedrest, he’d gladly deferred to Changbin. The other beta is apparently well-versed in all kinds of exercise and his face had lit up when Seungmin asked him to help out.
“Time to stretch. Give me your leg, I’ll help.” Changbin takes Felix’s right leg and raises it until he can feel the stretch in his hamstrings. Felix groans. It hurts, but in a good way.
Behind them, Jeongin and Jisung are working on something on Jisung’s laptop. Seungmin is studying, dutifully taking notes on a chapter of one of his textbooks.
“You’re flexible,” Changbin notes, patting Felix’s calf as he presses his leg towards him. “Do you play any sports?”
Felix laughs. “Not in years. I did taekwondo as a kid though.”
“Really? That’s cool! Were you any good?”
“Good enough, I guess. It was fun.” It really had been. He’d always enjoyed how strong it made him feel.
“Why’d you quit?”
Felix falls silent. Something must show in his expression, because Changbin immediately backs off. “Nope, don’t answer that, forget I asked. Give me your other leg?”
Felix accepts the out, grateful for the beta’s easy-going nature. “You know a lot about this stuff,” he says instead, making a vague gesture to indicate the routine they just did.
“I love working out. We have a home gym, actually. I’ll show you some day.”
“Don’t let him,” Jisung comments from the desk. “It’s a trap. He’ll smile at you and before you know it you’re two hours into a workout. It’s a torture room, is what it is.”
“Yah, brat! You were the one who decided they suddenly wanted to do pull-ups.”
“Yeah, one, for a bet. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known you’d start pushing dumbbells at me.”
“I knew,” Seungmin says, not looking up from his book. “That’s why I made the bet.”
Jisung tosses a pencil at him, which the beta dodges with a laugh. It flies over his head and hits Felix instead, and Jisung freezes. “Shit, Lix, are you okay?”
Felix snorts, plucking the pencil from where it landed on the sleeve of his hoodie, “No. You struck a mortal blow. I survived a two-week drop, but this pencil will be what kills me.” He tosses the pencil back, chuckling as Jisung fumbles in his attempt to catch it.
Changbin grins at him. “Black humour. I like it.” He lowers Felix’s other leg and taps his thigh. “Roll over onto your stomach, I want to massage your legs.”
Felix obeys, resting his head on his forearms and relaxing under Changbin’s warm touch. He hasn’t been touched this much in years, and he still can’t help but melt into it every time one of them does it. Which, considering they don’t let him go for more than thirty minutes at a time, is often. It’s a luxury that he treasures and dreads in equal measure, knowing that it will come to an end when he’s better.
“Guys, how many layers should we get?” Jeongin asks, clicking at something on the screen.
“You’re ordering the strawberry one, right?” Changbin asks.
“Yeah. It usually has three layers, but Sungie and I were thinking of asking for five?”
“The more the better,” Seungmin says. “What message are you putting on top?”
“Right now we just have ‘Happy Birthday’. He’s been so sad that I feel like we should add ‘Sorry’ or something, but I don’t want to make it depressing.”
Everybody is quiet for a minute, the scents in the room changing ever so slightly to something more dejected. Eventually, Changbin speaks up.
“Add, ‘We love you’ instead,” he suggests. “Have them cut some strawberries into hearts, the way we did for Valentine’s.”
“Oh.” Jisung smiles. “That’s a good idea.”
Felix frowns. “What are you talking about? Whose birthday is it?”
“Hyunjin’s, in two days. We’re trying to get him as many gifts as we can, since we can’t be there.”
Felix’s head snaps up. “What? Why not? Of course you need to be there.”
Changbin’s hands pause. “Lix-ah…”
“I can stay here. You can switch or something, if I can’t be alone. But it’s his birthday. You need to go.”
Seungmin looks up. “Felix, you only woke up four days ago. If we left, even in pairs, we’d carry the others’ scents when we returned. Even with scent neutraliser… it would be a risk. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“But—”
“No.” Seungmin closes his book. “Your recovery already doesn’t follow the trajectory I’m used to, and I don’t know if that means you’ll relapse. We’re not risking it.”
“We’ve discussed this with Jinnie,” Changbin adds, rubbing Felix’s calf soothingly. “He understands, and he agrees that this takes priority right now. We’ll celebrate his birthday properly when you’re feeling better.”
Felix is silent for a while, and then gives a reluctant nod. He knows a lost battle when he sees one.
But as the day moves on, he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s not right. He hasn’t met Hyunjin, doesn’t even know what he looks like, but he knows that every time the alpha delivers breakfast, he adds a flower to everyone’s plate. There’s a vase on the nightstand with a bouquet that changes daily as they add new flowers and remove the ones that have wilted.
Felix knows that Hyunjin is an alpha, and he feels wary of him, but… they said he was sad. Not angry, but sad. And they tried to hide it, but the others had been sad too, that morning. They’ve been stuck here with him for weeks. They deserve to celebrate their alpha’s birthday.
And so, that afternoon, when he’s sitting at the table nursing another immunonutrition shake—supposedly raspberry this time, but truly an insult to nature—he asks Jeongin if he can play a game on his phone. His own phone is old and no longer supports a lot of games, and the omega has let him play a fun little platform game before.
Jeongin simply unlocks the screen and hands it over, still focused on the essay he’s working on.
Felix thanks him, but instead of opening the game, he goes to Jeongin’s messages. His heart is pounding as he hovers over the chat called, “Jinnie-hyung”. Is he really going to do this?
His eyes flick to the nightstand, to the purple crocuses that had been on the tray this morning. Then to the nest, to all the pillows and blankets that Hyunjin was supposedly responsible for buying. He breathes out and opens the chat.
[4:36 pm] Jeongin: hey hyung are you home? can you come to the bathroom window?
He tried to match Jeongin’s texting style, having scrolled up a little to check. Hyunjin must already be on his phone, because the read receipt appears immediately. Felix has just enough time to put the phone on silent before the reply comes in.
[4:36 pm] Jinnie-hyung: ????
[4:37 pm] Jeongin: felix will be in the bedroom and seungminnie said it was ok as long as i lock the door and de-scent after
[4:37 pm] Jinnie-hyung: !!!!
[4:37 pm] Jinnie-hyung: really?????[4:38 pm] Jeongin: yeah! i really wanna see you
[4:38 pm] Jinnie-hyung: ohmygod ive missed u so much!!! im on my way!!!
Well. That had been a lot easier than Felix expected. Now he feels a little guilty for lying. He hopes the alpha won’t be too mad when he realises it’s him and not Jeongin. But it’s for a good cause, he reminds himself. He can bear the anger. If this works, they will all get to see each other on his birthday.
He exits out of the chat and puts Jeongin’s phone down. He stands up. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he says when Changbin looks up from his own laptop questioningly.
The beta nods. “Are your legs okay? Do you need help getting there?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine.” He does feel a bit shaky, but for once it’s nothing to do with his muscles. He makes his way over to the bathroom and locks the door behind him, stepping into the tub to take a closer look at the tiny window. It’s narrow, but it can be opened a crack to let the humidity out. He does this now, ignoring his trembling fingers, and waits.
He doesn’t have to wait long. It’s only a minute before he hears rushing footsteps outside, and then a breathless voice asks, “Innie? Shit, I should have brought a step stool.”
Neither he nor Hyunjin quite reach the level of the window, and he can’t see the alpha. That’s okay. That’s good, actually. Felix doesn’t think he could do this if he had to look him in the eye. He buries his nose in his hoodie and takes a deep breath, inhaling as much of Jisung’s lingering scent as he can. Then he looks up, and clears his throat. “Um. It’s not Innie. I’m sorry.”
It’s quiet for a moment. Then, a very confused, “Felix?”
“Yeah. I texted you from Jeongin’s phone. Sorry.”
“But… why? I thought you were… I thought you couldn’t—”
Felix takes another breath through his hoodie. “I’m not supposed to. I think Seungmin would murder me if he knew.”
“Fuck,” Hyunjin says. “Why… why? Why would you—”
“I want to smell you,” Felix says, and cringes. “Your scent, I mean. I think it… I think it would be good. To try.”
“But Seungmin thinks it’s a bad idea.” Hyunjin sounds sceptical.
“He also said I’m recovering way quicker than he expected. And I… it’s your birthday, in two days. I want you to be able to see your pack, and I think this is how I can prove to them that it’ll be fine.”
It’s silent again.
“Please. I can do it.”
There’s a quiet groan. “I really shouldn’t even be considering this. I… Felix, you’re only just getting better.”
“I can do it,” he repeats. “I want you to have a proper birthday. I want them to be able to see you again.” When Hyunjin still doesn’t respond, he adds, “They miss you. They were sad.”
“Oh, that’s just mean,” Hyunjin whines, before letting out a laugh. “You’re really something. Alright. Fine. I’ll give you my cardigan. Which I’ll take off, here, outside in the middle of March, because I’m self-sacrificing and generous.” There’s the sound of a zipper and then the rustle of clothes. “It’s good to meet you, by the way. You’ve certainly turned our lives upside down.”
Felix winces. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry. We like a bit of a stir. Except for the you almost dying bit, we all probably could have done without that. Thank you for saving Innie.”
“Oh.” That feels like so long ago now. “It’s nothing.”
Hyunjin snorts. “It nearly killed you, Felix. I’d say it’s something.” A pause. “Alright. I’ll give you this, on one condition.”
“What?”
“Unlock the bathroom door. If this goes wrong, they’re going to have my head if they can’t get to you.” A huff. “They’re going to have my head regardless, but this might raise my chances of survival.”
It’s not an unfair request. As long as he turns the lock quietly, they shouldn’t really notice. Everyone was busy with work or studies, and they all seemed pretty distracted when he left. He’s glad the rooms and doors are so well sound- and scent-proofed in grand houses like this, or he would already have been found out.
“Fine.” He walks to the door, unlocks it as slowly and carefully as he can, and waits for any reaction. Nothing. He steps back into the tub. “Done.”
“Okay,” Hyunjin says, sounding like he’s having to talk himself into it. “Okay. Here we go. God, don’t die, please.”
Despite his own nerves, Felix feels his mouth quirk up. “I’ll do my best.”
Fabric appears through the crack, and Felix sucks in a final deep breath of cinnamon before reaching up with a trembling hand. The cardigan is a creamy white, and feels soft against his fingers. It’s still warm from Hyunjin’s skin. He just holds it for a moment, both the cardigan and his breath.
“Hey, Felix?”
He hums.
“Sit down, too, will you? If you fall down and break your neck, I won’t live to see the sun set, let alone my birthday this Sunday.”
Felix laughs, and with that he’s exhaled all of the air he had in his lungs. He sits down in the tub and slowly brings the fabric to his nose.
He breathes in.
Chocolate.
No. Not quite chocolate. It’s the scent of cocoa beans, deep and earthy and fruity with just the barest hint of sweetness. It smells like the really dark, expensive kind of chocolate, the kind that sends dozens of recipes flashing through his mind. It’s rich, and decadent, and ridiculously good.
He inhales again, letting out a pleased hum.
“Felix? Are you still there?”
“Hmm,” he says, nose still buried in the fabric.
“How are you feeling?”
Oh, right. That’s what he was supposed to be checking. He feels good, though. Better than good. His hands are no longer trembling, and every part of him feels relaxed, the same way he feels when he smells the others.
“So good,” he sighs, taking another whiff of the cardigan. “You smell so nice.”
Hyunjin lets out a laugh, a little manic with relief. “Oh, thank god. Are you in any pain? You’re not dropping again, right?”
He shakes his head, then remembers that Hyunjin can’t see it. “No. I feel good, Hyunjin-ssi.”
“Let’s talk casually, Felixie. We’re from the same year and well, I think we’re there.”
“Will you scent me too?” Felix is feeling a little floaty, and suddenly he can’t think of anything better than adding Hyunjin’s scent to the ones that already surround him and his nest. “Please?”
Hyunjin is silent for a bit. “I… wow.” If he wasn’t already convinced that Felix isn’t about to drop, this should do the trick. An omega asking someone to scent them implies trust on a primal level. “Well,” he says eventually, a grin in his voice. “That should be interesting. I guess there’s no reason for me to stay away anymore, hm?”
“You’ll come?” Felix checks.
“I’ll come.” Hyunjin laughs. “You might have to save me when they try to kill me for walking through the door, though. Can you stand?”
“Mm,” Felix hums, blinking slowly. “Maybe?”
“That’s okay, baby. I mean—” He coughs. “Sorry. Habit. That’s fine, Felix. Stay there, alright? I’ll come for you.”
“Alright.” He buries his nose a little further into the cardigan and breathes.
A few minutes later, there’s shouting from the room behind him, and he drops the cardigan as he startles from his daze. His mind clears a little. Oh, shit.
“—think you’re doing?” Seungmin yells. Even the soundproofing isn’t enough to keep this kind of noise out. “Get out.”
“I’m—ow. Fuck, ow—stop that. Shit, I knew I should have called first.”
“Hyunjin, do you want to kill him? Get out!” Changbin actually sounds angry, and Felix winces.
Yeah, this is his fault. His head is still a little fuzzy, but he knows what he’s doing again. On shaky legs, he clambers out of the tub and stumbles through the door.
“Don’t—” several voices shout at once, whipping around to face him.
Jeongin and Jisung are in front of him, blocking the entrance to the bathroom. As soon as they spot him, they start pushing pheromones in his direction, so heavily that Felix blinks at the onslaught. Seungmin and Changbin are on the other side of the room, wrestling with a flailing dark-haired man that must be…
“Hyunjin,” Felix calls.
Everyone freezes.
“Hiya, Felix.” Hyunjin sounds unfazed, raising his head from where he’s slung over Changbin’s shoulder. “Still doing okay?”
He says it so casually that Felix’s mouth quirks up. He left the cardigan in the bathtub, and the haze is gone now. “You didn’t even call them to explain?”
“Yes, I see now that I may have made a slight error in judgement.” Hyunjin sighs dramatically. “Oh well. I’m here now. Hyung, can you put me down? As you can tell, there’s nothing to worry about. Felixie and I go way back.”
Felix can’t help but laugh. He knows that he should feel bad about scaring the others this badly, but there’s something about Hyunjin that makes it really easy to fall into familiar banter. It’s a little like when he met Jisung, and he’s no longer wary of the alpha. “I met your hand, ten minutes ago.”
“Way, way back.” Hyunjin flaps a dismissive hand, and then smacks Changbin on the shoulder. “Yah. Put me down, you great lump. I have an omega to scent.”
“What the fuck,” Jisung says, clearly echoing the thoughts of everyone else in the room.
“Hyunjin, if you think I’m going to let your scent anywhere near him—” Seungmin hisses, and Felix clears his throat.
“It might, um. Be a little too late for that.”
Seungmin swivels towards him, turning his glare on Felix. “Explain.”
“I passed him my cardigan through the bathroom window,” Hyunjin says breezily.
“You what?”
“In my defence,” Hyunjin wheezes as Changbin tightens his grip, “I thought I was meeting Innie.”
Jeongin holds his hands up as Seungmin’s furious gaze lands on him. “I didn’t do anything!”
“It was me,” Felix says. “I texted Hyunjin from Jeongin’s phone. I pretended I was him.”
“Did a good job of it, too,” Hyunjin muses. “He told me Minnie had given him the okay. And what was it you said, I really wanna see you? That’s almost kinky, Felix.”
Felix flushes. “That’s not what I…” He buries his face in his hands. “I was just trying to not make you suspicious.”
“That is a text I could have sent,” Jeongin agrees.
“Exactly!” Hyunjin cries. “So nobody can blame me for going, alright?”
“That does not explain,” Seungmin steps up to poke him hard in the neck with every word, “Why your airheaded brain thought it would be a good idea to fucking hand him your scent? Without supervision? Without me even knowing?”
“Ow, ow!” Hyunjin tries to dodge the attacks. “Why are your fingers so bony, what the fuck—fine! Fine. You’re right. That’s my bad, and I shouldn’t have done it.”
“I asked for it,” Felix says, torn between nervous laughter and guilt over causing such a stir.
“No,” Hyunjin says before anyone else can, “I still should have known better. This is on me.”
“Right,” Seungmin says. “So why the fuck did you?”
Hyunjin slumps over Changbin’s shoulder, head drooping. “Because I’m an idiot. And I miss you.”
“That is not a valid reason. This could have—do you even know what you—he could have—” Seungmin rakes a hand through his hair and turns back to Felix, suddenly frenzied. “You tried his scent? How are you feeling? Shit, fuck, sit down.” He marches over to Felix and drags him to the edge of the bed, shoving him into the nest. He kneels down. “Are you dizzy? Are you nauseous? Someone get me the fucking—” He stops abruptly, sucking in a sharp breath, and Jisung’s hand settles on his shoulder.
“It’s alright, Minnie. He’s okay.”
Seungmin’s face scrunches up as he struggles to hold back tears.
The beta has been so steady, so in control all this time that the shift takes Felix completely by surprise. Guilt fills him as Seungmin swipes a furious hand across his eyes. He leans forward, putting a hesitant hand on the beta’s other shoulder. “I’m sorry. Seungmin, I’m sorry. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to scare you, I just…”
“What?” the beta snaps, tears still falling. “What were you trying to do?”
Felix shrinks. “I wanted you all to celebrate Hyunjin’s birthday. All of you seemed so down about it. And I… I thought that if I could prove that I was fine with Hyunjin’s scent, then you could all see him again.”
“Jesus, Felix.” Changbin still hasn’t put Hyunjin down, but his eyes are fixed on Felix and Seungmin. “That was an incredibly dangerous thing to do.”
“Do you think I said no because I wanted to?” Seungmin says, voice trembling. “Don’t you think I’ve been missing them more than anything?”
Felix feels his own eyes well up, flooded with guilt.
“I said no because adding new scents too soon after a drop as severe as yours could throw you right back into one. You already dropped a second time after your first drop, and it was worse, wasn’t it? Like I told you it would be?” Felix only nods, shame swirling dizzyingly in his stomach. “Dropping a third time this soon after—that would be it. It would be worse even still, and there would be nothing we could do to bring you back from it. You would die.” Seungmin’s hands tighten around Felix’s arms. “This could have killed you, Felix.”
Felix’s throat feels tight. “I didn’t know,” he whispers. “I didn’t know it would be that bad. I’m sorry.”
Seungmin’s face scrunches up again for one long, tense second, and then he breaks. He slumps forward over the edge of the nest, shoulders shaking as he cries.
Jisung sinks down next to him and tugs his head onto his shoulder. “Oh, Minnie. It’s alright. It’s okay. He’s fine, see?” He makes gentle shushing noises as Seungmin falls into him.
Felix feels terrible. This is not what he wanted. This is not what he intended to do at all. He wanted to make them happy, not cause them further distress.
“Put me down, please, hyung.” Hyunjin’s voice has gone quiet, all traces of amusement gone. This time, Changbin slides him down without protest, and Hyunjin makes his way over to the bed. He kneels down on Seungmin’s other side and strokes his hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m really, really sorry. You’ve been taking such good care of him. You know best, and I should never have undermined that. I messed up, and I’m really sorry.” He presses a kiss to Seungmin’s temple. “It’s been hard, huh? These weeks must have been so scary. We’re all so proud of what you’ve been doing. Dragging Felixie back up, getting him all better again? You’ve been so strong. The best doctor.”
Seungmin slumps over to Hyunjin’s side and buries his face in his neck. “I’m not,” he cries. “I’m just a student and I’ve only done one internship and I keep messing up.”
“You haven’t,” Hyunjin insists quietly. “You haven’t messed up at all. He’s awake, and he’s getting better, and it’s all because of you.”
“I’ve been reviewing all my notes,” Seungmin mumbles thickly, breaths hitching. “So many times. And all my textbooks. And I asked Seonghwa-hyung, and still—”
The bed dips as Jeongin climbs in from the other side, shuffling up behind Felix. They’re all crying now. Felix thinks the pack would probably be weak to anyone’s tears, but watching Seungmin break down…
“He almost died because I waited too long with the IV,” Seungmin cries. “And then he had that really long seizure and I didn’t know what to do, and I was so scared—”
Changbin kneels down behind Hyunjin and tugs both of them back against his chest. “You have been incredible,” he mutters. “Seungmin, we handed you a terrible situation, and you have shifted heaven and earth to make sure he survived. You’ve done a fantastic job.” He presses a kiss into the beta’s hair. “I’m sorry you felt like you had to do it all on your own. We’re here, alright? Lean on us. Let go, Minnie.”
Seungmin lets out a quiet keen that breaks Felix’s heart and cries, letting his pack hold him.
*
When Seungmin shifts and straightens again, it can’t have been more than ten minutes, but it feels like a lifetime, and far, far too long. He sniffs, and Jisung hands him a tissue.
“Feeling better?” Hyunjin hums, not releasing the arm he’s slung around his waist.
Seungmin nods, cheeks flushed either from crying or embarrassment. Maybe both. He blows his nose, then takes a deep breath. “Thanks. I guess I needed that.”
“Our Seungminnie,” Changbin clucks. “Always carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Let us share some of the burden, yeah?”
Seungmin sniffs again, but this time his lips twitch. “Last time I asked Innie to use the analyser, he reset the whole thing.”
“Hey,” Jeongin says, but it comes out soft and smiling. “I got the data back.”
Seungmin looks up, eyes focusing on Felix for the first time. He clears his throat. “Okay. Time to play at being a doctor again, which apparently, I’ve not been failing at as much as I thought I had. Can someone get me the analyser, please? Someone who isn’t Jeongin?”
“Yah,” Jeongin says, but he looks relieved at the sight of the small smirk tugging at Seungmin’s lips.
Jisung gets up, and Felix tries to meet Seungmin’s eyes. He’s not really succeeding. Guilt has soured his scent and hangs around him like a shroud, and it’s only Jeongin’s hand on his shoulder that keeps him from scuttling backwards in shame. This is his fault. He did this.
“Felix?” Seungmin’s hand reaches out. “It’s alright. You didn’t know.”
“I should have listened,” he whispers.
“Yes. Will you, please, from now on?”
He nods, still not meeting the beta’s eyes. Seungmin taps him under the chin. “Hey. I forgive you. It’s okay.” He glances at Hyunjin, still plastered against his side. “I mean. You took a really fucking stupid risk, but apparently all the luck of the world is with you today. I’m going to check your pheromone levels, but if you haven’t collapsed by now, you’re probably in the clear.” Jisung hands him the familiar black device, and Felix bares his neck to allow Seungmin to press it against his scent gland.
He hums as it beeps and studies the readings. “Yeah, you might want to go buy a lottery ticket. Just a few spikes from the last few minutes, but that’s my fault. Your body accepted Hyunjin’s scent seamlessly.”
“Does that mean I can scent him?” Hyunjin asks. He looks at Felix. “If you still want to, that is.”
He does, but… Felix looks to Seungmin.
“I mean, the risk is gone. It’s a good idea, if you still want to,” Seungmin says. “It’ll give your body some extra security. In fact, I’ll check my notes, but I’m pretty sure this means we no longer have to be as careful as we have been about adding new scents. Not all at once, and under careful supervision. But apparently you’re stable enough that we can relax a little bit.”
Jeongin gasps. “Does that mean we can celebrate hyung’s birthday after all?”
Seungmin smiles, genuinely, for the first time since the whole mess started. “I think it does, yes.”
Jeongin and Jisung cheer, and Hyunjin lets out a happy laugh.
And then Changbin curses. “Fuck. That means I’ve only got a day and a half to find and fill two hundred balloons.”
Notes:
A little excerpt from my notes for this chapter:
1) Felix, sounding spacy and subby and smol: will you scent me too? please?
Hyunjin: *short-circuiting* baby2) someone please give Seungmin a hug. please
Also, after this, Hyunjin scented Felix and he promptly fell asleep. SO, this chapter comes with a bonus scene of Hyunjin confessing his sins to Chan on the phone that night. For anyone interested, you can find it here.
Chapter Text
“I’m sorry,” Felix says the next morning as Seungmin is conducting his standard checkup. The beta looks up, blood pressure monitor in his hands. “For what I did yesterday, but also for… for the drop in general. For dumping all of this, me, in your lap. You shouldn’t have to do all this.”
Seungmin watches his face carefully, his own expression neutral. Looking at him now, it’s hard to imagine he broke down like that the day before, but the image is burned into Felix’s memory. He never wants to see it happen again.
“If you hadn’t called us,” Seungmin begins slowly. “What would you have done?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you dropped. If you hadn’t decided to call us. Would you have dialled 119? Would you have gone to a hospital?”
Felix thinks back to that day. Thinks back to that moment, shivering and desperate in his sheets, when he’d known with absolute certainty that he was going to die. Even then, calling an ambulance hadn’t occurred to him. Being registered in hospital records, being sent back to Kwang-ho, was so firmly established as Not An Option in his brain that even in his final moments the idea hadn’t come up.
“No,” he says finally. His voice is quiet, but he knows what he just admitted.
Seungmin nods as if he expected that. “You would have died. If you hadn’t called us, if you hadn’t ‘dumped this in my lap’, you would have died.” He meets Felix’s eyes, intent and serious. “So how could I ever regret this? You allowed us to save your life.” His mouth ticks up. “That’s actually pretty rare. I’m only on my second internship, but saving lives doesn’t really happen that often. There’s usually just a lot of running around, a lot of bodily fluids, and a lot of paperwork.”
Felix laughs, feeling a bit lighter. “I’m still grateful. And something tells me you still had to do plenty of running around with me over the past couple of weeks.”
Seungmin huffs out a laugh himself, leaning forward to wrap the band around his arm. “At least the room is small. Besides, I wasn’t completely on my own. I had some help from an omega clinic I just finished my internship at.”
Felix stiffens.
“They don’t know who you are,” Seungmin continues calmly, ever observant. He presses the button and the band around Felix’s arm starts to tighten. “And they won’t ask. You’re not the first omega they’ve helped under the radar. It was one of the clinics on the list I sent you. I didn’t know anonymity was a necessity for you, or I would have mentioned it and told you who you should have asked for once you got there.” He jots down the readings in his notebook.
Felix stares at him. A clinic that helps omegas under the radar?
“There are a few doctors there who decided that if they can’t change the system, they’ll work around it. I called them a lot to check if I was doing things right. They walked me through the IV and NG tube insertions, and the catheter. I know it seems like I know what I’m doing, but I couldn’t have done this without them. They won’t turn you in. I never gave them your name, anyway, so they couldn’t even if they wanted to.” Seungmin looks at him. “Which they don’t.”
Felix isn’t entirely convinced. It sounds too good to be true, and he knows doctors are obligated by law to contact omegas’ registered bondmates in any medical emergency. But even if he doesn’t trust the doctors Seungmin contacted, he trusts Seungmin, and he trusts that the beta wouldn’t share his name.
Seungmin is still watching him, but Felix is saved from having to reply when the door bursts open and Hyunjin flounces in, a large familiar tray in his hands. “Breakfast delivery!” he sings, bowing with a flourish and making the dishes rattle. “In person this time.” He sets the tray down on the desk in front of Changbin and Jisung, and then rubs his side. “Hyung, my ribs hurt. You squeezed me so hard I think I broke one.”
Changbin merely grins. “Well, I did say I’d hug you the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“I knew that was a threat,” Hyunjin mutters, but he still drapes himself over Changbin’s lap.
The alpha had slept in the nest with them that night, only leaving this morning to talk to Bang Chan in person and get their breakfast. He’s barely let go of any of his pack members since he got here. At least, as far as Felix can tell—the moment Hyunjin had scented him last night, he’d melted into his arms and passed out, the scent daze enough to drag him down into sleep after the emotional rollercoaster they’d had.
“How was Channie-hyung?” Jisung asks, stealing a piece of chicken out of one of the soup bowls. “Did he chew you out again?”
Hyunjin grimaces. “Oh yes. I thought he got through all his reprimands on the phone last night, but he must have spent the night coming up with a hundred more.”
Jeongin exits the bathroom in a cloud of steamy vanilla and laughs, still pulling on a shirt. He lets Hyunjin grab his wrist as he passes, and the alpha scents him again. “God, I’ve missed you all so much,” Hyunjin murmurs, eyes closing in bliss.
“It’s probably partly why Channie is so upset,” Changbin says. “He’s never gone this long without us.”
Felix finally wrestles his face through the hoodie he’s putting on—one of Jeongin’s—and looks over at Seungmin, who’s putting away his equipment. He debates for a moment, turning the idea over in his mind to see how it feels, but he doesn’t need long. He’s no longer afraid. “Do you think I could meet him too? Or would that be too much?”
Seungmin’s mouth twitches. “Look at you, all obedient.” Felix sticks his tongue out at him, and Seungmin laughs. He seems more relaxed today. Felix didn’t know him well enough to notice how tense the beta had been, but the difference is clear now. “Your pheromone readings are good,” he continues. “I don’t see why not.”
“Really?” Jisung has lit up. “We can see him today?”
Seungmin looks at Hyunjin. “Where is he now?”
“He was in the kitchen when I left.”
“He was alone?”
“I… yeah.” Hyunjin falters for a second. “Yeah, it’s just him.”
Seungmin hums, walking over and eyeing the breakfast tray Hyunjin has brought. “Felix, how would you feel about trying some real food today?”
Felix’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Yes. Not this though, we need something a little more bland.”
Felix doesn’t care. “I’ll eat anything if it means I don’t have to drink another one of those shakes.”
“Perfect. Let’s get you some toast.”
Jeongin has managed to disentangle himself from Hyunjin and looks up, a slow smile spreading across his face. “You want to surprise him?”
Seungmin’s eyes sparkle. “Don’t you?”
Changbin laughs loudly. “We need to make you cry more often. I’ve missed this side of you.”
Seungmin glares at him, but it’s a little ruined by the smile he can’t quite hide. “Let’s go.”
And so they all leave the room, taking the breakfast tray with them. The others are huddled around Felix, and Jisung’s fingers are intertwined with his own. The alpha is bouncing with excitement, and Felix doesn’t know how he was ever nervous about meeting him. Jisung might be the cuddliest, most cheerful person he’s ever met.
It’s the first time Felix is seeing anything other than the room they’ve stayed in for the past three weeks. He supposes they must have carried him in through this hallway, but he doesn’t remember any of that. Based on the size of the guestroom he’d expected the rest of the house to be big, but he’s still surprised by the sheer length of the hallway as they make their way to the kitchen. The house is gorgeous, all wooden floors and ceiling beams with sunlight falling in through large windows. It’s an old house and it could easily have been dark and stuffy, but it’s not. It’s bright, and it smells clean. He can pick up Hyunjin’s scent, but the scents of Jisung and the others have almost completely faded. He can understand why Hyunjin and Bang Chan would have been feeling off.
They pause in front of a white door, and Changbin puts his finger to his lips. “Wait,” he mouths, eyes shining with anticipation.
Then he swings the door open and steps in. The rest of them remain in the doorway and watch as the beta walks towards a large kitchen island, where Bang Chan is seated on a bar stool, frowning at something on his phone. There’s a half-eaten bowl of soup in front of him. The kitchen smells pleasant, like coffee.
“Morning, hyung,” Changbin greets casually, pausing a little behind him.
“Hi, Bin,” Bang Chan mumbles, not looking up.
Changbin grins, but continues in the same casual tone, “Do we still have bread for toast?”
Bang Chan waves a vague hand in the direction of the kitchen cupboards. “Yeah, should be in—” He freezes.
Changbin’s grin widens as the alpha slowly, hesitantly, turns to look at him. As if he’s Orpheus, and Changbin will vanish like Eurydice as soon as he checks to see if he’s really there. Changbin merely spreads his arms. “Hi, Channie.”
Bang Chan remains frozen for one long second before he flies out of his seat. He’s across the kitchen and in Changbin’s arms in less than a second, burying his nose in his neck. “Oh my god,” he says, sounding on the verge of tears. “Oh my god, Bin.”
Changbin rubs gentle circles across his back. “I know. I know. Scent me?”
The alpha doesn’t waste another second before pressing his mouth to Changbin’s scent gland and inhaling greedily through his nose. When he pulls back to rub Changbin’s wrist against his own neck, he’s crying.
Felix feels stunned. Sure, he’d decided he was no longer afraid to meet Bang Chan, but the man was still their pack alpha. He’d been trying to push all flashes of Kwang-ho out of his mind, but he couldn’t help the nerves that were buzzing around in his stomach. He trusted the others and had decided to hope for the best. But never had he expected the alpha to cry at the sight of his packmates.
Jeongin steps forward, wrapping his arms around Bang Chan’s middle. “Hyung,” he mutters, before closing his eyes and baring his neck as the alpha pulls him in, eyes wet and shiny. Seungmin steps forward, and then Jisung, who lets go of Felix’s hand only for Hyunjin to immediately sling an arm around Felix’s shoulders.
Together, they watch the pack members reunite, sinking to the ground in a pile of entangled limbs and joyful scents. Hyunjin sniffs, and Felix looks up at him.
“What?” he says, wiping a tear from his eyes. “It’s just very touching.”
Felix doesn’t tease him. “It is,” he agrees simply. “I can’t imagine how hard the past weeks must have been for you. I’m really sorry.”
Hyunjin merely squeezes his shoulder and sends a burst of rich chocolate in his direction. “Wanna say hi?” He doesn’t wait for a reply and raises his voice. “Yah, hyung, you’re being rude! Come greet our guest.”
Changbin laughs from somewhere inside the pile of limbs. “I think he’s a little scent-dazed. Give him a moment, Jinnie.”
“Fine.” Hyunjin huffs out a laugh and drags Felix over to a chair. “Let me feed you, at least. Seungmin said toast, right?”
“Use white bread,” says a voice from the pile. “And get him a banana or something, but only if it’s ripe.”
Felix can’t help the grin that spreads across his face as Hyunjin salutes the pile, even though all he can see of Seungmin is a leg. This pack is nothing like he expected. They don’t seem to conform to traditional gender roles, and the way they interact is… well, it really is like they’re equals. Seungmin and Changbin seem to have no problem bossing the others around when they need something, and he hasn’t seen anyone try to take any autonomy away from Jeongin.
It begs the question where Minho fits into all of this. It hasn’t escaped Felix’s notice that the alpha is missing, or the strange looks that flit across the faces of the others whenever he is mentioned. He’s working, is all they’ll tell him, or He’s out. It doesn’t sit well with Felix, because it’s clear that something is going on, and it definitely has something to do with him. But he has no idea what he can do about it, or if he should even try.
Hyunjin slides a plate with banana slices across the island. “Toast is in the toaster,” he says as he sits down across from Felix and grabs a bowl of soup from the tray. “I don’t care what the others do, I’m eating. I don’t like cold breakfast.”
Felix watches him as they eat. Hyunjin is… effortlessly pretty. His features are almost delicate, but there’s a sharpness to him that balances it out. Shoulder-length black hair frames his face in a way that’s just messy enough to look perfect, and Felix wonders if he styled it this morning or if the alpha just wakes up like that.
He looks away before the alpha catches him staring, and his eyes fall on the flowers on the breakfast tray. They’re pretty; little purple bulbs on bright green stems. He picks one up to take a closer look, twirling it in his hand.
“Hyacinths,” Hyunjin says. “They bloom in early spring.”
Felix brings it to his nose. It has a sweet floral smell, subtle but nice. “Do you grow them?”
Hyunjin nods. “We have a large garden. We have herbs and vegetables too, but I take care of the flowers.”
“It was nice of you, to bring flowers every day.” Felix keeps his eyes on the hyacinth. “Jisung was always so careful about adding them to the vase, and it looked really good.”
“I know,” Hyunjin says. “He texted me pictures so I’d know which ones to bring next. Had to maintain the colour palette, you know.”
Felix smiles at that. “I looked forward to them. I think they did too.”
There is a pleased spike of cocoa in the air, and then the toaster dings. Hyunjin gets up to collect the bread. “Keep eating,” he says, nodding to the banana and setting another plate of toast in front of Felix.
Felix obediently takes another bite of banana, letting out a happy hum.
“Better than the shakes?” Hyunjin asks.
Felix swallows and grins. “Oh god, so much better. Whoever created those clearly never had to drink them.” He takes a bite of the warm toast and sighs in satisfaction.
Hyunjin pulls a face. “It’s just plain toast. Don’t you want anything on it?”
“No, this is great,” Felix insists, taking another bite. He’s eating carefully, but notes with relief that his stomach doesn’t start churning. “I’m never taking plain toast for granted again. And I don’t feel like throwing up what I’ve eaten for the first time in ages. It’s so nice.”
Hyunjin looks at him. “When’s the last time you actually had a meal?”
Felix shrugs. “I can’t really remember. Somewhere in January.” Even before his first drop, he hadn’t had the money to eat full meals, saving everything he could to pay the rent. It might have been the stew Aera sent him home with the week before he found Jeongin.
Hyunjin looks horrified, and stands without another word to pop more bread into the toaster. Before Felix can protest that there is no way he’ll be able to finish that, there’s a grunt from the pile on the floor.
“Okay,” Jeongin grumbles, trying to wriggle free. “I want to eat. That’s enough cuddling. Let me go.” Nothing happens, and he lets out another muffled grunt before changing tactics. “Channie-hyung?” he asks sweetly. “Alpha, I’m hungry. Will you feed me?”
Immediately, the pile shifts and Bang Chan pops up, hauling Jeongin up with him. Seungmin and Changbin laugh. “Oh, sly little fox.”
Jeongin smirks and lets Bang Chan tug him to his feet. He gives the dazed-looking alpha a quick peck on the lips before plopping down on a chair next to Felix.
“There’s only so much cuddling our Innie will put up with,” Changbin says as he picks himself up from the floor. He drops into the seat across from Felix and starts mixing rice into a bowl of soup, seemingly not caring that it’s only lukewarm by now.
Felix blinks. Now that he thinks about it, it’s true that Jeongin doesn’t seek out hugs or touches from his pack members that often. It’s usually Jisung or Changbin who initiate contact, and Jeongin who pulls away first. But… He looks to his left. “But I cuddle you all the time.”
Jeongin shrugs. “Well, your body needs it.”
Felix feels his heart sink. Curling up to the other omega is one of the things he enjoys the most, and he knows he latches onto him anytime he can. But apparently, Jeongin has only been putting up with it because he’s afraid Felix will drop again if he doesn’t. Felix has been making him uncomfortable all this time, and—
“And…” Jeongin’s cheeks flush as Felix looks back at him. “I don’t mind it so much. When it’s you.” Changbin whistles, and Jeongin’s cheeks darken further. “Shut up. It’s… He’s also an omega and he smells good. It’s just relaxing, okay.”
“I know he smells good,” Changbin says. “I’m just delighted to hear you finally admit to liking cuddles.”
“Such growth,” Hyunjin sniffs dramatically. “Three weeks apart and my Innie is all grown up.”
“Ugh,” Jeongin says. “Three weeks were not long enough.”
Felix listens to them banter, feeling a little stunned. Oh, he’s glad—it’s a relief to know that he hasn’t been touching Jeongin against his will. It’s just a little hard to wrap his mind around the fact that he’s the exception to Jeongin’s rule.
Now that they’re all standing and Bang Chan’s nose is no longer buried in his packmates’ scents, the glazed look in his eyes slowly fades away. With a final blink and a squeeze of Jisung’s hand around his own, he comes back to himself and shakes his head to clear it. “I can’t believe you’re all here.” Then he freezes. “You’re all here. Seungmin, where’s Felix, is he alright?”
He looks so panicked that Felix almost feels bad for the round of laughter that follows. He slides off his bar stool to make himself known and takes a step towards the alpha. He pauses, and then he bows, a proper ninety-degree bow, the way an omega is supposed to greet an alpha. He holds it and waits for permission to rise.
It doesn’t come.
Felix stares at the floor, nerves flaring up again. He thought with this pack it would probably be okay not to kneel, but… maybe he misjudged. Shit, he should have knelt. He’s an idiot, this is their pack alpha, of course he should have knelt—
“Yah, Chan-ah! Greet the poor kid properly.” Changbin sounds exasperated, but somehow not with Felix.
“I—oh, shit.” There’s a light tap on Felix’s shoulder. “Rise, Felix-ssi.”
Felix straightens, but keeps his eyes downcast. “Thank you for welcoming me into your home, Alpha Bang Chan-nim.”
Someone at the kitchen island hisses, and Bang Chan awkwardly clears his throat. “There’s no need for any of that, Felix-ssi. Can you… Will you look at me? Please?”
Felix looks up. Bang Chan looks a little flustered, but he collects himself. “We can talk casually. Call me hyung. We don’t use secondary genders as titles in this household. And you don’t defer to me. No… no bowing, okay?”
Relief floods Felix’s stomach. He hadn’t misjudged. This really is how this pack works. He nods, and Bang Chan—Chan—smiles.
“No bowing,” Chan repeats, “Except for me this time.” And he folds himself into a full ninety-degree bow in return, shocking Felix all over again. “Thank you,” he continues, “For saving Jeongin. For everything you have done for this pack. I apologise sincerely for everything that has happened to you since, and I can only hope you will let us repay the debt we owe you.”
Stunned by the words, Felix just stares at him for a second. Then he realises Chan isn’t rising, is waiting for Felix’s permission to rise, and he scrambles to tap the alpha on the shoulder. “It’s—it’s fine,” he says, stumbling over his words. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“You saved his life,” Chan says simply.
“And you saved mine,” Felix insists. They don’t owe him. If anything, he owes them. Saving Jeongin only took a few hours. He’s been leeching off of them for weeks.
Chan smiles. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.” His eyes slide over Felix’s face, as if searching for something. He glances at Seungmin, and then back. “How are you feeling? After Hyunjin’s idiotic—”
“Oh lord, here we go again,” Hyunjin mutters from behind Felix. “Hyung, he’s fine. Even Minnie said so.”
“I really am fine,” Felix says, when Chan looks like he’s about to lay into Hyunjin again. “I was the one who asked for it. And he—well, he has a nice scent. Even just his cardigan kind of made me melt into the bathtub for a bit. Before the screaming started, that is.” His cheeks are red from the admission, but Chan has relaxed again, and that’s what he wanted.
“That’s probably because of the drop,” Seungmin says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Your body is still very sensitive and will have a more extreme reaction to scents for a while. It’s why we’re going to have to keep being careful—a situation where a new scent is sprung on you by surprise could still be dangerous.” He looks at Hyunjin, and then at Chan. “But as long as you’re prepared to meet someone, it should be alright. Just know that you might get a bit hazy if it’s a scent you like, like yesterday, and that you might feel the urge to flee if your body decides it doesn’t like it.” He looks at Felix. “If that happens, we’ll be there to calm you down before you can spiral. Please don’t meet anyone new without us present for a while, okay?”
Felix nods.
“Can he still try hyung’s scent?” Jisung asks, still hovering close to Chan.
Seungmin shrugs. “If he wants to. We’re all here.”
Chan looks startled. “Oh, you- you don’t have to, Felix, if you’d rather wait or don’t want to—”
“I want to,” Felix interrupts. “I’m… I’m in your house. I think it would be good. To get used to your scent too.” After what Seungmin just told him, he’s a little nervous. What if his body decides it hates Chan’s scent, and he suddenly starts fearing the man again? It would make things so awkward, and he doesn’t want to cause them even more trouble. But he has to try. He owes it to Chan, to their entire pack.
Surprisingly, the pack alpha looks just as nervous as Felix feels. “O-okay,” he says. “Alright. Should I—”
“Just give him your shirt or something first,” Seungmin says. “It’s better to start with indirect scenting.”
“Alright.” Chan, still looking nervous, moves to pull off his shirt, and several people shout at once, making him freeze in place.
“Oh my god,” Changbin laughs. “A shirt from the den, hyung. One you wore last night or something. Don’t strip in front of him, Jesus.”
Chan flushes. “Right. That’s—I knew that. I’ll, um. Be right back.” He leaves the room, red creeping up the back of his neck.
“He’s a mess,” Jeongin giggles, stealing one of Felix’s banana slices.
Hyunjin laughs too, but his voice is fond when he says, “He just got you back. I went practically non-verbal for hours last night after we scented, and it’s only been twenty minutes for him. He managed a whole speech and everything.”
“He’s doing really well,” Seungmin agrees, walking over to take a seat at the island next to Changbin.
The other beta sends him an amused look. “Are you monitoring all of us, now?”
“I’m always monitoring all of you,” Seungmin says dryly. “The last time I visited my sister for a couple of days, Jisung broke his wrist.”
“That was not my fault,” Jisung sniffs.
Hyunjin snorts. “What, the tree hauled you up there by itself?”
“And then it knocked him down, all on its own,” Jeongin agrees. “A vicious blow from Mother Nature herself.”
Jisung pouts. “Stop ganging up on me. Felix, they’re being mean.” The alpha wraps his arms around Felix’s waist from behind and pulls him in, burying his face in his shoulder. Felix, who still feels warm and gooey every time one of them touches him, leans into the embrace gratefully. “See,” Jisung continues, “Felix is on my side.”
“That’s cheating,” Jeongin says. “Felix is too sweet. He never says no to cuddles.”
“Yeah, and it’s great,” Jisung sighs, turning his nose into Felix’s neck. “He always smells so happy.”
“He’s right here,” Felix mutters, going for grumbly but knowing it’s ruined by the way his cheeks flush and his hands clutch tighter around Jisung’s arms. There they go again, complimenting his scent. They do it often, always off-handedly, but it surprises him every time. Kwang-ho had always told him his scent was awful. He said it was sour, that it stung his nose, that Felix should do other people a favour by wearing blockers.
And he knows, rationally he knows that the alpha had been lying. That firstly, he had liked it when Felix smelled of fear, and secondly, that his scent had been sour because of him, because Felix had been terrified anytime the alpha was anywhere near him. His family and friends had always liked his scent when he was younger, and he’s mostly managed to convince himself by now that Kwang-ho had just been messing with his head. But it still sends a shiver of surprise through him every time he hears these people, who smell so great themselves that it’s practically a crime, tell him he smells good.
The door swings open and Chan walks back into the kitchen, a black shirt in his hand. He doesn’t go to Felix though, instead heading straight for Seungmin to bury his nose in his neck for a few seconds. Seungmin lets it happen, taking the alpha’s hand to rub their wrists together as well. “It’s okay,” he says, breathing in Chan’s scent. “I missed you too.”
Chan sighs into his neck, relaxing into him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you,” he mutters. “This shouldn’t have been on you.”
“It wasn’t,” Seungmin says. “I had the others, and everything turned out fine.” The words are in direct contrast with the way he broke down last night, but everyone seems willing to let that slide if it will comfort Chan. “You helped plenty.”
Chan takes another few moments to breathe him in, and then nods. “Yeah. Okay.” He presses a kiss in Seungmin’s hair. “I’m really glad you’re back.” He straightens and looks at the rest of them. “I’m probably going to be all clingy alpha today. Sorry in advance.”
“That’s alright. Come here, I like clingy.” Changbin reaches out a hand to reel him in, and Chan goes. The beta draws him in for a kiss, just a peck on the lips at first, until he smirks and nips sharply at Chan’s lower lip. The alpha growls, tightening his fingers in Changbin’s hair. The kiss turns heated so fast that Felix doesn’t know whether to avert his eyes or keep watching in fascination.
He’s saved from having to make a choice by Seungmin smacking them on the shoulder. “Yah, Felix is right here!”
The others laugh as Chan breaks the kiss, looking dazed. Jisung is still loosely holding Felix from behind, but his scent has spiked, just a bit. It’s not the first time Felix has been witness to their arousal. They’ve been cooped up in one room for weeks and he’s not an idiot—he knows what goes on in the bathroom when they pair up to take showers together, exiting drenched in each other’s scent. They’ve all been casual about it, keeping it relatively PG in front of him but never trying to hide it either. Felix doesn’t mind. He likes that they’re not afraid to be themselves around him.
Changbin whispers something in Chan’s ear with a wide grin, and the alpha’s ears go red. He groans, dropping his head against the beta’s shoulder. “You’re a fucking menace.”
“And you missed me so much.”
“And I missed you so much.”
“Alright,” Seungmin grumbles. “Give Lix that shirt before it reeks. He doesn’t need that kind of scent from you.”
Chan straightens, cheeks red but grinning. He fondly ruffles Seungmin’s hair, who slaps his hand away, and then turns to Felix. “Sorry about that.”
Felix waves a hand. “It’s alright.” He grins at Jisung over his shoulder. “It’s not like I haven’t seen worse.”
Hyunjin straightens, eyes lighting up. “Oh? Do share.”
Jisung groans, burying his head in Felix’s shoulder. Jeongin rubs a hand over his face, embarrassed, but he’s smiling when he answers, “A few days ago Sung and I were in the bathroom, just… letting off some steam, and Sungie somehow managed to unlock the bathroom door. We fell right into the room.”
Hyunjin cackles. “You didn’t.”
“We did,” Jisung admits, colouring. “But hey, even that didn’t send Lixie running away screaming.”
Jeongin snorts. “Probably because you were doing all the screaming for him, trying to cover us up.”
Felix laughs. “It was kind of funny. I’ve never seen him that red. And then Changbin-hyung threw a blanket over them and Jisung didn’t emerge for like an hour.”
“Because everyone refused to give me clothes.” Jisung sounds like he’s pouting. “And I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“I know,” Felix soothes, patting him on the head. “You didn’t.” He means it. It had been funny, and it hadn’t made him uncomfortable. They had both been a lot more embarrassed by it than he was.
Really, the four of them have been nothing but kind and considerate, carefully reading his face for any signs of discomfort at their displays of affection, and he is simply glad they’ve not been suppressing that part of their relationship for his sake as well. They’ve made too many sacrifices already, and he’d hate for them to no longer feel at ease in their own home.
“Come on, lover boy,” Hyunjin tells Jisung with a laugh. “Sit. Eat. Clearly you need the energy, if you can’t even hold Innie up while you—”
“Alright,” Chan says loudly, “That’s enough. Felix, do you still want this shirt?”
Felix steps out of Jisung’s arms. “Yes. Thank you.” He takes the t-shirt Chan is holding out to him and then pauses, standing uncertainly in the middle of the kitchen. “Um.” He suddenly feels awkward. He knows they need to monitor his reaction in case something goes wrong, but it feels really weird to purposely sniff their alpha’s shirt with all of them watching.
“You’ve literally been scented by all of us,” Changbin points out.
“Yes, well, I was unconscious for pretty much all of that, and with Hyunjin’s scent I was alone.”
“Yeah, you’re not doing it alone this time.” Seungmin’s voice is firm. “But we can go into the living room, and it can be just me keeping an eye out.” Chan and Jisung start to protest, but Seungmin shuts them up with a single look. “I’ll call you in if we need you. Let’s go, Felix.”
Felix follows Seungmin through a wooden archway into a spacious living room, where an enormous U-shaped couch and a few cosy arm chairs are set around a big TV screen. The couch is covered in so many pillows and blankets that Felix thinks he could make a nest right here, just with the items from this room. Perhaps that’s precisely what they’re for. There’s a plush rug in front of the couch that looks like a great place to stretch out. Despite the nesting materials, in this room, too, Felix can no longer smell the scents of everyone who has been staying in the guestroom with him. He hopes this will go well so that they won’t have to hide away any longer. Maybe if he doesn’t like Chan’s scent, he can just fake it?
“Have a seat. I’d rather you didn’t break your neck if you fall down doing this.”
“That’s what Hyunjin said too, yesterday.”
Seungmin’s lips twitch. “That’s the only smart thing he did, then.”
Felix sits down on the edge of the couch, almost gingerly. He’s still holding the shirt loosely in his hand.
Seungmin sits too, a little farther away. “Go ahead when you’re ready. We’re in no rush.”
But really, there’s no point in dragging it out. He brings the shirt to his nose and breathes in.
Oh.
He’d thought the kitchen smelled like coffee because someone brewed a pot that morning. And maybe they did, but mostly—it’s Chan. Chan smells like coffee, earthy and strong. Felix has never liked the taste of coffee, has always found it too bitter on his tongue, but the smell is a whole different story. His parents’ kitchen had smelled like this in the morning. It’s a good smell, one that brings back feelings of safety and warmth and comfort.
He wants to bury himself in it.
He doesn’t realise he’s leaning forward and threatening to topple right off the couch until Seungmin’s hand presses against his shoulder, holding him up. “You with me, Felix?
Felix blinks, dazed. Just smelling the shirt isn’t enough. He wants— “More,” he says. “Please.”
Seungmin scans his face, his dilated pupils, and then nods. “Hyung!”
Immediately, five people rush into the room, and Seungmin rolls his eyes. “I meant Channie-hyung. There’s only two people here I call hyung, guys—obviously I wasn’t calling you three.”
“Like we were about to stay behind. Is he okay?” Jisung sounds anxious.
“Hyung,” Seungmin says, this time very pointedly looking at one of the people behind Felix, “Can you come closer?”
Felix is still leaning heavily into Seungmin’s hand, the shirt pressed to his nose. He feels drunk on its scent. It’s so strong, and yet he needs—
Someone steps into his field of vision, bringing more coffee scent along with him. Felix lets out a needy whine and the person laughs. “Oh. This is a good thing then.”
“Very good.” Seungmin smiles. “Scent him, would you?”
The coffee scent kneels in front of him, and Seungmin slides out of the way so the alpha can replace him. “Hi, Felix. Can I take your wri—oof.” He throws an arm back to steady himself as Felix launches forward to get closer. There’s another quiet laugh. “Oh, alright, that works. There you go.”
Felix lets out a soft sound of contentment as he’s bathed in coffee, in safety, and lets himself melt into it.
Chapter Text
“—really okay? I’ve never reacted to hyung’s scent like that.”
“You did, that night you dropped. You were clinging to him just like this. It’s instinct.”
“He’s dropping again?”
“No. He isn’t, don’t worry. But the drop really messed with his body. It will take time before he’ll stop reacting to scents this extremely.”
A hand strokes through his hair, fingers scratching gently across his scalp. “I’m glad my scent didn’t scare him. I know it’s strong, not everyone likes it.”
“He’s liked all of our scents so far. Of course he’d love yours.”
“I’m glad he did. He has six scents to help keep him stable now. I’ve been wondering why he surfaced so quickly, but maybe the number of scents matters. At the clinic we had fewer people available, never more than two per omega. I’ll have to ask Seonghwa-hyung about it.”
“You’re really on hyung terms with the doctors you worked for, huh?”
“Only the good ones. They practically hide omegas on the run right under the noses of the other doctors there. It’s very cool.”
“And they just… told a med student about that during a three-month internship.”
A laugh. “Only after that day Innie got harassed on the subway. I was so angry. I think I ranted for a good fifteen minutes about social injustice and omega rights, not even caring who was listening. They filled me in on the secret system they’d set up the very next day.”
There’s a wave of vanilla. “I love you.”
It’s silent for a while, and it’s peaceful. He’s tucked a little tighter against someone’s chest, and he lets out a pleased sigh.
“Hyung… Where is he?”
This time the silence is tense. “At his studio.”
“When’s the last time he was home?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t smelled his scent in weeks. He has clothes and stuff at the studio, I think he’s just been there.”
“Have you talked to him at all?”
A sigh. “He doesn’t answer my calls. When we try to visit, he doesn’t open the door and refuses to talk. He hasn’t let us touch him, or even see him.”
“Fuck.”
The hand around him balls into a fist against his thigh. “I don’t know what to do, Bin.”
“Let me try.”
“Hannie…”
“No. I want to see him. He doesn’t… he’s hurting himself, and it has to stop. I can get through to him. He’ll listen to me.”
“It’s really bad this time, Jisung-ah.”
“I don’t care. Just let me—”
“Can he even leave? I know Felix is out of his room now, but does that mean we can leave the house?”
“I… think so. There’s six of us now. He’s usually only touching one or two of us. It should be fine to go out now, as long as you de-scent when you get back.”
“Then I’m going.”
“I’m coming with you.”
A stunned silence. “Innie? You’re sure?”
“I need to talk to him. I need to understand.”
There’s another silence, and then, “I… fine. Yes. Please try. Innie, you can take my car.”
“Thanks, hyung. Come on, Sungie.” There’s a shuffle, and then a quick brush of wrists across his cheek, leaving behind a cloud of cinnamon and vanilla that blends in with the coffee to create the scent of a perfect winter drink.
***
Felix wakes with his face buried in someone’s neck. Chan’s neck, he realises as his memories come drifting back. At some point the alpha had stretched out on the couch and he’s now lying on his back, Felix wrapped around him like a koala. He feels slightly embarrassed, but not enough to move away from the comfortable warmth and the scent of safety.
“Oh get fucked, ya cunt.” Despite the language, the voice only sounds mildly irritated. The words were spoken in English, sounds drawn out in a familiar drawl.
Felix smiles and replies in the same language. “Having a good day?”
“Fuck!” Something hard lands on Felix’s hip, and he grunts. “Shit, sorry. You alright, mate? Wait.” The hand that was rubbing circles on his hip stills. “You’re Aussie?”
“I’m Aussie,” Felix confirms, lifting himself up on his elbow so he’s no longer talking to Chan’s neck but can look him in the face. They’re alone in the living room. “Did you just drop your phone on me?”
Chan pulls a face. “Sorry about that. You startled me. I didn’t realise you were awake.” He grins. “Or that you’re from Australia. That’s awesome!”
The smile he sends Felix is so bright that Felix can’t help but return it. It should be more awkward, waking up clinging to an alpha he barely knows, a pack alpha at that, but it’s not. It must be the long period of scenting, because he feels at ease with Chan in a way he could never have imagined that morning.
He gestures apologetically to Chan’s neck. “Sorry for… well, whatever that was. How long was I out?”
“About three hours.”
“Oh god. Did I drool on you?”
“No, you were an angel. Very cuddly.”
“Ugh, I’m sorry, Chan… hyung.” He belatedly tacks on the hyung—it sounds awkward in English, but just saying ‘Chan’ feels too presumptuous. In English, alphas are addressed by rank if one wants to be respectful, but Chan had told him not to do that.
Chan chuckles. “Just call me Chris. It’s my English name. And really, I didn’t mind at all. It was relaxing for me too.”
He actually seems genuine, and his scent reflects it. It’s surprising—after being separated from them for so long, Felix had expected the alpha to crave close contact with his pack members only, not cuddle the pitiful intruding omega for three hours straight. But Chan really does smell relaxed. He digs Chan’s phone up from between their bodies and hands it back. “Until someone pissed you off.”
Chan huffs. “Just answering some emails. We’ve been working on a song for an artist who’s turning out to be a bit more demanding than we anticipated.”
“Oh, I knew this would happen as soon as the two of you met.” The Korean words come from behind them as Changbin steps back into the room, carrying snacks and a pitcher of juice. “We should have kept you two apart. Please switch back to Korean for the sake of your poor packmates.”
“Bin! He’s Aussie!”
Despite his pretend-irritation, Changbin laughs. “I know, hyung. He’s even from Sydney.”
Chan looks back at Felix. “You are?”
“I mean, it’s a big city. But yeah.” He shifts, trying to sit up. Chan moves with him, drawing his legs back to give Felix some room. In the end, Felix settles into a cross-legged position, his knees still touching Chan’s thigh. Chan doesn’t seem to mind, so Felix doesn’t withdraw further.
“When did you come to Korea?” Chan asks.
Felix’s face falls, and he looks away.
“Sorry. You don’t have to—”
“No, it’s fine. I was fifteen.” It’s not a time he likes to think back to. He had barely spoken a word of Korean, and it had taken months for anything to pierce the haze of grief that had hung around him. Even longer before he could get his brain to work long enough for the new language to stick.
“I was thirteen when I came here,” Chan offers, drawing him out of his thoughts. “I still miss Tim Tams. You can get them here, but not the special edition ones, you know?”
Felix sees the out for what it is, but takes Chan up on it. “Yeah, I haven’t had those in years.” Mostly because what little money he had, he wouldn’t waste on cookies. But he remembers them from his childhood, and he does miss them. “Why did you move here?” he adds, hoping Chan’s story is less depressing than his own.
“I was scouted by an entertainment company. I’ve always been into music and being an idol sounded cool, so I became a trainee. It’s where I met Hannie and Binnie.” He shoots Changbin a fond look. “We hit it off pretty quickly, our styles matched well. Eventually we decided to leave the company to try our luck on our own. The idol thing may not quite have worked out, but I’d say we did rather well for ourselves anyway.”
Changbin looks up at Felix. “Don’t misunderstand, if we wanted to we could have made it. I was amazing at aegyo. The people are missing out.” Felix laughs, and Changbin grins at him. “Rice cracker?”
Felix nods and Changbin hands him a cracker and a glass of juice. They fall into a comfortable silence as he sips at the drink. It’s sweet, some mix of mango and kiwi. Changbin sits down on the armrest of the couch and leans in to rub his jaw along Chan’s scent gland, causing Chan to close his eyes and sigh in satisfaction. “Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
Changbin bares his neck so Chan can scent him back. When he’s finished, he asks, “Will you spend the night with us?”
Chan pauses. “I…” There’s a look of longing in his eyes, but he presses it down and instead looks at Felix. “I don’t have to. I know I’m a stranger.”
The idea that he’d let Felix dictate where he sleeps makes Felix shift awkwardly. “Oh, it’s not… it’s your house. You can sleep wherever you want.”
“Felix, it’s your nest. I’m not just going to enter it without consent. I am already very grateful you agreed to meet me and I can see everyone again. I’m fine sleeping in the den, you do not have to invite me into your nest.”
Right. His nest. Felix keeps forgetting. The notion still feels absurd.
Changbin nods. “The only reason Jinnie didn’t ask you for permission last night is because you’d already passed out. He wouldn’t have slept there at all if you hadn’t whined every time we tried to pry you loose.”
Felix flushes and buries his face in his hands. “Oh my god.”
Changbin chuckles. “Don’t be embarrassed. It was cute.”
There’s a smile on Chan’s face. “Oh, Jinnie must have loved that.”
“Yes,” Changbin says with a roll of his eyes. “He was insufferable. We had to send him into a scent daze to shut him up.”
Chan laughs. His face is still bright when he turns to Felix, but then he sobers. “The point is that you do not have to share your nest with anyone you don’t want. Hyunjin will not sleep there again if you’d rather he didn’t, and I won’t even set foot in the room. You can set boundaries. I swear to you that all of us will honour them.”
Felix feels stunned. Boundaries? He’s in their house. They’ve taken him in and sacrificed weeks of their life for him, and now they’re asking him for his demands? He almost wants to laugh. And yet, Chan seems to be completely serious about it, watching Felix with an intent expression. Bizarrely, Felix gets the sense that he could tell Chan that he doesn’t ever want to see him again, and Chan would remove himself from the room without a word. If Felix told him no, he truly wouldn’t enter his nest at all.
Kwang-ho would have. Kwang-ho had delighted in locking Felix’s nesting supplies away until he was desperate, and then he’d give them back one by one, watching as Felix frantically built a flimsy nest with whatever he was given. He would criticise his every move, and after Felix was done, he would take away random parts of the nest so Felix would feel off-kilter and anxious and never, ever safe. Really, the nests at Kwang-ho’s place had always been for Kwang-ho’s amusement, never Felix’s comfort.
“You can even kick us out at night,” Changbin adds, drawing him away from the memories. “I was talking to Seungmin earlier and he said he wants to keep two of us with you and he’d prefer to be one of them in case anything happens, but it’s completely up to you who else you pick. This is about your comfort, and if you want privacy, we’ll do our best to give you as much of it as we can.”
At that, Felix feels a flicker of alarm. No. No, he doesn’t want them to go. The nest smells so safe because of them, and the addition of Hyunjin’s cocoa scent had been perfect, and he realises that a part of him had been longing to add Chan’s earthy coffee to the nest as well. It would add a grounding layer to the other scents, and it would be so good, but—but that’s selfish. Chan has been waiting for his packmates to be released from their quarantine for weeks, and surely they’ll all want to spend the night in their den again. He can’t just demand that they stay with him, that’s ridiculous. He has to… He has to tell them that—
“Keep breathing,” Chan says, at the same time as Changbin leans forward to bring their wrists together. Woodsmoke drifts through Felix’s system, and he exhales. He didn’t even realise he was holding his breath.
Chan tilts his head, his eyes keen and observant. “Is it the idea of explicitly saying that you want us to go that’s scaring you, or is it that you want us to stay?” When Felix just looks at him, he adds, “Because both of those are fine, and we won’t be angry.”
Felix averts his eyes. It takes another squeeze of Changbin’s hand around his wrist for him to speak. “The… the nest…” He swallows. “It feels good. With your scents.”
He can feel his cheeks burning, but Chan is unfazed. “Then everyone will stay. You want to add mine?”
Felix nods, still looking down at his lap.
“Alright. Just my scent, or do you want me to sleep there tonight? Either is fine.”
So many choices. No wrong answers.
“You too,” he manages, and Chan simply pats his knee, his scent blooming open into something happy and relieved.
“Then I’ll be there. Thank you, Felix. For your trust.”
Felix still can’t quite look him in the eye, but some of his tension eases at the way Chan’s tone remains casual. Like they’re discussing what to have for dinner, rather than Felix’s clingy need to keep their scents as close as possible.
Changbin nudges him. “None of us mind. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is going to make Hannie’s week, considering he gets to have both hyung and his new favourite cuddle buddy tonight.” Felix looks up, blinking. Changbin grins. “You were unconscious for two weeks, and he basically treated you like a scented plushie. At this point, he might cry if you kicked him out. Thank you for sparing us all the dramatics.”
Felix laughs at that, and the remaining tension disappears. Changbin always knows what to say to lighten the mood. “Where is he, anyway?” he asks, grateful for the chance to change the topic.
“He’s out with Innie.”
Felix brightens. “You get to leave the house again?”
“Yes, Seungmin gave us the green light.” Chan exchanges a look with Changbin. “They’ll be back for dinner, probably.”
Felix opens his mouth to reply, but Changbin rises, holding out his hand. “And before that, we’re going to go downstairs.”
Felix stares at him in confusion.
Changbin chuckles. “Oh yeah, you can cling to our alpha all you want, but you’re not getting out of the workout you skipped this morning. Let’s go. You can do some pilates, and I’ll find out how many balloons I can fill before my lungs give out.”
***
A few hours later Felix is sitting at the kitchen island, watching Chan set out plates as they wait for dinner to arrive. He insisted on celebrating Felix’s release from the guestroom with pizza. It’s a little ironic, since it’s not as if Felix will be able to eat it, but Seungmin had selected some side dishes that he could try a few bites of if he wanted to, and then set about making him some rice porridge without too many spices. Felix simply stands by what he said earlier—any meal that isn’t another nutrition shake is a win in his eyes.
Hyunjin is halfway through a story about the time he’d spent a week on a painting and his client had tried to pay him in lion figurines, when the door slams open and Jisung and Jeongin return in a cloud of scent neutraliser. Felix startles at the bang, and then panics as he sees the state they’re in. Jisung is shaking, tears streaming down his face, and while Jeongin isn’t outright crying, his eyes are red.
Felix jumps off his bar stool immediately. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Jisung launches himself at Chan, who makes gentle shushing noises as he hugs him back. Uncharacteristically serious, Hyunjin simply opens his arms for Jeongin, who walks into them without saying a word.
“I know,” Chan murmurs into Jisung’s hair. He looks pained, but not surprised. Somehow, Felix seems to be the only one panicking.
“He… He…” Jisung chokes on a sob and fists his hands in Chan’s shirt. “He didn’t even let us in.”
“It wasn’t you,” Chan says.
“But he’s hurting! I know he is, we all know he is, and he didn’t even open the door, and—” He breaks off, burying his face in Chan’s shoulder.
“We stayed for hours,” Jeongin says hoarsely, turning and leaning back against Hyunjin’s chest. “We thought if we could just get through to him, he’d come out.” He looks at Chan, defeated. “Hyung, he called security to escort us out. We were removed from the building like…” He lets out a frustrated breath of air, though it’s clear he’s more hurt than angry.
Hyunjin squeezes him lightly. “It’s not you.”
“He’s done the same to us,” Chan says. He sighs. “As long as he’s not ready to talk to us, there’s nothing we can do.”
Jisung lets out a quiet sob. That’s the worst part, Felix thinks, that he’s quiet. Apart from that first time they met, Jisung has never been quiet. He’s loud and boisterous in everything he does. But right now he’s crying brokenly into Chan’s shirt, so quiet that Felix can barely hear him.
Felix’s initial panic had abated when he realised they weren’t in immediate danger. By now it has transformed into a cold sense of worry instead, and he looks between them helplessly. He’s not stupid. He can tell from their conversation who they’re talking about, what had happened. It’s Minho again. Everyone has been so careful not to talk about him when Felix is around, but it was obvious that something is going on.
He’s been… isolating himself from his packmates? Shutting them out? Is it because he’s angry with them for taking Felix in? But the way Jisung said it didn’t make it sound like anger. He said he was hurting.
Felix’s stomach churns as he takes them all in, the tears and the hurt and the defeated expressions. He can’t smell Jisung and Jeongin yet, won’t be able to until the neutraliser wears off. But he can smell Chan, and Hyunjin, and Seungmin, and that’s more than enough. This is his fault. It doesn’t matter what they say. It doesn’t even matter what Minho did to him. What matters is that Felix is the one splitting up this pack, he’s the cause of the rift between them. He’s the one making Jisung cry like this.
He doesn’t even realise he’s shaking until Seungmin’s arm wraps around his shoulders, pushing him gently into a chair. The beta rubs their wrists together, wrapping Felix in a sheet of sage that he’s clearly trying hard to keep as calm and comforting as possible. “Deep breaths. You’re okay. We’ll all calm down here, and everything is going to be fine.”
That only makes it worse. The idea that they’re all going to push down their hurt, their pain, to comfort Felix when he’s the sole reason they’re upset… it’s too much. He rips himself away from Seungmin and flees. He needs to get away, to get somewhere where he won’t hurt them anymore—
He only makes it to the hallway before he crashes straight into Changbin, who instinctively grabs his arm to keep him from bouncing back to the floor. “Whoa,” he says, “Are you alright?”
Felix tries to pull himself free, but of course, of fucking course it’s at that moment that his knees give way as a muscle spasm races up his legs. He buries his face in the sleeve of his hoodie and bites down on the fabric to hold back a scream—of pain or frustration, he isn’t sure.
“Shit, shit—Minnie!” Changbin lowers Felix to the ground and immediately digs his hands into Felix’s thighs where the worst of the spasms always hit.
Seungmin is already there, dropping to his knees beside them and takes Felix’s other thigh. “This is our fault,” he says, “I’m sorry, Felix.”
But it’s not. It’s not their fault at all, and Felix hates that they think that. He wants to argue, wants them to leave him be so they can focus on comforting each other the way they should, but with the spasm, he knows that if he opened his mouth now all he could do is scream.
It gets even worse when someone else drops to the ground next to his head and drags Felix up enough to tuck his nose against their neck. He recognises the feel of Jisung’s arms before the scent of cinnamon starts entering his system, slowly making its way past the scent neutraliser. He must be putting a lot of effort in to push it out that fast. It still smells sad and heartsick, but beneath that there’s the unmistakable edge of soothing concern. For him.
Felix can’t take it. He doesn’t deserve this, everything about them doing this is wrong, and even as his body tries to melt into the scents around him, he fights hard to pull away, straining the muscles that are still under his control against the arms that hold him. They are talking around him, all raised voices and frantic hands, but he’s spiralling.
“Now, hyung, do it now, before—”
Coffee floods his system like a tidal wave, heavy and dark, and Felix’s mind goes blank.
***
When he wakes, his mind is clear. He doesn’t need the usual seconds it takes for his brain to acclimate in the morning—the scene he closed his eyes to is still engraved on the back of his eyelids like it only just happened. He knows time has passed, though. The surface he’s lying on is soft, and the blend of scents in the air tells him he’s back in the nest. There’s someone spooning him from behind, a warm arm slung over his waist, its hand tracing idle circles across his chest. He knows they’re alone in the room.
He hasn’t moved or opened his eyes, but something must give him away, because the person behind him clears his throat. “Good morning.”
The scent of cocoa told Felix it was Hyunjin even before he spoke.
“I was out for the entire night?” He knows there is frustration in his voice, but he is so tired of this. So sick of his body betraying him and just passing out whenever it feels like it, making him even more of a burden.
There’s a breath of air against his hair. “We were trying to keep you from dropping. Channie-hyung has a very strong scent, and he basically smothered you in it. He usually reins it in as much as he can, because it can be overwhelming. But it has its uses sometimes. He does the same for Jisungie when his anxiety gets really bad.” The coffee scent is in the nest now too, and Felix knows Chan slept here like they agreed on.
He knows he sounds bitter when he says, “Bet Jisung doesn’t pass out for twelve hours straight though.”
Hyunjin huffs. “Oh, he definitely has before. Don’t underestimate Channie-hyung.”
It’s quiet for a bit, neither of them making any move to shift away. Felix squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You know for what. I’m tearing your pack apart.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. I’ve been infiltrating your house for weeks and Minho-ssi hasn’t been back once.”
“Infiltrating.” Felix can hear the smile in Hyunjin’s voice. “You haven’t been. You’re welcome here. What’s going on with Minho-hyung has nothing to do with you. He has been pulling away from us since long before we brought you here.”
Felix scoffs. “Yeah. Since the day he met me in the mall, right?”
“I…” Hyunjin falls silent. “Well. Yes.” He sighs. “But that’s not your fault. I don’t know what’s going on with him, I’m pretty sure you’ve gathered by now that he won’t talk to us. I… we think he feels guilty? But it’s not just guilt, something is wrong, and it’s… worrying. But whatever else it is, I really doubt that has anything to do with you. How could it? He doesn’t even know you.”
How could it not? Felix had come into their lives, and Minho had pulled away. Of course it is because of him. And everyone else is suffering because of it. His frustration is taken over by a wave of defeat. “It’s hurting all of you.”
Hyunjin is quiet for a moment, and then says, “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Still not your fault.” Hyunjin’s arms around him tighten briefly for a gentle squeeze. “None of us blame you, okay? Not even Minho. He’s not angry with you.” When Felix huffs, Hyunjin says, “You don’t know Minho-hyung the way we do. Can you please trust us when we say that this is something else? I don’t know what, but it’s not you. Please stop trying to shoulder the blame for this.”
Felix takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I can try.” He doesn’t believe it for a second, but it’s sweet of Hyunjin to try and put him at ease. They’re all sweet. Every last one of them has been so kind, and that’s what makes this so hard.
“Good,” Hyunjin says with another quick squeeze. “That’s what freaked you out last night, right?”
“That, and… Jisung and Jeongin were upset. They needed you. You all needed each other. The last thing you should have had to worry about at that moment was me.”
“We didn’t mind. Felix, we… you know you’re not just a duty to us, right? We’re friends. You know that, right?”
Does he know that? He knows that’s how he sees them. They’re the best people he’s met in ages, and despite everything that’s happened, he’s laughed more in the past few days than he has in… god, years. He’s laughed more in a week of painful post-drop recovery than in the entire five years before this.
It’s a dizzying realisation, and he knows exactly why he hasn’t let himself think about it before. The idea of getting attached when it will all be gone in a few weeks anyway is too painful to consider, so he hasn’t. But hearing Hyunjin’s words, the idea that they might consider him a friend too…
“We like having you here.” Hyunjin’s quiet laugh blows a lock of Felix’s hair across his cheek. “Yeah, you might have scared the hell out of us when you got here. And again last night. Channie-hyung is going to go grey ten years early. But you’re fun to be around, Felix. I think you’re great, and I’ve only known you for like, two days. You don’t even know how the others talk about you.”
Felix stays quiet. He doesn’t quite know what to do with that. There’s something stirring in his chest that feels happy and grateful and dangerously like hope, and he tries to push it down, because even with this revelation, he cannot forget the hurt on everyone’s faces yesterday. The way they’d smelled, full of sadness and pain. They way they only felt because of him.
But it’s clear that Hyunjin is not going to change his mind, so Felix will let it go for now. Silently, though, he vows that he will fix it. He will find a way.
“You know, they were practically fused to your side last night. Even Innie. They told me to stay put while they prepare breakfast, but it’s a miracle none of them have come rushing back yet.”
Felix had been wondering where they all went. Suddenly, his eyes fly open. “Fuck. It’s your birthday!” Hyunjin laughs, and Felix flushes. “I’m terrible. I was so short with you when I woke up, too. I’m sorry.” He rubs a hand over his eyes. “Happy birthday.”
“That was short? Have you met Binnie-hyung?” The grin is audible in his words, and he pushes at Felix’s shoulder until he turns around in his arms. “You were all stuck in this room for weeks. You’re not telling me he never snapped at you in the morning.”
Felix blinks. “Not that I know of.”
Hyunjin laughs again, closing his eyes. “God. Gone for you, all of them, I swear. Never mind,” he adds when he sees Felix’s face. “I’m just saying, you’re—”
The door cracks open and they look up to see Jisung peer in. His eyes light up when he spots them. “Lixie!” he yells, diving into the nest. “You’re awake!”
“Oh, sure, ignore me,” Hyunjin mutters plaintively. “It’s only my birthday.”
Jisung waves a hand. “I’ve already talked to you today. I haven’t seen Lix in ages.”
“It’s been an hour,” Hyunjin mutters, but Felix is too busy staring at Jisung. He looks completely fine. He’s bright-faced and smiling and it’s like yesterday never even happened.
“Jisung,” he starts, but Jisung flops down on top of him like a sack of potatoes.
“Are you okay? Seungminnie said you were just sleeping, but I was still worried.”
“Jisung,” Felix says again, slightly breathier this time.
“Are you still tired? Do you have a headache?”
“Sung,” Felix chokes out.
“You know, if you want him to answer, you might want to remove your elbow from his windpipe before you can add ‘death’ to your list of symptoms.”
“Oh, shit! Sorry, Felix.” Jisung scrambles upwards and Felix coughs, drawing in a proper breath of air. When he can breathe again, he sits up too so he can look the alpha in the eye.
“Sung, are you okay?”
Jisung, who had still been eyeing Felix’s neck with concern, pauses. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” Felix takes his hand. “Because yesterday, you were not.”
Jisung stills. He sits back a little, fiddling with the blanket as he takes a breath. “Yeah. No, I wasn’t. I was worried, and I still am.” His eyes dart to Felix for a second. “I know you don’t want to hear about him, I know you hate him after what happened. But I just, I love him, and—”
“I don’t. Hate him, I mean.”
“What?”
“I don’t hate him,” Felix repeats, and he knows it’s the truth. He thinks Minho might hate him, for sure. But over the past weeks, the anger he’d felt that night has made way for confusion, considering how the rest of this pack interacts with each other. He doesn’t understand. And he’s still scared of the man, no matter how much the others seem to care for him. He’s wary. But he doesn’t hate him.
Jisung sends him a tentative smile. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
“I’m sorry for causing such a scene. I meant to give you guys some space, not pass out on you like an omega from a K-drama.”
That earns him a laugh. “Actually, I think it was kind of a good thing I got snapped out of it. I mean, except for the part where you gave us a heart attack by nearly dropping again. But as for the rest…” He shrugs, a little rueful. “Channie-hyung is right. If he doesn’t want to talk to us, we can’t force him. So for now, all we can do is keep trying, and wait it out.”
Felix looks at him, at the hint of sadness lingering in his eyes, and sits up on his knees to lean forward and wrap his arms around him. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“Thanks.” Jisung leans his head against Felix’s for a second, and then lets go. “Well, right now, you can help us celebrate Hyunjinnie’s birthday.”
“Oh, look,” Hyunjin deadpans from where he’s lying flat on his back in the blankets. “You remember I exist.”
Jisung snorts and smacks his thigh. “Get up, drama queen. I was actually sent to get you. Your breakfast is ready.” He pulls a face. “Well, most of it. When I left, hyung had already ruined two batches of pancakes, and his third attempt didn’t look very promising either.”
Hyunjin wails dramatically. “My pancakes!”
“You know none of us can cook!” Jisung bends over to pat him consolingly on the cheek. “There is cake, though. And strawberries.”
“Actually,” Felix says tentatively. “If you have enough ingredients to start over, I can make them?”
Hyunjin sits up so fast that he nearly collides heads with Jisung, who yelps and jerks back. “You can make pancakes?”
Felix bites his lip. He hasn’t made pancakes since he was fifteen. He hasn’t even tasted or smelled them in years, except for the day he escaped.
He hasn’t baked in years. But these people, all of them, have done so much for him that he can never repay them for. He has no money, no job or degrees or any real skills, no way to give them anything back. But he could do this. He hasn’t even let himself consider actually baking in years, but… maybe it’s time to try again. For them. Just to see how it goes.
“Yes,” he says, and his voice sounds firm. “I’ll make you pancakes. Consider it my birthday gift.”
And as Hyunjin’s eyes light up and Jisung whoops in glee, he feels a tiny stirring of excitement in his stomach at the thought of getting back in the kitchen. Yeah. Maybe it’s time.
*
Once Felix has got dressed—in borrowed clothes that are freshly laundered but have been scented by both Hyunjin and Jisung—they make their way down the hall. They enter the kitchen, and Felix blinks at the veritable sea of balloons that greets them. They’re everywhere—scattered across the floor, taped to the ceiling, to the walls, to the backs of the chairs.
By the time Felix had left Changbin the day before, the beta had made it to 103, and there had barely been space to move around in the gym. Felix has no idea if he actually made it to two hundred, but he would believe any number Changbin gave him. A glimpse through the archway into the living room reveals that that room, too, is decorated with balloons, and Felix briefly wonders about the state of Changbin’s lungs.
He doesn’t have long to wonder though, because Jeongin jumps up from his chair, somehow landing in an empty space between six balloons. “Felix! You’re awake!”
As the omega wades through the sea of balloons and walks right past Hyunjin to get to Felix, Hyunjin throws his hands in the air. “Who am I, the mailman?”
“A very cute mailman,” Changbin says, squeezing his cheek. “I would order so many packages if you were delivering them.” Hyunjin slaps his hand away, and Changbin laughs.
“Yah! I spent all night blowing up balloons for you.”
Hyunjin’s face does brighten as he takes in the room. “I love them. Thank you.” He wraps Changbin into a tight hug, and the beta groans exaggeratedly, pushing him away.
“Alright, be careful. I think I deflated a lung.”
“Minnie,” Hyunjin pouts as Seungmin approaches, “You’ll hug me, right?”
Without even looking at him, Seungmin pushes Hyunjin aside to grab Felix by the wrist and drag him to a kitchen chair. Hyunjin staggers back as if he’s been dealt a death blow and crashes to his knees, accidentally popping a balloon and creating his own sound effect. “Et tu, Brute,” he gasps.
Changbin cackles, then drops on top of him to ‘stab’ him some more with lightning-quick tickles. Hyunjin’s shrieks turn deafening, and Felix grins even as he’s dragged to the other end of the kitchen.
“How are you feeling?” Seungmin asks, already turning to the fridge. A few seconds later, he plops down a cup on the kitchen island in front of Felix. “Drink.”
“No,” Felix whines. “Not another shake.”
Seungmin shakes his head, not budging. “You nearly dropped last night, and you skipped dinner. We’re supposed to get your weight up, you’re far too thin as it is.” He watches Felix’s crestfallen expression, and he sighs. “You can drink half and share some breakfast with us, if you promise to drink the other half later today.”
Felix latches onto the offer immediately. “Deal. At least tell me it’s not raspberry again.”
Seungmin snorts. “It’s grape. Stay here, I’m going to get my things to check you over.”
“But my pancakes!” Hyunjin protests from the floor as the beta darts out of the room.
At the stove, Chan jumps from where he’s been dejectedly poking at an undefinable substance that’s stuck to the frying pan he’s holding. “Um. Yeah. About that…”
Hyunjin waves a hand. “Not you. I already know you ruined them. Treason, honestly. But I choose to forgive you, because Felixie promised to make me more.”
Chan turns towards Felix, eyes wide. “You can make pancakes?”
Felix smiles hesitantly. “It’s been a while. But I used to be pretty good at it.”
“Oh, thank god,” Chan says, tossing the pan into the sink and dropping onto a kitchen chair. “You’re an angel. I’ve started over twice already and by this point I think the pan is beyond saving.”
Felix takes a gulp of his shake, grimaces, and wades through the balloons to the counter to take a look. Chan is not lying—Felix has never seen a pan in a sorrier state. “Did you even use butter?”
The silence is deafening.
“You forgot, didn’t you.”
“Butter,” Chan groans.
Felix peers into the mixing bowl. “Though to be fair, I don’t think you used enough flour either. Do you have enough ingredients for me to start over?”
Chan waves a hand in the direction of the fridge. “Yes. Yeah, go wild. Whatever you need.”
“Not before my check-up,” Seungmin says, walking back in. Hyunjin’s loud protest is cut off by a single quelling look. “Are you saying your pancakes are more important than Felix’s health after he nearly dropped again? Think very carefully before you speak.” He drags Felix back over to his chair.
Hyunjin pouts, but Felix knows it’s for show. The alpha’s scent that morning, one of relief and lingering worry, had made it more than clear that he cared.
“Come on, Hyunjin-ah,” Changbin says, picking him up off the floor as if he weighs no more than one of the balloons, seemingly forgetting about his ‘deflated lung’. “We’ll sing for you while Seungmin does his doctor thing.”
“Doctor thing,” Seungmin grumbles, even as he starts laying out various—well. Doctor things.
Changbin breaks out into Happy Birthday as he unceremoniously dumps Hyunjin into a kitchen chair, and the others join in. Felix does too, until Seungmin motions for him to be quiet so he can get an accurate reading. Hyunjin lights up under the attention and leans happily back into Jisung as everyone does, in fact, hug him now.
It isn’t long before Seungmin finishes his examination, declaring Felix stable with a notable expression of relief on his face. “You scared the life out of me last night,” he says as he puts the analyser back in its case. “I was afraid you’d slip back into a drop, even after Channie-hyung knocked you out.”
“Sorry,” Felix says again.
“I called the clinic. Well, not the clinic itself,” Seungmin amends as Felix looks up. “Just one of the doctors I mentioned, one of the people I’ve been in touch with over the course of your drop. He assured me that we were in time to keep you from dropping again, but he offered to stop by today to give you a checkup. Just to make sure.”
Felix doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Seungmin bites his lip. “Please. I… again, I know it looks like I know what I’m doing. But I really am still only a student, and I’m terrified I missed something important. Please let Seonghwa-hyung check you over.”
The idea of being examined by a real doctor, who is bound by Korean law and healthcare regulations to log his results and contact his registered alpha, is enough to make Felix’s blood run cold. This doctor could have Felix back with Kwang-ho before the end of the day, and that thought sends ice clawing up his spine. He doesn’t want to see this doctor. Seungmin has done fine so far, he trusts him, he likes Seungmin—
He catches sight of Seungmin’s face, and slumps. He likes him. And the look on Seungmin’s face right now, of tension and uncertainty, does not sit well with him at all. Felix’s mind flashes to the breakdown Seungmin had had not even two days ago, and his shoulders sink. “Do you trust him?”
“With my life,” Seungmin says immediately. “With Jeongin’s life, if it came to it.” Seeing Felix’s hesitation, he adds, “He’s one of the good ones, Felix. You can trust him.”
“He won’t turn me in?”
“No. I’ve seen him and his team get omegas in and out of the clinic without anyone even noticing. A home visit like this will be even easier to hide. Everything will be off the record.”
There’s one more thing tying knots in his stomach. “Is he an alpha?”
Seungmin’s smile is understanding. “Seonghwa-hyung is an omega. Some of the doctors he works with are alphas and they’re just as trustworthy—Hongjoong-hyung does home visits too—but I figured you wouldn’t be comfortable with that.”
Okay. Okay. That’s… he can do that. He trusts Seungmin, and if Seungmin trusts these doctors, then Felix can do the same. “Okay,” he sighs. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” The relief on Seungmin’s face is so stark that Felix knows he made the right decision, for the beta’s peace of mind if nothing else. “Thank you. I’ll let him know he can come over.” He stands to go in search of his phone, leaving Felix sitting at the kitchen island, apprehensive but determined to do this for Seungmin. “Keep drinking!” he yells over his shoulder, and Felix resignedly takes another sip of the chalky liquid.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Chan speaks up, and Felix had almost forgotten the alpha was there. “About us stressing you out, but also about the…” He waves his hand. “The scent thing. I know it can be a lot, and I normally keep a tight lid on it. But it was the only thing we could think of.”
“It’s okay. Hyunjin explained when I woke up. And I mean, it worked. So thank you.”
“You’re doing okay?” Chan asks, watching him carefully.
“I really am fine,” Felix says. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
Chan hesitates. “You’re not feeling—”
Whatever he was about to ask gets interrupted by Jisung, who jumps off his chair with an excited shout as Seungmin comes back in carrying a large box. “Presents!” he yells. “Jinnie, you’re going to love this.”
Felix watches the delight on Hyunjin’s face as he tears open the brightly coloured wrapping paper and lays eyes on his brand new camera. The alpha is ecstatic, immediately taking pictures of the cake on the table, the balloons, and all of his packmates, as well as Felix.
“Stop it,” he laughs as Hyunjin tries to direct him into model poses. “If you still want my present, you’re going to have to let me make them.”
“Pancakes!” Jisung yells, popping up between the two of them with a wide grin.
“Pancakes,” Felix agrees as he walks to the counter, stomach jittery with nerves. Chan has rinsed out the mixing bowl and set out the ingredients Felix requested, and everything is ready for Felix to start. He stares at the ingredients and feels his hands tremble. What if he doesn’t remember how to make them? What if they turn out awful? What if it will feel wrong, like he always feared it would, and it will ruin the few good memories he has?
He takes in a deep breath and tries to centre himself. He’s fine. He’s alright, he can do this. If it doesn’t work, then… well, at least he’ll know. His stomach clenches at the thought, but he takes another breath. He has to try.
Jisung is still standing behind him, and he must be able to smell his anxiety by now. But the alpha doesn’t do anything, just stands there and chats to the others, and it takes Felix a minute to realise he’s subtly redirecting everyone away from the counter, letting Felix work through his fears.
It fills him with a rush of affection, and some of the tension bleeds out of him. He takes another breath, then reaches out and grabs the eggs.
It’s like some glass case in his brain cracks open along with the first egg. Muscle memory floods back in, and his hands move without him even having to think about what he’s doing. He whisks in salt and cinnamon and a dash of pepper, something that will barely be noticeable in the final result but that his dad had always sworn by. The movements are familiar, soothing, and it’s almost like he’s back in Sydney on any Sunday morning, like he could turn around and find his little sister playing her DS on the couch, like his mom could walk in any moment with a smile and a song on her lips.
He pauses his whisking for a moment, a pang of grief shooting through him. But then Hyunjin shrieks as a balloon pops and Changbin’s cackles fill the room, and Felix can breathe again. They’re gone. But he’s not alone.
His actions are sure and practised as he melts a slice of butter into the pan and pours the batter in. Before long, he flips the first pancake onto a plate, golden brown and steaming. He waits until he has a small stack before turning around. Jisung is still there, subtly standing guard over his workspace, and he looks over his shoulder as Felix moves. Felix smiles at him, hoping it conveys the gratitude he feels, and then steps past him to present the plate to Hyunjin. “Happy birthday.”
The alpha gasps, and then jumps up to sweep Felix into a hug. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you—”
Felix laughs. “You haven’t even tried them yet. Thank me after you’ve made sure I’m not poisoning you.”
“You’re not. They smell so good.” Hyunjin turns back to cram half a pancake into his mouth and moans. “Soh goo.”
“Me next! Me next!” Changbin yells. “Please make some for me too.”
The others start begging for pancakes too, and Felix turns back to the stove, relieved. No, it’s not the same. It’s not like it was in his memories—he’ll never get that back. But doing this doesn’t feel wrong, not like he feared. It hasn’t ruined the memories, only brought them closer to the surface.
And maybe, he thinks as the smell of butter and sugar mingles with the sounds of laughter and conversation, maybe he can make new ones, too.
Notes:
This chapter comes with a 2.8k bonus scene of the pack’s panicked reaction to Felix nearly dropping again, and the conversation they have afterwards. Basically, what happens in between "Felix's mind goes blank" and "When he wakes, his mind is clear". I think you’ll like it, and I think it adds a lot to the story (definitely to this chapter).
Chapter Text
Felix felt relaxed all throughout breakfast, but the nerves return in full force when Seungmin tells him the doctor will be there around one. He tries not to let it show, does his best to laugh along with Jisung and Changbin as they play a round of Mario Kart, but he knows from the way the others keep glancing at him that he isn’t very successful.
“Is there anyone you want to be there during the examination?” Seungmin asks, pulling him aside for a minute. “I will be there, of course, and Channie-hyung said he would like to be there as well, as pack alpha, but only if you’re comfortable with that. He’ll stay away if you don’t want him there.”
“No, I… I would like that,” Felix says. He has only known the alpha for a day, but there’s something about Chan that feels grounding, and Felix suspects he could use all the grounding he can get. “Can Innie be there?”
“If you want him to be.” Seungmin turns around. “Innie!”
Jeongin’s head pops up over the back of the couch, and Seungmin beckons him over.
“Noooo,” Hyunjin protests from beneath him. “You promised cuddles.”
“And you got them,” Jeongin retorts, getting up.
“For barely ten minutes!”
Jeongin grins. “You never specified a time. Bye, hyung!” He dodges Hyunjin’s swipe for his arm with a laugh, and heads over to Felix and Seungmin in the kitchen. Hyunjin’s wail of despair continues until Changbin flops down on top of him, and then it cuts off into a wheeze. “Oh my god, not you, I can’t breathe, get off—”
“What’s up?” Jeongin asks.
“Can you be there during Felix’s check-up?” Seungmin asks.
“Sure. Where will you go?”
Seungmin thinks about it.
“The bedroom?” Felix offers, even if his stomach clenches. He didn’t feel this way with Hyunjin and Chan, but the thought of a stranger entering the room where his nest is makes his skin itch. But, well. It’s not like he can just ban the others from the living room.
“Absolutely not,” Jeongin and Seungmin say at once.
“Lix, your nest is there.” Jeongin looks appalled at the thought. “We’ll just use the living room.”
Seungmin nods. “The others can go watch a movie in the den, or they can go out for lunch.”
They look determined, and Felix’s shoulders slump in relief. “Okay.”
“What do you want us to call you?” Seungmin asks.
Felix blinks at him in confusion.
“I’ve never given them your name when I talked to them. Seonghwa-hyung won’t ask you for it either. But just in case we need to address you, or describe you. We could use ‘omega’ as a form of address, but I think a name would be nicer.”
“Oh,” Felix says. That’s a surprisingly thoughtful question. “Call me Yongbok?”
“Yongbok it is,” Seungmin nods. “I’ll let hyung know.”
And so, a few hours later Hyunjin, Changbin and Jisung have left the house to grab lunch at a restaurant Hyunjin likes, and Felix is curled into a ball in a corner of the sofa. He’s scared, and it’s stupid. He’d already decided he was going to trust Seungmin. He does trust Seungmin. But this doctor will have the power to send him back to Kwang-ho—will have Felix’s life in his hands in every way, and everything inside Felix is screaming at him to run.
When the doorbell rings, he nearly bolts from the room. Only Jeongin’s presence at his side keeps him seated. The omega’s arms are wrapped tightly around Felix and a fiercely protective cloud of vanilla hovers around him. He still flinches violently at the sound though, and a whimper escapes him before he can hold it back. His heart races in his chest, so quickly he thinks it might burst free.
Chan’s face twists and he rises from his chair. He crouches down in front of Felix, adding a soothing burst of coffee to the vanilla. “It’s alright.” His voice is deep and intent. “Seungminnie trusts this doctor, so I’m sure it will be fine.”
Felix knows this. He knows this, but—
“But I’m going to talk to him first,” Chan continues. “Because I don’t feel comfortable letting anyone near you who might harm you, and I want to get a read on this man.”
“Hyung,” Seungmin protests, but Chan holds up his hand to silence him.
“We’ll be in the kitchen for this talk,” the alpha says, not looking away from Felix. “You’ll be able to hear every word. If at any moment you decide you do not want to do this, I want you to let Jeongin know, and he’ll tell me ‘beans’.”
Despite the tension, Jeongin snorts. “Really? The safeword, hyung?”
The corner of Chan’s mouth ticks up. “Well, it means everything stops. I’d say it works for this too. Is that okay, Felix? If I talk to him first, and you listen?”
They’re so kind. Felix wants to cry at the kindness they keep showing him. “Yes,” he manages, his voice more air than sound.
The doorbell rings again, and Chan stands. “Good. Minnie?”
“Yes,” Seungmin says. “Yeah, I get it. It makes sense. I’ll get the door.”
He leaves to let the doctor in, and Chan moves to the kitchen to wait. Jeongin shifts so he’s mostly hiding Felix from view and then holds his arms open again. Felix dives back into them, grateful for a chance to hide. It’s quiet for a minute, and then the door to the kitchen opens.
“…through here. Seonghwa-hyung-nim, this is Bang Chan, my pack alpha. Hyung, this is Doctor Park Seonghwa.”
From where he’s burrowed into Jeongin’s shoulder, Felix has a choice between huddling down so no one can see him through the archway, or lifting his head enough to watch the kitchen. He risks a split second of the latter, intending to duck back down, but then he realises that Seungmin and Chan have positioned themselves so they’re closest to the archway and the doctor’s body is only just visible. The man won’t be able to see into the living room, but Felix can observe him from here. He keeps watching, peering over Jeongin’s shoulder.
He can’t make out every detail of his face, half turned away as he is, but the omega has black hair and is tall like Seungmin. He’s dressed in casual clothes, dark skinny jeans and a black turtleneck. He looks young. Far younger than Felix expected. Upon entering, he folds himself into a respectful bow. “Thank you for welcoming me into your home, Bang Chan-nim. Seungmin has told me a lot about you.”
Chan bows back. “Likewise, Doctor Park.”
He straightens, and there’s a pause as they look at each other. Then Chan says, “Look, I’ll be honest. Seungmin trusts you, and that means something to me. It’s why you’re here. But I don’t know you, and this is too important to me to just let you in. I need you to tell me why I should trust you.”
“Hyung!” Seungmin says, aghast, but he falls silent again as Chan shakes his head at him.
It’s the first time Felix has seen Chan pull rank like this. He’s usually happy to let everybody do what they want, always laughing when they go against him, but this Chan is different. This Chan is dominant, face hard and unmovable. He seems bigger somehow, even if Seonghwa is half a head taller than he is.
If Seonghwa is in any way offended by this, he doesn’t show it. He simply nods respectfully again. “I understand. I realise that the position I’m in is one of power in this situation, and trust is a lot to ask for.” He sighs. “Unfortunately, because my mates and I work so secretively, keeping everything off the books as much as we can, there isn’t a lot I can show you that would prove my honesty. There aren’t really patient reviews or official certificates for what we do.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“Hyung, I already told y—”
Seonghwa holds up a hand. “It’s alright, Seungmin-ah. I appreciate you vouching for me, but your pack alpha is right to question me. You’ve never been on one of these home visits with me or Joong, but this is very normal, and very understandable.” Seonghwa turns back to Chan. “As you know, we work at the Golden Hour Clinic, six of my mates and I.”
“You’re a pack?” Chan interrupts.
“Yes. Most of us met through work, or when we were still med students. Our youngest hasn’t graduated yet, actually, but he interned with us last year and latched on to our Yeosangie, and there was no getting rid of him after that.”
“And nobody notices? An entire pack working in the same clinic, doing all kinds of stuff under the radar? That sounds suspicious to me.”
Seonghwa chuckles. “You’d think so, right? But it’s a very large clinic, one of the biggest in Seoul. We wear scent blockers at work, and we’re careful to keep our interactions strictly professional when we’re there. Most people don’t even know we are mated. It’s in our personnel files, but those are not publicly accessible. As for what we do…” He tilts his head. “Yeosangie works in screening, and Yunho works the front desk. They’re quick and they have good instincts. Any time they catch an omega who looks like they’re in need of our help, they shuffle things around so the omega will be placed in our care. The reasons vary. Sometimes they’re omegas on the run who have dropped, or people who are going through a bond severing. Sometimes it’s domestic abuse, or excessively controlling family members. The why doesn’t matter, and we don’t ask. We simply help where we can. That’s all.”
“Just like that?”
“Are you asking why we do it?”
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the law. It seems like a lot of risk to take for strangers.” Chan’s tone is almost provocative.
Felix can see Seungmin clench his hands into fists, but Seonghwa doesn’t react. He sounds patient and calm when he says, “We didn’t always do this. Joong and I were already mated when we graduated, and the clinic was our first job. We were just like any other doctor there, helping omegas according to hospital regulations, following protocol.” He pauses. “Sometimes, however, protocol is wrong. There was a rough case, about four months after we started. We were helping an omega through a drop, a really bad one. You’ll know by now that it’s a long process. The drop alone can take weeks, and then there’s the recovery after. You bond with your patient, and they tell you things. This woman… She didn’t want to go back to her mate. It was her alpha wife who caused the drop in the first place, and she was terrified it would happen again if she went back. She begged us to help her get away, she had family in Gwangju that would help her if only she could get to them.”
He sighs. “Joong and I went to our superior. He said our hands were tied. We had to follow hospital regulations, and that meant returning the omega to her alpha upon discharge.” His shoulders slump. “So we did. She died two weeks later.”
Jeongin hisses in Felix’s ear, and Felix startles. He’d almost forgotten he was there.
“The worst thing is that the head of department wasn’t wrong,” Seonghwa continues. “It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, but his hands were tied. The clinic is under so much scrutiny as it is, and if he simply told us to go against the law like that, it would be shut down before the week was over. But Joong and I… that case really hit us hard. We kept talking about it, and we promised each other that if something like that happened again, we would at least try, law be damned.” There’s a quiet chuckle. “And then we fell in love with the tall beta at reception, and Yunho turned out to be a genius with computers. We gained a packmate and a partner in crime all at once, and by the time another omega needed our help, we’d set up a system.” He huffs. “We still almost got caught. It took us a while to streamline things. But it grew easier as our pack expanded, and by now, we know what we’re doing. We have connections, both in pharmacy and to get people out of the city, and we know how to hide our tracks. Aside from our work at the clinic, Wooyoung and Mingi do check-ups at a homeless shelter in Dongjak-gu every Saturday, and Hongjoong and I do home visits like this one.”
It’s quiet for a moment and then Chan lets out an incredulous laugh. “Wow.”
“It is a risk, that’s true,” Seonghwa replies. “But it is worth it, to all of us.”
“I… I didn’t know that,” Seungmin says quietly. “About that case you and Hongjoong-hyung had.”
Seonghwa snorts, amused. “You didn’t ask. You were on board before we’d even finished offering.”
Chan laughs, and Felix sees Seungmin’s cheeks colour.
“Don’t worry,” Seonghwa says, stepping forward to squeeze Seungmin’s shoulder. “We all loved you. We’d welcome you back into our folds anytime.”
“Yes, I have a question about that,” Chan says, sobering. “I understand that Seungmin aided you in this kind of work. But I was not informed, and—don’t look at me like that, Minnie, you know I wouldn’t stop you from doing it.” He turns back to Seonghwa. “But he’s only a student, and he was under your care. If things had gone wrong during one of your cases, would he have gone down with you?”
“No,” Seonghwa answers immediately. “We asked him to keep it secret. That is true. But his name was never on any of the illegal cases we handled, Yunho made sure of that. If anything had happened, he would have been fine.”
Chan nods, and his expression relaxes. “Good. That’s all I needed to know.”
“Have I passed your test, Bang Chan-nim?” There is a hint of amusement to Seonghwa’s voice.
Chan smiles. “Let’s skip the formal honorifics. I’m ’97.”
“In that case, you’re my hyung. I’m ’98.”
“Forever the oldest,” Seungmin grins, laughing when Chan lunges for him. “Stop! Stop! Hyung, my superior is here!”
Chan lets him go with a fond ruffle through his hair, ignoring Seungmin’s red cheeks and the way he swats at his hand. “All kidding aside,” he says with a smile as he straightens. “How are we feeling over there, I.N-ah? No beans?”
Felix ducks his head back down in case Seonghwa looks over, but it’s only out of reflex. He’s not afraid anymore. Seonghwa had clearly been honest, and Seungmin’s trust makes a lot more sense now that he’s heard the man. He sounded genuine. He sounded kind.
He moves his head back a little to look at Jeongin, who is watching him patiently, waiting for him to reach a decision.
“I want to do this,” Felix says.
Jeongin nods. “We’re good, hyung,” he calls out to the kitchen. “All green.”
“Stop it with the sex codes,” Seungmin hisses, and Seonghwa lets out a bright laugh.
“That’s a new one. I like it. Wooyoungie is going to love that.”
“Oh god, please don’t tell him,” Seungmin mutters as he leads Seonghwa over. “He’ll never let me hear the end of it.” They walk around the couch, but stop a few feet away. “Hyung-nim, this is my packmate Jeongin, and this is Yongbok.”
“Hi,” Jeongin says, still curled around Felix. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“So you’re the one that got Seungminnie into our ranks,” Seonghwa smiles. “He cares about you a lot.”
Seungmin colours, but Jeongin smiles. “I know. I had no idea he’d be so vocal in his defence of me. Love you, Minnie.” He means it, but Felix suspects half the reason he’s saying the words is to see Seungmin’s blush spread further at being talked to this affectionately in front of his mentor.
Seonghwa’s gaze drifts to Felix. “And hello, Yongbok-ssi. I’m very glad to see you well.”
Felix takes in the kindness in his eyes, his open expression. Slowly, he untangles himself from Jeongin and stands up. He takes a step forward so he’s in front of Seonghwa, and then bows in greeting. “Hello,” he says. He rises. “My name is Felix.”
Chan lets out a surprised sound and Seungmin’s eyebrows shoot up. Seonghwa merely smiles and rolls with it, not even blinking an eye. “Nice to meet you, Felix-ssi. Shall we talk casually? Call me hyung.”
Felix smiles back and nods.
“How are you doing, Felix? From my understanding you’ve had a few rough weeks.”
“I’m fine,” Felix says automatically. Then he amends, “I’m okay. It could have been a lot worse.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Seonghwa says. He looks at Seungmin with a fond smile. “You’re lucky. You were in very good hands.”
Seungmin doesn’t look pleased. Instead, he hangs his head, and the beginnings of shame start to creep into his sage scent. “I screwed up a lot, hyung.”
Chan opens his mouth as if to protest, but Seonghwa beats him to it. “We have discussed this on the phone before, Seungmin-ah. You’re a student. You only interned with us for three months. There are many things you don’t know yet, and that’s okay. When you called us for help that first week, none of us expected you to be perfect. We all knew you would make mistakes.” He steps forward, placing a hand on Seungmin’s arm. “Hey. Look at me?”
Seungmin lifts his head, eyes still filled with shame.
“None of the mistakes you made did any real damage. You were self-aware enough to realise when you were out of your depth, and never too proud to call us for help. That shows wisdom. You did well.”
He squeezes Seungmin’s shoulder, and the beta’s scent lightens, the shame ebbing away. Seonghwa looks at Felix, and then back to Seungmin. “Honestly? We’ve had your number on priority on our phones for weeks, ready to rush over if you could no longer handle it on your own. It would be safer for Felix if we didn’t have to, but it’s a lot to manage, a drop like this, and none of us would have blamed you if you needed help. You did better than any of us ever thought you would. You did an incredible job, Seungmin-ah. We’re all very proud of you.”
A tear slips down Seungmin’s cheek, and he wipes it away with a hasty sweep of his sleeve. “Thank you, hyung-nim.” He takes a breath to steady himself and then straightens. “I’m really grateful for all of your help. Sorry for waking you all up at two a.m. that time. I thought Hongjoong-hyung would still be up after his shift.”
“Never apologise for asking for help,” Seonghwa says firmly. “None of us minded.” His mouth twitches. “Except for Mingi, maybe, because he startled so badly he fell out of bed. Joong had to leave the room to answer your call, Wooyoung was laughing so hard.”
Seungmin laughs, and Felix can see the satisfaction in Seonghwa’s eyes. The omega knows exactly what he is doing, and Chan has stepped back, clearly having come to the same conclusion. Pack alpha or not, Chan’s reassurances won’t mean anything without the medical knowledge to back them up. It’s Seonghwa who Seungmin needed to hear this from.
Seonghwa looks back to Felix. “Before we start, I need to talk to Seungmin first, Felix, if you don’t mind waiting a moment? Seungmin-ah, will you show me your chart?”
“Oh, yeah I—” Seungmin looks around before spotting his trusty notebook on the coffee table. He grabs it and hands it to Seonghwa. “Here. You’ve seen most of it though.”
Seonghwa hums as he takes it. “Joong was the one who reviewed your charts this week. He told me about them of course, but I just want to refresh my memory.” He lowers himself onto the couch across from Felix and Seungmin hesitantly sits beside him, looking nervous as the doctor starts flipping through the pages. Occasionally he pauses to check something with Seungmin, most of which involves medical jargon that goes straight over Felix’s head.
Felix has sat back down next to Jeongin as well, and Chan comes to sit on his other side. “I’m proud of you,” the alpha mutters in English, briefly patting Felix’s thigh.
Felix shakes his head, even if the words spoken in the familiar accent fill him with warmth. “I haven’t done anything,” he says in the same language.
“You know you have. Trust is not easy, and you’re offering it anyway. Be proud of yourself.”
Felix is silent, but Chan doesn’t seem to expect a reply. He merely pats his thigh once more and then continues to watch Seungmin and Seonghwa, who are still discussing notes.
“So the rash went away after that?” Seonghwa asks as he’s reading. “Good. You spotted it early, there was barely any redness at all in the picture you sent Joong.”
“Seungmin sent pictures a few times,” Jeongin tells Felix before he has time to do more than frown in confusion. “To check if he was doing things right. We video-called too. But we never showed your face.”
“And the pictures were always deleted as soon as we’d finished discussing them,” Seonghwa promises, looking up. “I think you did the same?”
Seungmin nods. “I’m sorry, Felix. I would have asked, but, well.”
“It’s okay. I’m not mad.” He shakes his head. “How could I be? You literally kept me alive.”
“You certainly did,” Seonghwa agrees, flipping through the pages again. “You’ve been extremely thorough, Seungmin-ah. If we could get Woo to keep notes like this, the nurses would cry in relief.” He snaps the notebook shut. “In fact, you can start simplifying your daily check-ups. I’ll have a look at Felix in a second, but there shouldn’t be any need for daily temperature and blood pressure checks, nor the full set of motor skill tests you’ve been running. Pheromone levels and your general survey checklist should suffice.”
“Okay.” Seungmin takes the notebook back. “I was just scared I’d miss something.”
“I understand that, and I commend your meticulousness. But I think he’s out of the woods now, especially after he didn’t drop last night.” He smiles at Felix. “Your recovery rate is remarkable. Your body must have taken really well to your friends’ scents. It made your drop a lot less painful.”
“Less painful?” Jeongin sounds incredulous. “He screamed himself hoarse for days.”
Felix winces. They never told him about that. His heart sinks at what he must have put them through, and Jeongin nudges him. “Hey, no you idiot, that wasn’t your fault. I just mean, you’re saying it could have been worse?”
“Oh yes.” Seonghwa doesn’t even hesitate. “I know it might not have seemed like it at the time, but Felix got off lightly. A Stage-6 drop, and he was conscious after only two weeks? That’s incredible.”
“He started talking after a week and a half,” Seungmin adds. “I almost didn’t believe it when Changbin-hyung told me, until he did it again.”
“I talked?” Felix asks, shocked.
Jeongin chuckles. “You begged Sungie to keep singing.”
“I—what?” Felix flushes bright red. “Oh my god.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. You made his week. He’s still bragging about your first word being ‘Song’.”
Felix buries his face in his hands, and Chan laughs. “It’s true. He sounded like a mother boasting about her child.”
“Please just knock me out again now,” Felix tells Chan.
Seonghwa laughs too. “That’s what you did last night, right?” he asks Chan. “Use your scent to overwhelm him?”
Chan sobers. “Yes. I didn’t hurt him, right?”
“You shouldn’t have.” Seonghwa looks to Felix, tilting his head. “Did he hurt you? Any unpleasant aftereffects?”
Felix’s head shoots up. “What? No. No, I feel fine.”
Seonghwa nods. “It was the best thing you could have done,” he tells Chan. “You and Seungmin made the right decision.” He steps closer to Felix. “Alright. I’ll give you a quick check-up—not that I think I need to, Seungmin has that well in hand and you seem to be doing fine. But technically, I’m still his supervisor, so I should probably check. After that I would like to draw some blood so we can get a better idea of what’s going on beneath the surface. I’m wearing scent blockers, of course, so my presence will not harm you. Would it be alright if I come closer?”
When Felix nods, Seonghwa stands. “Great. Let me get my bag.”
Chan moves to give the doctor some space, but Jeongin keeps Felix’s hand in his for all of Seonghwa’s questions and then during the blood draw. Throughout all of it, Seonghwa explains what he’s going to do before he does it and keeps checking in with Felix for consent and comfort levels. Felix is starting to feel embarrassed about the fuss—he’s not that fragile, he can handle a simple blood draw—but Seonghwa seems to notice as soon as his scent changes. “It’s protocol, Felix. The way I’m treating you is how I treat all of my patients. I’m not coddling you.”
Now Felix feels embarrassed for a different reason, and Seonghwa briefly squeezes his arm. “It’s fine, don’t worry. I should have mentioned it.”
“How will you get his results?” Chan asks as Seonghwa presses a fourth vial onto the needle, watching as it fills. “I mean, he’s not in your clinic’s database. Will you use Jeongin’s name again?”
Seonghwa shakes his head. “That was fine for a simple ointment prescription, but bloodwork would be dangerous.” His eyes flick up to Jeongin. “If you ever need medical attention, we can’t have Felix’s results in your history.” He caps the vial, shakes it and drops it into a container next to him. “Mingi handles our lab work. Yunho makes sure the data is wiped afterwards. We’ll have your results by Tuesday.”
Chan frowns. “Do you always tell people this much? You say you’re the only ones in on this, but if people always ask you questions when you’re doing home visits and you tell them everything you told us… that’s a lot of people in the know.”
“Oh, very sharp,” Seonghwa smiles, not looking up from the next vial he’s filling. “I can see why Seungmin respects you so much. No, don’t worry. With other people, we stick to the basics. I don’t mention my packmates, and I certainly never go into everything we do. But Seungmin already knows, and you’re his pack. Moreover, you’re helping Felix. I talked to Hongjoong about it, and we figured a little trust was warranted here.” He tosses the vial into the container. “I’m going to remove the needle now, alright Felix? There might be a slight sting, but it’ll be done in two seconds.”
“Thank you for trusting us,” Chan says sincerely, with a small bow of his head. “Your secrets are safe with us.”
Seonghwa looks up from the cotton ball he’s pressing to Felix’s skin. He meets Chan’s eyes for a few seconds, and bows his head slightly in return. “Thank you.” He replaces the cotton ball with a band-aid and lets go of Felix’s arm. “There. I’ll let you get back to your day now.”
“That was all?” Felix asks.
“I meant it when I said Seungmin has everything well in hand. He could probably have done the blood draw himself as well, if we’d given him the equipment.” He smiles over his shoulder at Seungmin, who’s sitting on the edge of the coffee table. “Speaking of equipment, Wooyoungie smuggled a spare pheromone analyser back into the hospital. You can keep the one you stole.”
Seungmin flushes and bows his head, even as he smiles. “Thank you. I’m really grateful you came, hyung. I feel much better now that you’ve taken a look.”
“You’re going to make a great doctor, Seungmin-ah.” Seonghwa packs the last of his materials into his bag and stands. “But you’re not one yet, and you don’t have to be. This visit doesn’t mean that you should stop texting us, okay? Any time you feel unsure, you let us know. Promise me.”
“I will, hyung-nim. Thank you.”
Seonghwa turns back to Felix. “And you’d better take a nap now. You look dead on your feet.”
He’s not wrong. Felix has barely been awake for half a day, but he can already feel exhaustion pulling at his limbs. The frustration must be visible in his face, because Seonghwa’s face softens. “It will be like this for a good long while, I’m afraid, both the exhaustion and the muscle spasms you mentioned. The drop took a lot out of you, and from what you told me, you weren’t in the best of conditions before then, either. None of that is your fault, but it will mean it’s going to take a bit longer to recover. Hang in there, Felix. You’ll get there.” He looks around the room. “And it seems that until then, you’ve got some good people around you to fall back on.”
Chan squeezes Felix’s shoulder. “Absolutely. You’ve got us for as long as you need, Felix.”
Felix is too tired to figure out the confusing mess of feelings that rise up in him at that declaration. Instead, he turns to Seonghwa. “Thank you,” he says. “For coming here. And for… for everything you do. You and your pack.”
Seonghwa smiles, “You’re very welcome, Felix. And I speak for my pack too when I say that we do it gladly. Now, I’d better be off. I’ve got two more visits to make and Joong is on dinner duty tonight, so I need to be back before that. There is no way he’s including even a single vegetable if I’m not there to force him and I’d like to keep us all from getting scurvy.”
***
That night, despite his earlier exhaustion, Felix can’t sleep. Perhaps it’s because of the long nap he took with Chan and Jeongin that afternoon, or the excitement of the day, but while the others around him are out like a light, Felix is wide awake.
He watches the clock on the nightstand hit 02:00, then 02:30, then 03:00. It’s like all of the things he hasn’t allowed himself to think about come back to haunt him without warning.
Today had been great. Despite the initial stress over the doctor’s visit, despite everyone’s wistful glances at the eighth chair in the kitchen that had remained empty all day, it had been a good day. Hyunjin, Changbin and Jisung had returned with dinner, and there had been board games, and the mood had been light. That wasn’t surprising. Every day here has been great so far, no matter how poorly he felt physically. They’re all just so nice, and kind, and they hug and cuddle him with the same ease they touch each other. This house is the brightest place he’s been in since he last set foot in his parents’ house in Sydney.
But he knows his days here are numbered. Chan told him he could take as long as he needed, but eventually, he will get better, and then he will have to leave. He’ll have to leave, and he no longer has an apartment. He hasn’t brought it up with the others, but he is sure of it. Seojun would have rented it out to someone else within a day of Felix’s disappearance.
And so he’ll have no place to stay, and he no longer has a job. It will be like those weeks after he first came to Seoul all over again. Spending all day walking into stores and hotels and restaurants trying to find a place that’s willing to hire an omega in dirty, rumpled clothes. Sleeping in back alleys and subway stations, slipping into homeless shelters just long enough to get a free meal but leaving before any of the leering alphas can get their hands on him.
The thought is enough to make his stomach clench, and he swallows against the rising dread.
His scent sours enough that Changbin, stretched out next to him, stirs and mumbles something in his sleep. Felix pats him soothingly on his arm, and then wriggles out of the nest. He needs to get some air, he needs to calm down before he wakes everyone up.
He makes it out of the room without anyone noticing. He’s good at being quiet. On silent feet, he makes his way to the kitchen, noting how different the house feels at night. It still smells comforting, but it’s dark and still now, the silence a heavy weight that makes him feel out of place. In a few hours, he knows it will be broken by Jisung’s laughter and music from Seungmin’s morning playlist, but right now it feels oddly cold, like he shouldn’t be here.
The kitchen is dark, but the living room seems a little brighter. Nobody pulled the curtains before they went to bed, and moonlight falls in through the large windows. He steps through the archway, and it’s only when he reaches the couch that he notices there’s someone in the room.
A man is standing by one of the windows, gazing up at the night sky. It’s a clear night, and even from where Felix is standing he can see the rising quarter moon peek out from behind a tree. Felix hasn’t made a sound, but the man must sense something anyway, because he turns, alarmed. A beam of moonlight falls across his face, and Felix stills.
For a long moment, he and Minho stare at each other, both caught off guard.
Then Felix takes in a breath, and a series of emotions flicker over Minho’s face in quick succession, too rapid to make out, before his face shutters and a blank mask settles in its place.
“I-I’m sorry,” Felix says, and his voice breaks clumsily into the heavy silence that hangs between them, too loud, every syllable echoing like the blow of a hammer. He takes in another breath. That too sounds loud, everything amplified in the stillness of the night. He doesn’t move his eyes from Minho’s face. The moment doesn’t quite seem real, and it feels like the alpha will vanish if he looks away. For a second, he wonders if he’s dreaming. “I… I didn’t know you were here. I’ll go.”
He starts to turn, but a voice says, “Wait.”
Felix turns back.
Minho looks at him, face perfectly blank, and Felix wishes he knew what the alpha is thinking. Minho lets out a breath, and Felix can hear this too. “Stay. I’ll leave.”
Felix startles. “No, I can—”
“I’m leaving anyway,” Minho interrupts, already moving towards the door. “Stay.”
And just like that, he’s gone.
Felix blinks after him for so long that when he finally moves again, his feet are stiff with cold. He looks to the window, and then to the door Minho had disappeared through. If he’d been there at all. Maybe Felix really had been dreaming.
When he returns to the nest, the clock on the nightstand reads 04:03. And while the sour worry is gone from Felix’s scent, his head is a jumble of confusion.
Chapter 11
Summary:
Minho.
Notes:
This chapter gets into some pretty heavy backstory. For trigger warnings, please see the end notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The next day, he doesn’t tell anyone about what happened. Or what didn’t happen. In the bright light of the morning, it seems even more far-fetched that last night he’d just stumbled upon the person that has been actively avoiding the house for weeks.
It’s crazy. Of course it hadn’t happened. And as the day starts and Jisung drags him to the bathroom to wash his hair, he dismisses it from his mind. He must have been dreaming.
***
Half a day later, he realises it is not as easily dismissed as he would like, and he drops his head to his folded leg with a sigh.
“Changbin-hyung?” he asks from his pigeon pose. He’s done with his mandatory exercises and is now halfway through his mandatory cool-down, which is at least distinctly more pleasant.
Changbin grunts from where he’s lying flat on a bench in front of Felix, on rep six of a set of chest flies. The dumbbells he’s holding are easily twice the size of Felix’s head.
They’re in the gym, a room in the basement fully stocked with weights and machines and a floor-to-ceiling mirror that stretches out along an entire wall. Changbin had nearly danced to the room the first time he got to go back here after their quarantine, and Felix could see why. If you loved working out as much as Changbin does, this room must be nirvana.
Felix waits until he’s finished the set and has sat up before he asks, “Can I ask you something about Minho-ssi?”
The way Changbin chokes on his sip of water makes Felix glad he waited. If the beta had dropped one of the dumbbells on his face, there is no way Felix would have been able to lift it off of him. “What—” he coughs. “What do you want to know?”
Felix shifts to stretch out his other leg. They never talk about Minho around him, but right now he needs them to. He needs more information. “How did you meet?”
Changbin stares at him in the mirror for a moment, and then wipes his face with a towel. “You know how we have our own recording studio at home now?”
“Yeah.” Felix hasn’t seen it yet, but he’s heard them talk about it. Or rather, he heard Changbin and Jisung complain about having to edit on a tiny laptop instead of the studio computers with their big screens.
“Well, we didn’t always have that.” Changbin shakes his head. “Obviously. We were poor as dirt when we quit our traineeship. Everyone thought we were crazy, ‘cause we showed promise, you know? But we did know that. That’s why we quit, we wanted to make our own music without all the restrictions and rules a company would strangle us with.” He huffs out a laugh. “Didn’t quite stop to consider that to make music, we’d need a studio, and studios cost money.”
Felix smiles. How young must they have been? Not even twenty, probably.
“We found one though, in this old dance studio that had some recording spaces we could hire. The soundproofing wasn’t great, but it sure as hell beat the tiny apartment we were living in. We just had to work around the dance classes that were taught there.” His eyes find Felix’s in the mirror. “That’s how we met Minho. He taught dance. Still does. Different studio now though, he was always too good for that place.”
He smiles. “God, he was an ass. After his classes, he’d use the space to practise his own dancing. We’d ask him to turn the music down, he’d turn it up. We offered to come in the middle of the night when the place was empty, he’d be there, blasting the shittiest hip hop through the speakers until none of us could hear our own thoughts.” He laughs. “Handsome as shit though, with that cocky glint in his eyes. There was always this… spark, between us. And we gave back as good as we got. Freestyling lyrics in the hallway as he was teaching so no one could hear his instructions, finding out which soda he drank to make sure the vending machine was always empty of that exact one, that sort of stuff. It was this game we were playing. There was a lot of back and forth, but we all knew what we were heading towards.”
His eyes focus on Felix again, and his mouth quirks up. “It took us a long time. I’ll spare you the details. But we got together. We just clicked, after he finally let us in. All taunting asshole on the outside, but once he finally started showing us he cared? God. You should see him with Hannie. He’s the one who cooks, too, normally. None of us can cook for shit, compared to him. Oh, most of us can handle the basics,” he says when he sees Felix is about to protest. “But you haven’t tasted good food until you’ve had his. He’d kick our asses for the stuff we’ve been serving you.” He drifts off into thought for a moment.
Felix watches him. Changbin has always been easy to draw into conversation, always up for a chat and free with his words. But Felix has never quite heard him speak like this, this openly, with so much fondness in his voice. He supposes the words had always been there, ready to roll off his tongue, just waiting for Felix to ask.
And so, as his mind brings up the hazy image of Minho’s face in the living room, half-obscured by the shadows of the night, he asks one more question, even if he doesn’t think he really needs to. “Do you love him?”
Changbin turns fully this time, away from the mirror so he can look Felix in the eye for real. He watches him for a moment, and Felix isn’t sure what he’s looking for, what he can read in his Felix’s face. Finally, he simply says, “Yes. I love him.”
Felix nods, and goes back to his stretches.
***
He doesn’t intend to do anything. But then that night he wakes up because he needs to pee, and when he gets back from the bathroom, his eyes fall on the clock. 02:49. He hesitates, one knee already back in the nest.
This is stupid, he tells himself. There is no way he’ll be there, even if the previous night somehow really happened. There’s no way he’d come back.
But he has to check. He has to know.
He shrugs on a hoodie that’s slung over the back of a chair—Jisung’s, judging by the cinnamon that wraps around him—and slips out of the room.
This time, he spots the figure before he even enters the living room, and it sends a jolt of shock up his spine. It was real. He hadn’t dreamed it.
He halts in the archway, half-hidden behind the wooden column, just watching. Last night, he’d been too stunned to feel anything, but this time, now that he knows it’s real, he is a little apprehensive. Minho hadn’t done anything last night, but… Felix stays hidden.
Minho is sitting on the couch, his eyes closed. He’s taking deep, long gulps of air, almost like he can’t get enough oxygen. Felix watches him breathe, confused. Despite his wariness, after a few minutes he’s starting to grow a little worried, until he realises what the alpha is doing. It’s the scents. Now that Felix and the others are no longer confined to the guestroom, the pack has taken time to re-scent the house. He’s watched them do it over the past couple of days, rubbing wrists across surfaces or walking several circles around a room and releasing pheromones until it smelled right again. Each day, everyone is a little more relaxed as the house is gradually saturated with their scents once more.
But Minho hasn’t been here. Minho hasn’t been home in weeks, hasn’t smelled or scented or been scented by his pack in weeks. It’s enough to drive anyone mad, and Felix doesn’t know how the alpha has managed to stay away. He must have been… he really must be in pain by now, Felix realises. Jisung had said it, of course, that Minho was hurting himself, but Felix had thought he meant emotionally. The very real, very physical consequences of distancing oneself from one’s pack hadn’t even occurred to him.
The alpha trembles as he clearly fights the urge to bury his face in the couch cushions, fingers digging into his thighs so hard that they must be leaving bruises. Felix watches, trying to get a sense of how he feels. He’s… no longer as afraid as he was before. Yesterday, Hyunjin had said that Minho wasn’t angry with him, and at the time, he thought the alpha had just been placating him. But looking at Minho now, shaking and pale… this does not look like the alpha who pinned him down in the mall. A part of him wonders if that alpha even exists at all.
That’s not who he is, Jisung had said that day they met up for coffee.
Felix hesitates, but then Minho lets out a quiet, shuddering breath, and something in Felix clenches in sympathy. What Minho is experiencing… He knows how that feels.
It is a risk. He knows it is. And yet, when Minho’s breath hitches again, he steps forwards.
“Hey,” he says softly, and Minho startles so badly that he actually lets out the beginnings of a growl before realising who he is. Felix tenses, ready to cover his ears at the first hint of an alpha rumble in Minho’s voice. Ready to run, if he has to.
But Minho doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. He blanches, eyes still wide, as if he’s afraid of Felix. And then the emotionless mask slams back over his face.
But, well. He can hide his expression. Can hide his thoughts, and control his body language. But he can’t hide the exhaustion dragging at his skin, the dark circles under his eyes. Can’t hide the shaking of his hands, or the way he’s still gasping in desperate lungfuls of his packmates’ scents, even as he stares at Felix with blank eyes.
They watch each other for a long minute, both tense. And then, very, very slowly, Felix reaches up and grabs the back of Jisung’s hoodie. Quickly, so he won’t lose sight of Minho for long, he pulls it over his head, ignoring the cold that sends goosebumps across the skin of his arms. Wordlessly, he holds it out to the alpha.
Minho doesn’t move. He simply continues to stare at Felix, fingers still trembling.
Felix swallows. “You… You can take it,” he offers. “It’s Jisung’s. I only wore it for a few minutes, it shouldn’t have too much of my scent on it.”
Minho’s eyes dart to the hoodie, and then back to Felix’s face. He does not reach out.
Felix bites his lip. If he’s wrong about this, if Minho is angry with him after all, this is the stupidest thing he could possibly do. He takes a deep breath of the comforting scents in the room, steels himself, and throws the hoodie in Minho’s direction.
It hits him square in the face, and Felix stiffens.
But before he can apologise or shrink back, Minho whines into the fabric, hands shooting up to press his nose into it. He shudders, and Felix watches him suck in deep, sharp breaths like a man starved for air.
And he is. That’s exactly what this is. Scent starvation.
Felix knows it well. After he ran away from Kwang-ho, after he made it to Seoul, there had been weeks of awful, horrible anguish as his body longed for the mate his mind had never wanted. He knows what Minho is going through.
As he watches Minho shake, his wariness slowly drains away. No, this is not the alpha he met in the mall. He doesn’t know what happened that night, still doesn’t understand why Minho did what he did—but he’s starting to get to know the six other people in this pack, and he knows that they love Minho. And he knows without a sliver of doubt that they would never love someone like the image of Minho that’s stuck in his mind. Somehow, the idea he has of the man must be wrong.
“I’ll be right back,” Felix says quietly. “Please wait.” He leaves Minho on the couch, face still covered by Jisung’s hoodie, and slips away, into the hall and then back into the bedroom. Quickly, making sure to keep his movements quiet so he doesn’t wake anyone up, he darts around to grab other pieces of clothing. A shirt of Jeongin’s. Hyunjin’s cardigan. Changbin’s tank top. One by one, he gathers something from every pack member, and then hurries back to the living room.
He doesn’t know Minho, has no clue who the man really is, if he isn’t who Felix thought he was. But he does know that right now, he needs help, and that’s enough. For now, he can focus on that.
By the time he gets back to the living room however, his mind made up and his arms full of clothes, he knows he’s too late as soon as he steps through the archway. The couch is empty, and Minho is gone.
He slumps, frustrated, but then he pauses. Yes, Minho is gone.
But so is Jisung’s hoodie.
***
The next morning, he checks everywhere in the room, still a little doubtful. But Jisung’s hoodie isn’t there. It had really happened. Minho had really been there.
He doesn’t know what to do with that information. He doesn’t tell anyone about it. He probably should. He should tell Seungmin, if no one else, after the promise he made the beta about not meeting new people. He almost does that morning, when Seungmin is jotting down his readings in his trusty notebook. But the moment he opens his mouth to speak, the words stick in his throat.
It doesn’t feel right. It felt… fragile, that moment between them last night. Not that Minho had said anything or even really acknowledged Felix’s presence beyond a blank-eyed stare, but…
But he’d been so meticulous in shutting his packmates out, and somehow it feels like if Felix tells everyone that Minho was here, he’s going to jinx it. Like if he does, Minho won’t come back.
And well, nothing had happened. The alpha hadn’t attacked him, and he had clearly been wearing scent blockers, so it’s not as if Felix had been in any danger of smelling him the way Seungmin was wary of. He doesn’t need to tell Seungmin. So Felix keeps quiet, and starts his day as usual. He wants to see if anything else happens. If it doesn’t, if nothing changes, he can always tell them later.
Just after lunch, Hyunjin calls him over from the bedroom, and Felix walks in to find him and Jeongin standing next to the nest.
“What’s wrong?” Felix asks, seeing their serious expressions.
“Nothing,” Hyunjin says. “We just need your permission to take down the nest.”
The colour drains from Felix’s face.
“Temporarily!” Jeongin yells, smacking Hyunjin on the arm. “For a few hours, to wash the sheets! Jesus, hyung, have some tact.”
“Ow, ow!” Hyunjin wails. “I was getting to that!”
“You should have led with that,” Jeongin says exasperatedly. He looks back to Felix. “Lixie, we’d like to wash the sheets. It will take about four hours, and we can build a temporary nest in between. If you’re not comfortable with that, we have an extra set of sheets that we could use straight away, but they’re not as soft. That’s what we did during your drop so we wouldn’t have to take down the nest, but you definitely preferred these ones. I think waiting for them to be washed and dried would be best, but only if you can stand that long without a permanent nest.”
Oh.
Slowly, Felix feels the tightness in his chest disappear. That’s a reasonable request. Washing the sheets makes sense. It’s important. It’ll feel good when they’re all soft and clean again. And yet…
He looks at the nest. It’s so beautiful. It has actual walls, and pretty colours, and it smells so good. The thought of taking it down…
He swallows. He’s being stupid. They want to wash the bedsheets, not burn the nest to ashes.
There’s a whiff of vanilla and then Jeongin’s hand is in his. “Tell you what. I have my own room, and it has a really pretty nest. It has just as many colours, and it has curtains, and my friend Beomgyu gave me the softest pillows for my birthday. If you agree to let Jinnie-hyung wash the sheets, we can go there and you don’t even have to watch it happen. We can stay in my nest until he’s done, and then we can rebuild this one.”
Behind Jeongin, Felix vaguely notices Hyunjin’s jaw drop, but he’s too distracted by the earnestness in Jeongin’s eyes. “Really?”
“Yes,” Jeongin says without a moment’s hesitation. “Does that sound okay?”
Felix’s eyes flicker to the nest again. He fidgets. “We can… We can rebuild?” he stutters awkwardly. We’ll be allowed to? is what he’s really asking.
Based on the darkening of Jeongin’s expression, he hears it. “Yes,” Jeongin swears. “You can rebuild it whenever you want. However you want. No one will ever stop you.”
“We really won’t,” Hyunjin adds. “The last time Channie-hyung accidentally got in the way of Innie’s nesting, Innie threw a lamp at his head.”
Felix’s eyes grow wide, and Jeongin groans. “I didn’t mean to. He startled me, and I was territorial, and I lashed out instinctively. The lamp was closest.”
Hyunjin snorts. “Don’t worry,” he tells Felix. “Hyung caught it. He has good reflexes, and it was his own fault.”
The idea that Jeongin could throw a lamp at Chan in a nesting haze and they would all blame Chan instead of him is…
“The point is that you can build your nest in any way you like, and none of us will get in your way,” Jeongin says. His eyes dart to the lamp on the bedside table and he smirks. “That one looks like a sturdy enough threat.”
Felix laughs, incredulous.
Jeongin smiles back. “Okay with hyung washing the sheets?”
“Yeah,” Felix says, feeling a little lighter. “Yes. That’s fine.” He looks at Hyunjin. “Should I… Do you need help?”
“Absolutely not,” Hyunjin says, looking affronted at the very idea. “I’m not putting you through the stress of taking it down. Just go with Innie. To his room. Since apparently, you’ve been invited into it and all.”
He’s laughing by the end of it, and Jeongin shoots him a glare but pulls Felix along by his sleeve. “Come on. Let’s go to my nest.”
*
Three hours later, they’re stretched out on Jeongin’s four-poster bed, the curtains drawn around all sides but one. Jeongin was right. His nest is beautiful. Felix had no idea nests could look like this. The drapes are slightly see-through so the nest won’t feel too dark, and Jeongin has so many pillows. Felix is in awe of Jeongin’s nesting skills. The walls of his nest are layered with the softest materials and they look so sturdy, and they smell like all the different tones of Jeongin’s vanilla scent.
It’s a private nest, with no pack scents present. And yet Jeongin had pulled him towards it the moment they entered the room. When Felix had paused, a little doubtful, Jeongin had merely said, “It’s fine. You’re welcome in my nest, Lixie.”
And when Jeongin had tugged on his hand again, Felix had let himself be dragged into the nest. It was far, far too beautiful to resist. Jeongin had looked incredibly pleased with Felix’s awe, and had pulled him down for a nap with a smile on his face.
Now Felix is awake again, his head pillowed on Jeongin’s stomach and the first volume of Jeongin’s favourite manga series in his hands. Despite his initial attempts to control his scent, his control had relaxed in his sleep and the room now smells like lemon cupcakes, just like that night in the alley. It’s wonderful. He would have apologised to Jeongin, but the omega smells equally relaxed.
“It’s nice that you have your own room,” he murmurs, lowering the book.
“Mm?” Jeongin is listening to music, but he removes one of his earbuds so he can hear Felix better.
“It’s nice that you have your own room,” he repeats. “It’s pretty.”
It is. It’s not just Jeongin’s nest that’s beautiful. The room is large, and the walls are painted a deep, comforting blue. There’s a desk against a wall, and a few beanbags on a soft rug in the corner. There are two large windows that let in light, and all in all, it feels warm and loved.
“Oh.” Jeongin’s hand plays with a lock of Felix’s hair. “Yeah, I love it.”
“I like the blue walls.”
Jeongin takes a long breath, and Felix’s head rises and falls with the movement. “It was Minho-hyung’s room.”
Felix blinks. “What?”
“This room. Before I moved in, it was his. He painted the walls.” His hand keeps playing with Felix’s hair. “When I came, the pack knew I would want my own space, and they told me I could pick one of the other rooms. But hyung knew I like watching the sunrise, and this room has the best view. He chose it because he likes sunrises too. The day I moved in, he took me here and all his stuff was gone. He’d moved it to a different room, so I could have this one. Just because of something I mentioned to him once.”
Felix focuses on the soothing feeling of Jeongin’s fingers in his hair, his mind whirring. There it is again, that confusing clash between their stories about Minho and the image of him that had formed in Felix’s mind that night. Further proof that that image is wrong, and has been wrong from the very start. He’d thought Minho was like Kwang-ho. It’s why he’d been so scared for Jeongin’s safety. But Kwang-ho would never have done something like what Jeongin just told him. In fact, when Kwang-ho thought Felix was enjoying the sunshine falling in through the windows a bit too much, he had blocked out all windows in the back of the house for a month to keep Felix in the dark. And then he’d brought him back out into the light and commanded him to keep his eyes open and watch, if he liked it so much. It had hurt. It had hurt so much.
But Minho had given up his room for Jeongin, a room that had been his and that he liked, just to give Jeongin something he would love.
“I miss him,” Jeongin whispers, drawing Felix out of his thoughts. “I’m still mad about what he did to you. But I said a lot of very nasty things to him that night, and I should have heard him out first. I don’t understand why he would have done it. It just doesn’t seem like him.”
No. Felix is starting to get the same impression.
“That doesn’t change anything for you,” Jeongin continues, combing through his hair. “You don’t have to ever forgive him. None of us expect that from you. But I just… I miss him.”
“You love him.”
Jeongin exhales. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”
Felix doesn’t answer, but rubs his cheek over Jeongin’s stomach in wordless comfort, to show that it’s okay. Silently, he vows that he’ll bring Minho back to them. He wants to fix this. If he’s the reason Minho is staying away, then maybe he can convince him to come back. He’ll try again tonight. Maybe Minho will be there. And if he is, he’ll talk to him. He’ll do whatever it takes.
*
And so, later that night, he lies wide awake in their newly built nest. It is just as good as the first one, just as big, just as beautiful.
Felix had been anxious when they’d walked back into the room and the nest had been gone. But like Hyunjin and Jeongin had promised, the sheets had been fresh and clean and there had been baskets piled high with nesting materials, ready for them to rebuild. Jeongin had nudged Felix onto the bed, and then stuck his head around the doorway and bellowed, “HYUNGS! COME HELP US!”
The pack had come running.
If Felix hadn’t been a little busy with Chan and Seungmin checking him over to make sure he was okay, he would have laughed at the speed with which they’d all shot into the room.
“What do you mean, scent this!” Jisung grumbled at Jeongin, his nose stuck in the omega’s scent gland. “I thought one of you was hurt, you asshole.”
Jeongin didn’t bother holding back and was laughing openly. “We need scents.”
“I hate you,” Seungmin sighed, finally lowering Felix’s wrist.
Changbin was leaning against the doorway, an arm slung around Hyunjin’s waist. They were both grinning. “You’re a brat.”
“Yep,” Jeongin agreed with an answering grin. “Now come scent our blankets.”
And they had. They’d scented everything Jeongin handed them, no questions asked. Jeongin had tried to let Felix nest alone, but Felix had felt unsure. Surely he could never make anything as good as the nests Jeongin built. Jeongin’s nests were amazing, and Kwang-ho said Felix was terrible at nesting. And he knew that Kwang-ho said a lot of things that were not true, but what if this one was? Felix hadn’t had much of a chance to practise nest building, and he didn’t want to risk screwing it up and seeing the judgement on everyone’s faces.
So he’d asked Jeongin for help, and after studying his face for a minute, Jeongin had agreed. But only on the condition that they’d build it together. He’d kicked out everyone else and then started building, conferring with Felix on the placement of every blanket, of every pillow. He’d shoved as many of them in Felix’s hands as he could, and Felix had hesitantly placed them around the borders of the nest. “Just follow your instincts,” Jeongin had told him. “You know exactly what to do. Stop doubting.”
It had gotten a little easier as they went along, Felix slowly gaining some confidence as he sniffed a corner and instinctively reached for a pillow that had Changbin’s scent on it, because that was missing from that spot. He’d looked over his shoulder at Jeongin afterwards, but Jeongin had merely beamed at him and Felix had relaxed.
And now, the nest is finished, and everyone around him is asleep, their scents drifting gently across the freshly scented walls. The urge to follow them down into sleep is strong. He’s tired. And in the past week, he’d given into that tiredness, because there hadn’t been a reason not to. But this time, there is. This time, he has a plan, and he is going to stick to it.
He watches the numbers on the clock tick upward, then restart as midnight hits. He watches, fighting against sleep, and waits. And at 02:30, he slips out of Hyunjin’s embrace and out of the nest.
He grabs the shirt Jeongin had worn that day and makes his way to the living room. He doesn’t know if Minho will be there. He hasn’t heard anything, no car, no doors, and no footsteps. But he hadn’t heard Minho leave last night either, so the alpha must be good at being quiet too.
He doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or relieved when the room is empty. He might no longer be scared, but he’s still nervous to have this conversation. He waits for thirty minutes, then an hour, but Minho doesn’t appear. By that time, his eyes feel so heavy he can barely keep them open, and he decides to try again tomorrow.
He turns to go back to bed, but then stops, considering. Quickly, he heads back to the couch and leaves Jeongin’s t-shirt neatly folded on a cushion. There’s no harm in it. If the alpha doesn’t stop by, he’ll just collect it later.
But when he peeks into the room the next morning, groggy on far too little sleep, the shirt is gone.
***
After that, it becomes an unspoken agreement between the two of them. Felix waits until two or three in the morning before slipping out and leaving an item of clothing. A different pack member’s clothes every night, and by now Minho has at least one piece of clothing from everyone. He still doesn’t tell anyone about it. Clearly, Minho doesn’t want them to know he’s here, and it just… it doesn’t feel like Felix’s secret to share.
It’s not exactly what he wants, because he wants to talk to Minho, and the alpha is clearly avoiding him too. But at least this way Felix is helping him, and he hopes that if he keeps going, maybe it will put Minho at ease enough that he’ll agree to talk.
So Felix keeps leaving clothes, and keeps quiet. He starts leaving food, too. It hadn’t escaped him how gaunt the alpha had looked, so he sets out plates alongside the clothes. Leftovers from dinner. A sandwich. Some fruit. The food disappears, just like the clothing, although Felix finds the plates rinsed and placed back in the cupboards the next day.
Days pass. Seungmin returns to work, leaving everyone with a strict set of instructions and an order to call him or the Kim pack immediately if anything happens to Felix. Jeongin goes back to school in time to participate in an important debate he can’t miss. One by one, they all seem to settle back in their normal routines, although they’re careful about never leaving Felix alone in case he needs them.
After about a week, Felix opens the bedroom door after sharing breakfast with Jeongin and Jisung to find Seungmin bent over his notebook in the nest, two textbooks spread open in front of him.
“—really don’t need to, Seungmin-ah,” a tinny voice is saying through the speakers of Seungmin’s phone, which lies next to him on the sheets.
Seungmin looks doubtful. “But that study by Kang and Jameson said—”
There’s a laugh on the other end of the line. “What, the 1988 one? Seungmin. You know better than to trust those.”
“I- yeah.” Seungmin sighs. “I do. I’m just worried. He’s so tired.”
“You’ve been sending us his data daily, both his pheromone levels and his answers to the general checklist. He’s not feeling dizzy. He’s not nauseous, or in more pain than is normal for this stage of recovery. His pheromones are stable. He’s doing fine, Seungmin-ah.”
Oh. They’re talking about him. Felix doesn’t recognise the voice, but it must be one of Seonghwa’s packmates.
Seungmin’s hand clenches around an edge of his textbook. “So you don’t think we need to do another blood draw?”
“I do not,” the voice says, sounding kind and patient. “It’s only been a week and a half since the first one, and there’s nothing we could check for that the first tests didn’t already cover. Mingi was very thorough. I was talking to him and Woo earlier, and we all agree that the exhaustion could very well simply be due to the severity of his vitamin deficiencies. His B12 was what, 84? Layer those results on top of a Stage 6 drop and it’s no wonder he’s tired, Seungmin-ah. His body is going to need time to recover.”
Seungmin relaxes. “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.”
“He’s taking his prescriptions, and he’s resting. He gets more scenting from the six of you than he would have received from our volunteers at the clinic; he’s going to be fine. You’re doing a great job.”
“Okay,” Seungmin says again, and this time the tension is gone. “Thank you, hyung-nim.”
“No problem. Anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you, that was all. Sorry I keep—”
“Stop apologising, you idiot,” the voice says, amused and exasperated. “We don’t mind. Keep calling. In fact, if we stop hearing from you, I’m sending Woo over to drag a report out of you.”
Seungmin laughs, and Felix watches him exchange a few final pleasantries before ending the call.
He is still standing in the doorway, feeling guilty. He didn’t mean to worry Seungmin. The beta is right, he is tired. The drop had already left him with frustratingly little energy, but now that he only sleeps a few hours at night, always light enough to wake up at the barest sound, afraid of accidentally sleeping through his nightly appointment, the exhaustion is back in full force. The others have taken to letting him sleep in, but he often crashes again soon after breakfast, his sleep schedule slowly shifting to make up for the broken nights.
They’ve all been making sure to stay in the nest at night in the hopes that their scents will help. Ironically, this means that they’re all sleeping by the time Felix slips out, and it makes it easier to stick to his and Minho’s strange little understanding. Often one of them sits up to check if Felix is asleep and comfortable, but they always settle back down within seconds. Felix is good at faking sleep. He’s good at reeling his scent in just enough that it will still drift around him, but the lack of haziness won’t be too obvious. He did it often when he was living with Kwang-ho, in an attempt to escape the alpha’s attention. With Kwang-ho, it hadn’t always worked. But the pack isn’t looking for signs of deceit, and it’s ridiculously easy to fool them.
He feels a little guilty about that too. But it’s worth it, he tells himself. If there’s any chance that what he’s doing will bring Minho back to them, it’s worth taking a few extra naps throughout the day.
“Oh hey,” Seungmin says as Felix steps into the room. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” Felix answers, climbing back into the nest. He longs to crawl back underneath the blankets, and it’s clear that Seungmin notices.
“You can go back to sleep in a minute,” he says. “I talked to Hongjoong-hyung and I’m finally reassured I’m not accidentally killing you. Apparently, you’re tired because of your B12 and other deficiencies, and all we need to do is let you rest.”
Felix huffs out a laugh to hide the flicker of guilt that shoots through him. At least Seungmin smells genuinely relieved, and he looks a lot more relaxed than yesterday. “I won’t say no to more sleep,” he shrugs nonchalantly. And he won’t. Except at night.
“Come here,” Seungmin says, patting the spot next to him. “I’ll run your tests and then you can lie down.”
Felix yawns and shuffles closer, baring his neck for the analyser. In the past, baring his neck had meant subservience, or fear. But it’s not like that with Seungmin. It’s not like that with any of them. For some reason, he hasn’t panicked about the action once, not even after he just woke up here. It’s like his body just knew they were safe, even if his mind had no memory of those two weeks.
Seungmin presses the metal tip against his scent gland and starts the reading. Felix waits, looking at the scribbles in Seungmin’s notebook. “What does it mean?” he asks.
“Hm?”
“Mod. And Sig. And…” He squints. “Rib?”
Seungmin snorts. “Rel. I’m glad my handwriting is doctor-like at least, even if I’m still only a student.”
Felix laughs. “Sorry. What does it mean though?” He’s been wondering about it since he woke up.
“It stands for releaser. They’re types of pheromones. Modulator, signaller, releaser and primer. They’re good indicators of whether different processes in your body are functioning well or not. Whether you’re healthy.”
“Like when I smell someone’s scent and I can tell they have a cold?”
The analyser beeps, and Seungmin starts scribbling down his results. “Kind of. This is a lot more specific though. Like, your Mod-A tells me your general omegan hormone stability. So long as it remains below twenty, we’re good. Today it’s twelve, which is great. It’s the only Mod reading I need, the others don’t really matter right now.”
“What are they?” Felix asks, curious now despite his tiredness.
Seungmin smiles, pleased at his interest. “Most of the Mods correspond to certain emotions. Like, Mod-C is for anger, Mod-D for sadness. Those aren’t too important, because people can generally pick up on emotions from someone’s surface scent. The only useful ones are A and B.” At Felix’s look of curiosity, he continues, “Your Mod-B is…” He hesitates for a split second. “For an omega, Mod-B responds to Alpha Voice. If it’s higher than fifteen, it means an alpha used their Voice on you.”
Oh. Felix swallows. “So in the mall, when Minho-ssi…”
Seungmin’s face does something complicated, but he answers, “Yes. Your Mod-B would have spiked that night.”
It’s quiet for a moment. After a long glance at Felix’s face, Seungmin directs his eyes back to his notebook, continuing to fill out his chart.
“Jisung said…” Felix starts, and Seungmin looks up. “Jisung said that that wasn’t who he is. That night.”
“No,” Seungmin agrees.
“He’s a good person,” Felix says, somewhere between a question and a statement. He already knows Seungmin’s opinion, but he wants to hear it.
“I’d say so, yes.” Seungmin eyes him carefully and then continues, “But he did a bad thing. What he did to you was inexcusable, and it’s okay if you’re scared of him.”
But Felix truly isn’t scared anymore. If Minho wanted to harm him again, he’s had more than enough opportunity to do it. He could have pinned Felix to the ground again that very first night they met in the living room. But he hadn’t. And somehow, Felix doesn’t think he ever would again. He believes Jisung. Believes what Jeongin told him. He doesn’t understand, but he can see how much it confuses them too, both Minho’s actions in the mall that night and his current isolation.
“He’s hurting,” Felix says instead, ignoring Seungmin’s pseudo-question.
“He is,” Seungmin agrees again. “But that’s not something you need to worry about.”
Felix watches him for a moment and then sighs. “Okay.”
“Good,” Seungmin smiles, and gestures at his notebook. “Do you want to learn more about pheromones, or do you want to take a nap?”
Felix’s mouth splits open into a yawn at the mere mention of sleep. “I really do wanna learn more,” he insists when Seungmin laughs. “I swear. Just maybe a nap first.”
“We’ll talk more later,” Seungmin says. “I’m honoured you’re interested.”
“It’s cool,” Felix mumbles, crawling back to the spot in the nest that has the perfect blend of coffee and vanilla after Chan and Jeongin slept there last night. “You know a lot. You’re so smart.”
Seungmin blinks, and suddenly there’s the faintest of blushes on his cheeks. It takes Felix by surprise, and he hides a smile. Oh. That’s cute. Seungmin recovers himself and leans over to scent Felix to sleep, and Felix lets himself melt into the mattress.
Just before he drifts off, he thinks about Seungmin’s insistence that it’s not his problem. Out loud he’d agreed, but silently, he knows it is. Minho might not be anything to him. But Minho is hurting, and he doesn’t like that. And it’s hurting them too, and they do mean something to Felix. They mean… quite a lot.
He really will fix it. He’ll get Minho back home.
***
In the end, he keeps up their little ritual for a little over two weeks before he changes tactics.
What he’s doing is not working, and it can’t continue forever anyway. Eventually, the pack is going to run out of clothes—Hyunjin has already been searching for a white blouse Felix smuggled off four nights ago—and he knows that scented clothing is not going to tide Minho over forever. It’s enough to keep him going for now, apparently, but it won’t be long before he’ll need more than simple fabrics.
And Felix wants to bring him back, not run a nightly drive-through for Minho to pick up clothes and food for the rest of Felix’s stay here.
So after two weeks, he comes up with something else.
He does what he usually does, leaving an item of clothing on the couch (a blue button-up shirt that Seungmin had worn that day), placing a bowl of food on the coffee table (leftover tteokbokki from a takeout place Jeongin likes), and then quietly tucks himself into an armchair to wait. He knows he can’t be seen from the doorway, and by now he’s taken so many naps on the couch that his scent has mingled with the others in the room. It shouldn’t be immediately obvious that he’s here.
It takes a long time, and he dozes off by accident. He startles awake to the sound of a low hum. Minho is here. He is kneeling by the couch, taking a deep breath of the sage scent that clings to the shirt. He’s only a handful of feet away, but he clearly hasn’t noticed that Felix is here.
He glances at the clock. A quarter past three.
He watches as Minho folds himself over the shirt, hands fisted tightly into the fabric. He looks worse now, despite the clothes and the food. Even paler. More shaky, and although Felix can’t see his face where it’s pressed into the shirt, he knows he’ll find even darker circles under his eyes today.
Very, very quietly, he gets out of his chair and unfolds the throw blanket he brought. Before going to bed, he’d asked everyone if they could scent it, claiming he felt a little off and would like to carry all of their scents close that night instead of just the people that were right next to him. It was a bit of an odd request, since all of their scents are interwoven through the nest, but everyone seemed to write it off as another post-drop symptom, simply complying with a worried look and a brush of a hand through his hair.
Of course that meant he had to actually keep the blanket close as he pretended to sleep, so now his own scent is on it as well. But the scents of Minho’s packmates, who had scented the blanket liberally and deliberately with soothing pheromones, should outweigh his own.
On silent feet, he pads closer to the couch, and wraps the blanket around Minho’s shoulders in one quick move.
He darts back in case the alpha lashes out instinctively, but he needn’t have. The moment his packmates’ scents drape over him, heavy and strong, Minho goes limp. He slumps sideways, and Felix jumps forwards this time, just in time to catch him before he hits the coffee table.
The way he caught the alpha means that Minho is now leaning into him, but he shows no signs of discomfort at being this close to Felix’s scent. He merely curls up into the blanket, releases one tiny, terribly broken sound, and begins to cry.
He’s not loud, but he’s crying hard, letting out wet, rattling sobs and shaking so violently he chokes each time he tries to draw in air. Felix can’t smell anything yet but plain cotton, and the alpha must be wearing an insanely good brand of scent blockers for them to still be effective with this level of distress. Since Minho doesn’t pull away, he wraps an arm around him, first just one, and then as the alpha leans into him, Felix shifts so they’re lying on their sides on the rug and he can wrap his entire body around him from behind.
He doesn’t know much about the science behind scent starvation. Seungmin would probably have a ten-step plan with the exact order of actions that should be taken in this situation, but Felix has no idea. He may not know exactly what to do, but he knows what it feels like, to be aching for someone’s scent. He also knows what it’s like to be so deprived of touch that you’d do anything to have someone hold you.
So he folds himself around Minho’s blanketed form and holds him, squeezing him as tightly as he can.
He doesn’t know how much time passes. It could be minutes, it could be hours. Minho cries, and Felix can’t smell his scent, but he can smell the salt of his tears. He plasters himself against his back, tucking one edge of the blanket closer around Minho’s shoulder, and rubs his arm in a silent attempt to soothe.
Eventually, Minho seems to have cried himself out, sobs tapering off into slow, wet, exhausted breaths. It’s quiet for so long that Felix wonders if he’s fallen asleep.
Then he says, “I’m sorry.” The words are hoarse, his voice barely audible.
Felix squeezes his shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” Minho says through another sob, and then keeps going, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
The words become a mantra, repeated over and over until the syllables tumble into one another, barely understandable but sounding so broken that Felix feels his own eyes well up.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so—” Minho chokes on the wetness in his throat, and Felix rubs across his chest as he coughs.
“Ssh,” he says, feeling helpless in the face of Minho’s pain. “It’s alright. You’re alright.”
“You should hate me,” Minho spits suddenly, voice thick. “You should loathe me for what I did, and you kept—instead you—”
Felix shakes his head. “I don’t. I don’t hate you. That wasn’t you.” However confused he is, he is sure of it. Whatever had made him snap that night, it is not who he truly is. Minho is not like Kwang-ho, and Felix is sorry he ever thought he was.
Minho cries harder, and Felix wraps his arms impossibly tighter around him. “I don’t hate you,” he repeats. “It’s alright. I forgive you. I forgive you.” He repeats the words until they become a counter-mantra, whispering them again and again into Minho’s neck, releasing more pheromones to try and soothe.
It takes another while before Minho quietens again, slumping back against Felix’s chest in exhaustion. Felix doesn’t feel much better himself, drained both from lack of sleep as well as the flood of emotions. He’s relieved his body is coping with this so well, opting for exhaustion instead of a muscle spasm. Perhaps it’s because he’s not panicking this time. He’s sad for Minho, but beyond that, he’s calm. This feels right.
“You’re okay,” Felix says. “We’re good. We’re fine.”
“I was horrible,” Minho breathes, voice barely audible. “I told you—I made you kneel, I used…”
Felix says nothing for a moment, and then asks, just as quiet, “Why did you?” Because that’s what he doesn’t understand.
It’s silent for a long time.
“I didn’t even see you,” Minho whispers into the darkness, just when Felix thinks he isn’t going to answer. “Innie was gone. I lost him in the store, and all I could smell was his fear. And I searched for hours, and then I found him, and I lost it. I didn’t even see you.”
Felix stays quiet, still not quite understanding but sensing that the alpha isn’t finished.
“I didn’t see him either anymore. Innie. It wasn’t him I saw.” Minho is quiet for a long time, their breaths the only sound in the room. It’s like they’re in a bubble, and any word from Felix will pop it. He doesn’t speak. Eventually, Minho continues. “When I was thirteen, I had a friend. Jaewoo. He was a year younger than me, and he lived three houses down from us. We’d grown up together, and he was more like a little brother than a friend. He was an omega. We were out on the street one day, just kicking a ball around, and I kicked it too hard. It rolled down an alley and he went to get it. It was taking too long, so I went after him.”
He pauses to take in a breath. “When I got to the alley, he wasn’t alone. There was someone with him, an alpha, older. He must have been in his twenties. I didn’t even register that anything was wrong at first, but then I smelled Jaewoo’s fear, and the alpha’s sadistic glee, and—” Minho cuts himself off and swallows hard, and Felix tightens his arms as sick dread fills his stomach. “I was so shocked, I just froze. I didn’t- I didn’t even yell, I just stood there.” Minho’s hands ball into fists against the blanket. “He noticed me, though. Don’t know what gave me away, seeing as I was too fucking stupid to do anything, but he noticed. I remember thinking that he would run, now that he’d seen me.”
He spits out a laugh, sharp and ugly. “And he did. Only he took Jaewoo with him. And I let him. I stood there, and I let him take him, and I never saw Jaewoo alive again.” His fists are trembling. “His body was found three days later. It was my fault.”
“You were a kid,” Felix whispers through his tears, both at Minho’s anguish and at the memories the words drag up. “You were just a kid.”
Minho growls. “I was old enough to do something. I was thirteen.”
“Just a kid,” Felix repeats, voice firm. He’d been eighteen when Kwang-ho found him, and he’d practically been just a kid. “It wasn’t your fault.” Minho doesn’t reply. Felix starts rubbing his arm again, slow and gentle.
“It doesn’t matter,” the alpha says eventually, tone flat. “What matters is that that is what I saw, when you brought Innie back. I didn’t see him. I didn’t see you. I saw Jaewoo and the psychopath that was holding him, and all I could think was, Not again. This time, you’re staying right here.” He grinds his teeth. “I lost control. I lost control completely. And you paid for it, and nearly died.”
Felix lets that night in the mall replay in his mind, lit anew with the knowledge he has now. The way Minho had snapped into action without even looking at him. The way he’d clutched Jeongin to his chest, his furious eyes fixed on Felix. Except not on Felix, he knows now. On someone else entirely.
He lets himself process this for a while, their breathing once more the only sound in the room. After a few minutes of silence, he asks, “Can I give you my honest reaction, now that I know?”
Minho stills against him, but Felix can feel him nod.
“I’m surprised you didn’t snap my neck.”
Minho lets out a surprised bark of laughter, and the sound seems to startle him so much that he snaps his mouth shut. “What?”
“You thought I was him,” Felix continues, “And you only made me kneel? How are you talking about lack of control? Minho-ssi, if you were lost in that flashback… I’ve never seen someone more in control of their actions than you were in that moment.”
Minho very, very slowly lets out the breath he was holding.
“It’s… what you went through, that’s horrible. That’s a nightmare, and I’m so, so sorry that happened to you. To Jaewoo.” He gives Minho a gentle squeeze. “But I’m thankful you told me, if that makes sense. I didn’t understand why you did what you did, especially not after meeting your packmates. They were so… I just didn’t think they could love someone who wasn’t a good person. It confused me.”
At the mention of his packmates, Minho releases another shaky breath.
“It makes a lot more sense now,” Felix continues. Then, after a moment, he adds, “They miss you.”
Minho’s hands twitch against the blanket.
“They’re worried about you. They know you’re hurting.”
“I deserve it.”
Felix growls at him, and it must be unexpected, because Minho jerks in surprise. “You don’t,” Felix says, voice low. “And if you say that again, I’m dragging them all out of bed right now so they can tell you themselves.” Even a day ago, he wouldn’t have dreamed of talking to Minho this way. But things feel different here in their bubble.
Minho is quiet for a moment, and there’s just the barest hint of a smile in his voice when he says, “You’ve gotten to know them.”
“Yes. They’re… they’re great.” He swallows. “It sort of felt like I was intruding, though. Like I was forcing you out, replacing you.”
“Perhaps I wanted you to,” Minho whispers. Felix stills. “I don’t… I couldn’t trust myself. I lost control, and I couldn’t… I can’t let that happen again, around them. I can’t hurt them.”
“So you stayed away.”
“Yeah.” Minho breathes. “I thought it was best. Better if I wasn’t there. Better if you were, instead.”
Felix’s breath gets stuck in his throat.
“But it hurt,” Minho sighs. “It hurt so much.”
Felix exhales. “I can tell. So could they.” After a moment, he adds, “You wouldn’t, you know. You wouldn’t hurt them.”
Minho doesn’t say anything.
“You snapped that night in the mall, and you held Jeongin like he was the most precious thing in the world. Hell, you didn’t even really hurt me, and you thought I was him. How could you ever think you would hurt your pack, the people you love?”
Felix hears Minho’s breathing hitch, can smell it as he begins to cry again. But it’s different this time. Still exhausted and pained, but a little bit fresher.
It takes him by surprise when Minho shifts, turning around to wrap himself around Felix in return. He takes the blanket with him so it covers both of them and buries his face in Felix’s neck, cheeks wet and warm. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again.
Felix shifts with him so he can hold him better, their limbs tangling until he no longer quite knows where he ends and the alpha begins. He squeezes, and Minho lets out a sigh against his neck. They lie like this for a few long minutes. Felix doesn’t delude himself into thinking he just fixed everything. Clearly there was a lot more going on than he thought. He knows this won’t be the end of it. But maybe at least, Minho will come back now.
Felix is about to ask him what he wants to do now. Is about to ask if maybe Felix can finally call one of Minho’s packmates over so he can be scented properly—but then the smell of salt increases once more. For a moment, Felix thinks the alpha is crying again. But then he realises it’s not tears, it’s Minho. The scent blockers have finally worn out, and his own scent is starting to seep back into the room. And maybe Felix shouldn’t. Maybe it’s a risk, but it doesn’t feel like one as he inhales, filling his lungs with the scent of…
Ocean.
It’s the sea, fresh and salty and flooding over him like a wave. Memories flash before his eyes, of the beaches he grew up at, of days of sun and laughter and nights of cool, comforting peace as he listened to the waves crash against the shore.
He gasps, all thought of asking questions forgotten. He inhales greedily, needing more of the sea, more of home. Because that’s what it feels like. If Chan smelled like his parents’ kitchen, Minho smells like his best memories, wild and free. It doesn’t feel like when he was dropping, when he’d been convinced he was submerged in the depths of the ocean, all of its weight pressing down on him. This isn’t like that at all. Minho smells like the ocean breeze, fresh and cool with just a hint of something briny. It’s like he’s in the water but only barely, like he’s floating, perfectly supported by the salty waves beneath him.
Hazy exhaustion crashes over him so quickly he can’t do anything to stop it. Very vaguely, a part of his brain thinks, Seungmin is going to kill me, before the ocean sweeps him along and he drifts away.
Notes:
TW for mentioned kidnapping, implied sexual assault, and murder of an underage omega character (someone from Minho’s past). For info on how to skip (because you can, without missing anything important), see the first comment below. Stay safe!
Actual end notes:
Oof yeah I have a lot of thoughts on this chapter. A lot happens, a lot is shared. We're witnessing Minho’s breaking point here, after weeks of scent starvation and mental turmoil. Things will get better from here <3
Chapter 12
Notes:
Little notice to start: we’ve hit December, and between work and birthdays and the holidays, I’m going to have to slow down updates a tiny bit. I want to do this story justice, and I’d hate to rush through edits.
You’ll get main story updates on Wednesdays, and FORTUNATELY, the next few chapters are all over 9k and come with bonus scenes, so I’ll be posting those on Saturdays in part 2. The bonus scene for Chapter 13 (the long-awaited Minho POV) is even close to 5k, so that’s like, nearly a full-sized chapter (longer than Chapter 2, even).
I am going to try my hardest to get Chapter 15 to you for Christmas. I can’t make promises, but I do love the idea of giving you all a little (a LARGE, considering Ch15 is over 10k) Christmas gift, so fingers crossed. I’ll keep you posted!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Slowly, Felix drifts back to shore, getting closer and closer to the beach until he moors and sound comes back to him.
“Ha! That’s mine. Pay up.”
“How the fuck are you making this much money just from stations? You don’t even have any other properties.”
“I’m just that good.” Jisung, Felix’s mind fills in.
“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” Changbin grumbles, but it’s followed by the sound of paper shuffling and a pleased hum from Jisung.
“Innie, you’re up.” Silence. “Innie?”
“Oh, sorry. I just… they look peaceful? This is so weird.”
“Right? Of all the things to wake up to…”
“I got scared when we woke up and Felix was gone,” Hyunjin says. “After that night he nearly dropped and Channie-hyung put him under… We talked that morning, right, while you guys were making breakfast. He kept apologising, saying he was a burden and that he was disrupting our lives. I tried to tell him that we’re friends and we didn’t mind, but… I don’t know. When he was gone this morning, I got scared that he’d just up and left, you know?”
Changbin hums. “We all were. But then you found him here. With Minho, of all people.”
“You’re lucky he isn’t awake to hear you skip the honorifics,” Chan comments from the couch. Felix can hear the clicking of laptop keys. “He’d have your head.”
“Tch. Minho-hyung doesn’t scare me.”
“And yet the hyung is back where it belongs—ack! No wonder you’re losing, if you keep throwing your property cards at me.”
There’s quiet laughter, and then Hyunjin strokes a gentle hand through Felix’s hair. “I need them to wake up though. I’m so confused.”
“We all are,” Chan says. “But Minnie said we couldn’t wake them, so let them sleep. Get back to your game. And here, give Binnie his Cockatoo Island back.”
“I’d rather not,” Hyunjin mutters. “At least if he doesn’t have that I stand a chance of not coming in last.” Even so, the hand disappears as Hyunjin takes the card from Chan and turns back to the coffee table.
Because that’s where he is, Felix realises. In the living room, lying on the rug. He’s wrapped around a warm body that’s still fast asleep, shallow breaths puffing softly against his neck. It smells wonderful, like he woke up on the beach, the air all salty sea breeze and—Minho. Felix freezes as his head clears, the previous night playing before his eyes like a movie. A very surreal movie, which he would never believe had really happened if it weren’t for the tiny little fact that Minho is still right here, just as tangled up in Felix as Felix is in him.
Oh god.
They’re still in the living room, wedged between the coffee table and the couch, exactly where they’d been last night. Except that right now, they’re no longer alone.
Slowly, so as not to let anyone know he’s awake, he takes in a deep breath of Minho’s scent. The alpha no longer smells sad. He doesn’t quite smell healthy either, his scent still a little unbalanced and thin, but the notes of overwhelming desperation and self-loathing have disappeared. Felix squeezes him gently, relieved.
Minho sighs quietly, nose twitching against Felix’s neck. “F’lix?” he mumbles, just as Changbin lets out a wordless yell of frustration as he lands on one of Jisung’s stations again.
Felix hums an affirmation as Hyunjin and Jisung cackle, and gives him another squeeze. The laughter and complaints around them continue, and Minho seems to realise where he is and what’s happening all at once. He stiffens, and Felix tilts his head a little so his scent gland is right under Minho’s nose, releasing just enough soothing pheromones that Minho will smell them, but the others won’t. He refuses to let the alpha panic again now, after everything he did over the past two weeks to get him here.
It takes a minute, but then Minho relaxes into him again with a resigned sigh. Together, they listen as Hyunjin, Jisung, Changbin and Jeongin continue their game, getting progressively louder until a voice from the doorway hisses, “Yah! I thought I said to stay quiet, what the hell are you doing?” Felix feels Minho smile into his neck as Seungmin steps closer. “I have no idea what happened last night, but it’s a miracle they were both as stable as they were when we found them. You can’t wake them before they’re ready. It could get really bad really fast.”
There’s a chorus of guilty apologies, and Minho snorts. Out loud, he says, “Glad to see someone has been running this house while I was gone.”
For a moment, there’s dead silence. Nobody moves, and then everyone talks all at once.
“Minho-hyung!”
“Oh my god, you’re—”
“Hyung, are you—”
“Quiet!” Seungmin hisses. “Do not wake Felix, or I’ll gouge your eyes out with a spoon.”
“I trained him so well,” Minho says to Felix, who laughs quietly into his neck. “Did you idiots really think either of us would sleep through this?”
Felix feels him pull back a little, and finally opens his eyes so he can look Minho in the face. “Hi,” he says, voice low and heavy with sleep. “Sorry for passing out on you.” Just like that morning with Chan, the long hours of scenting mean he feels comfortable with Minho. He still barely knows him, but his body is loose and his mind is relaxed, and he’s able to talk to him without any awkwardness.
Minho huffs out a laugh. “You scared me for a second. I would have done something, but your scent turned sleepy so fast that I didn’t stand a chance. You knocked me out.”
Felix’s mouth curls up. He hadn’t expected Minho to be this light-hearted this morning, but he’s not complaining. Apparently, the alpha has a dry kind of humour. He kind of likes it. “Oh, you’re not blaming me for that. You’ve been here every night, I know you haven’t been sleeping. That is on you.”
“Um,” Jisung says. “What the fuck is happening? I can finally ask that now, right?”
“I think Felix pulled another Hyunjin,” Changbin says, sounding a little faint.
“Oh, I know he did,” Seungmin says darkly, and Felix grimaces. He knew the beta would be mad.
“Felix,” Chan says from the couch, leaning forward. “We woke up and you were gone. We thought something had happened.”
“Well, clearly something did,” Jeongin mutters.
Felix looks up at them apologetically. “I’m sorry. I meant to be back by the time you woke up, I didn’t mean to sleep with—to sleep here.” He stumbles over the last words, realising how it sounds, and he flushes bright red. He tries to sit up and put some distance between him and Minho, but the alpha’s arms are wrapped around him like a vice. In the end, Felix ends up hauling them both into a sitting position, one of Minho’s arms still wrapped around his waist. This… is not any better.
“You know,” Jeongin says, “If I didn’t know any better, walking in to find your packmate and your new best friend sleeping together would seem rather compromising.”
“No,” Felix sputters, even as his mind trills, best friend. “That’s not what- we didn’t—”
“Well,” Minho says dryly, glancing at him. “We have been meeting up here every night for over two weeks. He has a point.”
“What?” This time the exclamation comes from everyone else in the room.
Felix feels his cheeks heat further and he glares at Minho. “We haven’t been meeting up. You have been avoiding me and sneaking in only after I was gone every time.”
Minho hums thoughtfully. “Clearly I got too complacent. That was a dirty move last night, with the blanket.”
Felix laughs despite himself. “But it worked.” Minho’s mouth twitches upwards, and Felix grins.
“Okay,” Chan says, snapping his laptop shut. “Alright, hold up. I think we’re all going to need some explanation, here.”
Felix looks away from Minho to take in the others. They’re all staring at them, expressions ranging from bewildered to hopeful to… he catches sight of the sheen of tears in Jisung’s eyes, and his smile vanishes. Minho notices at the same time he does, because he says, “Jisung-ah.”
He pulls his arm back from Felix and holds them open for Jisung, who launches himself into them with a sob. “Hyung—”
“Ssh, jagiya. You’re alright. I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“You shut me out!” Jisung wails, fingers digging into the back of Minho’s hoodie. Changbin’s hoodie really, the one Felix left for him five nights ago. “I came every day, and you—”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Minho’s own voice sounds tight now, all amusement gone. He smells a lot more uneasy now too, as if he’d only been clinging to light-hearted banter because it was easier than facing reality. And, yeah. Felix should probably have realised that the humour was a mask.
Minho lets Jisung cry, carding his fingers through his brown curls and breathing him in. “I… I thought it was best. If I stayed away.”
Chan tilts his head. “Because Felix was here?”
“No.” Minho sighs. “Well. Partly. I didn’t think my presence would help. But that’s not…” His eyes dart to Felix again, and Felix knows without asking that the story Minho told him last night is one he hasn’t shared before. He can also tell, by the exhaustion and raw hurt still lingering in his eyes, that Minho isn’t ready to share it a second time, not today.
“He…” Felix begins slowly, testing the waters, and when Minho doesn’t cut him off, he continues. He keeps his eyes on Minho though, not looking at the others. “He was scared of losing control. Like that night in the mall. He thought if he stayed here, he might hurt one of you.”
Changbin hisses in a sharp breath through his teeth, and Hyunjin says, “You wouldn’t. Hyung, you would never hurt us.”
Minho smiles, but it’s sad. “Well. I did.” His eyes briefly flicker to Jeongin. “I needed to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. I didn’t even mean to come back, but it was… hard.”
“Of course it was,” Seungmin mutters, stepping closer to kneel next to them. He’s holding the familiar pheromone analyser, but to Felix’s surprise, he’s not Seungmin’s target this time. Minho yelps as the beta presses the cool tip against his neck and tries to pull away, but Seungmin holds firm. “We all scented you as soon as we found you this morning, wrist-to-neck so we wouldn’t wake you. But you haven’t been around our scents in seven weeks. How on earth were you still functional?”
Minho resigns himself to the touch of cold metal. “Felix gave me clothes.”
“I was wondering why you were wearing my hoodie,” Changbin says, just as Hyunjin exclaims, “Is that where my blouse went?”
“But… But how,” Jisung mumbles, face still buried in Minho’s shoulder. “Lix has been with us. In the nest.”
“Well, clearly he’s been sneaking out,” Jeongin says. “Really, Lixie? Every night?”
Felix colours, but when he looks to Minho for permission, the alpha nods at him, and so he tells them. About his surreal encounter with Minho that first night, and then meeting him again the next. About staying up until everyone else had fallen asleep so he could leave clothes, and food, and about his plan with the blanket last night.
“So that’s why you asked us to scent it,” Chan says. He sounds relieved.
“And that’s why you have been so tired,” Seungmin says, looking up from the notebook he’s been writing down the readings in. He does not sound relieved—only exasperated.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” Changbin says, grinning. “You lured Minho-hyung home with scents and treats, and then trapped him by throwing a blanket over him? Like a feral kitten?”
“Yah!” Minho exclaims, snatching up a Monopoly token—Hyunjin’s thimble—and tossing it at the beta’s head. “Watch it.”
Changbin dodges the attack easily, still laughing. “That’s amazing. Oh my god. Lix-ah, you should have filmed it.”
Privately, Felix thinks it would not have made for a very amusing video, the way Minho had collapsed the moment he’d smelled the blanket, sobbing and desperate. But he knows it does sound funny when told like this, and the mood is lighter now. He decides to keep it that way. “I also threw a hoodie in his face the second night we met.”
Changbin cackles so hard he falls over. The others laugh too, and even Jisung lets out a watery chuckle.
Chan, however, is not laughing. “Min,” he says softly. “Are you back now? Are you staying?”
Minho turns to face him, noticing the emotion in his eyes. His gaze moves to Felix, and then to Jeongin, slowly passing over everyone else. For a moment, Felix thinks he’ll say no. That he’ll get up and leave again. Somehow it feels like if he does it now, if he leaves again, after all of this, it will be final. The room is tense as they all wait for him to reach a decision. And then Minho sighs. “Yeah. If you’ll have me.”
“Of course we’ll have you.” Chan’s voice is firm, and he leans forward to place a hand on the back of Minho’s neck. “Minho, you’re ours. We’re not complete without you.”
“It’s not exactly easy to get rid of us,” Hyunjin pipes up. “You must have noticed, with us stalking you at the studio every day.”
“I did. I’m sorry for locking you out.”
“It’s okay,” Hyunjin says brightly. “I took a lot of pictures this morning. You looked very cute. We’re even now.”
Minho moves as if to grab another token to throw at him, but Chan’s grip on his shoulder stops him.
“Please,” Chan says. “Can I hug you now?”
Minho looks back at him, his face softening. “Yeah.” He nudges Jisung, who’s still attached to his side like a barnacle. “Come on, jagi. Let me go for a second so I can get up and hug hyung before he implodes.”
He shifts onto his knees and gets to his feet, only to immediately go deathly pale, listing dangerously to the side. Jisung cries out in alarm, but Changbin and Seungmin are already there, strong arms holding the alpha up.
“And back down you go,” Seungmin says, pushing at Minho’s shoulders until he’s sitting on the couch next to Chan.
“What’s wrong? Is he dropping?” Jisung sounds frantic. “Seungmin, what’s—”
“He’s fine,” Minho grumbles from the couch. He’s still pale, but he doesn’t seem to be in danger of passing out anymore. “Just got dizzy for a second.”
“This isn’t a drop,” Seungmin says soothingly to Jisung. “I told you that’s rare. He’s going to need proper scenting from all of us, but his levels were stable, all considering.” Then, to Minho, “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Oh,” Felix realises. Minho had never touched the tteokbokki he set out for him last night. It’s no longer on the table, so someone must have cleared it away. He looks at Minho. “I probably should have let you eat before I threw that blanket over you. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Minho says. “I wasn’t hungry, anyway. I just needed…” He trails off with a tired sigh, tipping his head back against the couch. Chan seems to know what he means anyway, and tugs on Minho’s sleeve until the alpha relents and falls into him. He presses a kiss to Minho’s cheek, then his jaw, before firmly pressing his lips against his scent gland. Minho sighs again, but this time it sounds relieved.
Hyunjin plops down on the couch to curl into Minho’s other side, and Jisung rests his head on Minho’s thigh. Changbin settles on the back of the couch so he can place a hand on his shoulder, and soon the whole pack is crowded around the alpha, touching him from all sides and wrapping him up in a cloud of scents.
Felix watches them, for the first time feeling a little out of place. Suddenly, this moment feels very private. He’s not part of their pack; he shouldn’t be here. When Hyunjin presses a kiss to Minho’s wrist, he shuffles back, intending to quietly slip away, but Jisung looks up at him questioningly.
“I… I’ll just go make some food,” he whispers. “Give you some privacy.”
Jisung snatches his wrist. “No. Stay.”
Felix’s eyes dart to the cuddle pile on the couch. “Sung… This is pack business.”
“Well, yes…” Jisung hesitates. “But you brought him back. So now this is pack-and-you business. Get back down here. It’ll feel wrong if you leave.” He tugs on Felix’s arm until he gives in, allowing himself to be pulled back in until he’s leaning against Minho’s thighs along with Jisung.
“That’s the second time you’ve brought a pack member back to us,” Chan rumbles. He hasn’t turned his head away from Minho, but his eyes are looking at Felix. Felix hadn’t even realised he was listening. “We’re racking up quite the debt with you.”
Quietly, Felix says, “I wanted to bring him back. You were all so sad, and it was my fault he was gone.”
“It wasn’t,” Minho says, sounding surprisingly clear and sharp for someone who has just been scented by all six of his packmates. He pulls his head back from Chan’s shoulder so he can look Felix in the eye. “You know what I told you.”
Felix can see the others looking between the two of them with small frowns of confusion, but he’s trapped in Minho’s gaze.
“I’m the one who wronged you,” Minho insists.
Felix shakes his head. “It’s alright, Minho-ssi.”
“It isn’t. You deserve a proper apology.” Minho pulls a face. “And I will give you one, as soon as I can feel my legs again. Also, call me hyung. I think we’re there.” He smirks. “After all, we’ve slept together.”
Felix lets out a noise of embarrassment and tries to bury his flaming face in his hands, even as he hears everyone around him break into laughter. “Stop saying it like that!”
With that, the tension in the room breaks, and everyone wraps themselves back around Minho. It’s only a minute or two, however, before Seungmin pokes Felix in the ribs. “Yes, about that. You!”
Felix’s eyes widen.
“What were you thinking, sneaking away from our scents and meeting up with someone whose scent was not yet safe at all? Not just once, but every night?” Felix scans his face, but he doesn’t look as upset as he’d been that time with Hyunjin, merely exasperated.
Still, he feels guilty. “Sorry. I did think about telling you. I did. But it just… didn’t seem like my secret to tell?” He darts a glance up at Minho. “I didn’t want to risk scaring him off.”
“Yah,” Minho says. “Contrary to what you all seem to think, I’m not actually a stray cat.”
Felix can’t help but tease him, just a little. “You literally ran away from me those first two nights. Very cat-like.” He smiles at Minho’s expression, and then sobers. “It just seemed like you didn’t want them to know you were here. I wanted to respect that.”
“Yeah, I’m still confused by that,” Jisung says, head still resting on Minho’s thigh. “How come we never smelled you?”
“I wore scent blockers,” Minho admits, though his head is now once again tucked into Chan’s neck and his voice comes out slightly slurred. “Felix is right. I didn’t want you to know I was here.”
“Which is another reason why I didn’t tell you,” Felix says quickly, turning back to Seungmin with pleading eyes. “I never smelled him. Not before tonight, at least. And it wasn’t like with Hyunjin. This time was unplanned.”
Seungmin looks between the two of them and then closes his eyes with a resigned sigh. “Why couldn’t I have joined a nice, boring, predictable pack that doesn’t try to give me heart attacks on the daily?”
Hyunjin squeezes Seungmin’s face in between his hands and peppers it with kisses, ignoring the instant complaints the beta lets out. “Because you loooove us.”
“And you’re an adrenaline junkie,” Changbin adds with a grin. “You’d be bored to death within a day with any other pack.”
Seungmin grumbles, but doesn’t deny it. He does, however, look over at Minho and shakes his arm. “You can’t fall asleep, hyung. You need to eat first.”
Minho swats his hand away and grumbles something, turning his face further into Chan’s neck. Seungmin is about to protest, but Chan comes to his aid, pressing a kiss to Minho’s hair. “Alright, love, sit up. Let’s get some food into you. We’ve worried Seungminnie enough over the past few weeks.”
“I’ll get him something,” Changbin says, rising from the back of the couch. “Any requests?”
Something about this gets through to Minho, and he straightens in alarm. “You’re not cooking. You’ll burn down my kitchen.”
“Yah!” Changbin says, to the sound of more laughter. “I’m not that bad.”
“Changbin-ah, the last time I let you help me make dinner you spilled gochujang down my entire spice rack and broke my best spatula in half.” Minho glares at him. “You’re not cooking.”
Changbin throws his hands up. “Fine! Fine. I wasn’t going to, anyway. I’ll get you a sandwich or something.” He walks away, muttering, “Why are you on my ass about this. Channie-hyung’s the one who ruined your frying pan.”
Minho’s head shoots away from Chan’s shoulder so fast that Hyunjin, on his other side, yelps in surprise. “You what?”
Chan’s eyes widen. “It was an accident! I’ll buy you a new one.” Minho’s glare doesn’t lessen. “I’ll buy you two. …And that immersion blender you wanted?” Minho finally relaxes, and Chan lets out a relieved sigh.
“Minho-hyung reigns over the kitchen with an iron fist,” Jeongin whispers to Felix. “He’s terrifying.”
Felix can picture it, although right now, the terrifying effect is slightly reduced by the way Minho yawns and sways right back into Chan at the slightest release of calming pheromones. “Fuck,” he groans, “Why am I so tired. I literally just woke up.”
“Such a cat,” Hyunjin teases, dodging Minho’s half-hearted attempt to snatch his wrist.
“It’s really not a drop?” Jisung asks, sounding worried.
“It’s scent starvation,” Felix says to Seungmin, “Right?”
Seungmin looks at him. “It is. Do you know a lot about it?”
Felix takes in a breath as everyone’s attention settles on him. That’s not quite what he intended. Still, to his surprise, his throat doesn’t lock up at the thought of answering. He doesn’t look at anyone, but when he speaks, his voice is steady. “I’ve been through it before. It… wasn’t pleasant.”
It really hadn’t been. Of course, he’d also been living on the streets at the time, and that hadn’t helped. But the exhaustion, the haziness, the itch under his skin… it had been maddening. The physical symptoms had been bad, but the fight between his mind and his body had been the worst of all. The way his body craved the presence of the very person he had run away from, the way it wanted to crawl back and beg for forgiveness if only to get a whiff of a scent he didn’t even like—that had very nearly broken him.
“It was different for me though,” he continues, surprising himself. He fidgets with the edge of the rug. “For me it led up to… to severing my bond. It was… I don’t know. It was a lot.”
Aside from the way Minho’s eyes snap towards him, there are no gasps or surprised exclamations—they’ve seen the faded mark on his neck. They know he’s been living off the grid under a false name. He’s sure they’ve put two and two together.
“When was this?” Chan asks.
“When I came to Seoul. About two and a half years ago now?” He looks up at Minho. “It’s part of why I left you those clothes. I could tell you weren’t actively rejecting your bond. If you were, you would have been a lot more…” He trails off, mind flashing back to the misery that had followed the scent starvation.
“In pain,” Seungmin finishes for him. His voice is still calm, but he looks pale. “Breaking a bond is agonising, and it has a lot of nasty aftereffects. There’s a reason people can’t mate again until three months afterwards. Did you have anyone to help you through it?”
Felix huffs out a wry laugh as he remembers that week. “I didn’t even have a home. There were no other people in the back alley I found, though, so that was good.” He’d waited as long as he could. He hadn’t wanted to go through the severing on the streets, but eventually the bond had snapped by itself, and he’d had no choice. He looks up, takes in the horror and sympathy on their faces. “It’s really fine. I got through it, and I don’t regret it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Seungmin shakes his head. “No wonder you were able to drag yourself through weeks of extended drop without breaking. Your pain tolerance must be off the charts.”
Well. I had a lot of practice, Felix thinks, but he doesn’t say it.
Arms slip around him and he’s engulfed by the scent of cinnamon, smelling sad but affectionate. “I’m so glad you weren’t alone this time.”
Felix wraps his hands around the arms circling his waist and leans back into Jisung, allowing himself to draw comfort from the alpha even if he knows it’ll make it harder later, when he has to leave. “Me too,” he confesses, closing his eyes. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank us,” Changbin says, voice quiet. Felix hadn’t even noticed he’d come back into the room. He hands Chan a plate with a sandwich, considering Jeongin and Hyunjin have attached themselves to Minho’s arms, and then sets another sandwich down on the coffee table next to Felix. He looks at him. “We’re friends, Lix-ah. Whatever you need, we’re here for you.”
It won’t last, Felix tells himself. It can’t last, once you’re healthy again you’ll leave and you’ll be back on the streets. Don’t get attached.
But the room around him is warm, and it’s filled with soothing scents and affectionate touches. And won’t he regret it later if he doesn’t take everything he can get now?
He gives Changbin a small smile and leans more of his weight on Jisung, relaxing into his hold. He’s weak, he knows he is. But he’ll deal with the consequences later.
***
Minho spends most of the day in a scent daze on the couch, slumped against or on top of never less than four of his packmates. Over the course of the day, some colour returns to his skin and his scent slowly evens out again. He’s not awake for much of it, only reluctantly sitting up whenever Seungmin and Chan rouse him to get some more bites of food into him.
Everyone stays home; stays close. Jisung remains plastered to Minho’s side all day, one hand fisted tightly in his shirt or clutching Minho’s own. Felix has never seen him this relieved, and he tries to apologise again for hiding the truth from him, but in response, Jisung startles him by letting go of Minho and giving him a tight hug. “Thank you,” he breathes into Felix’s hair, and Felix melts into him.
That night after dinner, Felix returns from the bathroom to overhear a quiet conversation the pack is having over Minho’s sleeping form on the couch.
“—in the den?” Changbin asks.
Seungmin tilts his head. “He’s doing better than this morning. But if I’m completely honest, I’d prefer to have all of us with him tonight, just to make sure the scent starvation is gone.”
“But we can’t all stay with him,” Jisung says. “We can’t leave Lixie.”
“No,” Chan agrees, brushing a hand through Minho’s hair. Minho mumbles something and turns his head further into Chan’s thigh. “And we won’t. We’re going to have to split up.”
Hyunjin bites his lip. “Do you think there’s any chance Felixie will be okay with us dragging a mattress into the room so hyung can sleep there?”
Chan sighs. “I don’t know, Jinnie. That’s… Even if he’s outside the nest, his scent will be in the room. That’s a lot to ask, especially considering their history.”
“But they slept here last night,” Hyunjin says.
“But he said he didn’t mean to. And we’re talking about his nest. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“No, we’re not asking him that,” Jeongin agrees. “He’d say yes out of guilt or something. We’ll just split up and switch every few hours.”
Felix blinks from where he’s standing in the archway. He hadn’t paid much thought to where Minho would sleep. He’d just assumed that they’d all stay together. He thinks he could be alone, if he slept in his nest and they gave him a few extra scented blankets for indirect scenting, but he knows Seungmin would never agree to that, not after last night. And selfishly, he doesn’t really want to argue for it either.
So, he can’t be alone tonight, and neither can Minho. In his mind, it had been easy.
Apparently, it’s not easy to them. Somehow, they’re fiercer protectors of Felix’s boundaries than Felix himself could ever be, and letting Minho sleep in Felix’s nest had never even occurred to them. For a brief second, Felix wonders if they’re right, if he’s just letting it happen out of guilt. But the moment the thought occurs to him, he knows that’s not it. It’s not guilt. He genuinely wouldn’t mind having Minho in the nest. In fact, the idea of Minho’s ocean scent drifting around the other scents that suffuse the space… yeah. He wouldn’t mind that at all.
Their carefulness is sweet, but it’s unnecessary.
He steps back into the room, and everyone looks at him.
Changbin pulls a face. “How long have you been there?”
Felix smiles. “Long enough. He can sleep with us.”
“Felix…” Chan says, clearly conflicted. “It’s your room.”
“I know.” As bizarre as that thought still is, he knows they consider it his room. He walks closer. “But also, I meant the nest, not the room.”
Hyunjin’s jaw drops. “Seriously?”
Changbin catches his wrist as he walks past. “You don’t have to invite him in for us. Please don’t feel pressured.”
“I don’t,” Felix says. He sinks down on the fluffy rug in front of the couch, watching Minho sleep. “It’s fine if he stays.”
Jeongin scans his face. Slowly he says, “He used his Voice on you.”
“Yeah,” Felix agrees simply, not looking up. “We talked about it. We’re good. He can stay in the nest.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees several people exchanging glances. They’re confused, just like before. And Felix gets that. They weren’t there last night. They may have been able to spot the dried tear tracks on their cheeks and smell the lingering undertone of sadness in the air, but they didn’t see the way Minho broke down. They don’t know what he told Felix.
And maybe some people would have carried a grudge for longer. But Felix has never been good at grudges, or anger, or hatred. It has always only felt draining, and he doesn’t see the point. He knows Minho won’t do it again. That he had never meant to do it in the first place. There’s no need for resentment.
He looks up. “I mean it. If you think it won’t make him uncomfortable, I’d like him to stay. He… he has a nice scent. And I’m glad he’s back, I was a little afraid he’d try to leave again today.”
Chan lets out an incredulous laugh. “I can’t believe you. How on earth are you real.” Felix smiles at him, and Chan ruffles his hair. Then the alpha tilts his head and says, “I need you to not panic when I say this, because I promise none of us are mad.”
Felix’s smiles vanishes. “What?”
“We’re not mad,” Chan repeats. “Tell me you understand that first.”
“I… do?”
Chan smiles, and it eases some of the tension Felix can’t quite help but feel. “We didn’t give Minho scents on purpose.”
Felix blinks.
“We thought if we didn’t, he’d cave sooner. It’s the only manipulation we allowed ourselves. We were willing to give him space, and time, but we didn’t quite want to make it easy on him to stay away.”
Felix blanches.
“We’ve been talking to his colleagues to make sure he wasn’t at a level where he would truly harm himself or risk breaking the bond, and we’ve all been confused as to how he lasted for so long. This explains a lot.”
Fuck. Fuck, that meant that if Felix hadn’t given him clothes perhaps Minho would have been home weeks ago—
“Don’t,” Chan says. “Don’t panic. We’re not mad.”
“But- for weeks,” Felix chokes out. “I gave him—”
“We know. And we’re not mad. I meant what I said this morning. It was you who brought him back.”
Jisung and Seungmin nod, and Changbin leans forward. “I don’t know what you talked about. But I’m pretty sure that even if he’d come back to us out of desperation, he wouldn’t have agreed to stay afterwards. We’re grateful, Lix-ah. Not mad.”
Felix’s heart is still beating too fast. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Jeongin says. “I think it was you he needed to talk to, not us. Channie-hyung is right. It was you who brought him back.”
Slowly, taking in the way they’re all still just as calm as before, just as content, Felix’s shoulders relax. He huffs out a laugh, rubbing his face. “I can’t believe I didn’t even think of that. Of course you did it on purpose.” Of course they wouldn’t just have let Minho starve for no reason.
Jisung waves a hand, and when he speaks, his tone is light and smiling. “Forget us. I can’t believe you managed what we spent seven weeks trying to do, just with a blanket and some clothes.”
“I can,” Hyunjin says. “He smuggled me into the guestroom with clothes.”
Changbin rolls his eyes. “You didn’t need any smuggling. You walked in yourself like the idiot you are and cried, ‘Rejoice, darlings! I’m back!’”
Felix laughs, and even Chan snorts. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“I did,” Hyunjin says with a frown. “And let me tell you I was expecting a lot more rejoicing than I got.”
“You didn’t deserve any,” Seungmin says dryly. “You nearly killed Felix.”
Hyunjin waves a hand. “I didn’t! Felix loved my cardigan! Speaking of which—” He turns to Felix. “Did you give that one to Minho-hyung too? Because I have been searching everywhere for it and if I find out it’s all crinkled in a heap on hyung’s studio couch, I’m going to murder you.”
“Hyunjin!” Chan snaps, eyes immediately shooting to Felix to see if Hyunjin scared him.
But Felix merely laughs, still relieved that they really aren’t mad. “I didn’t. If you lost it, that’s on you.”
Hyunjin slumps over dramatically, burying his face in Minho’s stomach with a whine. “Noooo…” The whine cuts off as soon as he breathes in and gets a good whiff of Minho’s scent, and then he nuzzles his face against the alpha’s belly, sighing in satisfaction.
Felix smiles, watching the way all of them are touching at least some part of Minho, holding on to his hands or stroking a thumb over his shoulder or calf. He really is glad they have him back. He’d felt so bad about being the cause of the rift between them. Of course he knows now that it hadn’t technically been him, that Minho had been struggling with a lot more that had nothing to do with him, but still. He’s relieved they’re together again.
He yawns, and leans his head against Jeongin’s leg. He also can’t wait to get to sleep through the night again. He would have kept it up for much longer if he had to, but he’s very much looking forward to getting a full night’s rest.
Jeongin’s wrist rubs along his scent gland, sending a burst of vanilla through his system, and Felix blinks drowsily. “Stop,” he mumbles, “Or ’m gonna fall asleep.”
“That was the goal,” Jeongin says simply, smiling at him. “Apparently you haven’t slept well in ages.”
“You’ve already brushed your teeth,” Chan agrees, leaning over to rest a warm hand on his head, nails scratching gently along his scalp. “Just give in. We’ll carry you to bed.”
Felix is already halfway off to sleep, the feeling of Chan’s fingers making his brain go fuzzy. He hums, slumping forwards and then sideways as his muscles go lax. He’s caught in strong arms, and woodsmoke wraps around him. A soft kiss is placed on his forehead, and then he knows no more.
Notes:
Me, to me: how many chapters are you going to end with Felix falling asleep?
Me, to me: Yes.Also, I realised on Wednesday after reading some of your comments that you are completely right and we need a bonus scene of the pack waking up to find Felix gone and their reaction to finding him and Minho intertwined like long-lost lovers on the rug in the living room. Soooo I wrote that too, and because I'm me, it's like 2.5k. You can find it in part 2, if you're interested.
Chapter 13
Summary:
Breakfast, lunch, dinner. A full day with the pack.
Notes:
This chapter gets into Felix’s backstory. Just to be safe I’m going to put some trigger warnings in the end notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The next morning, Minho reestablishes his reign over the kitchen the moment he enters the room, shooing Jeongin away from the counter and fixing the mess the others had apparently made of his organised drawers and cupboards.
Felix watches him from the kitchen island. After a day of scenting and a good night’s sleep, Minho seems nearly completely back to normal. That comes as a surprise to Felix, whose own scent starvation had only ended after he’d gone through the gruelling process of severing the bond. He had no idea the effects would fade so quickly once someone reunited with their mates, but for Minho’s sake, he’s glad they do. He watches the alpha potter about, restacking pans and sharpening knives. After his own first full night’s rest in weeks, he feels grounded today, more energised than he has been in a while. He thinks Seungmin will be relieved when he returns from work and sees the results of the tests Felix and Jeongin had carefully conducted in his stead. The omega is seated next to Felix, both of them under strict orders not to move while Minho restores order in his domain.
“At least you kept the fridge stocked,” Minho mutters, bending over to sort through its contents. “Even if—are these tomatoes? Which one of you harebrained imbeciles put these in here, they’ll lose all their flavour! Look at this texture, what—”
Felix looks to Jeongin, who has been watching Minho from the moment he came in. He looked thoughtful at first, but as Minho continues to mutter angrily to himself, a slow smile spreads over his face. He notices Felix’s eyes on him and laughs quietly. “I’ve missed him.”
They’re the only ones in the kitchen right now. Chan, Changbin and Jisung had an early meeting with the production team behind a rapidly growing K-pop group, and they left at the same time Seungmin did. When Felix left the nest with Jeongin, Hyunjin had still been asleep. Jeongin doesn’t have classes until that afternoon, but he has a study group he’s supposed to meet up with before then. Besides, he’s usually an early riser just like Felix—and, apparently, Minho. And well, of course he is, Felix thinks. According to Jeongin, Minho likes sunrises as much as he does.
“Changbin-hyung said Minho-hyung would be appalled at the meals you cooked for me,” he says absently, watching as Minho starts chopping up mushrooms with a speed that could give Head Chef Dong-soo a run for his money.
“Oh, definitely,” Jeongin agrees easily. “If he’d laid eyes on any of them, he’d have made us eat grass for mistreating a guest. But the others are shit at cooking.”
Felix feels his lips twitch. “And you?”
“Oh, I can cook. My parents made sure I could, an omega’s duty and all that.” He rolls his eyes. “But I hate it, and the others know that. They don’t make me.” Jeongin looks at him. “Do you like cooking? Your pancakes were amazing.”
Felix smiles brightly. “I’m not a great cook, but I love baking. Anything sweet I can probably do. I used to bake every day, back in Australia.”
Jeongin smiles back at him. “Oh yeah! I think I remember you mentioning recipes you were planning to bake the night we met, back in the alley. Some kind of brownies?”
Felix huffs, half amused, half embarrassed. “Well, I was more talking to keep you with me that night. I haven’t actually baked in years. You’ve… well, you’ve seen where I live.” Lived, his mind corrects. “You kind of need an oven for baking. And money for proper ingredients.”
Jeongin’s face falls, but his eyes are understanding, not pitying. “Well, if your pancakes are that good after all this time, I can’t wait to see what else you can do.” He gestures around the kitchen. “We have two ovens. And plenty of ingredients. Go wild, please. The kitchen is yours.”
“I sure hope that is me you’re talking to, Yang Jeongin, because last time I checked you had no authority over this kitchen.” Minho doesn’t even look up from his chopping board, but his voice rings out clear and sharp across the kitchen.
Before, that tone might have made Felix flinch. But well. There is something about having someone break down in your arms that makes it a little hard to be afraid of them afterwards.
The tone doesn’t appear to bother Jeongin either, because he merely laughs. “You’ll want to make an exception for Felix, hyung. He bakes, and he’s really good.”
“It’s fine,” Felix says when Minho turns to look at him. “I don’t want to overstep. You don’t have to let me into your kitchen.”
Minho watches him for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he says, “It’s not up to me to let you do anything, Felix. You’re welcome to use the kitchen.”
“Holy shit,” Jeongin says. “I’ve literally never heard you say that. Ever.” Minho points his knife threateningly in his direction, but Jeongin ignores it. “Felix,” he adds, “Please know the immensity of the honour that’s just been bestowed on you.”
Felix’s cheeks feel hot. “You don’t even know if I’m good. I could set fire to the kitchen, for all you know.”
Minho shrugs. “Jeongin’s vouched for you. That’s enough for me.”
Jeongin’s face goes slack with surprise, but then a voice from the doorway drawls, “Jeongin is also the world’s slyest lawyer. He could lie straight to our faces and we wouldn’t even know it.”
Hyunjin shuffles up to the counter as Jeongin tilts his head consideringly. “Probably,” he shrugs eventually.
“But he wouldn’t,” Minho says, once again turned back to the stove as he adds soybean paste to a pot of boiling water. “Because Jeongin is a good boy.” Quick as lightning, he turns back to use his wooden spoon to smack Hyunjin’s hand away from the slices of cucumber on the cutting board. “Unlike you.”
“Gah!” Hyunjin yelps, looking at Felix with wide eyes. “How does he do that every single time?”
“Probably because you try it every single time,” Jeongin says dryly, and Felix laughs.
Hyunjin heaves a dramatic sigh and drapes himself over Felix’s back, who can feel the pleased spike in his own scent at the touch and the cloud of cocoa that engulfs him. “What were we talking about? What did you vouch for?”
“That Felix-hyung wouldn’t burn down the kitchen if Minho let him use it.”
Hyung. Felix blinks. He doesn’t think Jeongin has ever called him hyung before. He’s usually pretty casual with Jisung and Seungmin too, with them only being five months apart. He’ll use the honorific for them occasionally, but it’s the first time Felix has heard Jeongin use it for him. It’s not necessary of course, he doesn’t need it. But it still feels… nice. He hasn’t been a hyung since—
“Felixie gets to make more pancakes?” Hyunjin crows, eyes lighting up.
“Was that what hyung was trying to make when he destroyed my frying pan?” Minho asks, stirring the large pot on the stove.
Jeongin snorts. “He was so insistent that he could do it, and it just got worse every time he tried.”
Felix’s lips twitch. “He forgot the butter.”
“He forgot—” Minho turns around, incredulous, then closes his eyes and turns back to his stew, murmuring something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, I’ll butter him when I roast him on a spit.
It isn’t long before the kitchen starts smelling delicious, like meat and spices and freshly cooked rice. Jeongin has asked Felix to quiz him on some legal jargon, and Felix dutifully reads out the tricky words from a large book Jeongin has handed him. Hyunjin has sat down on the chair on Felix’s other side, playing absently with Felix’s free hand as he checks Instagram on his phone.
“Habeas corpus.”
“A writ that requires the custodian—” Jeongin is interrupted when Minho slides a large bowl of doenjang jjigae under his nose. His eyes close immediately as he inhales. “Oh my god. That smells so good.”
“Eat,” Minho says, pushing the book away to set two more bowls down in front of Hyunjin and Felix. “Especially you. Honestly, what have the others been feeding you? When’s the last time you even had a proper meal?”
“The last time I asked that, he said January,” Hyunjin answers distractedly, and Minho freezes. “But then Seungminnie worked really hard to get him back to eating solid foods, so we’re good now.”
Ah shit, Felix thinks, just as Minho turns to him. That’s not something he wanted Minho to know.
They look at each other, and for a moment, all he can see in Minho’s eyes is something broken and shameful. But then, before Felix can say anything, it’s gone, replaced by steely determination. “You can eat normally again? You can eat this?”
Felix nods. Over the past few weeks, his diet had slowly expanded to include more and more foods, and when his body hadn’t rebelled against any of it, Seungmin had finally given him the all clear.
Minho points at the bowl. “Then eat.”
“Why does everything he says sound like a threat,” Hyunjin mumbles, shrinking away from the look Minho shoots at him and hastily shoving a spoonful of stew in his mouth.
Felix feels his mouth twitch, even as he instinctively picks up his spoon at the look in Minho’s eyes. Jeongin’s eyes flicker between the two of them, as if to make sure Minho isn’t scaring Felix, but Felix isn’t scared. He gets where this sense of urgency comes from, for Minho. He takes a spoonful of jjigae, and his eyes widen. It’s warm, and rich, and spicy—it’s perfect. It’s the best savoury food he’s tasted in a long time, and it’s just stew. He’s starting to understand what Changbin and Jeongin had been on about with their reverence for Minho’s cooking.
Minho watches him keenly, sharp eyes focused on Felix’s expression. Whatever he sees on Felix’s face must tell him all he needs to know, because he nods in satisfaction. “You’re eating all of that. And at least two side dishes. Do you prefer spinach or radish?” He turns back to the fridge, not even waiting for an answer.
Felix blinks, and Jeongin laughs at the look on his face. “Oh yeah, you’re in for it now.”
Hyunjin pats Felix on the shoulder. “Hope you’re hungry, Lixie, because you’re not getting out of this kitchen anytime soon.”
*
In the end, it’s not that bad. Felix had been a little nervous about offending the alpha, but Minho seems to know when he is full without Felix saying anything, and simply removes the bowls without commenting on the food that he wasn’t able to finish.
Jeongin had left to get ready for his meeting before the others were finished eating. As Minho sets Felix’s bowl down on the counter, he comes back in with his backpack slung over one shoulder. He drops the bag on a chair and then walks up to Minho. For a moment, Jeongin looks at him, eyes unreadable. Then he lowers his gaze and dips his head in a classic posture of submission. He presents his hands, palms up. On them lies his black pack collar, silver tag glittering in the morning sunlight.
“Will you put it on for me?” he asks Minho, who has frozen in front of him.
Felix stiffens at the sight of the collar, but he shakes himself. They’re not Kwang-ho, he tells himself firmly. He’s seen Jeongin wear his collar before. They won’t hurt him. He darts a glance at Hyunjin, who is staring just like Minho is, wide-eyed. He gets the sense, both from their reactions and from what he knows of Jeongin’s character by now, that this kind of submission doesn’t happen often.
It takes a minute for Minho to regain his composure enough to move. “Of course.” If his voice is a little hoarse, well, no one will judge him for it. He takes the collar from Jeongin’s hands and gently tips his head up until the omega is looking him in the eyes again. Slowly, almost reverently, he clips the collar in place around Jeongin’s neck. He slips two fingers beneath the leather to test it’s not too tight, and then lets his fingers trail down Jeongin’s neck, rubbing lightly over his scent gland. Jeongin shivers and closes his eyes with a sigh, tipping his head into Minho’s hand. The moment is so intimate that Felix almost feels like he shouldn’t be watching.
Minho leans in to press a featherlight kiss to one eyelid, then the other, before catching his lips. It’s only then that Jeongin moves, smiling into the kiss and bringing one hand up to hold Minho’s wrist. After a moment, Minho parts their mouths to exhale against his lips, their foreheads pressed together. “Thank you,” he whispers, before moving back and pressing a warm kiss to the back of Jeongin’s hand.
A small smile appears on Jeongin’s face as he looks at him. “Missed you.”
Minho doesn’t reply other than giving his hand a squeeze, but the gesture seems to tell Jeongin all he needs to know. He squeezes back and then lets go, turning to grab his bag and the jacket he slung over one of the chairs. “Alright, I’m off. Bye hyungs!”
“Have a nice day,” Felix says, a little amused at the two dazed alphas surrounding him.
“…Bye,” Hyunjin says after a second, managing to snap himself out of it.
Minho takes a second longer, but as Jeongin steps into the hallway, he calls out, “Be back by seven! We’re having pack dinner tonight.”
“Okay!” Jeongin calls back, and then he’s gone.
Felix watches as Minho turns back to the sink, a light flush on his face. They don’t let me do anything, Jeongin had said during that first conversation about his studies. I’m my own person. And Felix can see it—has seen it, in many interactions and many ways before now. But before, those moments had always reaffirmed that Jeongin was on equal footing with the others, that there was no power imbalance between them. This time was different. This had been an active display of submission.
And it had been Jeongin’s choice. Jeongin had chosen to submit, to let Minho take over, even if it had only been for a moment. No one had demanded it of him, and no one had asked for more when he pulled back—the power had remained his, no matter who he temporarily gave it to.
Despite everything he knows about this pack by now, the realisation leaves him stunned. His mind is reeling with thoughts and feelings he isn’t quite sure what to do with. When Minho starts wiping down the kitchen island, he stands. “I’m going to do my workout.”
Hyunjin looks up. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I’ll be fine.” He needs to be alone for a bit. “I’ll find you after.”
“Alright. I’ll be in my studio until two, then I’ll have to leave to meet a client. I think Channie-hyung and the others should be back by then, but if not…”
“It’s fine,” Felix says. “I’ll be fine. I’ll make sure to find you before then.” He can go without scenting for a few hours now, and he isn’t worried.
“I’m staying home,” Minho says. Once again, Felix can’t read his expression. “If you need anything, you can… well, I’ll be here. If you… need anything.”
From the amused huff of air next to him, he gets the sense that Minho stumbling over his words doesn’t happen often either. He decides to ignore it, and merely nods. “Thank you. I will.”
He leaves the kitchen and heads for Changbin’s gym even though he can barely see where he’s going, the scene with Jeongin replaying over and over before his mind’s eye. Control, his mind whispers treacherously, you’d have control here. They’d let you keep it, and they wouldn’t hurt you. He sets his jaw and pushes the thought down hard, telling himself that the ache in his chest is anything other than longing.
***
They actually end up back in the kitchen for lunch, just the three of them. Felix is pretty sure Minho hasn’t left the kitchen at all since breakfast, because from the looks of it, new groceries have been delivered and various dishes are simmering on the stove in preparation for dinner. If the kitchen smelled good this morning, it’s nothing compared to now.
As they eat their kimbap—another simple meal that has no right to be as good as it is—Hyunjin is tapping away at his phone.
“Jinnie,” Minho says. He looks tense.
Hyunjin mutters something, fingers flying across his phone screen as he types.
“Hyunjin-ah.”
Another mutter.
“Yah!” Minho says, and Hyunjin jumps, fumbling with his phone when it nearly slips through his fingers.
“Sorry. I was writing an email. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” He looks apologetic, and Minho rubs a hand over his forehead.
“No. No, that’s not…” Minho sighs. “Fuck.” He takes a deep breath. “Jinnie, I’m sorry.”
Hyunjin looks even more alarmed now.
Minho raises his eyes to look at him. “I missed your birthday. I was… I wasn’t thinking straight and I didn’t even realise what date it was, but that’s no excuse. I’m really sorry.”
Hyunjin relaxes. “Oh, that. God, you scared me. Hyung, it’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
“Well,” Hyunjin says, a corner of his mouth pulling up into a smirk, “If you really feel guilty… you can make it up to me by getting me something expensive.” His eyes are sparkling. “Something Gucci. Or Louis Vuitton. Or a box of that amazing wine we had at the rooftop restaurant last year. Or—”
“An impasto workshop by Kim Guangwen at the MMCA this June?”
Hyunjin freezes. “What?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the name of your favourite painter.”
Hyunjin stares at Minho. “No, I… what?”
“That’s the workshop you wanted to go to, right? You only whined about it for weeks after you couldn’t get a ticket.”
“I—yes, because it was sold out. So what are you—”
Minho produces an envelope from out of nowhere and slides it towards him. “You have a ticket now. It’s my birthday gift to you. I’m sorry it’s late.”
Hyunjin stares at the envelope for exactly three seconds before snatching it up and ripping it open. His eyes nearly bulge out of his head when he realises that it does, in fact, contain a ticket. He staggers dramatically out of his chair and grabs Minho’s hand. “Hyung. Hyung.”
Minho watches him.
“Hyung,” Hyunjin says again. “Hyung.”
A corner of Minho’s mouth quirks up. “Yah, jagi. Did I break you?”
“Hyung!” Hyunjin screeches, whipping his head up to look at Minho. He doesn’t give the alpha any warning before launching himself at him, but Minho seems to expect it, catching him without effort and letting Hyunjin bury his face in his shoulder. “Hyung,” he sobs.
“I know forgiveness can’t be bought,” Minho mutters into his ear. “But you deserve this. I’m sorry.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hyunjin shrieks, and this time Minho does wince at the sheer pitch and volume right next to his ear. “Hyung, I wasn’t even mad at you to begin with. And you—you got me…” He pulls back to look at him, his eyes wide and shiny. “How. How the hell did you do this? I’m pretty sure nothing short of murder could have gotten you a ticket at this point.”
Minho’s shoulders have relaxed now, and he lifts one in a casual shrug. There’s a glint of humour in his eyes when he says, “In that case, perhaps it’s best not to ask. Plausible deniability, and all that.”
Hyunjin stares, then lets out an incredulous laugh, wiping his eyes. “You—hell. First Seungmin, then you. What kind of crime syndicate is this pack becoming?”
Minho frowns. “Seungmin?”
“Organised a drug deal a few weeks back,” Hyunjin says with a dismissive wave. “Not the point. Hyung, how the fuck—”
Felix can’t help it. He laughs, both at the reverence with which Hyunjin is clutching the paper to his chest, and at the aghast look in Minho’s eyes as he reconsiders everything he thought he knew about the youngest beta.
Hyunjin looks at him as if he’s only now remembered that he is here, and then a dazzling grin stretches across his face. “Lixie,” he whispers. “I’m going to meet Kim Guangwen.”
Felix doesn’t bother holding back his own grin. “I heard.”
“I get to learn from Kim Guangwen.”
“I know.”
“Kim Guangwen,” Hyunjin breathes, awed, and then he squeals. He whirls back to Minho, throwing himself back into the man’s arms. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you—”
Minho’s quiet huff of laughter is tinged with no small amount of relief, and he spreads his legs so he can pull Hyunjin in closer.
“I love you.” Hyunjin leans in for a kiss, and Minho’s hands squeeze tighter around his hips. “Please stop feeling guilty.” Another kiss, and then he pulls back, tilting his head. “Although if you do still feel guilty, you could always make me jjajangmyeon tonight?”
Minho tilts his own head, mirroring him sweetly. “Do you want to find out yourself whether people commit a murder for these tickets? Because I’m sure yours can be arranged.”
Hyunjin jumps back with a yelp, clutching the ticket to his chest again. “No! Nope. It’s mine now. No take-backsies. I’ll live without jjajangmyeon.”
Minho turns back to his kimbap. “That’s what I thought.”
***
“How was the hospital?” Chan asks Seungmin as Minho adds some more dumplings to Jisung’s plate.
The alpha really had spent all day in the kitchen. Apparently pack dinner is a much bigger deal when Minho is home, and a lot more elaborate. They’re not even seated around the kitchen island this time, but at the actual dining table which Felix had never seen anyone use before. The table is full of food—more jjigae, several plates of meat, and so many side dishes Felix is surprised Minho hasn’t run out of bowls.
The dining room had thrown Felix a little at first. Kwang-ho had liked to live like any traditional rich alpha, and had dragged Felix off to more fancy dinner parties than he could count. Old-fashioned dinner parties, where the mood was stuffy and proper and which followed the traditional rules of etiquette to a T. It had meant Felix would sit kneeling next to Kwang-ho for hours, being fed only what Kwang-ho deemed necessary to give him. It often meant that Felix was given just enough for Kwang-ho not to look suspicious, but never enough to fill his stomach, and never foods that he liked. The glint in his eye had made it perfectly clear that it was nothing more than a game to him. Everything had been a game to Kwang-ho. Blending in perfectly with his rich friends, showing Felix off in public like a prized possession, the most treasured thing in his life, only for his hands to secretly dig hard into every spot that was bruised and beaten underneath Felix’s clothes.
The mere sight of the dining room table should have been enough to send Felix running. But this pack didn’t follow traditional dynamics, he told himself firmly as he forced himself to stay in the room and watch what would happen. Things were different here.
And it hadn’t even taken a minute for them to prove him right. Jisung had set his phone to play chill low-fi beats through the speakers in the room, and Jeongin had plopped down into a seat immediately upon entering, no pillows on the ground in sight. He’d stood up again only to drag Felix over to the chair beside him, and Felix felt the tension escape him in a rush.
He had kind of already known, but he shouldn’t have worried. This pack didn’t do stuffy and artificial dinners. Formal table setting or not, dinner in this pack was loud and rowdy, filled with gentle ribbing and laughter. They seemed to use this time to catch up; one by one, everyone shared stories about their day, and the others listened.
Hyunjin had practically shoved his ticket in everyone’s face the moment they entered the room. Felix doesn’t think the alpha had let go of it the entire day, even taking it with him to his meeting that afternoon. Chan, especially, had sent Minho a look of such fond adoration upon hearing about it that Minho had looked ready to kick him for it—would have, probably, if he hadn’t been leaning halfway across the table to heap Felix’s plate full of food.
“Ugh,” Seungmin groans at Chan’s question, dropping his head into his hands. “I can’t wait until this internship is over and I can go back to school.”
Changbin laughs. “A few months ago you were so excited to finally get into the field.”
Seungmin scowls at him. “Yeah, when I was assigned to the omega clinic, which I liked. Not gynaecology.”
“Is it that bad?” Jisung asks.
“A woman kicked me in the balls today,” Seungmin starts, and chaos breaks out.
“What the hell did you do?” Changbin gasps, cackling so hard that Jeongin’s hand on his shoulder is the only reason he hasn’t fallen off his chair.
“Nothing!” Seungmin protests, over the sound of raucous laughter. “She was sitting up after a cervical checkup I got to watch in on and I was just behind the stirrup. It was an accident. But it hurt like hell and I had to stay all professional.”
“Oh my god,” Hyunjin manages. “Please tell me someone filmed it.”
Seungmin stares at him. “She was naked from the waist down. Of course nobody filmed it.”
“Please stay in gynaecology forever,” Jisung giggles. “This is the best story you’ve ever told.”
Seungmin sends all of them such a deadpan look of long-suffering exasperation that Felix laughs harder. “Alright. I’m done talking about my day. Someone else go.”
Minho doesn’t bother to hold back his smirk when he says, “Alright, pup. Did anyone have a better day than Seungmin’s balls did?”
A new round of laughter ensues, but eventually Chan takes pity on the youngest beta and tells everyone about the meeting they’d had with the production team that morning.
“And then we got back to the car and we saw a dog!” Jisung yells as he finishes.
Hyunjin gasps. “Oh, tell me everything. Sorry hyung, I don’t care about your stuffy meeting. You should have led with the dog.”
Minho huffs. “Not this again.”
Jisung ignores him. “He was so cute and the owner let us pet him for like ten minutes! He was so fluffy. So soft.”
“It was a cute dog,” Chan agrees, an amused twinkle in his eyes. “We should get one.”
Minho glares at him. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, here we go again,” Changbin sighs.
“But Minho-hyung, it was so fluffy!”
“Cats are fluffy,” Minho says, pointing his chopsticks at Jisung. “And they’re clean. And they can take care of themselves without having to be taken for a walk three times a day.”
“But that’s the best part!” Jisung whines.
“Jisung-ah, the last time I took you hiking you were out of breath before we’d even left the parking lot.”
Jeongin leans in closer to Felix and whispers, “This happens every time. The great Cat vs Dog debate has been ongoing since before I joined this pack, and they’re no closer to settling it. Never mind that Changbin-hyung is allergic and we’re never getting either.”
Felix bites at his lip to hide his amusement as the sound levels in the room rise. “Did you ever try to mediate? Being a lawyer, and all?”
Jeongin looks aghast. “Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not getting in the middle of this. I know how to pick my battles, Lixie, and I wouldn’t make it out of this one alive.”
Felix laughs, unfortunately drawing attention to himself.
“Felix,” Jisung says eagerly, leaning forward. “You pick. Dogs are better, right?”
“There is no way someone of Felix’s standard is going to say anything other than cats,” Minho declares loftily, staring the others down over the edge of his wine glass.
Jeongin glares at the others. “Stop trying to draft Felix into your war, you vultures.”
“Well,” Felix says tentatively, “I um… I like both? I like all animals, really.”
“Of course he does,” Hyunjin sighs, even as Changbin says, “See, Lix is smart. He won’t let himself be dragged into this.”
“Dogs are great,” Felix says, “I love them. But cats are funny and they’re cute.” He looks to Jeongin as he remembers something. “It was a cat that led me to you that night, actually.”
Jeongin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”
“Yeah, there was a cat at the corner of the alley and I stopped to pet it. It was only after a minute that I heard you.” Felix smiles. “I mean, you had hidden yourself pretty well, it’s not like I could have spotted you from the street.”
Jeongin’s lips tug up. “I was always the best at hide-and-seek.”
Despite the fear that must be attached to the memory, the air between them remains light. It feels like a shared thing between the two of them, that bubble they’d been in in the alley that night. It hadn’t all been fear, after all. There had been trust too, and quiet conversation, and donuts. He’s glad Jeongin has recovered enough to be able to joke about it.
“No match for me though,” he teases back. “Well. Me and the cat. It was a team effort.”
Jeongin grins and then squeezes Felix’s hand under the table for a brief second. “I’m kinda glad you beat me.”
Felix squeezes back. He is too. No matter how stressful that night had been, how awful the days and weeks had been afterwards. He could never regret meeting Jeongin. He doesn’t notice how quiet the room has grown until Jeongin looks up and breaks the spell between them. “Oh, guys.”
Apparently, Jeongin is the only one who’s ready to joke about that night.
Both Chan and Changbin’s hands are clenched into fists, and Jisung and Hyunjin look stricken. Seungmin looks worried, but he isn’t looking at them. Felix follows his gaze to where Minho is sitting, and feels his heart sink.
Minho’s face has gone back to that expressionless mask he had worn those first nights in the living room. Everything about him is neutral—everything except for his eyes. He cannot hide the pain there, not when he’s clearly feeling it so intently. He’s looking at Jeongin as if he’s right back there, as if that night is still happening and Jeongin is still gone.
“Hyung,” Jeongin says, reaching a hand out across the table. “Hyung, I’m fine.”
“I lost you,” Minho says, and his voice is flat. “It was my fault.”
“It wasn’t. I’m my own person, hyung. It wasn’t your job to keep track of me.” The words could have been harsh—would have been, Felix knows, in any other situation. But right now, Jeongin’s tone is gentle and the words come out soft.
Minho looks like he would argue, but soft words or not, Jeongin chose them cleverly. If the alpha protests, it will sound like he’s denying Jeongin’s autonomy too. Felix can suddenly see how brilliant the omega would be in court.
“It could have happened anywhere, whether you were with me or not.” Jeongin sounds firm. “Do not apologise. I will not accept it. What happened to me wasn’t on you, and I don’t want you to blame yourself for it.”
There is a slight, very slight emphasis on the “me” in that sentence, and Jeongin and Minho watch each other for a long moment. Whatever passes between them, Minho nods, and Jeongin nods back, and then the moment is gone.
Before Felix can wonder if they’re okay, Minho’s eyes shift to him, and his gaze is so intense that Felix freezes. Slowly, very slowly, he rises from his seat and steps around the table. A part of Felix wants to look at the others to see their reactions, but his eyes are locked with Minho’s and he can’t move. What is Minho doing?
The alpha stops a few feet away from Felix’s chair, face still carefully blank. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then he kneels. Felix feels his eyes widen with shock, but Minho doesn’t just kneel. He folds himself forward and presses his forehead to the ground, palms flat on the floor.
“Felix-nim,” Minho says to the floorboards, shocking Felix further with the formal honorific. “I told you I owe you an apology. A proper one, in front of my pack. For my actions in the mall that night. For using my Voice on you. For the harm I caused you, both that night and in the weeks after. I hurt you, and that is unforgiveable.”
The silence after he stops speaking is so loud, so heavy that it snaps Felix out of his frozen state. He scrambles out of his chair so fast he nearly knocks it over. He drops to his knees in front of Minho and puts his hands on the alpha’s arms, trying to pull him up. “Minho-ssi. Minho-hyung, stop. You don’t have to apologise.”
Minho doesn’t budge, no matter how hard Felix pulls, but he does raise his head ever so slightly to look Felix in the eye. “I do,” he says simply. “I hurt you.”
“It wasn’t…” Felix hesitates, aware they’re not alone in the room. “It wasn’t me you were hurting. Not really.”
“But it was. I may not have meant to, but it was you I hurt. You saved one of my packmates, and I nearly killed you. Let me take responsibility for my actions.”
His ocean scent is murkier than usual, nearly sulphury with shame and regret. Felix takes a deep breath, then loosens his grip on Minho’s arms and slides his hands down to take his hands. This movement Minho does allow, and Felix intertwines their fingers.
Felix takes a deep breath. Alright. Honesty. He can give Minho that. “Yes,” he says, ignoring the slight tremble in his voice. “You hurt me.”
Minho flinches, but otherwise doesn’t move. He looks like he would let Felix nail his hands to the floorboards if that’s what Felix wants. He’d probably hand him the hammer.
“And I was scared. I don’t have good experiences with Alpha Voice. In that moment, you terrified me.” He takes another breath and squeezes Minho’s hands. He doesn’t want the hammer. “But then I got to know your packmates, and I was confused instead. Like I told you that night, it just didn’t make sense. And you… Minho-hyung, you already explained yourself. And you already apologised. And I already forgave you, a thousand times over. I understand. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. It wasn’t your fault. Please get up.”
Minho’s fingers tighten around Felix, but he doesn’t move.
Felix tilts his head as an idea sparks. “I forgive you, Minho-hyung. And that is my choice to make.”
Minho’s eyes, still locked onto Felix, finally flicker with the barest hint of exasperated amusement, and Felix wants to crow in triumph when he huffs and slowly sits up on his knees. “Using Jeongin’s tricks against me, I see.”
“More like saving you from yourself, because clearly someone needs to,” Felix counters, letting out a breathy laugh. “I mean it, though. Stop beating yourself up over this. I understand what happened. It’s alright. I’m fine now. We’re fine.” He squeezes Minho’s hands again and exhales in relief when Minho nods.
There is just a hint of the alpha’s normal fresh salty scent in the air, but most of it is still far too heavy with sulphur for Felix’s liking. Hesitantly, he leans forward. This is stupid. He should not ask, it’s not his place, but—
“Can I… Can I scent you?” He keeps his eyes resolutely on Minho’s, knowing that if he made eye contact with anyone else just now, he might die. It really is an incredibly inappropriate question. He is not pack, and as much as they have all been scenting him to keep him stable, the only times he’s scented them back of his own accord have been when he was too out of it to know what he was doing.
But he had used his scent to calm Minho before, when they were wrapped around each other in the dark, cradled by the night in a bubble of shame and hurt and tears. He had used his scent then, and it had helped, and he wants it to help again.
Somewhere behind him there’s a quiet gasp, and his cheeks burn. He knows it’s wrong, he knows he shouldn’t have, and yet…
“Yes,” Minho says, bowing his head. “Please.”
No one speaks up. No one protests.
Felix exhales shakily.
There are various ways to scent someone, and some are more intimate than others. Felix deliberates, not wanting to overstep more than he already has.
After a second of deliberation, he raises his wrists to either side of Minho’s neck, rubbing his own glands lightly across the bumps in Minho’s skin and deliberately releasing pheromones. The alpha exhales and his hands come up to hold Felix’s wrists, pressing them tighter against his skin.
The scent of citrus mixes with salt, slowly driving out the sulphur until all that is left is the scent of lemon trees near the beach. Felix inhales the scent, a deep, instinctive sense of satisfaction coursing through him. He pushes down the feeling, because this is not about claiming, is not about him at all. But it still feels right, and it eases the final worried parts of him to have Minho smelling healthy again and not like shame.
He lets Minho hold his wrists for another second and then quietly draws them back when the alpha lets go.
“Thank you,” Minho says, and Felix can tell he means more than just the scenting. Thank you for helping Jeongin, he’s saying. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your forgiveness.
He might not say it out loud, but Felix hears it as clearly as if he were.
“Anytime,” he says, to all of it.
Minho nods at him a final time, slow and grateful, and then looks up at everyone still seated around the table. After a moment, Felix follows his gaze, stomach churning with apprehension.
But nobody looks angry. Nobody looks disgusted, or uncomfortable, or offended. He lets his eyes slowly trail across everyone at the table, and all he finds is relief, and fondness, and love. They must love their packmate very much, Felix thinks, to allow him to seek comfort outside of their pack like this.
Jisung and Hyunjin are crying by now, but they don’t smell upset. He can see both Chan and Jeongin watching Minho with affection, but there is a discerning glint in their eyes that tells Felix they’ve picked up on the fact that there’s more to the story, that there are things Minho hasn’t told them. They don’t say anything though.
“Any interest in law, Lixie?” Jeongin asks instead, breaking the silence. He smirks. “Because I think you’ve got potential.”
“Oh, lord save us,” Changbin sighs. “If there are two of them, we’re not winning an argument ever again.”
Felix laughs, and lets Minho pull him to his feet. With a final quick squeeze of his hand, the alpha lets go, subtly taking a deep breath to collect himself and then heading back to his chair. Chan’s hand disappears under the table and Felix suspects he’s placed it on Minho’s thigh in a gesture of comfort. Jisung, on Minho’s other side, leans over to rest his head against his shoulder. Minho doesn’t move, but he doesn’t push them away either.
Felix takes his seat again, and Jeongin softly nudges his shoulder in reassurance.
“Felix, can I ask you something?” Seungmin asks. He’s sitting across from Felix and he looks contemplative.
“Yeah, of course.”
“It’s a personal question. You don’t have to answer it if it’s too much, or if you don’t want to.” Seungmin waits for Felix to nod before he continues. “You mentioned bad experiences with Alpha Voice. I was just wondering if that was what triggered your drop, the first time? Because while…” He darts a quick glance at Minho, but pushes through. “While what hyung did was bad, it wasn’t… It shouldn’t have been enough to cause a drop that severe. Not without previous trauma or long-term exposure.”
Felix looks at his plate, biting his lip. He’d been waiting for this question—or not this one, specifically, but any question about his past. He’s been staying with them for well over a month, and he hasn’t told them much. Yesterday had been the first time he’d opened up a little. They were bound to be curious, but they never pushed or asked for more, seemingly content with however little he was willing to share.
“You do not have to answer,” Changbin reminds him. “You don’t owe us anything.”
The words only reinforce what Felix already knows. They won’t push him. If he doesn’t want to tell them, they won’t press it.
Somehow, it’s exactly this that decides his mind. He does want to tell them. Oh, he doesn’t want to talk about this, already knows this will cleave him right open, but he wants them to know. He trusts them.
“I was mated once,” he starts, still looking at his plate. “You all know that.” His hand subconsciously drifts up to the scar on his neck. It no longer stands out as much, fading more with each year that passes. But it’s still visible, and he can still feel it, a raised white ridge of skin. He hates it. Hates what it represents, hates that no matter how much he moves on, he’ll always have his mark on him like the vindictive claiming brand it is.
He knows he is silent for too long, but nobody speaks.
“I grew up in Sydney,” he says eventually. It’s a non sequitur, but he needs to go back to the start and tell it all at once. He cannot do this twice. “With my family. My parents, and my two sisters. Everything was good. Life was… it was just good. Normal. Happy.” He takes a breath. “When I was fifteen, we were on our way home from a restaurant, and our car was hit by a drunk driver who’d run a red light. My parents and little sister died on impact. My older sister…” His voice cracks, and he sets his jaw. “My older sister made it to the hospital, but not through the surgery that followed. I was the only survivor.” He clenches his hands into fists on his lap. “Barely a scratch on me. A miracle, they said. I was so lucky.” He feels a tear spill over and wipes it away on his shoulder.
Under the table, Jeongin nudges his thigh with his hand, palm up in a silent offer. Felix grabs onto it like a lifeline.
“We had no relatives in Australia. My friend’s parents tried to take me in, but my uncle in Daegu stepped in and I was flown off to Korea the day after the funerals. I had never met him before. I barely knew a word of Korean.” He lets out a humourless laugh. “Missed out on the culture shock though. I was too numb to feel anything for months. My uncle sent me to language classes, and then to school, and I just went through the motions. I don’t know if he didn’t know me well enough to see how badly I was doing, or if he just decided to ignore it in the hope that things would fix themselves.”
He sighs. “It did get better after a bit. I made a few friends. Or they made friends with me, really. They were a bit younger than me because I was placed in a younger grade, but they sort of clung on and didn’t let go. They didn’t mind I barely talked at first, or how faint my scent had gotten from grief. They were just… there.” They’d helped him with the language too. Jake had latched onto him as soon as he realised the new kid in his class was from Australia, and he and Sunghoon had come as a package deal.
He wonders where they are now, and if they’re still together. It’s possible. They had been good together. If any couple could make it through high school and the turbulence of college and job-searching that followed, it would be them.
“We went out for dinner one night a few years later, and I was walking home afterwards. It was still early, and it was September so it was still light outside. I thought… I didn’t think anything could happen.” He takes in a breath to stave off the nausea he can feel rising in his stomach. “It wasn’t even a remote area or anything. But one moment I was walking, and the next I was pressed up against a wall, and there was a Voice in my ear telling me not to move, and all I could smell was alpha and sandalwood.” His stomach rolls anyway, and his hand clenches around Jeongin’s. “He… He bit me, claimed me, in the next minute. The bite took. I don’t know why.”
He raises his eyes for the first time. “I really don’t know why. I swear I didn’t want it.”
The first gaze he finds is Seungmin’s across the table, and the beta simply nods. “It happens. It’s rare, but there’s been research. If you were still grieving, your hormones and pheromones might have been irregular enough for it to take. It doesn’t mean you wanted it.”
Felix feels more tears slip down his cheeks. “Well, that’s what my uncle thought. I managed to get away and I ran home, but my uncle… He was traditional. He had very clear ideas of what an omega should or shouldn’t do. I’d just turned eighteen, and according to him, I’d whored myself out, and I was his now. He didn’t believe the alpha had never even touched me like that. His scent was all over me, after all. I got kicked out the same night.”
He drops his eyes back to his plate. “I tried to make it to Sunghoon’s house. My friend. But I guess the alpha was waiting for something like this, because he cornered me before I’d even made it to the end of the street. He used his Voice again and made me follow him to his car.”
He takes a moment to collect himself, using his free hand to wipe across his face. He takes a deep breath and then raises his head to look at the others. Most of them are crying too, but still nobody interrupts him. “His name was Park Kwang-ho. He kept me by his side for nearly two years, and whenever he was home, I spent the majority of it under the effects of his Voice.”
Jeongin’s hand clenches around his, and Felix doesn’t know if it’s on purpose or an involuntary reaction.
“He never touched me, sexually. He wasn’t into that, he never even got aroused. He just liked… pain. Physical. Mental. Little games that messed with my head. He liked to hear me beg. He liked to show me off in public, act like the perfect alpha, then tear me apart as soon as we got home.”
He takes in another breath and tastes mournful vanilla. His hand tightens around Jeongin’s. “It broke me a bit, for a while. I kind of… locked most of myself away. I was there, but I wasn’t. If that makes sense.”
“It does,” Jisung whispers. The air in the room is heavy with sadness, and not just Felix’s own.
“I gave up on trying to get away. I gave up on everything, for a long time. I didn’t know I was still in there until he took me out to lunch with a friend of his. He knew exactly what foods I did and didn’t like, and always made sure to order things I hated. But the kitchen mixed up some orders, and they served me pancakes instead of the salad Kwang-ho had ordered.” He smiles. “I didn’t get to eat them, he sent them back immediately. But I saw them, and I smelled them, and they smelled exactly like the way my dad used to make them.” He finds Hyunjin. “Like how I made them for you.”
Hyunjin doesn’t bother hiding the tears that roll down his cheeks, but he raises a trembling hand to his mouth to stifle a sob. Seungmin, who isn’t crying but does look pale, puts a hand on Hyunjin’s shoulder to comfort him.
“And something in me just… clicked back into place. I was fully inside my body for the first time in two years. I acted like nothing had happened. I ate the salad. I kept my eyes down. But then Kwang-ho went to the bathroom and his friend stood up to pay the bill, and I snatched his wallet from his hand and ran. I think he was too shocked to shout or come after me for a second, and by the time he did I was already out the door. I covered my ears while I ran in case they tried to command me again.” His mouth quirks up with a twitch of satisfaction. “I ran straight to the nearest train station. Kwang-ho’s friend had enough cash in his wallet to get a ticket to Seoul, and I left on the next train. I got here the day before my twentieth birthday. That was two and a half years ago.”
He falls silent, his throat raw. He can’t remember the last time he talked this much. He tries to get a sense of what he’s feeling, but he mostly just feels numb. He’s never shared this before, and it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that he has. The others are quiet. Perhaps they’re processing too.
It’s Changbin who finally breaks it. “That’s how you ended up on the streets.”
Felix nods. “Yeah. I didn’t have anything except for the little cash I had left after the ticket.”
“And you went through the scent starvation and bond severing without help,” Seungmin says.
Felix shrugs. “I couldn’t let them find me. Even if I wanted help, I had no money and no ID. It was rough, but I got through it. And after that, I was me. My body was my own again for the first time in years.”
“How long were you on the streets for?” Chan asks. He’s pale. One of his hands is still under the table, but the other is clenched into a fist next to his plate.
“A few months,” Felix answers. “It took me a while to figure out how to live off the grid. I’d broken the bond, but he was still my registered alpha on any official record. Only he could annul our mating. I couldn’t let anyone find me, because then I would be delivered right back to him, him being my first alpha and all that.” He swallows. It’s an outdated law and a horrible one, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Kwang-ho will always be his first alpha, and he will always own him. Even if he mates again, the government wouldn’t recognise the bond without Kwang-ho signing off on it and letting him go.
He drags his thoughts back. “I found the kitchen job and I saved up as much as possible. And then someone at one of the homeless shelters I visited told me about an apartment building a few blocks over, where the landlord would turn a blind eye if you wanted to pay cash. I got my apartment in spring the next year.” The apartment he definitely no longer has, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. That’s a problem for later.
There’s more silence, and then Changbin says, with forced lightness, “Well. At least that answers your question, Minnie. That sounds like enough trauma to do the trick.”
“Bin!” Chan snaps, but Felix lets out a burst of startled laughter. Chan looks ready to lunge at Changbin, and Felix wants to laugh again, but his throat closes and his laughter cuts off. And then he’s crying. Not just tears this time, but full sobs that rack his body and make it hard to breathe.
Immediately, Jeongin tugs on his shoulder to pull him close, and Jisung is out of his chair and on his other side in a flash. He’s crying too. Changbin comes up behind Jeongin’s chair to rub Felix’s shoulder, and the others stand as well to crowd in close.
Felix had managed to get through his story with relatively few tears, but now it’s like the dam has burst. There’s no holding back the grief, the pain, the agony he spent so long pushing down. He knew it was there, had always known. But he also knew he couldn’t let himself feel it, because if he did, it would crash down on him, so heavy and thick that he would choke on it. Throughout the two and a half years he’d lived alone, he hadn’t even let himself mourn the day his family died each February. He’d known with absolute certainty that if he let himself feel it, feel all of it, he would die. It would either kill him directly, or send him spiralling into a drop so deep he would never make it out.
But he is not alone now. There are hands brushing his hair, his face, his arms, there are voices murmuring soothing nothings in his ear, and there are scents, all mingling together to create that perfect blend of a beach bonfire picnic. He feels scraped raw and hollowed out and completely drained, but he is held. He won’t fall apart—they will not let that happen. He’s safe to give in, to let the waves of pain crash over him and ride out the storm.
He’s swept up into someone’s arms at some point, carried off to a soft space where the scents are even more intense. He’s tucked in under a blanket and so many limbs that he can’t tell where he begins and they end. None of them ever let go.
Notes:
TW: mentions of family death and grieving, forced bonding, kidnapping, abuse, and dissociation.
End note: This chapter comes with two bonus scenes. One is a little coda, for anyone who wants to see the pack carrying Felix off to bed after all of this (Hyunjin's pov). The second one is Minho's bonus chapter, which reveals what he's been doing and thinking since that night in the mall (+ a little interaction between him and Seungmin). Both of those are now up in part 2.
Chapter 14
Notes:
Little update: there will be a bonus chapter on Saturday, but after that I’m going to let go of regular posting for the rest of December. You WILL get Chapter 15 during that time, I’m just not sure yet when.
That said, enjoy this chapter!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When he wakes the next morning, he feels lighter. Not literally—he cried so hard last night that the muscles around his chest ache with it, and besides that he’s pretty sure at least eighty percent of Changbin’s body weight is on top of him—but his mind feels lighter. Raw, and tender, like he’s opened up a wound that is now fresh in the back of his mind, but it’s a wound that’s been rinsed clear of the dirt that was poisoning it. It’s still bleeding, but it’s clean. Ready to heal.
When he leaves the bedroom to go have breakfast, Chan pulls him aside for a moment. “Hey,” he says softly. “How are you doing?”
“Better,” Felix says. When Chan looks dubious, he continues, “Really. I feel better. Sorry for last night.”
“Don’t apologise,” Chan says immediately. “Don’t ever apologise for opening up. That’s actually why I wanted to talk to you—I want to thank you.”
Felix blinks.
“For trusting us. You didn’t have to tell us all of that, and you did.” Chan’s eyes are serious and intent. “I want you to know that you’re safe here. We will not turn you in. We won’t ever share anything you told us without permission, and none of us will ever harm you.”
The words sound like a vow, and Chan’s scent is so fiercely protective that it takes Felix aback for a minute. Finally, he manages, “I know. I trust you. You’re good people.”
They took him in. They went out of their way to get him through his two-week-long drop without involving authorities, when they could have just called an ambulance and be done with it. They’re the best people.
“What you went through…” Chan swallows. “I can’t even fathom what that must have been like. It’s horrifying. If there’s anything we can do, anything you need, even if that’s just someone to talk to, then please know that we’re here for you. We want to help you, Felix.”
Felix shifts uncomfortably, but nods. There isn’t anything they can do, and the last thing he wants is for them to do even more for him than they have already, but it’s kind of Chan to offer. He smiles. “Thank you.”
Chan seems to sense that he doesn’t really want to talk about it right now, and he merely holds out his arms. “Can I give you a hug?”
In lieu of an answer, Felix simply wraps his arms around him and breathes in the alpha’s warm coffee scent. “Thank you,” he says again.
“Of course,” Chan says, hearing the deeper ways in which he means it. “We’ve got your back, Lix, for as long as you will let us.”
Felix is saved from having to reply when Jisung wails Chan’s name because he can’t find his laptop charger, and Chan steps back to head upstairs with a final squeeze of Felix’s arms and a look of long-suffering exasperation.
Felix laughs and walks to the kitchen. He barely makes it one step into the room before Minho snatches him by the sleeve, like a cat lying in wait. “I want to apologise again,” he says seriously when Felix looks up at him questioningly. His voice is tight. “After what you told us last night—”
“Don’t,” Felix says, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare start again. You already apologised for your actions and I already accepted. My past doesn’t change that.” When Minho says nothing, he adds, “Don’t make me get Innie. Because I’m bad at arguing but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind doing it for me.”
Minho shakes his head with a huff, but Felix can tell from the loosening of his shoulders that he’s won. “Fine. I won’t bring it up again. I just had to make sure you knew I was sorry and that I’m not taking it lightly.”
Felix softens. “I know. We’re good.”
Jeongin appears at Felix’s side out of nowhere. “You called?”
Minho frowns at him. “I know they say lawyers are spawned in hell, but showing up like you’ve been summoned when we whisper your name is taking it a bit far.”
Jeongin laughs, and drags Felix off to the kitchen island to eat their jjigae and play the daily Wordle together.
And that lightness sets the tone for the day. Other than those two conversations, nothing really changes. Perhaps Jisung and Hyunjin are a little extra cuddly, but the mood remains comfortable. If he’d feared that he would ruin something by telling them his life story, it’s clear even after just one day that that fear was unfounded.
And yet, it feels fundamentally different. One conversation didn’t magically take away all of the pain and grief he’d harboured inside of him, but he feels clearer anyway, a little more free. Maybe because he’s no longer fighting so hard to keep a part of himself locked away for fear of what might happen if he lets himself feel it. Maybe because the others don’t judge him, or blame him, or treat him differently in any way at all, even though they now know all of him.
Nothing changes, and yet he feels different. It feels good, Felix decides. If someone had told him three months ago that he was going to willingly tell seven people everything they needed to know to deliver him back to the hell he crawled out of, he would have laughed in their face. And yet here he is. And he doesn’t regret it.
He’s glad he told them. He’s glad they know. He really does trust them, trusted them even before Chan’s vow. They won’t harm him. It’s just a fact, settled deep within his bones. They’re safe.
***
One afternoon, Felix is playing cards with Changbin in the kitchen when Hyunjin walks in, a bunch of bright yellow flowers in his hands. He places them on the counter and pulls a vase from one of the cupboards. He hums cheerfully to himself as he fills it with water and starts arranging the flowers.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” a voice says from behind them. “That floats on high o’er vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.”
Hyunjin spins around to where Chan is leaning against the doorway and lets out a cry of happiness. He launches himself at the pack alpha, who catches him in his arms with a laugh. “Hyung! How do you know the poem?”
Chan sets him down, grinning. “You’re the one who gave me the book, Jinnie.”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think you’d read it!”
“How could I not? It’s your favourite poet. This is your favourite poem. Of course I read it.”
Hyunjin looks like he could cry, and the kitchen floods with happy chocolate. Chan kisses him on the nose and then squints dubiously at the flowers. “Those are daffodils, right?”
Hyunjin laughs. “Yes, hyung. They’re daffodils.”
“Oh, good. This would have been really embarrassing if I’d got that wrong.”
Changbin leans closer to Felix and pretends to whisper. “He called roses tulips once.”
Chan sends him an exasperated look. “Because I misspoke. Not because I don’t know what roses are.”
Still to Felix, Changbin says, “He says that every time, but Channie-hyung is hopeless with plants. Last Christmas he almost ate a bunch of holly berries before Minho-hyung slapped them out of his hand. I think we witnessed a miracle today.”
Felix and Hyunjin laugh, and the alpha turns to Changbin with a grin. “Oh, I forgot about that! He looked so crestfallen when he dropped them all.”
“He’s right here, and he’s older than all of you. Show some respect.”
“Don’t worry, hal-abeoji,” Seungmin says, sticking his face around the doorframe. “We could never forget your age.”
Changbin cackles. “Do you just pop up any time Channie-hyung’s age is mentioned?”
Seungmin grins. “Don’t tease him so much guys, it’s not his fault. Geriatrics can’t help how forgetful they are.”
“Yah, Kim Seungmin!” Chan yells, storming out of the kitchen to chase Seungmin’s delighted laughter. “Get your ass back here and I’ll show you geriatric!”
***
“Ilsung-ssi, I have already—”
“Ilsung-ssi, seonsaeng-nim said we should focus on—”
“Ilsung-ssi, if you would just let me fi—”
Felix has been listening to Jeongin’s side of the Zoom meeting for the past thirty minutes, and by now Jeongin’s hands are clenched so tightly around the arms of his chair that Felix is starting to think he might actually rip them off.
He is sitting on a bean bag in Jeongin’s room with one of his mangas in his lap, but he stopped trying to read it a while ago. The room still smells like vanilla, but it has a sharp, burnt, angry edge to it now, and Felix can’t blame Jeongin for it. He doesn’t think the omega has gotten to finish a single sentence in the entire meeting.
Jeongin has remained exceedingly polite, but his honorifics and formal language are clipped, every syllable sharp and edged like a blade. Felix would wonder how the guy on the other side of the call hasn’t noticed, but it’s clear that he hasn’t been paying much notice to anything Jeongin is doing.
“You know what, fine.” Felix can still hear the other guy talking over Jeongin’s headphones, but Jeongin has obviously had enough. “I will prepare the witness examinations if you send me a draft of your opening statement by tomorrow. I need to know what angle you’re going for. I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow, Ilsung-ssi.”
Jeongin slams his laptop shut, snatches a hoodie from the desk and screams into it as loudly as he can. He lowers it, and then lets out a loud, “FUCK!” for good measure.
“That sounded like torture,” Felix says, and Jeongin spins towards him in his chair, still panting.
“Shit, I’d forgotten you were here.” His teeth are clenched. “God, I hate that guy.”
“Alpha?”
Jeongin snorts. “Oh yeah. The fucking worst.” He rakes a hand through his hair and gets up to start pacing, too agitated to sit still. “You know the type. Thinks omegas are weak little creatures who need an alpha to be in charge, because our pathetic little brains will surely implode when faced with the stress of making any kind of decision.” His hands clench and unclench at his sides. “I just need to pass this course. You know I actually like mock trials? And I’m good at them. But fucking Baek Ilsung has been making my life hell ever since the term started. By this point I genuinely don’t know if he even wants to become a lawyer or if he’s just trying to get me to fail so I’ll prove his sexist bullshit worldview right.”
Felix does know the type. He may not have gone to university, but he knows exactly what Jeongin means. He wishes there was something he could say to make it better. But there isn’t. It’s just what those people are like, what society is like, and it’s awful and infuriating and there is nothing they can do about it.
“The worst thing is that the law just validates his fucked-up beliefs, you know?” Jeongin fumes. “Like, my medical records aren’t sent to me. I can request them, but they’ll be sent to Chan-hyung, and they were sent to my alpha father before that. There’s all these horrible laws that imply ownership. Oh, they don’t call it that, but that’s essentially what it is, right?” When Felix nods, Jeongin says, “Right. It’s fucking awful. I hate the law.”
Felix huffs, a little amused despite himself. “You’re studying it. You love law.”
“I love being a lawyer. I hate the way the law works. That law of first right, the one that keeps you chained to that bastard? That was passed over four centuries ago. Fucking 1578. And since then we’ve abolished so many other laws that were ‘outdated’ and ‘dehumanising’, but somehow this is still perfectly fine, because omegas simply are weak and incapable of taking care of themselves, right?” Jeongin looks like he wants to spit on the floor. “I spent the past week looking into it, I debated one of my professors on it, and there’s literally no way around it. You’re just, stuck unless he lets you go. It’s fucking despicable.”
Felix blinks. He doesn’t know what to say. Yeah. He already knew that. Kwang-ho would never let him go. But the fact that Jeongin had tried to find a way out for him is very sweet.
“And it’s not even impossible to abolish it? It wouldn’t even be a super lengthy process. But since the people who have the power to change it are all alphas, no one cares.”
“You do.”
Jeongin’s eyes blaze. “You fucking bet I do. I want to make a difference. Do you know how hard it is for omegas to get proper representation in court?”
Not really. Felix can’t say he’s ever tried, but he can imagine.
“Especially unmated omegas. There are so many alpha lawyers who’ll only work with an omega’s head alpha, rather than the omega themselves. Or if they do, they’ll charge twice as much, and it’s just—” Jeongin grinds his teeth. “I want to make a difference. Because I can. I’m in the top five of all my classes and I know I can do it. But sometimes these group assignments with fucking asshole alphas who’ll also become lawyers make me want to claw my fucking eyes out, especially when they don’t listen to a fucking word I’m saying and any kind of emotion on my part would get me dismissed as hysterical.”
Felix has never heard Jeongin swear this much, has never heard or seen or smelled him this angry. And there’s nothing he can say to make it better, because Jeongin is right. It’s bullshit, and dehumanising, and awful.
So instead, he gets up.
“Let’s scream,” he says.
Jeongin stares at him. “What?”
“You’re angry. Let’s scream,” Felix repeats. “Without the hoodie this time. As loud as we can. We’ll take turns.”
Jeongin lets out a strangled laugh. “Felix—”
Felix screams. It’s loud enough that he startles even himself, and he falls silent earlier than he consciously meant to. But the bedrooms are sound-proofed, and there’s nothing to worry about.
Jeongin stares at him for one second, two, three, and then lets out a scream of his own. It’s loud and angry and echoes off the ceiling.
Felix grins, and screams back. Jeongin’s mouth stretches into his own grin, and they keep going, screams getting louder and progressively more insane and it feels good. He hadn’t expected it to be this cathartic, this freeing, just to scream at the stupid world they live in.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Jeongin laughs.
“The dumbest,” Felix agrees, a wide grin on his face. “Together?”
Jeongin simply opens his mouth in response and they scream, again and again, laughing and trying to catch their breath in between, until the burnt angry scent of vanilla has made way for wild, unrestrained joy.
Felix realises he may have overestimated the house’s soundproofing when the door bursts open and Chan flies into the room, brandishing an electric toothbrush like a taser. There’s a smear of toothpaste in the corner of his mouth. “What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?”
Felix and Jeongin look from Chan to the toothbrush to each other, and collapse into giggles, sinking down to the floor in a heap. “Oh my god,” Jeongin gasps. “Not a- not the tooth—” He can’t finish the word, laughing so hard tears are leaking out of his eyes.
Felix isn’t much better off, face buried in Jeongin’s shirt, trying to draw in a proper breath of air. “Toothbrush,” he manages, and that sets Jeongin off again.
“Jesus,” Chan says, lowering the toothbrush and stepping back until he’s leaning against the doorway, a hand on his heart. “What the fuck were you two doing? I thought you were being murdered.”
Jeongin raises his head from Felix’s shoulder and wipes his eyes, still hiccupping with laughter. “What were you going to do, hyung? Take care of the murderer’s dental hygiene?”
“I heard you haven’t been flossing,” Felix adds in a low voice, mock-threatening, feeling Jeongin shake against him with silent laughter.
Chan looks exasperated, but there is something soft in his eyes as he watches them laugh. “I take it neither of you are hurt?”
“Nope.” Jeongin waves a hand. “Just an omega thing.”
“Our poor little brains can’t help it,” Felix adds, relishing in the bewildered expression on Chan’s face and the way Jeongin laughs harder.
“Alright,” the alpha says slowly, backing out of the room. “I’m going to leave you to it. Shout if you actually need me. I’ll only come for my name this time.”
“Don’t worry, hyung,” Jeongin calls after him. “If we get a cavity you’ll be the first to know.”
Chan’s hand appears back around the doorframe to shoot him the middle finger, and they burst into laughter again, their giggles following him all the way down the hall.
***
Not everyone has their own room, Felix finds out as days pass and he explores more of the house. Jisung, Hyunjin and Changbin love company and don’t feel the need for their own space, perfectly happy to relax in the presence of others. Chan holes up in his studio if he needs time to himself, and even Jisung and Changbin will leave him to it then, knowing exactly what signs to look for after so many years together.
Minho, Seungmin, and Jeongin are the only ones who have their own bedrooms. They don’t use them often, Jeongin explains when Felix asks him about it. Most of the time they sleep in the pack den with the others, but sometimes they just need space to recharge on their own. It sounds so healthy. Felix should be used to it by now, but every time he discovers a new way in which this pack works to accommodate each other’s needs instead of acting on preconceived ideas and expectations, he’s amazed all over again.
The upstairs floor of the house is designed in such a way that there’s a walkway all the way around the stairs, with rooms on every side except the wall behind the stairs, which has big windows that let in light. Aside from the bedrooms, there’s a bathroom, a laundry room, Hyunjin’s studio, and an office. There are more rooms downstairs, and some of them aren’t even used except for storage. The rooms aren’t small either—the house just really is that big.
The largest room on this floor is reserved for the den, which is the only room he hadn’t been shown. That makes sense. It’s a pack’s most private, most protected space, and it’s taboo for any outsider to enter it. Doing so never even occurs to Felix. He is still sleeping in the guestroom, sometimes with all seven of them, but by now it’s usually just a few of them who share the nest with Felix as the others presumably spend the night in their den. They always make sure to switch every night or so, so Felix’s nest won’t lose the scents his body has come to rely on as he heals.
It’s nearing the end of April when Felix steps back into the hallway after taking a shower and runs straight into Jisung. The alpha grabs his wrists, bouncing up and down with excitement. “Will you let me braid your hair, Lixie? Please? It’s so pretty, and it’s so long!”
He’s right. Felix’s blond hair has grown to a little past his shoulders. He’s never had it this long—Kwang-ho had always made him keep it short, and while Felix had let it grow out a little after he moved to Seoul, hoping it would cover his mark, he’s never gone this long without giving it a trim. But he kind of likes it. It gives his face something delicate, something pretty, especially now that he has gained back some weight. He thinks the others like it too, maybe. Chan, Changbin and Hyunjin keep running their fingers through it, and even Minho has curled a lock around his finger once or twice. And well, with the way Jisung is practically vibrating in front of him, there’s no mistaking his opinion of it.
“If you want to,” he says with a small smile. “I’d like that.”
Jisung beams at him, and drags him up the stairs to the larger bathroom. Felix has never used that one, has simply stuck to the guestroom ensuite. But Jisung and Jeongin had been right when they told him about the size of it all those weeks ago—the upstairs bathroom is enormous. The bathtub is indeed large enough to fit seven people, although it would probably be a bit of a squeeze. There’s an actual plant in the corner, in a way Felix didn’t think people did outside of home decor magazines.
Jisung drags a stool in front of the large mirrors and ushers him onto it with an excited flutter of his hands. He rests his hands on Felix’s shoulders and stands behind him for a moment. “Pretty,” he says again, looking right at Felix instead of his hair, and Felix flushes.
Jisung grins at him and steps to the side to rummage through one of the cabinets. “Let me comb your hair, and then I’ll dry it a bit before I braid it.”
“Do you do this often?” Felix asks, watching as Jisung deposits various equipment, bottles and clasps onto the countertop.
“I do Jinnie’s hair sometimes,” Jisung says, stepping back behind Felix. “But he also loves doing it himself, and none of the others really have long enough hair for it.”
“You could grow yours out,” Felix says. “It would probably look really good.” Anything would look good on Jisung. He thinks that regardless of the alpha’s hairstyle, Jisung would only need to flash that bright smile at people and they would fall over themselves to do his bidding.
“Thanks,” Jisung says, playfully shaking his head so his curls bounce in his face. “I kind of have been growing it out, just a little. I want to see what it would look like. I tried to convince Innie too, because his is so shiny and beautiful, but he says he likes it the way it is. Really I think he knows I would beg him to braid it all the time, and he wants to avoid the hassle.” He laughs, meeting Felix’s eyes in the mirror. “You don’t mind, do you? You can tell me if you don’t feel like doing this. I know I can be clingy, I won’t be offended.”
Felix shakes his head. “No, I like it. If anyone has been clingy, it’s me. It’s just that…” It feels so good. It feels so good to be touched. The hugs, the hand holding, the casual head pats, the cuddles. He feels drunk on it sometimes, like he could soak it all up and live on touch alone.
He doesn’t say it, but it must show on his face anyway, because Jisung wraps his arms around him in a back-hug. “I get it, Lix. I can’t imagine going without touch for as long as you have.”
“Kwang-ho…” Felix takes a breath, looking down at his lap instead of meeting Jisung’s eyes in the mirror. “Touch was usually punishment, with him. It usually meant pain. But sometimes… sometimes he’d be really sweet, all of a sudden, and he’d hug me. He’d use his scent to daze me because even if I didn’t want to, my body reacted to it, you know?”
“You were mated,” Jisung says quietly.
“Yeah. He had so much control over his pheromones. I don’t know how he did it, but if he wanted his scent to smell a certain way, he could do it. And he’d make it all sweet and loving, fill the room with it, until I’d just… melt.” He shakes his head. “And then he’d change it to anger in the blink of an eye, and watch me panic, just switching back and forth between sweet and angry until I couldn’t tell up from down. He loved that kind of thing.”
Jisung’s arms tighten around him. “I’m so sorry.”
“He’d croon in my ear as he did it, doing the same thing. Sweet voice, cruel words. Pathetic little omega. So naïve, so easy to fool.”
“That has nothing to do with being an omega,” Jisung says, hands clenching in Felix’s sweater. “I’m an alpha and I’m way more sensitive to scents than Innie is. What you’re describing would have wrecked me, and Innie might have been fine. Sub-gender doesn’t mean everything.”
Felix is silent for a while, letting Jisung’s body heat soak into his back. “It’s so different here. The way you all treat Jeongin is amazing.”
“None of us love Innie because he’s an omega. We love him. If he wants to be a classical omega, great. If he doesn’t, that’s fine too.”
“And he doesn’t,” Felix says, his mouth quirking up.
Jisung huffs out a laugh, and Felix can feel his chest shake. “Definitely not. And none of us care. They don’t care that I’m not a typical alpha either.”
Felix looks up, curious.
“I’m too soft most of the time, too submissive. Especially with people I don’t know well I get super anxious. I got picked on for it a lot by the other trainees.” He smiles. “Until Channie-hyung found out, that is. He still won’t tell me what he did, but they kept quiet pretty quickly after that. But yeah, I’m not what an alpha is supposed to be. Even my scent is too sweet, all sticky cinnamon.”
“I love your scent,” Felix blurts. He colours a little when Jisung looks at him, but presses on. “When we met, in the mall… I was so wary. I told Seungmin it wasn’t a big deal, that he should just invite you and Changbin-hyung over. But you were an alpha, which meant you had a Voice, and I was really scared I’d made a mistake, that you would…” He shakes his head. “And then you came and you were all shy and nervous, and you smelled like that. I’ve met people with cinnamon scents before, but they were always a little too spicy, or too sharp, or too stale. But I smelled you, and I was back in Sydney and my dad was teaching me and my sister how to make cinnamon rolls. I felt comforted, and safe. I liked you immediately. It was crazy.”
It’s Jisung’s turn to blush now, and Felix watches his full cheeks flush a pretty red. Flustered, he leans forward to bury his head in Felix’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he mumbles into the fabric. The air floods with a warm rush of happy cinnamon, and Felix instinctively tilts his head to get closer to it, nearly whining when Jisung pulls back.
The alpha laughs and pats Felix’s shoulder. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to daze you. Let me actually dry your hair now, or we’ll be here all day.”
Felix is pretty sure he wouldn’t mind that, especially when Jisung starts running his fingers through his hair as he works. He scratches his nails gently across Felix’s scalp each time he lifts a new section, and Felix is practically purring by the time the hairdryer is switched off.
“Is there any particular style you wanted?” Jisung asks, combing through it one more time.
Felix shakes his head, watching as the lock Jisung is holding slips through his fingers with the movement. “Whatever you want is fine. I know nothing about braids.”
Jisung hums. “I’ll keep it pretty basic. Just relax.” He selects a few sections of hair and starts braiding, urging Felix to tip his head down and lean back against his chest as he works. It’s soothing, the gentle tugs and twists of his hair, the quiet scratchy sounds near his ears. Felix feels his eyes drift shut, and realises he could easily fall asleep here.
“Is anyone else home?” he asks to distract himself.
Jisung pauses the song he was humming. “Channie-hyung and Changbin-hyung were heading for the gym when I left them. The others are out. I think Jinnie mentioned something about picking up paint, and Minho-hyung always has a meeting with his staff on Thursday.”
Felix blinks. “Wait. His staff?”
“Oh, yeah. The dance studio is his. It’s getting pretty big, there’s like… five or six other teachers now, I think?”
Felix wonders how talented Minho must be to own a large dance studio midway through his twenties.
“An old mentor of his offered him the position when he retired,” Jisung continues unprompted. “So he got lucky. But the only reason he got the offer is because he really is that good, and he’s more than proved it over the past few years. Since he started running the studio he’s had to hire two more teachers and they may have to look for a bigger place. Right now they’re renting the lower floor of a gym, but hyung said they might be able to get their own building if things keep going this well.”
“I wish I could see it sometime,” Felix says.
“We’ll take you! I bet he’d love to show you around.”
They do this a lot. Talk about the future as if he’ll be here to see it, to do these things with them when he’s healed. He’s slowly starting to accept that they really do consider him a friend. He even gets the sense that they won’t just kick him out when he’s better. But even if they don’t, he can’t intrude on their hospitality forever. He doesn’t want to. He has already disrupted their lives more than enough. He wants them to have their space back, wants them to be able to all sleep in their den and do what they want without worrying about a guest.
He’s still recovering and if he left now, he knows they would panic, so he hasn’t. He’s put Seungmin through enough. But he will leave as soon as the beta declares him healthy again. He’ll end up back on the streets, and as much as the thought chills him, at least this time he’ll be in good shape when he goes. He won’t have to go through another bond severing, and with the weight he’s putting back on it will be a while before he’s truly starving, especially now that he can drop by Aera’s bakery if he gets truly desperate. He can find another job. He can find an apartment. He did it before when he was much worse off. He can do it again.
“You know, it probably sounds strange to you, but you wouldn’t believe how much more open and approachable Minho-hyung is now. Compared to when we met him, I mean.” Jisung’s voice breaks him out of his thoughts.
“When you rented the recording studio in his building?”
“In his old building, yeah. Did Channie-hyung tell you?”
Felix hums. “Changbin-hyung. He said you guys and Minho-hyung had a prank war.”
Jisung laughs. “Oh, right. Yeah, we did. It was just that Minho-hyung was so… cold. Unapproachable. He was so serious all the time. And then Changbin-hyung started teasing him, and there was no reaction for weeks until one day his eyes narrowed, and he started ruining our takes by playing music at random hours. It was like something had flipped, and there was a gleam in his eyes after that.”
Felix tilts his head. “Changbin-hyung said Minho-hyung started it.”
Another laugh. “Of course he did. But nope, definitely all Binnie.” Jisung tilts Felix’s head back in place so he has better access, adding another lock of hair to the braid. “He was still closed off though. We were messing with him, and he’d get back at us, but we never actually talked. I don’t think we spoke more than ten words to each other for months.”
“What changed?”
Jisung’s hands momentarily pause in Felix’s hair. “I... I told you about my anxiety.”
“Oh, Sung, you don’t have to—”
“No, it’s fine. I… We’d had a pretty stressful week. We were working so hard, and there was this potential client that we really needed to win over, because if we didn’t that would be it. We had no money. We were already behind on rent, and we were so close to getting kicked out. If this fell through, it would be over.” Jisung is silent for a bit, staring at one of the hairclips on the sink. “We were all stressed. The day before the deadline, we’d been working on the track all day, and we were finally getting close to finishing it. Just some final touches left. And Channie-hyung and Binnie-hyung left to get some ramen from the convenience store across the street.” Slowly, as if to give himself something to focus on, he starts braiding again. “I stayed behind to keep working. I was adding some reverbs when the computer crashed. It just went black, out of nowhere.”
Felix inhales sharply.
Jisung’s hands still again. “I… I lost it. I remember staring at the screen, and then feeling as if the world was crashing down around me. I couldn’t breathe. I really thought I was going to die.” He meets Felix’s eyes in the mirror. “And then Minho-hyung found me. I guess he was walking by or something and heard me fall to the ground, or maybe I made a noise. I don’t know. I don’t even remember him entering the room. I just know that when I came back to myself and drew in a proper breath for the first time, he was there, guiding me through a breathing exercise. The room smelled like ocean, and even though we were in an old, musty studio, it felt like the cleanest air I’d ever breathed. I just broke down crying and fell into him, and he held me. We sat there until the others returned, and Binnie nearly ripped Minho-hyung’s head off for hurting me before Chan-hyung held him back. He could see there was more going on, even if he was wary.”
He shakes his head, a faint smile on his face. “I explained what happened. I have no idea how they understood what I was saying, I was crying so hard. And then Channie-hyung restarted the computer and the track was still there. It was fine. The only thing we’d lost was the last reverb I added. Minho-hyung was still next to me, and I just sobbed into his shoulder for a good ten minutes.” He laughs. “It wasn’t funny then, but looking back the looks on their faces were hilarious. Channie-hyung was still wary of Minho, and Changbin-hyung stress-ate an entire bowl of ramen before it sank in that we really hadn’t lost the track. Minho-hyung was just sitting there, still rubbing circles on my back while also looking completely baffled as to how he’d ended up in that situation.”
Felix laughs too, picturing the scene.
“Something changed after that. He started stopping by the studio to check on me. He’d make up excuses, claim it was for any other reason, but we all knew what he was doing. We’d talk for a bit, and then he’d leave for his classes, and we’d go on recording. We sent off the track, and the client loved it. They mentioned our name to someone else, and then two weeks later we got an offer to write for a popular entertainment company. It was insane. The night we got the deal, we decided to take Minho-hyung to dinner.”
“And he came?” Felix asks, surprised it had been that smooth.
Jisung smiles widely, thoroughly amused. “You’ve clearly got a good read on him. No, he definitely refused. So instead, we brought dinner to him. Had a picnic dinner in the dance studio. Changbin-hyung practically had to sit on top of him to get him to stay, but eventually he relented. And well, things just grew from there, I guess. It took a long time.” He picks up another section of Felix’s hair to start braiding again. “But I mean it. As hard as it is to get him to talk now, he’s practically an open book compared to those first days.”
Felix remembers what Minho told him, the pain and self-loathing in his voice as he’d shared his story. And he can imagine very vividly how the alpha would have closed himself off from the world, blaming himself for his friend’s death. How he would have grown distant and cold, slowly hardening under the weight of his guilt.
It’s still there, he knows. Simply sharing his past with Felix and hearing his reassurances won’t fix something that big. He knows Minho hasn’t forgiven himself. But he’s glad that at some point, he’d at least managed to open himself up for love again.
***
Over the next week, Felix can’t help but think about what he’s going to do when he leaves. He’s been clinging to the fact that he’s still recovering because that means he gets to stay a little longer, but he knows it’s just an excuse, and it can’t last forever. Eventually, he’s got to go.
While he’s still here and has easy access to the internet, he spends his afternoons on his phone, searching for restaurants and shops that are looking to hire. Of course he can’t send anything in or apply for a job the official way, but he keeps a list in his notes app so he can stop by and offer his services in person after he leaves. He’ll just write it out on paper before he goes, in case his phone dies and he doesn’t have access to a charging station. He hopes someone will be able to point him to another residential building that will let him rent an apartment, and he won’t have to spend too long on the streets. The shelters had never been safe for omegas, and there’s no way he’s staying there.
There is nothing he can do right now though, and although the uncertainty is stressing him out, he tries to push it from his mind so the others won’t notice. He doesn’t plan on telling them—they don’t know he’s lost his apartment, and he’ll just pretend that’s where he’ll go back to after he leaves. He’ll be out of their hair, and maybe, if they somehow really do want to, they can continue to be friends after he finds a job and a new place.
It turns out, however, that he’s not the only one keeping secrets.
“I’m stopping by Olive Young after school,” Jeongin announces over breakfast one morning. “I’m out of facial wash. Does anyone need anything?”
“Ooh! Can you pick me up some more moisturiser?” Hyunjin dives for his phone. “It’s this brand. The green one, please.”
“Pick up some more hand soap, too,” Minho adds, sliding an omelette onto Changbin’s plate. “We’re almost out.”
More people start yelling out products and Jeongin slaps a notepad on the kitchen island with a huff, telling them to make a list.
Chan chuckles, reaching for his wallet. “Take my card, Innie. And you might as well take my car too, because something tells me you’re going to need the space.”
Jeongin laughs and says something in return, but Felix has frozen in his chair, eyes fixed on the black credit card in Chan’s hand. The credit card that looks identical to the one they had given him in the mall.
Minho’s credit card.
His spoon clatters into his bowl with a loud noise and Jisung jumps, but he doesn’t notice.
The credit card.
Fuck, how could he have forgotten the credit card? It had been in his mattress. Must still be in his mattress, except he’d definitely lost his apartment and there is no way his landlord hadn’t dumped his stuff. Had the mattress been burned in some garbage disposal centre? Or had the man dumped Felix’s stuff out on the street? Someone could have taken it. It’s how Felix had found the mattress in the first place, after all. What if someone had found the credit card? What if they’d been using it all this time, subtracting millions of won from Minho’s bank account, and nobody had noticed because they’d trusted Felix with the card and he had lost it and forgotten all about—
“—lix? Felix!” Someone’s hand is on his shoulder, adding pressure. “Felix, what’s wrong?”
“Is the drop back? What’s happening?” Jisung sounds panicked.
Felix feels dizzy. Oh god, what if they lost their house, what if Minho lost his studio because of him—
A hand settles at the nape of his neck and squeezes, brief but hard, and Felix sucks in a breath. “There you go.” A thumb strokes up and down his neck, the scent of coffee blooming around him like a cloud. “Breathe, Felix.”
Felix takes another breath, realising that’s why he felt so dizzy. The room stops spinning as he draws in oxygen, but his head is still racing.
“Can you talk to me?” Chan asks, voice soft and clear. “It’s okay if you can’t.”
“’M fine,” Felix manages.
Chan’s other hand settles on top of Felix’s, trying to pry it loose from his thigh. Oh. He hadn’t realised he’d been digging his fingers in. It’s grounding him though, and he doesn’t want to let go. “Squeeze my hand instead,” Chan says. “That’s it. Good job. Breathe with me, alright?”
There’s another flood of coffee, and Felix breathes it in, somehow able to let the panicked spiral of thoughts go for just long enough to slump into Chan’s hold.
“Good. Another breath.”
Felix breathes with Chan for another few minutes until the room slowly comes back into focus. Everyone is watching them, but they’ve stepped back from the kitchen island to crowd against the counter, giving them some space. Only Jisung is still at Felix’s side, holding on to Felix’s other hand.
Felix lets out a shuddering breath and drops his head to his chest. “Fuck.”
“You back with us?” Chan asks.
“Yeah,” Felix sighs. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologise.” Chan slowly sits down on the chair next to him, but keeps his hand on Felix’s neck. “Do you know what brought it on?”
Felix closes his eyes, letting go of Chan and Jisung to bury his face in his hands. “I lost your credit card,” he whispers.
“What?” Chan leans in closer. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Felix lowers his hands. “You need to check your bank account.” His voice is hoarse. “I lost your credit card.”
Chan simply blinks at him, uncomprehending, but Jisung gasps. Felix looks at him, stomach churning with guilt. “Minho-hyung’s credit card, you mean?”
Felix nods, swallowing in an attempt to get rid of the tightness in his throat. “It’s gone.” He looks at Minho standing by the sink. “Has someone been using it? I—you need to check, please, you could have lost so much—someone could have taken—”
“Sssh, Felix, it’s alright,” Chan soothes, but Felix isn’t listening.
“Please, Minho-hyung, you have to—you have to block it, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” He’s nearing tears now, and everyone at the counter shuffles restlessly as if they want to go to him.
It’s Minho, however, who moves, walking forward until he’s in front of him. “Felix. I check my accounts daily. Nobody has used the card in months, not since they gave it to you. I didn’t even know they had given it to you, I thought Seungmin still had it.”
Felix stares at him. “You… how did you not miss it?”
Minho’s mouth quirks up. “I have another one. But that’s not the point. What has you so panicked about this, hm? Why now?”
“I…” Felix’s eyes flick to the black credit card that’s still lying on the kitchen island in front of him. “I forgot. That I had it. But it’s gone now, and I’ve lost my apartment so I can’t get it back, and—”
“How do you know you lost your apartment?” Hyunjin breaks in, sounding confused.
Shit. He hadn’t meant to share that. “I… I mean, I…” Then he frowns. Something about the way Hyunjin said that… “How do you know I’ve lost my apartment?” he throws back.
Hyunjin shoots a panicked look at Chan, who sighs. Felix looks between the two, eyes wide. “You knew? How did you know?”
Chan rubs a hand over his face. “Let’s all sit back down. Finish your breakfast, everybody. I’ll tell you.”
There’s a shuffling of feet and sliding of chairs as they all sit back down, everyone looking just as bewildered as Felix feels. Everyone, that is, except for Hyunjin and Chan.
“The day you got here,” Chan begins, “Changbin gave us an update over the phone. To tell us what happened, how you were doing, the state you were in when they found you. He also mentioned he kicked down your door.” Chan shoots a dry look at Changbin, who shrugs unapologetically. “So Hyunjin and I went over to see if we could fix it. Make sure no one broke in, you know. But when we got there—”
“That bastard was already there,” Hyunjin spits, fingers clenching around his chopsticks. “He was—”
“Jinnie,” Chan says, “I think it’s better if I explain.” Hyunjin falls silent, and Chan continues, “Your landlord was there. At first we thought someone had already broken in, the building looked shady enough for it, but it turned out he owned the place.”
“He was fucking shady himself, hyung, did you even hear what he—”
“Yah!” Minho says, cuffing Hyunjin around the back of his head. “Let hyung talk.”
Hyunjin grumbles, but obediently stays quiet again.
“We tried to explain the situation. He called you Yongbok, so we figured that’s the name you were going by. We told him there had been an emergency and we had to force the door open, but we would pay to have it fixed as soon as possible. He…” Chan hesitates.
“He kicked me out,” Felix says calmly.
“He… yes. You knew?”
Felix shrugs. “He was on the verge of kicking me out every other day. He kept coming around demanding more money, and I… I kind of used most of your taxi money to pay him off. I’m sorry. But I knew it wouldn’t hold him off for long, and then with the door and me missing my next rent payment? Yeah, I knew as soon as I woke up that there was no way I still had an apartment.”
Chan lifts his gaze to the ceiling. “Rent. I didn’t even think- fuck. And here we thought we were protecting you from further stress by not mentioning it. You’ve been worrying about this on your own all this time?”
“It’s fine. I haven’t been that worried. I know he’s thrown away my stuff, but I didn’t own a lot, so it’s fine.” It’s not like he could take it with him when he goes back to the streets, after all. He bites his lip. “Except for the credit card. I’m really sorry you lost that because of me.”
Hyunjin frowns. “Lix, he didn’t throw away you stuff.”
Felix stares at him.
“We took it,” Chan says. “It’s in the garage.”
Felix’s eyes widen.
“Everything that was in your apartment, we took with us.”
Hyunjin tries to hold back a laugh and fails. “You should have seen hyung. He cursed out your landlord like a sailor and nearly threw him out the window when he tried to lay claim to your things. We were on the seventh floor. It was amazing.”
Jeongin laughs, and Minho’s mouth curls into a smirk. “Good,” they say simultaneously.
Chan colours bright red, but he doesn’t deny it. “He deserved it,” he comments offhandedly, before turning back to Felix. “Your stuff is right here. Is that why you were worried about the credit card?”
“It was in my mattress,” Felix mumbles. He cannot believe it. That they went to his place to help, to fix things before they could escalate. That they tried to bargain with his landlord. That they saved all of his things and had been keeping them safe for weeks.
“Well, then it’s still in your mattress,” Hyunjin says. “I wanted to throw that out, actually, because it was kind of gross—sorry,” he adds as Seungmin jabs him in the ribs, “But it was, and I said I’d buy you a much better one, but Channie-hyung said we couldn’t make decisions about your stuff even if it was gross.”
“I did not use the word gross,” Chan feels the need to clarify. “But they are your things, Felix, and we’d already violated your privacy enough by entering your apartment and packing everything up. They’re yours. It’s up to you what you want to do with them.”
“I’m still buying him a new mattress,” Hyunjin mutters.
Felix is still staring, mind reeling with the whiplash of this conversation. Then he looks to Minho. “I still have your credit card,” he breathes. A wave of relief crashes over him. “Oh my god.”
“That’s still what you’re most worried about?” Changbin asks incredulously. “Not that, I don’t know, you lost your apartment?”
“I already knew I lost my apartment,” Felix laughs, dizzy with relief. “I was just scared someone had stolen all of your money. I thought you might lose your house or something.”
“The house is mine,” Hyunjin says flippantly. “We wouldn’t lose that.”
Felix blinks. “It’s yours?”
Hyunjin shrugs. “I have a lot of money.”
As Felix tries to take in that bit of information, Changbin speaks up again. “That’s not the point. Lix-ah, what about you? Why did you never mention anything?”
“What were your plans for when you’re better?” Jeongin adds, eyes narrowing. “Where were you planning to go?”
“I…” Felix hesitates. He hadn’t planned on telling them at all. He had wanted to avoid this entire discussion, but the look in Jeongin’s eyes tells him he’s not getting out of this. “I was going to find a new place,” he says vaguely.
Changbin nods slowly, but Jeongin’s eyes narrow further. “Before or after you left this house?”
“Before of course, what are you even saying? He’d have no place to go, why would he—” Jisung falls silent as he notices Felix’s expression. “Lix?”
“It wouldn’t be for too long,” Felix says, suddenly feeling guilty even if he doesn’t quite know why he should. “There were people at the shelter in Daebang-dong that had good contacts. I was going to find them again.”
“You were going to go back to living on the streets,” Changbin says slowly. “Do you hate us that much?”
Felix balks. “What? No!”
“Then why would you decide to leave our perfectly good house to live on the streets?” he throws back, raising his voice.
“Bin, calm down,” Chan says. “This is not helping.”
“No,” Changbin snaps, not looking away from Felix, “I want to know why that would seem like the best option to you.”
Felix stares at him. Changbin has never spoken to him like this. Clammy cold grips his spine, and he swallows. “I… I can’t stay here forever. I’ve already intruded for so long, and—”
“Lix-ah, we like you. We care about you. I thought we’d shown that, but you still—what, did you think we would just kick you out?” This time, there’s hurt mixed in with the anger.
“No,” Felix sighs, “That’s the problem. You’re too nice. But you’ve already done so much, given up so much for me, and I’m… I have no money. No job, no skills, nothing to pay you back with. I never even finished high school. I feel awful staying here and just taking, and it’s… when I’m better, I’m going to go. You’ll still have done more for me than I can ever repay, but at least I can stop taking more.”
It is quiet for a second, and then nearly everyone bursts into loud protest.
“That’s ridiculous!” Changbin says. “You don’t have to pay us back, we don’t want you to!”
“Bin, this is not helping—”
“What, so you’re just letting him move back onto the streets?”
“Of course not, but he needs—”
“No, Changbin-hyung is right, we can’t just let him—”
“We’ll just make sure that he—”
“Felix has to—”
“SHUT UP!!!”
Jeongin’s yell is so loud it shocks everyone into silence. “Everyone,” he says, voice deadly quiet, “Shut the fuck up. Do you even realise what you’re doing? What you sound like?” He stares everyone down as he talks, one by one until they avert their eyes. Only Seungmin and Minho hold his gaze, but they hadn’t been arguing to begin with. “This is Felix’s life. Felix’s choice. What he does is not up to you.”
“Innie, that’s not what we meant,” Chan tries soothingly, but Jeongin doesn’t let him finish.
“But it’s what you did. Whatever Felix wants to do, it’s up to him.”
Hyunjin looks ready to burst into protest again, but without even looking at him, Jeongin points a finger in his direction and he snaps his mouth shut without another word. The omega looks around the table, daring them to speak. Jisung, Hyunjin, Changbin and even Chan stay quiet, although they clearly don’t like it. Seungmin has tilted his head at Jeongin, looking thoughtful, and Minho has relaxed back into his seat, a small smile playing on his lips.
Felix stares at Jeongin in a combination of bewilderment and awe.
The omega turns to him. “Felix. It’s your decision. If you want to leave when you’re better, no one will stop you.” He pauses, as if waiting for Felix to acknowledge his words.
Hesitantly, Felix nods. He’s a little surprised Jeongin is so firmly on his side. Even if he’s defending Felix’s rights as an omega, he’d expected him to be a little more…
“But I want to ask you something,” Jeongin continues. He pauses again and when he next speaks, his voice is softer, quieter. Felix instinctively leans forward a little to hear him better. “The night we met, when we were sitting against the wall in that alley. You held my hand and talked me out of my panic attack, and you let me cry on you while I got my bearings.”
Felix nods. He remembers.
“Do you remember the first thing you asked me when I was coherent again?” He holds Felix’s eyes for a second, but doesn’t pause long enough for him to answer. “You asked if you could call anyone for me, or if I was running. You told me you hadn’t called an ambulance, because if my pack was abusive—” Someone gasps, but Felix can’t tear his eyes away from Jeongin to check who. “—then you didn’t want me to be returned to them. If it was them I was running from, you told me I could come stay with you.”
Felix nods again. He remembers that too. He doesn’t know where Jeongin is going with this.
“Did you mean it?” Jeongin asks. “If I’d cried again, and told you I was scared of my alphas and I didn’t want to go back, would you have taken me home?”
“Of course,” Felix says, without hesitation.
“I would have slipped into a drop right after, and I’d have had to go through the process of severing the bond—would you have decided that was too much effort, or would you have taken care of me throughout all of that too?”
“Of course I would have,” Felix whispers, heart clenching at the idea of seeing Jeongin like that, barely conscious and in pain.
“After that, I couldn’t go by Yang Jeongin anymore, they would find me. So I’d have to take on a new name, and everything I did would have to be off the books, because bond or not, they’d still be registered as my packmates in the eyes of the law. It would mean I’d have a hard time finding a job or my own place to live. I wouldn’t have any money. No clothes. I’d have dropped out of school, so I’d have no degree. I could give you nothing, and I’d be in your space all the time. Would you have wanted me to leave?”
Felix can see the trap now, carefully constructed with quiet words and earnest eyes, buttons pressed so lightly that Felix hadn’t felt them slide into place until it was too late. “Jeongin…”
“Would you?” Jeongin presses. “I’d be a bother, right? You’d be well within your rights to want me gone. You can be honest, you won’t offend me.”
“Of course I wouldn’t have kicked you out,” Felix sighs. “You know that. We probably wouldn’t have made it though. I would have tried, but I could barely feed myself as it was. We’d likely have ended up back on the streets before the week was out.”
“We,” Jeongin repeats with a smile. He shakes his head. “Now imagine you didn’t live in the shitty apartment you were staying in. Imagine you had a house. You had money. You had all the food you could ever want. Would you have let me stay then while I found my feet again and figured things out, regardless of whether my drop and bond severing symptoms had passed and I was healthy again?”
Felix closes his eyes, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “Yes.”
“And if I told you I needed to leave your big, absurdly luxurious house that has more space than you could ever need, because I was intruding on your life and I had no means to repay you. How would you feel?”
This time, Felix does cry. “Jeongin,” he chokes. “Stop.”
Jeongin’s voice softens, but he doesn’t stop. “It’s how we feel, Felix. How we all feel. It’s what the others were trying to tell you, even if they were doing a terrible job of it.” There’s a huff of laughter from Seungmin and Felix can faintly see Hyunjin wipe his eyes. “We like you. You’re our friend, as much as we are yours. You’d do this for us, if you had the chance. Please let us do the same for you.”
Felix squeezes his eyes shut, fighting against the urge to cry harder. He doesn’t hear Jeongin move, but the omega is suddenly there, squeezing in the spot between Chan’s chair and Felix’s to wrap his arms around him. “Please,” he whispers. “Let us help you, Lixie.”
Felix wraps his own arms around Jeongin in return and buries his wet face in his shoulder. The angle Jeongin is in can’t be comfortable, but the omega doesn’t say anything, just lets Felix cling to him. Hesitantly, another hand lands on his back, and when Felix doesn’t shrug it off, it starts to rub in gentle circles.
It takes him a moment to collect himself, but then he takes a deep breath and releases Jeongin, leaning back to wipe his eyes. “That was mean,” he tells him, voice thick.
“That was brilliant,” Hyunjin says, grinning. “Damn, Innie.”
“Well, you idiots were fucking it up,” Jeongin says, shrugging, but he can’t hide the pleased spike in his scent.
“We were,” Chan sighs. “I’m sorry, Felix. We shouldn’t have talked for you.”
One by one, everyone apologises, except for Seungmin and Minho, who hadn’t actually spoken throughout the entire interaction. Felix has never seen Minho look this proud though, and he doesn’t miss the way the alpha briefly squeezes Jeongin’s wrist when he moves back to his seat.
“So will you stay?” Jisung asks, a little nervous.
“I…” Felix hesitates. “Yeah. I… Fine. If you really wouldn’t mind?”
“We wouldn’t,” Chan says immediately. “We want you here.” His voice rings with decisiveness, and he’s echoed by a chorus of agreements.
“It’s just…” Felix sighs. “I don’t like it. It feels wrong to just… live here, without contributing anything. I don’t want that. It doesn’t feel good.”
Rather than an immediate protest like he’d been expecting, this time there’s a pause as the others take it in.
“I actually think I’d feel bad about that too,” Jisung says slowly. “Even if it was fine with you guys. I think I’d feel like I was freeloading.”
“Yes,” Felix says emphatically, glad someone understands. “Exactly.”
“Well, Innie and I are not contributing,” Seungmin says. “And nobody minds that.”
“But we’re students,” Jeongin says.
“And you’re pack,” Felix adds. “I’m just a… I’m just me.”
“Friend,” Changbin corrects. “Say it.”
“Out loud,” Jisung whispers, and Seungmin smacks him on the arm with a snort.
Changbin rolls his eyes, but his mouth curls upwards anyway. “I mean it. Say it.”
“Friend,” Felix huffs. “Fine. I’m your friend.”
“Are you afraid?” Jisung continues, grinning and dancing back with a cackle to dodge Changbin’s mowing hand. “What do we eat!”
“Well, I’ll make sure you won’t be eating anything for the rest of the day if you don’t finish these eggs I made you,” Minho deadpans, and Felix laughs. “Get back to your breakfast.”
“Even if I’m your friend,” Felix says after an obedient mouthful of eggs. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’d be freeloading.”
“We really don’t need the money,” Chan says, but it’s not dismissive. He’s thinking. “But if it’s that important to you, we can help you look for a job? And you can just pay us part of what you earn. We can figure out the details later.”
Felix nods slowly. That sounds… better. It’ll probably be a hard negotiation later if he’s going to convince them to let him pay enough, but this sounds like something he can live with.
“You can’t go looking for a job right now anyway,” Seungmin says. “Not until you’ve fully recovered, and that’s up to me.”
Chan lets out a laugh. “Oh, another one. Our youngest are the ones who really rule this pack, I see.”
Minho raises an eyebrow, but he’s smiling as he stands to grab more coffee. He ruffles Seungmin’s hair as he passes, to the beta’s indignation. “Is that something you’re only realising now?”
“Alright,” Jeongin says, pointing to the notepad still on the kitchen island. “Anyone who wants something from Olive Young, write now or forever hold your peace. I need to get to class.”
There’s a scramble as both Hyunjin and Jisung dive for the pen at the same time, and everyone laughs. The mood is light, and it’s like nothing ever happened.
But it did.
He gets to stay while he figures things out. They want him to stay. And together they’ve found a way to make it work, one that feels relatively honest. It might not be perfect, but it’s a compromise. He gets to stay. And when that bubbly feeling of hope, of warmth, of happiness returns to his chest, this time he doesn’t push it away.
Notes:
HE’S STAYING.
Anyone want that bonus scene of Chan cursing like a sailor and nearly tossing Felix’s landlord out the window? Because that's now up in part 2!
In addition, this chapter comes with two more bonus scenes that are set in the first week after Minho’s return. One: Jisung asks Minho for a night together, just to reassure himself that Minho is really back (Click here), and two: the first time Minho witnesses one of Felix's muscle spasms (Click here).
Chapter 15
Notes:
I really, really liked writing this chapter. Enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Here it is,” Chan says, gesturing towards a corner of the garage, where Felix’s mattress is stacked against the wall. In front of it, there are two cardboard boxes.
He opens one and spots his thin blanket and his clothes. It’s immediately clear that they washed them, because there’s no cranberry sauce in sight and his clothes definitely hadn’t smelled like fresh cotton when he last saw them. The box isn’t full. He didn’t own much. Besides his work clothes he owned maybe three shirts and one pair of jeans, threadbare and worn. It suddenly occurs to him that they’ve had his clothes all this time, but they’ve been letting him borrow theirs. And yes, perhaps it was to keep him from realising they’d visited his apartment, but he suspects it was mostly because their clothes are soft and warm and don’t have holes in them, and they are kind people.
His eyes drift to the mattress. Hyunjin was right. It does look gross. It is gross. It’s old, and stained, and it never smelled right no matter how often Felix scented it. He remembers the nest he’d tried to build on it, using the few clothes he had and his single blanket and pillow. It hadn’t been enough. He’d never felt safe, it had never soothed his instincts sufficiently to get a deep night’s rest.
They had seen it. They had all seen it, the place he lived, how little he had. Rationally, he knows there’s no reason to feel ashamed. He got himself off the streets, and he fought hard for everything in that apartment. He’s proud of that. But looking at it here, in this giant house filled with luxury, the dingy mattress and the few cardboard boxes on the floor still seem…
“Don’t.” It’s said in English, and Chan’s voice is soft.
“I know,” Felix says, in the same language. “I know. I just…”
Chan steps up next to him. “You’re not the only one to come from nothing. I know Changbin told you how we started, him and Hannie and me. Our apartment wasn’t much bigger than yours.” He huffs. “And just as mouldy. None of us will judge you.”
And Felix knew they wouldn’t. He knows how good they are, he knew they wouldn’t judge him for it. But still, knowing Chan gets it on a deeper level… it eases something inside of him.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Okay.” He crouches down and trails a hand along the side of the mattress, trying to figure out which way it’s turned so he can find the rip. When he finds it, he shoves his hand inside, searching for the envelope. It takes him a minute and for a moment he’s scared Seojun had found his hiding spot after all, but then his fingers brush against paper and he fishes out the envelope the lady at the mall had given him. He checks it, and both the money and the card are still in there. He lets out a relieved sigh and stands, handing it to Chan.
“Oh,” Chan says, staring at his handwriting on the envelope in surprise. He takes it, looks inside, then takes out the black credit card and hands the envelope back to Felix. “This is yours.”
Felix tries to refuse. “No, you gave me way too much.”
“I owe you far more than this.” He holds up his hand before Felix can speak. “I know, I won’t try to pay you off any more. But I gave you this money before we’d even met, and I’m not taking it back. This is yours.”
Felix pauses for a beat. “Consider it rent, then. For staying here the past two months.”
Chan laughs. “Nice try. Still no. We’re the reason you’re even sick in the first place, Felix. I may have reluctantly agreed to a compromise about rent once you’re fully healed, but until then you’re not paying us anything.”
His voice is determined, and Felix can tell from the look in his eyes that he’s not going to win this argument. He sighs. “Fine.” He’ll just save it and use it for rent once they finally let him pay.
They’re still speaking English. It’s been so long since he had actual conversations in the language that it takes him a while to find a word sometimes, but Chan doesn’t seem to mind. The more they talk, the more it comes back to him though, and the familiar drawl of Chan’s accent trickles warm and soothing through his veins. He’d forgotten how much he missed it.
“You didn’t use it,” Chan says, drawing him out of his thoughts. “The money.”
Felix tilts his head. “I used a fair bit of it to pay my landlord off.”
“But not for anything else. You wouldn’t have touched it if you didn’t have to.”
Felix looks away. “It didn’t feel like my money. And…” He sighs, deciding to be honest. “I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know you, and Seungmin and Jeongin may have said it was fine, but I didn’t know why you’d given me so much money. Nobody just… hands out money like this. I didn’t know if you’d come back for it. It wasn’t worth the risk.”
Chan’s face twists into something sad. “Ah. I see. No, really, I get it,” he adds when Felix looks up apologetically. “Our pack didn’t make the best impression that night, and with everything you’ve been through… I take it you didn’t have your own money when you lived with Kwang-ho.”
He doesn’t say “your previous alpha” or “when you were with Kwang-ho”. It’s a subtle acknowledgement that Felix’s previous bond had not been consensual, and he’s grateful.
“Sometimes he gave me money,” Felix says, staring at the mattress. “When he’d go on a business trip and couldn’t bring me along. But it was never enough to get by, and he knew it. He’d call me every night and he’d ask me what I’d eaten that day, and he’d love watching me struggle to answer the question politely while avoiding telling lies. I always lost weight because I had to make the money last, and then when he’d come back he’d be all pitying, feeding me and acting like he was saving me from myself. Either that or punishing me for being stupid and careless with money. Usually both.”
Always both, really. Felix can still hear his voice. Are you that stupid, pet? Can’t count to ten? He’d tut and shake his head. And you count just fine when I punish you, too. I thought you could handle this. Well, I suppose I’m going to have to teach you again.
There’s a spike of furious coffee in the air around them, and Felix looks up at Chan.
“Sorry,” Chan says, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. “I’m in control, I swear, I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just… so mad that someone would do that to you. It makes me want to…” He huffs, then snaps his eyes to Felix. “You know he’s wrong, right? What he did, and the way he treated you?”
“I know,” Felix says, because he mostly does. It had taken a while for him to get his head straight after he’d come to Seoul, but breaking the bond had helped. It was like getting Kwang-ho’s pheromones out of his system had made it easier to purge himself of some of the mental games too. Not all of them. He knows that there are things that have stuck. Convictions about ways in which he’s bad and inferior, and that terrible, bone-chilling fear of alphas. He doesn’t like it, but he’s not entirely sure how to fix that either. Maybe he just needs more time.
“Good,” Chan says. He rakes a hand through his hair, eyes still looking a little dark. “God. No wonder you didn’t trust me.”
“I do now,” Felix says honestly. “I have for weeks, probably ever since that first phone call.”
“The one where I talked to you without thinking and scared you so badly Innie had to hang up on me to talk you out of a panic attack?”
Felix huffs, but his mouth twitches. “The second phone call, then.”
Chan smiles. “I know what you meant. And I’m grateful. Thank you, for your trust. It means a lot. I may screw up sometimes, but I promise I do not take it lightly. Please let me know when I do.”
Felix regards him. “You’re a good alpha, Chris. A good pack alpha too.”
Chan is silent for a moment, his smile slowly disappearing. “I don’t feel like it sometimes.”
Felix frowns.
It’s Chan’s turn to stare at the mattress now, no longer making eye contact with Felix. Slowly, he says, “I’m supposed to keep this pack together. To make sure my packmates are happy, and healthy, and taken care of. To keep an eye on our dynamics, and make sure we’re communicating. And I failed.” He closes his eyes. “I failed Minho so badly I made him sick and nearly snapped our bond.”
“Chris, no—”
“He was suffering, and I tried, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t trust me enough to come to me for help. If it hadn’t been for you, he might have—”
“Chris,” Felix says, grabbing his arm. “You didn’t fail. It wasn’t your fault.”
Chan looks at him then, pain in his eyes. “He still won’t talk to me, you know that? He’s back, and I’m so goddamn relieved to have him here I could cry, but for how long? I still don’t know what happened, why he left. He won’t talk to me. He doesn’t trust me.”
So Chan had caught on to the fact that there was more to Minho’s story, and he had tried to talk to him. And Minho hadn’t been able to let him in. Felix had hoped that after the alpha told him about it, he might be able to do it again. But based on everything he’s observed from Minho over the past few weeks, he can’t say he’s surprised Minho had kept his story to himself. He’s private and doesn’t seem to come out and say how he really feels all that often. He’s a smooth talker, all sharp-tongued banter and witty comebacks, but really talking, about all the things that go on beneath the surface? Felix can imagine all too easily how he’d avoid that like his life depended on it.
“He could leave again,” Chan continues. “And I still don’t understand what made him think he had to that first time, so if he left again, I’d be just as useless. And the next time, he might not come back.”
He’s quiet as he speaks, and he sounds worried. Helpless. Like he doesn’t know what to do.
Felix can picture the conversations Chan has tried to have with Minho, and how Minho would have evaded Chan’s attempts to get him to open up.
“He told you,” Chan says then, eyes finding Felix’s. “He told you what happened.”
It isn’t a question. Felix stays silent.
“Will you… will you tell me?” There are tears in Chan’s eyes.
Felix’s face twists in sympathy, and he swallows. Two months ago he wouldn’t have dreamed of refusing a pack alpha, but Chan won’t hurt him, and he knows he has to. “No. I won’t.”
Chan’s shoulders slump.
“Chris…”
“No, I know. I know.” He rubs a hand across his eyes, but he’s not crying. “I’m sorry. I should never have asked that, it’s not fair to you or to Min.”
It’s quiet for a while as Chan visibly recollects himself and Felix tries to think of something to say that will help. Because he gets it, he understands where Chan is coming from. It’s clear even to him that Minho’s guilt and shame are still there, like a hidden whirlpool beneath the calm-looking ocean surface. He needs to talk about it, to let it out before it can drag him back under.
Felix takes a breath. “I’ll talk to him.”
Chan’s eyes snap to his. “What?”
“I’ll talk to him. I’m not… I’m not saying he’ll listen. I’m not special, I think he only talked to me because that night was…” He trails off, remembering Minho’s sobs, the way he’d lain shaking in his arms, crying ‘I’m sorry’ over and over and over again. His heart clenches and he swallows before continuing. “It wasn’t because he trusts me more. He does trust you.” He knows that for a fact.
“He does,” he emphasises when Chan’s face twists. He wants to say more, to explain, but he knows he can’t do that without betraying Minho’s trust. “I can’t say anything else,” he finally sighs. “But I’ll try to talk to him.”
He’s startled when Chan draws him in for a hug.
“Thank you,” Chan says, breath warm against Felix’s hair. His fingers are curled tightly into Felix’s hoodie. “Thank you so much.”
“It might not work,” Felix warns him. “Like I said, I’m not special.”
Chan pulls back just enough to look at him. “No,” he says seriously. “You really are.”
Felix feels his heart skip a beat at the intensity in his eyes. It only lasts a moment before Chan squeezes his shoulders a final time and lets go. Felix draws in a breath to try and keep himself from flushing bright red, and kneels back down next to the boxes to give himself something to do.
He pushes the box he’d opened to the side and looks at the other one. “Why is there so much? I definitely didn’t own enough for a second box.”
“That one has your tableware,” Chan says, sounding completely normal. “Your plates, and cups, and cutlery.”
Felix lets out a startled laugh. “He let you take that? Chris, that came with the apartment!”
Chan splutters. “How was I supposed to… There was no bed, but it came with tableware?!”
Felix shrugs, still smiling. “Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t about to complain. I can’t believe he just let you take it.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure he didn’t really feel like arguing after I pinned him to a wall and threatened him with a lawsuit,” Chan shrugs, picking up a glass from the box and examining it.
“Oh my god,” Felix gasps, laughing harder. “You didn’t.”
“He was despicable. I’m not apologising.”
“I don’t want you to,” Felix laughs. “I’ve wanted to spit in his face since the first day I met him.”
Chan looks at him and then eyes the box consideringly. “Wanna smash his dishes?”
“What?”
“It’s not like we need them. We’ll get you new stuff if you end up moving to a new place—with your permission, of course. I don’t mean to offend, but this looks like it’s about to fall apart anyway.” Chan is grinning now. “Come on. You know you want to.”
Felix doesn’t really want to them to buy him more stuff, but… the thought of smashing Seojun’s things is very tempting. And well, Chan isn’t wrong. He’s had more than one bowl split in half in his hand. It’s a miracle they got everything here intact—it’s unlikely it would survive another move.
Chan must see the look on his face, because his grin widens further. “That’s the spirit. Come on, Aussie boy. Let’s find a wall to throw these at.”
***
“…can be seen as the Jester arta- archy- archive- damn it. Yongbok-ssi, what was it again?”
“Ar-che-type,” Felix says slowly, reading along with the transcript on Jeongin’s screen.
“Archetype,” Jiwoo repeats. “Archetype. That’s why Puck can be seen as the Jester archetype, because he leans heavily towards wit and mis…chief?” She looks at her camera and switches back to Korean. “Did I say that right?”
“Perfect.” Felix grins and shoots a thumbs-up at Jiwoo’s face on the screen, and she grins back.
“We are going to nail this presentation,” Chanyoung says, sounding a little tinny over the speakers.
Jeongin shoots Felix a wide smile and then looks back at the screen. “I told you you wouldn’t regret skipping our library session for this.”
“No, you were right,” Chanyoung agrees. “Yongbok-ssi, you’re a lifesaver. I wish we could smuggle you into class tomorrow and hide you under the desk as our prompter.”
Felix laughs and blushes. He had been surprised when Jeongin had asked if he would be willing to join their Zoom meeting to help them practise their English presentation. He’d wondered if this was another class where Jeongin had gotten stuck with asshole alphas, and he’d been nervous at first. But whatever their subgender was, Jiwoo and Chanyoung had been nothing but smiles and kindness. It has been a lot of fun, actually, to help them out. He knows it’s nothing special, English just happens to be his first language, but it feels good to be useful.
“Oh, I wish we could,” Jeongin smiles. “Hyung could be our good-luck charm.”
The hyung is back—has been for the entire meeting. Apparently Jeongin is happy to leave it out when it’s just him and his pack, but now that others are present, he insists on paying Felix the proper respect by adding on the honorific. It’s still a little odd to hear it again so many years after Jake and Sunghoon, but he can’t deny that it’s nice.
His phone buzzes on the desk next to him, and he leans over to check the incoming message.
[3:12 pm] Hyunjin: where r u
Chanyoung and Jeongin are busy discussing the specifics of an upcoming assignment, so Felix takes his phone and texts back.
[3:13 pm] Felix: I’m in Innie’s room, helping with his presentation
[3:13 pm] Hyunjin: what r u wearing
[3:13 pm] Felix: ???
[3:13 pm] Hyunjin: just tell me
[3:13 pm] Felix: Sweatpants and a hoodie?
[3:14 pm] Hyunjin: i knew it
[3:14 pm] Hyunjin: ugh
[3:14 pm] Hyunjin: just come to the living room ok
Felix must be staring at his phone with a particularly worrying expression, because Jiwoo actually interrupts Chanyoung to ask Felix if he is okay. Jeongin looks to the side. “What’s wrong?”
In lieu of a response, Felix just shows him the phone.
“Oh,” Jeongin laughs. “He finally snapped, huh? Channie-hyung’s managed to hold him back for a while, but we’ve all been waiting for it to happen.”
“Jeongin, what—”
“Just go. We’re done here anyway. He made it sound weird, the idiot, but it’s nothing bad, I promise.”
And with that doubtful note of reassurance, Felix says his goodbyes to Jiwoo and Chanyoung and makes his way to the living room. “Hyunjin?” he calls hesitantly from the kitchen, peeking around the archway.
“Felix! Silk or cashmere?”
“What?” Felix steps forward to find Hyunjin on the couch, laptop in his lap and his legs tucked up underneath him. He’s staring hard at something on the screen.
“Silk or cashmere?” Hyunjin repeats, as if that clarifies anything.
“I… don’t know? What are you—”
“You’re right, we’ll get both. You should have options.”
Felix approaches slowly, not sure if he wants to see what Hyunjin is looking at or if it’s better to stay away. The moment he’s within Hyunjin’s line of vision though, the alpha looks up and his face twists into an expression of dismay. “See, I knew it, you look terrible.”
Felix falters. “I’m… sorry?”
Something in his tone must be enough to pierce even through Hyunjin’s intense focus, because he looks up in alarm. “Not you! I meant the clothes, you are gorgeous, you always are—sit down. We’re going shopping.”
Felix blinks at him. He feels like one of those falling cartoon characters, bouncing from branch to branch with every bewildering sentence Hyunjin throws at him. “We’re what?”
“Shopping. I’m getting you new clothes. What do you like? Jeans? Skirts? Skinny, baggy, colour, monochrome? Here, have a look at this, tell me what you think.” He gestures at something on the screen. “I think these would look amazing on you, but I don’t think they have pockets except those stupid fake ones, so you need to tell me if that’s a dealbreaker. Sit!”
Felix finds himself moving forward on autopilot without even realising it. When he does, he stops himself, holding up a hand. “Hyunjin, wait. What are you doing?”
Hyunjin looks up. “I just told you. I’m buying you new clothes.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Felix, you’re wearing a pair of Jisung’s sweatpants and one of Changbin’s hoodies.”
“Yes, they’re letting me borrow them. And they’re fine!”
Hyunjin looks appalled. “Those sweatpants are like five years old and you are swimming in that hoodie. It’s at least three sizes too big. You need to wear real clothes.”
Felix looks down at himself, still a little perplexed. “I wore jeans yesterday.”
“Yeah, Jisung’s, and we had to use a belt or they’d fall down, and the legs were too short. And everyone told me to let it be, that I shouldn’t interfere, and I tried, Felixie, I really did, I suffered for weeks watching you waste away in those rags, but I can’t do it anymore. I’ve reached my limit.” He clutches his chest with one hand, looking so genuinely pained that Felix might grow concerned if he didn’t know any better.
As it is, he narrows his eyes. “So what, you’re just going to buy me new things? With your own money?”
Hyunjin waves a hand. “I have so much money that I could buy the entire Versace summer collection for all eight of us and it wouldn’t even make a dent.” He sends Felix a pleading look. “Please, Lixie. Please let me buy you new clothes. I have been stressing over this, you won’t believe, look, this morning I woke up with a pimple because of it.” He points at his cheek, as if expecting Felix to suddenly find a blemish on his immaculately smooth skin.
Felix huffs, exasperated. This is the rent discussion all over again. “Jin, stop, I’m not just going to let you—”
“Fine.” Hyunjin drops the dramatics and puts his laptop to the side, leaning forward. “I’ll be honest. The real reason I’ve kept quiet for this long is because I kind of like seeing you in our clothes. We all do. It makes me feel like I’m caring for you, and it’s nice. But it really does bother me that none of our clothes fit you the way they should—like, you and me have the same waist size, but any time you wear my pants we have to roll up the legs or you’ll be tripping over them all day. As much as I love seeing you wear our clothes, I want you to have things that fit you properly and that match your style, clothes that you really like. Everything in me is dying to get you your own wardrobe. Please let me.”
Hyunjin’s speech throws Felix for a loop for a second. He’d just been grateful they let him wear clothes that are warm and soft and of so much better quality than anything he’s worn in years. He already felt guilty over that, even if none of them had complained. And apparently they haven’t because they like seeing him in their clothes?
While Felix tries hard to silence the part of his brain that unhelpfully starts linking that statement to claiming and courting gestures, Hyunjin uses the opportunity to press further. “We can just say it’s a birthday gift.”
“My birthday is in September,” Felix manages, dragging his thoughts back from the ridiculous hole they’ve crawled into. Surely Hyunjin was just exaggerating.
“Well then it’s my birthday gift.”
“You just had your birthday. I made you pancakes.”
“Yeah, and I hated them.”
Felix stares at him, unimpressed. “You ate like six.”
“No, they were awful. The worst birthday gift anyone’s ever gotten me. So you can make it up to me by letting me style you. That’ll be your proper birthday gift to me.”
Felix laughs. “Nice try.”
Hyunjin pouts. “Why are you so against this?”
Felix sighs, dropping down on the couch next to Hyunjin. “Because I can’t pay you back. We just had this conversation. It’s like the rent thing. I don’t want you to spend that much money on me, it’s not right.”
“That’s not a good argument. You don’t have to pay me back. And I will prove it to you.”
Felix looks at him expectantly. The silence stretches.
Hyunjin clears his throat. “You see, your argument is invalid because… because…” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Fuck. I knew I shouldn’t have done this without Innie. Fine. Fine. I have nothing. But,” he stresses when Felix grins, “You can pay me. You can model for me.”
“What?”
“Sit for me? I’d like to paint you. I mean, the painting will be abstract so it won’t necessarily look like you, but I love having a model. You can pay me back that way. Really,” he says when he sees Felix’s sceptical expression. “I’m not just saying this, I’ve been meaning to ask you anyway. You’re really pretty, and you have this air about you that’s like, magical, ethereal almost, and I’ve been dying to paint you for weeks. It would mean a lot to me.”
He looks utterly sincere, and Felix feels his resolve weaken, as much from the honesty as the sudden compliments. A faint blush rises to his cheeks. Clearly Hyunjin sees it too, because he throws a hand in the air. “Yes!”
“I didn’t say I would do it!”
“But you will. I can feel it. The spirits are whispering to me.”
Felix snorts, reverting to humour to get his cheeks to cool down. “You went two weeks without your favourite hairbrush because you were scared of a ghost in the bathroom. The spirits aren’t telling you shit.”
Hyunjin looks appalled. “Who told you?! It was Sung, wasn’t it. It’s always Sung.” Felix laughs, and Hyunjin quickly makes use of his good mood. “But you’ll do it, right? Modelling is a real job, so that means I win. That was the last of your arguments.”
It isn’t, really. Felix could easily argue around it, because he’s pretty sure whatever Hyunjin is planning on buying him will be worth far more than the few hours of modelling he’s asking for in return. But looking at the excitement on Hyunjin’s face, at the undeniable hope in his eyes that Felix will agree… he can’t bring himself to say no.
“Fine,” he sighs. “You can buy me clothes. But I have a veto right. No ridiculously expensive brands, alright?”
Hyunjin pouts for only a few seconds, but then his excitement returns. He snatches his laptop back and drags Felix in closer. “Oh my god, I have so many ideas, you’re not going to regret this. Come here, look at this—”
“Stop hiding the URL bar, I can see the Prada logo right there on the page. Find a different store.”
“Damn it.”
***
The clothes come in the next morning, delivered in so many bags and boxes that Chan goes out to help the delivery guy carry them in. It takes three trips. Felix stands in the hallway, feeling horribly awkward and guilty over the ridiculous amount of clothes, but Chan merely laughs.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says as he sets another three boxes down. He nods at Hyunjin, who is already digging through a box with a delighted squeal. “We know what he’s like. You deserve something nice, just go and have fun.”
He was talking to Felix, but Hyunjin ends up taking the words to heart and immediately drags Felix off for a three-hour long fitting session. By the end of it, Felix is the reluctant owner of more clothes than he’s ever owned in his life, as well as a coat, two jackets, and four pairs of shoes. Even when he lived with his family in Sydney, he never had a wardrobe this big.
Staring at himself in the mirror though, he has to begrudgingly admit that Hyunjin knows what he is doing. Dressed in light blue jeans that actually fit him and a white cable-knit sweater, he looks…
“Holy shit,” Jisung says from the doorway. Felix turns to find him staring, eyes wide. “Felix. Wow.”
“I know, right?” Hyunjin says, putting down the mascara he’d used on Felix and diving back in to drape a long silver necklace over Felix’s head. “I’ve done a fantastic job.”
“Shut up,” Jisung says. “Don’t you dare take credit for this, this is all Lix.” He steps into the room to get a closer look and whistles.
Felix’s cheeks colour. “Stop. It’s just the clothes.”
“It’s not,” Hyunjin and Jisung say at the same time.
Hyunjin takes Felix’s hand to fasten a bracelet around his wrist. Felix lets him, barely even noticing the fussing after hours of playing dress-up. “You’re just really pretty. I can’t wait to paint you.”
Jisung hums in agreement, playing with a lock of Felix’s hair. “You’re going to do that today?”
He doesn’t sound surprised. Hyunjin had told everyone about their deal over dinner last night, practically bouncing with excitement at the prospect.
“If you’re up for it, Felix?” Hyunjin looks at him. “You can take a nap in my studio while I’m working.”
A nap does sound nice. He’s slowly getting his energy back, but he has yet to make it through the day without naps. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Great!” Hyunjin beams, sliding a few rings onto Felix’s fingers. He doesn’t even know where the alpha got all this jewellery from—they’d definitely not ordered it yesterday, Felix had very firmly drawn the line at accessories. The rings fit perfectly though, and he throws Hyunjin a suspicious look. He wouldn’t put it past him to have spent the night ordering things behind Felix’s back.
Hyunjin flashes him an innocent smile that doesn’t quite match the spark in his eyes, and simply pats his arm. “There. All done.”
“Wait, let me braid this back really quickly,” Jisung says, taking the front sections of his hair and creating two small braids along each side of his head that come together at the back. When he’s finished, he turns Felix back to the mirror. “Beautiful.”
And well… he is. With the clothes and the light makeup Hyunjin had applied, he really does look good. He’s so used to seeing himself look drained and worn, with circles under his eyes and his hair falling limply in his face after a gruelling fourteen-hour kitchen shift. It’s gotten better since he got here, of course, but this is something else. He didn’t even know he could look like this.
“Lunch first,” Jisung says. “That’s why I came here, hyung sent me to get you.” He pulls Felix up with a grin. “Let’s go show you off.”
Felix whines in embarrassment and Hyunjin laughs. “Fifty thousand won says that Changbinnie is going to choke on his kimbap.”
***
Changbin does choke on his kimbap when Jisung ushers Felix into the kitchen. Even Chan’s eyes go wide when he sees Felix, although he quickly gets up to get Changbin a glass of water. They’re the only ones home and lunch is spent with Hyunjin and Jisung arguing over whether Jisung did or did not accept the bet by grinning at Hyunjin when he brought it up.
When they finish, Chan, Changbin and Jisung disappear downstairs to head to their studio, and Felix follows Hyunjin one floor up to his. Since Hyunjin usually prefers to be alone when he’s painting, he’s only seen this room briefly, when he was given a tour of the house.
It’s bright and spacious, with a balcony on one side and a large bay window on the other, both overlooking the garden. There’s an easel near the window, positioned in a way that will allow Hyunjin the best light when he’s painting. The walls are white, but there are canvases stacked against every wall and cabinet, finished or half-finished or empty. Paints and pots with brushes cover every surface, and there’s an apron haphazardly slung over a chair.
“Wow,” Felix says, admiring the painting on the easel. It’s a flower against a black background. The edges of its petals are white, but vivid orange bursts outwards from its centre, so violently that the flower seems to sway on its stem.
“I finished that two days ago,” Hyunjin says, coming to stand next to him. “I think it turned out well.”
“Are you kidding? It’s gorgeous.”
Hyunjin smiles at him, before taking the painting off the easel and leaning it against a desk. He replaces it with an empty canvas. “Take a seat,” he says, gesturing towards the cushioned bench in the window nook. “I need to set up, and that’s where I want you anyway.”
Felix sits, making himself comfortable on the seat. He watches Hyunjin potter about, grabbing various bottles and brushes and other materials, and fiddles with the cushions. It’s only after a few minutes that he realises he’s instinctively been rearranging the pillows around him in a way that feels good. He feels his cheeks heat. Shit. What if the seat had been arranged just the way Hyunjin wanted it to be in preparation for this painting?
He’s about to put the cushions back when Hyunjin says, without even turning around, “Don’t. Just get comfortable. Scent the cushions if you want, make the space yours. This painting is about you.”
Felix stares at him. Sometimes, Hyunjin is dramatic to the point he seems silly, and then there are moments like this, when he suddenly shows a deep understanding of what’s happening around him.
“I thought this painting was for you,” Felix says after a moment, still holding on to one tasselled cushion.
“It is,” Hyunjin says, coming back up from a chest in the corner with a box of paints. “But you are the painting. I want you relaxed. Whatever feels right for you, I want you to do it. Stretch out, fall asleep. It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re relaxed, I’ll have the vibe I’m going for.”
Slowly, Felix puts the cushion back down, shifting it about until it feels right. The sun is shining and a ray of sunlight falls in through the window to warm his socked feet. It’s early afternoon, and he can tell that more light will fall in as the afternoon goes by. Above him, the windows are opened a crack to let in fresh air, and he can hear the birds outside. It’s peaceful, and by the time he has the cushions just the way he wants them to, Hyunjin has gathered all his materials.
“Alright,” he says as he moves back to the easel. “I’m going to use acrylics for this. But first I’ll do a quick sketch.”
Felix straightens a little. He feels self-conscious and doesn’t know where to place his hands. “How should I…”
Hyunjin looks up. “Oh no, I meant it. Just sit anyway that feels good. Sit back, lie down, it doesn’t matter. Yes, exactly like that. Just relax.”
Felix curls his feet back up onto the seat and leans back against the pillows. He still feels a bit awkward at first, but then Hyunjin says, “I tried painting Changbin-hyung two years ago and he walked out on me after fifteen minutes because he got bored. As long as you stay in the room, whatever you do is fine,” and Felix feels himself relaxing as he laughs.
“When did you join the pack?” he asks, suddenly realising he has no idea how they met. “I only know how 3RACHA met Minho-hyung.”
“I met them a few months later,” Hyunjin says, pencil sliding softly across his canvas. “I was a student in one of Minho-hyung’s dance classes.”
“Really?” That takes Felix by surprise. “In his old studio?” From Hyunjin’s recent comments, he got the sense that his family has a fair amount of money, and there shouldn’t have been any need for Hyunjin to join a dance studio as dilapidated as the one Jisung and Changbin had described.
Hyunjin smiles, clearly hearing what Felix isn’t saying. “Yep. My parents weren’t very happy about it, but I was eighteen and they couldn’t stop me. Besides, their displeasure was kind of the point.” He doesn’t look at Felix as he speaks, focused on his canvas. “I’m from a chaebol family, in case you hadn’t guessed. I grew up in luxury, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a spoiled brat. I still love expensive things and spending money. But I hate pretending to be someone I’m not.”
He shakes his head. “The social circles my parents are in, with all their cocktail parties and two-faced fundraisers and golf trips, they’re so fake. It’s a bit like…” He waves his pencil. “You know in high school, how you’ll only be popular if you’re pretty and act a certain way? It’s a bit like that, but a thousand times worse.” He shoots Felix an amused look. “I mean, I was homeschooled, so I wouldn’t exactly know. But that’s what Innie said when I talked to him about it.”
“That sounds about right,” Felix says, remembering his own school days here in Korea.
“Yeah. It’s all about kissing up to people, networking, saying one thing but meaning something else. I hated it.” Hyunjin huffs. “I could do it, but I loathed it. I’ve always been straightforward about who I like and who I don’t like, and hate having to pretend otherwise.”
Felix can see that. Hyunjin is excentric, melodramatic at times, but he’s honest. If you ask for his opinion, he’ll give it to you straight, without artifice or censorship.
“So a few months before I turned nineteen, I signed up for dance classes at the shabbiest studio I could find. I wasn’t expecting much. I’d had private dance instructors all my life and as much as I hated the isolation, they were some of the best in the country. I only did it to spite my parents.” Hyunjin smiles. “And I wasn’t proven wrong, at least not immediately. It wasn’t a beginner’s class, but Minho-hyung was new to teaching. He was good, but too focused on what his students were doing to really inhabit the dance at the same time, you know?”
Felix stays silent. It’s a rhetorical question, and he’s content to simply listen.
“And then I stayed late one night so I could get out of a pretentious dinner my parents were holding. I was just hanging out in the dressing room, killing time on my phone when the music turned back on. So I opened the door and watched.” He lowers the pencil and looks at Felix. “He was stunning. I mean, he’s handsome as shit no matter what he does. But seeing him dance the way he did that night… he took my breath away. It was like he kicked me right in the chest.” He shakes his head and huffs out a laugh. “He’ll stuff me in the toaster for saying something this corny, but I fell for him before the song was over.”
Felix smiles and thinks, not for the first time, that he really wants to see Minho dance. “Did you approach him?”
Hyunjin laughs and picks his pencil back up. “I waited until the song had finished and told him he danced like an angel, and maybe he wanted to grab a drink sometime? He looked at me like I’d spit in his ramen and didn’t talk to me for three weeks.”
Felix laughs too. “And that didn’t scare you off?”
“I like a challenge.” Hyunjin winks. “Also, the way he glared at me? It was fucking hot, let me tell you.”
Felix can picture that all too easily too. Minho has this air about him that, if wielded in the right way, could pin a man to the ground, no Voice needed.
“I didn’t find out he was already being courted until like a month later, when Changbin-hyung stopped by.” Hyunjin’s eyes flicker to Felix and then back to his canvas, continuing his sketch. “I’d seen him before in passing, their recording studio was in the same building. But we’d never talked. He didn’t say anything then either, just slipped into the studio and leaned back against a wall, arms crossed and waiting for Minho to finish.”
He sighs dreamily, dramatically clutching a hand to his chest. “Those arms, Felixie.”
Felix laughs. “You fell in love with him at first sight too?”
“I couldn’t help it. You’ve seen his arms. Can you blame me?”
Well. No. Not really. Felix has had to look away more than once during his training sessions with Changbin, suddenly paying extra attention to his footwork to keep himself from staring.
Hyunjin smirks. “And well. Minho-hyung may not have given me the time of day. But Changbinnie definitely noticed me checking him out through the mirror, and he didn’t seem to mind so much.”
“Did you approach him too?”
“I definitely showed off a little. Got a little extra sweaty, as you do. I had no idea he was there for Minho.” He laughs. “Not until the end of class, when Minho glared daggers at me and then walked straight up to Changbin and kissed him right in front of all of us. I thought Binnie was going to faint, he looked so shocked.”
Felix laughs with him, curling his legs a little further onto the seat. “What did you do?”
“I walked up to them and told Changbin he was hot.”
“You didn’t.”
Hyunjin grins. “And then before Minho could deep-fry me, I told him he was hot too, and that the way he danced still made me breathless every week. And that I’d love to take them both out for dinner.”
“What did they say?” Felix asks, completely engrossed. The way Hyunjin tells the story makes it sound like a K-drama.
“As expected, Minho-hyung told me to fuck off. And Changbin was a little too dazed to say anything. I learned later that that was the first time they kissed—the first time hyung showed any real sign of interest at all.”
Felix imagines Minho coolly letting the others woo him, letting them rope him into conversations and drag him off to dates, all while keeping that expressionless mask firmly in place. Not ready to let them in, and yet unable to push them away either. Not making any move until a potential rival showed up. Yeah, that sounds exactly like him.
“So I did as Minho requested and fucked off.” At Felix’s look of surprise, Hyunjin chuckles. “I do have some tact. It clearly wasn’t the right moment. I had expressed interest, but there was nothing else I could do at that time.”
He sketches a few final lines on the canvas, studies it for a moment and then puts his pencil down, grabbing his palette.
“Did you really want to court them, or were you just looking for some fun?” Felix watches Hyunjin as he starts mixing paints, years of experience evident in the efficient movements of his hands.
“I guess I did come across as a bit shallow at first. And maybe that’s what it was, at the start? I’ve always appreciated beauty, and there’s no denying they’re gorgeous. But I started paying more attention after that, and the more I watched, the deeper my feelings grew. It didn’t take long at all.”
“Just Changbin-hyung and Minho-hyung?”
Hyunjin’s mouth ticks upwards. “Oh yeah, the others were a surprise. I brought flowers the next week, one for each of them, and only when I went to drop it off at the recording studio did I realise that Changbin was already mated and there were two more people involved.” He adds another dollop of paint to one of the colours he’s mixing. “I showed up with a carnation and he opened the door flanked by another very hot alpha and a very cute one, and he was like, ‘Oh fuck, you were serious.’”
Felix laughs.
“I was surprised, sure, but not disappointed. And they didn’t seem to mind talking to me.” He huffs out a laugh as he picks up a paintbrush. “I think they were genuinely grateful I’d accidentally driven Minho straight into their arms. They were nice, and I thought, why not? I wanted to see if they’d let me get to know them better, see if anything could come of it. They were mated, but well, they were all courting Minho-hyung. I figured if they were willing to let him in, I could at least try. So I stepped up my game after that, signing up for another dance class and bringing flowers for all four of them twice a week.”
He takes a moment to regard the sketch before dipping the brush in one of the colours on his palette. Then he nods and sweeps it across the canvas in light movements, the rhythmic brush strokes the only sound in the room. He looks at Felix every once in a while, but whatever he’s looking at, Felix doesn’t get the feeling that he’s really watching him.
He’s not sure if he’s allowed to keep talking or if Hyunjin prefers silence now that he’s actually painting. He’s dying to ask more though. He wants to know the rest of the story—obviously they’d gotten together in the end, but he wants to know what happened.
As if sensing his burning curiosity, Hyunjin smiles. “Ask.”
Felix lets out an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“I can talk. You want to know what happened next?” Hyunjin is grinning. He doesn’t seem like he minds at all, looking rather delighted to have an audience. Felix should have known, really.
“I was just wondering how they reacted. I mean, with Minho-hyung…”
Hyunjin tilts his head, not looking up from the canvas. “Well, I suppose it was a bit of an odd situation for a while? Minho refused to even take the flowers, I had to leave them on the studio bench. The others accepted them, but it was never really talked about, if you know what I mean? We talked about all sorts of things but never this. It was clear that they weren’t completely opposed to the idea, but they’d never go through with it if Minho-hyung wasn’t on board. Which we all thought he wasn’t.” He shrugs. “If they’d told me to stop, I would have. But they didn’t. Not even Minho, so it was… confusing, for a few months.”
He takes a breath, lowering his paintbrush. “And then my grandfather died.”
Felix can see his expression darken, a flicker of pain in his eyes before he closes them and takes a breath.
“He was the only one in my family I didn’t mind spending time with. The only one who never pushed me to be someone I wasn’t, who actually liked me for me. He mostly lived the same rich, pretentious life all of us did. He was good at the game, but… I don’t know. Underneath that he was just kind. He didn’t have the same expectations for me everyone else did. He liked my art, and he’d cover for me with my parents if I needed some time alone.”
He stares down at his palette, though he doesn’t seem to really notice it. “His death hit me hard. There was the wake, and the funeral, and there were so many people who pretended to be devastated he was gone but who were really just there to figure out who he’d left his money to. It was so fake, all of it, their loud sobs and squeezed out tears and exclamations of sympathy. Meanwhile I felt like the grief would actually tear me to pieces, and I couldn’t even show it because it would be ‘unbecoming’ of the alpha Hwang heir. I felt like I was drowning, and I was all alone.
“I stopped going to school. I was studying business at SNU only because of my parents, but I didn’t care anymore. I even gave up on courting. I still came to dance class, because it was the only distraction I had that got me out of the house and away from the emptiness, but I just didn’t have the energy to keep up the flowers and notes and all the cheerful flirting. It had been months at that point, and clearly it wasn’t going to happen. I figured there was no point in continuing.”
To Felix’s surprise, Hyunjin looks at him and his mouth curls up into a faint smile. “And then after three weeks, Minho-hyung pulled me aside after class. Dragged me straight into his office and demanded I tell him what was up.” He lets out a quiet laugh. “I think I just stared at him for a good two minutes, because like, what? I thought he’d be happy I stopped bothering him. But he just stared back at me, with that eyebrow raise he does, waiting for an answer. And when I realised he wasn’t going to leave, I broke. I just… all the grief I’d bottled up, it was like I’d opened the floodgates and it just came out, right there.” He looks at Felix again, mouth twisted into wry amusement. “I don’t mean delicate tears. This was crash-to-the-ground, sobbing, loud grief, super ugly and gross. I don’t know what he must have thought, but I was past the point of caring.”
He shakes his head. “Surprisingly, he stayed. Tugged me onto his lap like a child and let me bury my face in his neck. And then he texted 3RACHA and they were there two minutes later, and they all just… held me. And they didn’t leave.”
Felix feels his heart clench at the mental image, and yet he watches the small smile on Hyunjin’s face grow bigger, less sad and more fond.
“That night changed something. Once I’d lost about fifty percent of my body weight in tears and snot and could talk again, I explained what had happened. I told them I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t do it. The idea of going back there, to the games and pretence and fakeness—I just couldn’t. I felt like I would actually explode if I did. So Minho-hyung took me home with him.”
Felix makes a sound of surprise, and Hyunjin chuckles. “Yeah. That was my reaction too. But I refused to go home with 3RACHA, because I knew their apartment barely fit the three of them as it was. I said I’d just go find a hotel or something, but Minho said there was no way in hell he was leaving me alone after that. He just went all protective alpha on me, pheromones and all. I’d never had anyone take care of me like that—with my family, it was always me who was supposed to be a stereotypical macho alpha, you know? But he just took charge, and it was nice. It was such a relief.”
Felix knows the feeling. As guilty as he feels about it, it’s been amazing not to have to worry about everything and let the pack take care of him. “So you went home with him?”
“Yeah, he let me stay on his couch and told me to take as long as I needed to figure things out. I stayed the night, and then another one, and before I knew it it had been three weeks.” He shakes his head. “It was so weird, Felixie. We went from him ignoring me completely to moving in together, and we still weren’t talking.”
“Not at all?”
“Just the basics. ‘How was your day’, or ‘I’m going to the store, do you need anything’. But that was it. I still didn’t know if he even liked me or if he’d just taken pity on me. And I was scared to push it, because I didn’t want him to kick me out. It was… hard. I was still grieving, and I was fighting with my parents, because they wanted me to come home and go back to school, and I refused. And beyond all that, I was still in love with all of them. I may have decided to give up flirting, but I couldn’t help but still want them. I saw the others nearly every day, either at the studio or at Minho’s place when they dropped by, and there was always something there, you know? But none of us were talking about it, so we were all stuck in this weird limbo.”
He huffs out a laugh. “It was Channie-hyung who fixed things in the end. He sat us all down at Minho’s tiny kitchen table. There weren’t even enough chairs, so Sungie was in Changbin’s lap on a chair that was fighting for its life, and Channie-hyung was just sitting cross-legged on the floor like a five-year-old.”
Felix laughs, and Hyunjin grins back. “Yeah, it was funny. But it worked. He said, ‘All cards on the table, no judgement, no lies’ and forced us all to talk.” He’s quiet for a moment, smiling. “By the end of the day, I’d shared a first kiss with all of them and we were courting.” There’s still a hint of awe in his eyes at the memory.
Felix laughs in surprise. “Just like that?”
“Yep. Turns out even Minho wanted to, after the night he realised I wasn’t just a spoiled fuckboy looking for a challenge. He’s just really bad at talking, and he had all these morals holding him back about me grieving or whatever.” He rolls his eyes and picks up his brush again to resume painting. “So yeah. That’s how I met them. Minho-hyung and I bonded with the pack officially at the same time, a few months later.”
He finishes painting the layer he was working on and grabs a blow dryer to dry it enough that he can move on to the next. Felix’s leg has gone stiff from where it’s tucked underneath him, and he shifts carefully in an attempt to stretch it out.
“You can move,” Hyunjin says. “I really don’t need you to sit still. You could even leave by now if you want to.”
“No, I want to stay.” Felix hasn’t spent this much one-on-one time with Hyunjin before, and they’ve certainly never talked like this. He likes it. Likes that Hyunjin is willing to share this with him. It’s not even that he’s a particularly private person, his past had simply not really come up before. But it’s still nice, to be trusted with it.
So leaving is the last thing on his mind. He does, however, change positions, this time stretching out so he’s lying down, curled up on his side so he can still see what Hyunjin is doing. The sun has indeed moved and is falling in through the window now. With the window open it doesn’t get too hot, and he feels like a cat basking in the warmth. Instinctively, he rubs his cheek against a pillow to scent it a little. He would apologise for taking the liberty in what is essentially Hyunjin’s personal space if the alpha didn’t look so pleased at his actions.
“Did you go back to business school?” Felix asks, trying to distract himself and make sure he doesn’t do something stupid like blushing.
Hyunjin snorts. “Oh no. I unenrolled, decided to focus on art instead. When my parents found out, they disowned me.”
“What?” Felix sits up on his elbow, alarmed.
Hyunjin waves a hand. “Don’t worry. Aside from signing up for those dance classes, it’s still easily the best decision I ever made.”
“But…” He’d been disowned? Felix had thought the money had come from his family. He feels like it would be rude to admit that though, so he keeps silent.
His confusion must be obvious though, because Hyunjin smiles. “Oh, yeah—remember how I said all those vultures at the funeral only came to find out who’d inherited my granddad’s money?” He shrugs. “Turns out it was me. I didn’t find out until I was already living with Minho-hyung, when the attorney called me. My parents tried to fight it in court, but they lost.” He cleans his brush in his water cup and grins, not looking up from his work. “Picture it, Felixie. The five of us were living in two tiny apartments, and from one day to the next we suddenly had billions of won and a house.”
Billions of won. Billions. Felix can’t even fathom that amount of money. And a house. “This house?” he manages after a while.
“Yep. I didn’t even know it existed. I don’t think my parents do either—that or they’ve just never tried to find me. That’s equally likely, really. I took the time to have it renovated, because it was really run-down when I first visited, all rotted window frames and leaky roof tiles.” He turns to Felix and declares proudly, “I didn’t tell the others. About the money or the house, although I did pay for groceries as often as I could get away with. I wanted to surprise them when it was finished.” He sighs dramatically. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Lixie. I’m an open book, I can not keep secrets. I’m terrible at it. I’m pretty sure I gloated in anticipation for four months straight—the others definitely knew something was up, but they were kind enough not to press.”
He picks up a different brush and dips it in yellow. “And then it was done and I forced them all into the new car I’d just bought and drove them over here. I’ll never forget the looks on their faces when I gave them all house keys and asked them to move in with me.” He pauses, considering. “Probably because I got it on video, remind me to show you later.”
Felix laughs. “Oh, please do.”
“We made a lot more changes to the house afterwards. It was beautiful, and fit for living in, but 3RACHA’s studio was something that was built later. I sat down with Minho-hyung to plan alterations to the kitchen, and he surprised me by asking if he could start a vegetable patch in the garden. I didn’t even know he liked gardening.” He smiles as he adds a few more lines to the painting. “We made it our own, over time. I loved doing the decorating. I think if I wasn’t a painter, I’d be an interior designer. Because then you get to focus on all the finishing touches. It’s a cool job, and so underrated.” He picks up his glass.
“Hyunjin,” Felix begins, but Hyunjin isn’t finished.
“You need to really pay attention, you know?”
“Jin—”
“Not everyone can do it, but I’ve always had an eye for detail. I think I’d be fantastic at it.”
“Hyunjin!”
“Yes, dearest Felixie?” Hyunjin says brightly as he takes a sip of water.
“That’s your paint water.”
Hyunjin does a spit-take on the desk to his right, and Felix laughs at the loud, dramatic spluttering that follows.
“Oh, god,” Hyunjin gags, wiping his tongue with a paint-splattered cloth and making it worse. “Oh my god, ugh, I need to—give me a second.” He leaves the room to the sound of Felix’s giggles to rinse out his mouth.
While he’s gone, Felix takes the time to stretch out again, melting a bit further into the pillows. His eyelids feel heavy, and he realises for the first time how sleepy he is. It has been a long day so far, and as much as he loved listening to Hyunjin’s story, he normally takes a nap earlier than this.
When Hyunjin comes back, two glasses of juice in his hands and still dramatically rubbing his tongue against his teeth, he takes one look at Felix and shoots him a guilty grin. “Whoops. I was supposed to let you rest, wasn’t I?” He puts one glass of juice down on the floor next to the window seat.
“I liked it,” Felix says through a yawn. “Liked getting to know you better.”
Hyunjin’s face softens, and he brushes a thumb across Felix’s cheek. “Me too, darling. But you can continue to get to know me better after your nap. Sleep, before Seungminnie kills me.” Playing dirty, he brushes his wrist against Felix’s scent gland, releasing a soothing burst of cocoa that envelops Felix like a cloud. He’s out like a light within seconds.
*
When he wakes, the sun has shifted again and is no longer falling in through the window. He must have been out for at least a few hours. He blinks when he realises Hyunjin is no longer at the easel.
“Sleep well?”
Felix yelps and looks down. Hyunjin is sitting on the floor, his back against the window seat and his head tipped back so he can look at Felix. He’s grinning. “Did I scare you?”
“You know you did,” Felix mutters, swatting at his shoulder as he slumps down again. He’s too comfortable to sit up properly.
That is, until Hyunjin says, “The painting is done. Do you wanna see?”
Felix gets up so quickly his vision turns to static for a moment. He’s been buzzing with curiosity all afternoon about what Hyunjin was doing. It had been fascinating to watch him work, mixing colours and alternating between broad strokes and small, careful lines all with that same steady hand.
“Please show me.”
Hyunjin rises and grabs his hand, leading him over to the easel. Felix takes a breath and steps around it to look.
The painting is done mostly in pastel colours, with the exception of a black silhouette curled up in the middle. It’s not recognisable as Felix, and yet… the way the silhouette has been painted, with contrasting brush strokes and raised bits of paint, makes the figure seem jagged. Hurt, and raw. Around the silhouette, the colours are soft. Light. The surface the figure is lying on flows smoothly into the outer sections of the painting, edges blurring into lighter colours, no harsh lines to be seen.
Felix stares. In the middle, the figure looks wounded. And yet, its pose is relaxed, at ease. As if its wounds are still there, but it can finally rest, warm and cared for.
Hyunjin has not just painted Felix. He’s painted what Felix is feeling. Painted the hurts of his past, and the wildly contrasting softness and security he found when he came here.
He’s painted healing. He’s painted safety.
Felix doesn’t realise he’s crying until Hyunjin gives his hand a little squeeze. When Felix turns to him, there’s kindness in his eyes. Understanding.
Felix is too overwhelmed to speak. He simply throws his arms around Hyunjin and holds him tight. Hyunjin seems to know what he means anyway, and hugs him back, not commenting on the tears that are staining his shirt.
“Thank you,” Felix manages after several long minutes. “Thank you.”
Hyunjin squeezes back. “You’re welcome, darling.”
Notes:
Things Hyunjin did while Felix was asleep:
-Paint
-Get distracted because the sun caught Felix’s hair in a particular way and made it shine
-Go back to painting
-Take pictures and text the group chat about how cute Felix is
-Paint
-Be berated by Chan for taking pictures without asking
-Paint again
-Begrudgingly delete the pictures after Minho joined in on the berating, only to grin at Jisung’s private text with a picture of Chan sending heart eyes at his phone
-Finally finish the painting in the way Felix deserved and then curl up close to enjoy Felix's scent until he woke up
The next chapter will probably be out on Saturday. On Wednesday, you'll get something for sure, I'm just not quite sure yet what. I have been working on a Hyunjin bonus scene that would contain that breakdown in Minho's office as well as the chat they all have around Minho's tiny kitchen table, if anyone would be interested? It's like 6k somehow, I have no idea how that happened. Anyhow - hope you all enjoyed this chapter! <3
Edit: that Hyunjin prequel is now up, and ended up being 13k spread across two chapters. You'll get the breakdown, their talk about courting, a date with Minho, and Hyunjin finally showing everyone their new house. Throughout this, Hyunjin slowly learns what it's like to be cared for.
Chapter 16
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s not all smooth sailing.
As much as Felix trusts this pack, as much as he knows that they’re different, that they’re good, some things are hard to shake.
He doesn’t even realise that he waits until all the alphas have taken a bite before eating himself until Minho points it out to him. One night, Hyunjin is deep into a story he’s telling, completely forgetting to eat, and Felix’s hands are folded in his lap as he listens.
“Eat, Felix,” Minho says quietly from the chair next to him as Hyunjin rattles on.
Felix blinks at his untouched plate. Then his eyes flicker to Hyunjin’s plate, and Minho shakes his head, already ahead of him. “We don’t do that here. Eat.”
“Sorry,” he mutters, feeling his cheeks colour as he picks up a piece of chicken. “I didn’t even notice.”
Minho simply shakes his head to dismiss his apology and places an extra jeon on his plate. “Eat,” he says again, and that’s that.
*
They stumble upon a trigger one day when Hyunjin beckons Jisung over to come check something on his laptop. “Here, pet. Which one do you like better?”
Felix’s blood runs cold.
Here, pet. Alpha’s got you a treat today.
Look what you’ve done, pet. Embarrassing Alpha in front of all his friends? Oh, I think you know exactly what you were doing. That desperate for some attention, hm? I know exactly what to do with you.
Be a good pet and fetch Alpha a drink, yeah? It’s been a long day.
He shivers once, and then his mind blanks out.
When he becomes aware of himself again, he realises he’s been moved. He’s lying down now, curled up in his nest and tucked between Hyunjin and Jisung. They’re both awake, arms slung protectively over his waist, having a quiet conversation over his head.
“…like this for you?” Hyunjin is saying.
“Only a few times,” Jisung says. “I usually get panic attacks when things get bad, I start hyperventilating and stuff. I haven’t dissociated since I was a trainee.”
Hyunjin’s fingers trail along Felix’s side. “What do you think triggered it?”
Here, pet.
Felix snaps his eyes open, needing to see something other than Kwang-ho’s sadistic grin.
“Gah!” Hyunjin yelps as Felix suddenly stares straight at him. He almost rolls back, but manages to restrain himself, although he does clutch a hand to his chest. “Sorry. Fuck, you scared me.”
“Lixie?” Jisung sits up on his elbow, leaning over him. “Are you back with us?”
“Yeah,” Felix manages. The echoes of Kwang-ho’s voice still rattle around his brain.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Nest.”
“Yes, good job. Would you like some water, or do you want to cuddle for a bit longer? Either is fine.” Jisung’s voice is calm, low and soothing. It’s in moments like these that Felix remembers he is an alpha, everything about his tone hitting just the right spot in Felix’s brain.
Felix swallows, and only notices then how parched he is. “Water. Please.”
They help him sit up against the headboard, but keep him tucked in between them. He’s handed a glass of water, which he drains immediately.
“Do you remember what happened?” Hyunjin asks. When Felix nods, he continues, more hesitantly, “Could you tell us? What made you react like that?”
Here, pet.
Felix shudders.
“Was it something we did?” Jisung presses gently. “Because if it was, please tell us so we don’t do it again.”
“I…” Felix’s voice catches in his throat. He can’t. He can’t say it. But they don’t speak, they just wait for him to continue, and he swallows, eyes darting briefly to Hyunjin before looking away again. “It was the… what you said. To Sung.”
There’s a confused silence. Eventually, Hyunjin says, “I’m really sorry, but could you tell me what I said? I don’t remember. I was showing him some bracelets, and the next time we looked up you’d gone blank.”
“You can write it down,” Jisung offers. “You don’t have to say it.”
But the thought of writing it down, of admitting that he’d broken down just from hearing such a simple three-letter word, fills him with shame. He’d rather say it.
It takes him three tries before he manages to shape the word and push enough air past his lips that the sound emerges in a whisper. “Pet.”
“Pet?” Hyunjin repeats, frowning, and Jisung immediately smacks him on the arm.
“Shut up!”
“Sorry! Fuck, sorry, shit—”
Despite himself, despite the ice still sending shivers through his veins, Felix breathes out a laugh. “Yeah. That.”
“It’s what he called you.” Jisung’s words aren’t a question. He already knows.
Felix nods anyway. Then, after a moment, he takes a breath. “He never called me by my name. It was always… that. Or omega, if he was angry. But mostly that.” In a weird way, he’s grateful for it. As much as he hated the degradation, it meant that his name was still his. It meant that the first time Jeongin had said his name in that alley, he’d felt a rush of wonder alongside the fear. He loves it when they call him Felix, or Lixie, or Lix, and he’s intensely grateful Kwang-ho hadn’t taken that from him as well.
Hyunjin’s scent turns bitter with guilt. “Oh, Lixie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I’m so sorry.”
“No,” Felix says. He knew this would happen. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine.”
“It’s trauma,” Jisung says, “Which means it’s not your fault either.” His voice is firm, leaving no room for argument.
“I won’t ever say it again,” Hyunjin vows.
“No,” Felix protests. “That’s… You don’t have to do that.” Hyunjin loves endearments, uses them all the time. He doesn’t want Hyunjin to censor himself because of him.
“Felix.” Hyunjin’s voice turns firm now too. “Do you really think I still want to use it now that I know this is what you associate it with?”
“But you love calling people things.”
“Yeah. Just not that, not anymore. This just means I get to be more creative from here on.” He looks over at Jisung and pokes his belly. “I’ll just call you snookums. Angel muffin. Baby cakes.”
Jisung pretends to gag, and Felix feels his mouth curl up into a small smile.
“Seriously though,” Hyunjin continues, turning back to him. “It’s fine. I have other pet names.” He freezes in horror, even before Jisung smacks him again. “I didn’t mean—”
Felix laughs out loud this time, and after a second, Hyunjin and Jisung join in in relief. “It’s fine. I can handle the word in other contexts. It’s just when someone’s addressed by it, I think.”
“Then we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen from now on,” Hyunjin says, wrapping him up in another hug. “Now, do you think you could stomach something to eat? I think we all deserve something sweet after this.” He looks over at Jisung, and his eyes sparkle. “How about it, pudding p—”
Jisung launches himself at Hyunjin to slap a hand over his mouth, and Felix yelps and laughs as he’s squashed between them.
*
So, the pet name—literally—gets banned from the house. That’s the only mishap for a while, until one day when Felix is alone in the kitchen. He’s standing in front of the kitchen door and sipping a cup of tea. There’s a magpie out on the terrace, hopping around and chattering loudly to its mate in a nearby tree. He’s so engrossed in the scene that he doesn’t notice Chan coming up behind him until he speaks.
“What are you doing?” Chan says, voice a low rumble after a late wake-up, and Felix jumps so badly he spins around and drops the glass.
It shatters on the floor, and Felix’s knees hit the ground only a split second later, arms folded behind his back and head tilted to bare his neck in submission.
“I’m sorry,” he rushes out, his mind screeching with instinctive panic. It doesn’t even register that it’s Chan. All his brain knows is that he’s just broken a glass in front of Alpha, and he’ll be punished. “I’m sorry, Alpha, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“What…” Shocked, Chan drops to his knees in front of Felix. “Felix. Lix. It’s me.” He switches to English. “Felix, it’s me. It’s me. Can you look at me? Ah, shit—” He grabs Felix’s hand and places it on his chest. “Breathe with me, alright? We’ve done this before. In… and out… That’s it. Follow my count.”
It takes a few minutes, but eventually the panicked haze in Felix’s mind clears up enough to realise where he is. Who he is with. He releases a shaky breath and leans forward to bury his face into Chan’s chest. “Chris.”
“Ssh,” the alpha says soothingly, stroking the back of his head. “It’s okay. You’re alright. It’s just me.”
“I know,” Felix chokes out, heart still beating too quickly. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologise for. I’m sorry for scaring you.”
Felix clenches a hand into the fabric of Chan’s shirt. “It’s stupid. I know you’re safe. I trust you.” He looks up, eyes shiny. “I swear I do, I’m sorry—”
Chan places a finger over his lips. “I know you trust me. Trauma isn’t logical. I’m not mad, I get it.”
Felix closes his eyes and lets Chan shuffle him sideways until they’re clear of the glass. He checks Felix for cuts and when he finds none, he pulls him into his side. Chan’s scent had spiked in alarm a few minutes ago, but it’s back to its usual calm steadiness now. Felix leans into him gratefully. His eyes still leak tears, and he can’t quite manage to stop. Chan merely holds him close, and lets him cry on his shoulder. “I hate this,” Felix mutters tiredly, and Chan nods.
“I get that too. But honestly, I’m amazed by how little this happens around us. With everything you’ve been through…” His hand tightens around Felix’s shoulder. “I’d understand it if you broke down every single day because of some way we triggered you.”
Felix considers this. “I think it’s your scents,” he says eventually. “You all kept me safe when I was at my most vulnerable, and I think everything in me knows it. You’re safe. I was just… distracted.” He gestures vaguely to the window. “There were magpies.”
Chan lets out a surprised snort of laughter and squeezes his shoulder fondly. “I’m glad,” he says after a moment. “I’m so glad you feel safe with us.”
Felix doesn’t respond, simply leans into him. How could he not, he thinks. With the way they act, the way they are… how could he not?
*
So no, not everything goes smoothly. But he’s still healing. There’s evidence of that, too. In his physical progress, the way his body is getting stronger the more he exercises with Changbin. In his growing comfort around all of them. In the way he initiates touch himself now sometimes, rather than waiting for them to offer. And then there’s a change he never expected to happen at all.
“You smell different,” Jisung says one day as he back-hugs Felix in the hallway.
Felix blinks. “Huh?”
“Yeah, it’s…” Jisung leans in to sniff his neck. “Your scent has changed. It’s sweeter.”
“I…” Confused, Felix shifts a little. “I can’t smell it. Can I…?” People usually can’t smell their own scent as strongly as other people can. It takes a deliberate release of pheromones to really get a sense of all the layers of one’s own scent.
“Of course.”
Felix releases his hold on his pheromones and allows a cloud of citrus to billow around him. He breathes in deeply, and his mouth drops open.
Jisung is right.
His scent is sweeter. There’s an undertone to it that hasn’t been part of his scent since… since his family died.
It had been there before, he knows. He’d always smelled like citrus, but when he was younger, it hadn’t just been fresh and zesty. There had been a sweetness to it that softened the scent into something more gentle, something warmer and more summery. He’d forgotten what it even smelled like. It’s something he had never expected to smell again.
Jisung’s eyes are wide, his lips parted as he stares at Felix. “Holy shit,” he says as he takes in a deep breath. “Oh my god. You smell incredible.”
Felix blushes bright red.
“I mean, you already smelled good, ever since you woke up,” Jisung continues. “All bright and fresh, but this…” He breathes in again and blinks, almost dazed. “Wow. Delicious.”
Slowly, Felix reins in the cloud of pheromones, but he can’t bring himself to reel it in completely. He thought he’d smelled healthy for weeks, but now… He breathes in his own scent and marvels at how right it feels. At how wrong it had felt before without him even realising. It feels like he’s whole again.
Jisung wraps him up in a hug, and he realises his eyes are wet. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“It’s been so long,” he cries into Jisung’s shoulder, smelling how syrupy citrus mixes with sticky cinnamon in a perfect blend. “I haven’t… I didn’t even remember, I didn’t think it could come back. I’m so happy.”
Jisung presses a kiss into his hair and hugs him tight. “It’s perfect, Lixie.”
And somehow, it feels like he’s saying you’re instead.
***
The next day, Felix wakes from a nap to the sound of pages rustling. There’s a hand resting on his shoulder and his face is pillowed on someone’s stomach. Seungmin’s stomach, he remembers as he breathes in and fills his lungs with sage. They’re on the couch, and their legs are tangled together. He blinks his eyes open and finds his head is angled in such a way that he can see the book Seungmin is holding propped up on his hip.
He squints at it, trying to read it from the side. It’s a dense text though, and he gives up after coming across words like amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Something about memories, he thinks, skimming the page. “The brain?”
Seungmin doesn’t startle. “Mm,” he hums. “Just some personal research.”
“Would you ever want to be a psychiatrist?”
“Oh no.” The response is immediate. “That sounds terrible. But the human brain is interesting. It does some weird stuff.”
Felix lifts his head so he can look at him. “Do you know what kind of doctor you’d like to be? When you graduate?”
Seungmin lowers the book, looking contemplative. “I haven’t decided yet,” he says eventually. “But I did like working for the clinic, especially after Hongjoong-hyung showed me what they were really doing.”
“Seonghwa-hyung-nim said you were good at it. That they’d love to have you back.”
Seungmin smiles. “Who knows, maybe I’ll go back. Make Innie scream by breaking the law on the daily.”
Felix laughs, but shakes his head. “He’d be proud.”
“I know.” Seungmin snaps the book shut and pushes himself up, forcing Felix to sit up as well or risk tumbling off the couch. “How’re you feeling? Well-rested enough to go outside?”
Felix stares. “Outside?”
Seungmin gestures towards the large windows. “It’s twenty degrees and sunny. I think it’s about time you get some proper sunlight.”
“Are you serious?” Felix’s face breaks out into a grin. “I get to go outside again?”
“Just to the garden,” Seungmin warns, but he’s smiling at Felix’s excitement. “Go get your shoes.”
*
Ten minutes later, they’re standing in front of the kitchen door that leads to a small terrace overlooking the garden. Felix is wearing his new sneakers, which he hasn’t had a chance to wear since Hyunjin bought them for him. When Felix had returned, Seungmin had been holding one of Jisung’s jackets and forced him into it, even though Felix protested he wouldn’t need it in this weather.
“I know you’re excited,” Seungmin is saying now, “But I need you to know that you might feel uncomfortable once we step out. The house is essentially a bubble of our scents, and your body has grown used to it. Even when we’re not actively touching or scenting you, you’re breathing in our pheromones. You feel safe here. When we step outside, that feeling of safety might vanish, so I need you to be prepared for that.”
Felix nods, but he doesn’t think it’ll be that bad. It’s just the garden, it’s not like there will be other people there. And he’s missed being outside so much.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Seungmin says, and huffs as Felix immediately throws open the door and rushes across the threshold.
The sun hits his face and he grins, throwing his head back in bliss. He breathes in his first breath of fresh air, and freezes. His eyes fly open in panic, body instinctively scrambling back until his back hits Seungmin’s chest. The beta’s hands come up to hold his arms, sage mingling with the clean air of the garden. “Breathe, Lix.”
Fuck. Seungmin hadn’t been kidding. It’s like every instinct in him is screaming at him to get back inside, back to his nest, back to safety. As if he’s in danger here, and that’s ridiculous—it’s just a garden, and a beautiful one at that. Flowerbeds and bushes stretch out beyond the terrace, and there’s a large expanse of open grass to their left.
Felix’s hands clench into fists and he fights against the overwhelming urge to run, beyond annoyed with himself.
“Deep breaths,” Seungmin says again. “It’ll get easier, keep going.”
He breathes, muscles locked to keep his legs where they are. Seungmin is right behind him, head hooked over Felix’s shoulder, and it helps. Slowly, the feeling of danger ebbs, until he’s able to uncurl his fists and take a step forward out of Seungmin’s embrace. He breathes in again, and this time he doesn’t panic. He can still tell the difference, can still feel the lack of the scents that he’s grown so used to, but this time it feels more like what he was expecting when he stepped outside. The warmth of the sun on his skin, the smell of clean air and grass and flowers. He’s not entirely at ease, but it’s doable this time. The feeling of finally being outside outweighs the discomfort.
“Okay?” Seungmin checks.
He releases a breath. “Yeah.”
“It can be intense the first time.”
“It’s weird.” He doesn’t know how to feel about it. Seungmin seems to think it’s normal, but it’s like his body suddenly has a mind of its own, working against him and playing tricks on him when nothing is wrong. It scares him a little, that he doesn’t have control over it. If this had happened when he was still living on the streets, he would have been easy pickings for anyone who wanted to harm him. “Why now?” he asks, frustrated. “Even after I broke my bond I was fine. My body has never been this weak.”
Seungmin walks up beside him. Felix doesn’t look at him, choosing to focus on a butterfly fluttering around a flower bush. “Have you ever been able to let go and relax the way you have with us?”
Felix is quiet, watching the butterfly land on a purple flower. He doesn’t really have to think about his answer though. No. No, he hasn’t felt this safe with people since his family died. Jake and Sunghoon had come close, but he’d still been living with his uncle and they’d all been so young.
“That’s why,” Seungmin continues, Felix’s silence being answer enough. “When you’re living under continuous stress like you were for years, it becomes chronic. It strengthens the amygdala and changes the neural circuits in your brain, meaning that your brain is—”
“You’re quoting your book, aren’t you,” Felix breaks in, recognising the word. “Is that why you were reading it? For me?”
“Yes, well.” Seungmin flushes, but he doesn’t deny it. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think you’ve ever been in a position where you could let go and allow your body to rest and recover the way it needed to. You’ve been stuck in survival mode for a long time.”
Felix lets those words sink in, watching as the butterfly gently flaps its wings, but does not fly off. “So what my body is doing now wouldn’t have happened on the streets.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist. But I don’t think so. You wouldn’t have let yourself. You might have snapped eventually, though.”
Felix’s mouth lifts in a wry smile. “Well, I did.” But even as he says it, he knows it’s not completely true. Because he remembers that first hour of his drop, before Changbin and Jeongin and Jisung had arrived. How there had been a part of his brain that just couldn’t let go, because it wasn’t safe. How that had been the only thing he knew, repeated over and over in his mind, and how he’d been stuck in that loop until they had come for him.
And before that…
“Even during that first drop, after I brought Innie back,” Felix says slowly, watching the butterfly’s antennae move. “I never dropped fully. I still got up to drink water sometimes. I drifted in and out of it for two days, and then snapped back to normal on Monday just before my shift.”
“Yeah. You couldn’t go without water, so you didn’t. You couldn’t miss work, so you didn’t. Survival brain is odd like that.” Seungmin looks at him. “But whether you made a conscious choice or not, your body decided it was safe with us. You’re recovering, probably from a lot more than just the drop.”
He’s right, Felix knows it. He knows he’s recovering in many other ways. And it’s a relief, knowing that this probably wouldn’t have happened on the streets. That it didn’t happen on the streets precisely because it couldn’t.
“How are you feeling now?” Seungmin asks. “I don’t mean this moment. I mean in general, compared to three months ago, before you’d even met us.”
He takes a moment to think about it, and then says honestly, “Better.” Even if he still needs naps, and still gets muscle spasms sometimes, and even if he reacts more extremely to scents than he ever has before—he feels better. He feels safe, and he can’t believe how much of a difference that makes. Being able to fully relax, to lean on the people around him and trust that they’ll watch his back when he lets his guard down. He has rested, relaxed and slept more deeply here than he has in years.
He doesn’t say all of that, and he doesn’t know if Seungmin hears it in the silence. But the butterfly flies off to the next bush, and Seungmin simply nods at him before gesturing towards the garden path. “Want me to show you around the garden?”
And Felix takes another deep breath of sunny spring air and nods back, letting Seungmin lead him farther away from the house.
*
Seungmin leads him along a winding route through the garden, past flower bushes and shaded nooks with wooden benches and an old, gnarled tree that looks perfect for climbing. When he sees Felix looking, Seungmin says, “Don’t even think about it. That’s the one Sung fell out of last year. One broken wrist is enough.” As they get closer and walk past it, Felix spots a little wooden sign nailed to the tree that says, Do not climb. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Jisung). Below it, a different hand has carved, Rude •`ᴖ´•, and Felix smiles.
Past the flowers, there’s a large vegetable patch next to an open field of grass. “Minho-hyung’s,” Seungmin explains as they walk past the plots with bright green sprouts. Some areas are still empty, and Felix suspects they’ll be filled as they get a little further into the season. “Though it was Hyunjin who did most of the planting this year, when hyung was gone.”
Felix looks at the sprouts for a while, imagining Minho tending to them. He hasn’t forgotten about his promise to talk to him. It’s just been… difficult. Not that Minho is hard to catch alone—the alpha seems to enjoy quiet time, and it would be easy to seek him out in the kitchen or in his room. It’s just that Felix has no idea what he would say. He can’t just barge into the conversation out of nowhere. Minho would shut it down immediately.
So he’s been waiting, trying to find the right hook to lead into it carefully. It just hasn’t happened yet.
Distracted, he turns around, and from here, he has a good view of the house. He’s never seen it from the outside before. It’s gorgeous. It has layers and different protruding corners, all light grey stones and arched doorways. The big windows on the ground floor are surrounded by ivy and rose bushes that climb up wooden trellises against the walls. There are two balconies that Felix has spotted from inside, but hasn’t set foot on yet due to his quarantine. He should be able to go there now, he realises with delight. He wouldn’t just invade Hyunjin’s studio, but the office has a balcony too, and it looks like a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the sunshine.
They continue walking and as they round a corner they find Changbin, kicking a soccer ball against a wall of the garden shed. Seungmin is about to call out to him, but Felix pulls his sleeve and puts his finger to his lips. Slowly, he steps closer, his footsteps muffled by the grass and the sound of the ball hitting the wall. When he’s close enough, he stops. “Up for a game?”
Changbin jumps and spins around, nearly tripping over the ball rolling between his legs. Impressively, he manages to both keep standing and stop the ball with one foot. “Felix? Oh my god, you’re outside!” With a wide grin, he throws his arms around him in a burst of happy woodsmoke. “How did you escape? I thought Seungmin would keep you captive forever.”
Felix laughs and turns them around so Changbin can see Seungmin walking up behind them, an exasperated expression on his face. “You couldn’t have properly jump-scared him, Felix? He deserved to fall.”
“Seungminnie!” Changbin says brightly, entirely unapologetic. He lets go of Felix to wrap Seungmin up in a bear hug as well, lifting him off the ground as he squeezes. Seungmin wheezes and slaps him on the arm in protest, wriggling to get away to the sound of Changbin’s laughter.
Felix takes the opportunity to head to the ball Changbin abandoned on the grass, rolling it up on his foot and bouncing it experimentally a few times. He’s rusty—he used to be okay at this as a teen, but it’s been years since he even laid eyes on a soccer ball. He’s not completely terrible though, and after a few minutes muscle memory seems to kick in and he gets the hang of it again.
“Not bad,” Changbin comments as Felix bounces the ball a little clumsily from his foot to his knee and back. “I didn’t know you played!”
Felix looks up and promptly loses the ball, laughing as it rolls away. “Not in years. But I meant what I said. I’m up for a game if you want to play?”
“Hell yeah.” Changbin grins and turns to the other side of the lawn, where Felix spots two actual soccer goals. He takes a few steps and then stops, tilting his head. “We need more players. Minnie?”
Seungmin, now released from Changbin’s grasp, is in the process of straightening his clothes as he catches his breath. He raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“You love soccer!”
“Try again when you haven’t just attempted to strangle me.”
Changbin pouts. “Aw, come on. Please?”
Seungmin pauses. “You’re doing my chores for the next two weeks.”
“I’ll clean the bathroom for you, once. Don’t push it.”
“Deal.”
Changbin grins. “Nice. I’ll ask hyung too. Where is he?”
Seungmin gestures vaguely at the house. “I think he’s still with Sungie and Minho-hyung in his room.”
“Oh. Really? This whole time?” Seungmin pulls a face at him, and Changbin laughs. “Oh. Well, I’m sure they’re finished by now.” He grabs the ball and jogs towards the back of the house, where he looks up at one of the dormer windows. He narrows his eyes and flings the ball upwards, aiming for the window. He misses the first two times, but hits it on the third. “Hyung!” he yells after the ball thuds against the glass.
The window swings open and Chan sticks his head out, bare-chested. “What on earth? What are you doing?”
“Oh come on, you guys have been in there for two hours—stop being horny. Get dressed! Come play soccer with us!”
Chan looks exasperated, but then he follows Changbin’s pointing finger towards Seungmin and Felix and his eyes light up. “Felix! You’re outside!”
Felix waves, and Chan looks back to Changbin. “You’re playing? Give me two minutes.”
Minho’s head pops up next to Chan’s. His hair is mussed, but he, at least, is wearing a shirt. “Yah, Seo Changbin! If any of you degenerates kill my onions again, I’ll bury you where they died.”
Chan pales, but Changbin shoots him a cheerful thumbs-up and jogs back over to Seungmin and Felix.
It really does take no more than a few minutes for Chan to join them, bounding over across the lawn with a wide grin. He’s dressed only in black shorts and a tank top, and Felix suddenly feels ridiculously overdressed in his long jeans and jacket, especially considering they’re about to play. He shrugs the jacket off, shaking his head when Seungmin narrows his eyes at him. “I’m not cold.”
“It’s not the cold I was worried about. I gave you Jisung’s jacket for the scent.”
Oh. That makes more sense. “I’m fine,” he insists, when Chan turns to him as well. “It’s much better than before.”
Seungmin eyes him for another second and then nods. “Okay. Let us know if it gets uncomfortable.”
“Teams!” Changbin yells, slinging an arm across Felix’s shoulders. “I claim Lix.”
Chan looks to Seungmin, who shrugs. “If that means I get you, I’m not complaining.”
“Alright,” Chan says. “We’re claiming the goal by the apple tree.”
Seungmin nods at him approvingly, and it’s only when they start playing that Felix realises they picked the goal that would save Felix from having to play with the sun in his eyes. He rolls his eyes as he kicks off with Changbin and watches Chan’s slow, careful attempts at reclaiming the ball. Felix might still be recovering, but there’s no need to coddle him to this extreme.
It doesn’t take long for Chan to realise his mistake.
“Shit,” he hisses as Felix swerves past him and passes the ball to Changbin, who slots the ball easily past Seungmin into the goal.
“Stop babying me, Chris,” Felix tells him in English, accepting Changbin’s high-five with a grin.
Chan licks his lips and grins back. “Oh,” he laughs, “It’s on.”
The game picks up speed after that, Chan no longer holding back. He’s good—he’s very good. He’s strong and athletic and he has great ball control. Whenever it is in his possession, it’s nearly impossible to win it back. Seungmin is good too. He doesn’t have as much control as Chan, but he’s smart, always seeming to know exactly where Felix and Changbin are headed and where he needs to be in order to block or pass them. They’re both good, but there’s always a point where they need to pass the ball between them, and Felix is fast. Changbin cackles in delight each time Felix dashes in between their opponents and makes off with the ball, passing it back and forth with Changbin as Chan and Seungmin try to make it back to their goal in time.
It’s fun. It’s tiring and it only takes a few minutes of playing for Felix to notice the hit his stamina and endurance have taken from the drop, but it’s fun. They play for about half an hour, slowing down every few minutes for Felix—and Seungmin, he notices with relief—to get their breath back, until they’re tied 3-3.
“Final goal?” Changbin offers, slapping Seungmin on the back.
“Final goal,” Chan agrees. “Better step it up, Bin.”
Changbin grins and kicks off again, cursing when Seungmin darts in to steal the ball away from him. They go back and forth for a bit, moving between the two goals with neither of the two teams scoring.
Chan is in possession of the ball now, and he’s coming for their goal with a single-minded focus. Felix can tell from the look in his eyes that he has no intention of passing to Seungmin this time, not wanting to give Felix or Changbin the opportunity to steal the ball again. Changbin is covering Seungmin, too far away from their goal, and Felix knows that if Chan gets any closer, he’s going to score.
He dashes forward and tries to wrestle the ball away from him. He knows it’s in vain—neither he nor Changbin have succeeded in doing so for the entire match. He doesn’t have the same level of control and he’s not strong enough. He gives it his all anyway, laughing as he tries to kick at the ball, cheekily holding on to Chan’s arms for balance. Chan twists, trying to swerve around him, and Felix twists with him, a wide grin on his face, dripping with sweat but having so much fun he could burst with it. He leans into Chan in an attempt to throw him off, and blinks in surprise when Chan inhales sharply and trips over his own feet. Chan falls backwards, and without the weight at Felix’s back, he topples over right on top of him. Chan’s hands immediately come up to hold him steady, even as he clearly gets the breath knocked out of him.
“Shit,” Felix gasps, sweeping his sweaty hair out of his eyes and twisting in Chan’s grasp to check on him. “Are you o—”
He pauses at the look on Chan’s face, eyes wild and dilated, nostrils flared. There’s a sharp spike of coffee in the air around them, and Felix feels his own eyes widen. Oh.
Chan is lying on his back and Felix landed sideways in his lap, one arm resting on the grass even though with the way Chan is holding him, he doubts he would need to hold himself up. Chan is sweaty too, dark hair plastered against his forehead, a droplet running down his neck. Felix’s eyes follow it, helpless to do anything but stare.
His next move is instinctive, the urge coming from deep inside of him. Without even thinking, he follows the instinct and tilts his head to bare his neck, just slightly. The movement is small, so small it would go unnoticed in any other situation, but Chan’s eyes are fixed on him and it’s impossible for him to miss it. They zero in on the movement, his hands tightening on Felix’s waist. The smell of coffee gets stronger, and Felix can smell his own scent spike in response. His heartbeat quickens.
“Shit, are you alright?” Changbin’s voice comes from their right, and Felix jumps.
He scrambles off Chan’s lap, standing and bending over—supposedly to dust the grass off his jeans, but really to try and get the furious blush on his cheeks to go down. Fuck. Fuck, that was—
“Sorry, oh my god,” Chan says, getting to his feet himself. He switches to English, seemingly on instinct. “Shit, sorry Felix. I didn’t mean to—shit. Are you okay? Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine,” Felix manages, wiping a hand over his face and hoping the lingering redness can be blamed on the exertion. “I’m fine.”
Even if they dismiss the redness, though, there’s no way Changbin and Seungmin don’t pick up on their scents. It had barely been ten seconds, but the sharp spike of want lingers in the air until finally a gust of wind breezes through and dissolves it. Neither of them comment on it, but they exchange a glance with each other and then look at Chan—they have definitely noticed.
“I’m so sorry, Chris,” Felix says, still in English. “I don’t know what—”
“No, it’s my fault,” Chan interrupts, “It’s my scent, it’s strong, and I know you were just reacting. It was… the exercise, and I just—fuck, I didn’t mean for it to spike, I’m really fucking sorry.” He looks like he wants to reach out and touch Felix’s shoulder, but he stops himself, awkwardly swaying back.
Felix’s eyes flicker to Changbin and Seungmin. He’s never spoken English with them, but he’s pretty sure they’re good enough to pick up on what they’re saying. It’s not as if a series of repeated apologies and curse words are particularly hard to decipher.
“Forgive me,” Chan continues. “It’s… the adrenaline, you know, I just… I’m sorry. You’re safe here. I swear I wouldn’t… I didn’t mean to—”
Of course not. Of course he wouldn’t. He’s happily mated, for fuck’s sake, of course he wouldn’t.
And he seems to think Felix’s actions had been nothing but an instinctive omegan reaction to his scent. So do Changbin and Seungmin, judging by the fact that they merely look concerned, rather than angry that he tried to seduce their pack alpha. They think he’s blameless. That’s… good. Felix can roll with that.
He isn’t blameless, of course. His mouth had gone dry as soon as he’d registered the sight of Chan beneath him, sweaty and panting. He’d bared his neck before Chan’s scent had even fully sunk in, based on nothing but his own feelings. But there is no way he is admitting that. Better to let them dismiss it as an instinctive reaction than have them think he’d come for their relationship like that.
“It’s okay,” he says, forcing a smile on his face and switching back to Korean for the sake of the others. “I’m really fine. It’s just the game, right? Adrenaline.” His words sound weak and stilted to his own ears, but Chan seems to relax a little anyway. Perhaps because the alpha can tell that he doesn’t smell panicked or afraid, just embarrassed.
“Right,” Chan agrees with an awkward laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks at the others and clears his throat. “Well. I think that’s enough exercise for today. Agree to a tie?”
Seungmin jumps at the chance to both lighten the mood and dig at Chan. “You can just tell us you’re too old for this kind of exercise. There’s no need to be ashamed, we know your body is on the decline.” He pats Chan’s shoulder in solidarity, nodding solemnly, before dashing away when Chan lunges for him, cheeks still red but seemingly glad for the distraction.
Felix watches them go, Seungmin shrieking with laughter as Chan catches him, and they disappear around the corner. Felix lowers himself into a crouch, burying his face in his hands. Fuck. Oh god, he’d just… he’d just fucking bared his neck at Chan, like some sort of… Jesus, perhaps his uncle had been fucking right about him after all.
“Well,” Changbin says, flopping to the ground beside him and stretching out lazily. “That was interesting.”
Felix grimaces, pressing his hands harder against his face. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Changbin says, and he sounds amused. “It’s fine, Lix-ah, don’t worry about it. Exercise always gets hyung riled up like that. His scent is a lot to take in, when he’s like that. It’s not your fault.”
But it is. It had definitely been Felix’s fault.
“Seriously,” Changbin says, slinging out an arm to pat him on the wrist, the only place of Felix he can reach, lying on his back as he is. “Don’t worry. We’re all good. You’re not too freaked out, are you? Because he didn’t mean to scare you, you know. You’re safe here, like he said. He would never—”
“I know,” Felix says quickly, closing his eyes. “I know.”
Chan has six amazing bondmates—he has no need for someone like Felix, someone he can’t even legally mate. Of course he would never.
The problem is that Felix is starting to realise that he would.
Not just Chan, either. Each and every one of them, they’re all just so wonderful. And sometimes they call him pretty and tell him he smells good and hug him or look at him with all this affection, and he only realises now that some hidden part of him had started to build up hopes of…
He dismisses the thought before it can even fully form. No. No, he’s not going there. Clearly that wasn’t what they meant at all. Like they said, they would never. Of course they wouldn’t.
And they’ve all been amazing, giving him more than he ever deserved. Their friendship is more than enough. He’s not going to do anything to break up their pack, he’s not going to even let himself think about it. He’ll make sure that his reaction today won’t happen again.
His embarrassment melts away into a quiet resolve, and he feels Changbin tug gently at his wrist, can sense the beta’s relief at the change in his scent.
“You’re right,” Felix says, removing his hands from his face and letting Changbin pull him down for a cuddle, sweaty and all. “It’s not a big deal. I’m fine.”
“Good,” Changbin says against his back, wrapping him up in woodsmoke.
It’s not a big deal, Felix repeats to himself as he relaxes into him.
He won’t let it become one.
*
He dozes off eventually, sleepiness overtaking him after the exertion of the soccer game and with the feeling of warm sunlight on his skin.
He’s woken up by the sound of a car crunching up the gravel driveway. He blinks his eyes open to find Changbin still beside him, Felix’s head now resting on his chest, an arm slung over Changbin’s waist. The sun has shifted and they’re now in the shade of the apple tree. Someone has thrown Jisung’s jacket over him like a blanket.
“What time is it?” he mumbles, turning his head. He would feel guilty about trapping Changbin here like this if the beta didn’t seem so utterly content not to move, still lying back with his eyes closed. For a moment, he wonders if he’s asleep, but then Changbin answers.
“A little after five. That’ll be Minho, he picked Innie up after grocery shopping.”
Felix sits up, letting the jacket fall to his lap. He stretches and rubs the sleep from his eyes. He’s sore already, and he knows his muscles are going to kill him tomorrow. But he doesn’t regret playing, despite the way it ended.
“Have a juice box,” Changbin says, blindly grabbing one of the boxes next to him and tossing it in Felix’s direction. “Channie-hyung brought them over a while ago. I think he still felt guilty.”
Felix shakes his head, but accepts the juice box. “He shouldn’t. I’ll tell him later that we’re fine.”
Changbin snorts. “Honestly, he could probably use that. He kinda freaked out afterwards, he was so afraid he’d scared you.”
“He didn’t,” Felix says firmly. He’d felt many things, but fear was not one of them.
“I’m glad.” Changbin sits up as well, patting Felix on the arm. Then he rolls his neck and yawns loudly.
“Hi!” someone calls from across the lawn. Felix looks up to see Jeongin heading towards them, a large smile on his face. “Minho-hyung told me you were here,” he explains as he gets a little closer. He shakes the pack of cookies he’s holding. “Told me to bring you this in case you were hungry.”
Changbin’s face lights up as Jeongin tosses it at him.
“He also said we’re having dinner early because of his evening class, and that if you eat too much now and don’t have room for dinner later, he’s not cooking you anything else this week and you’ll have to fend for yourself.”
Changbin doesn’t even hesitate before cramming a cookie into his mouth. “That won’t be a problem,” he says with his mouth full. “I’m always hungry.”
Felix laughs at the disgusted expression on Jeongin’s face, and the omega turns to him. “And you! You’re outside!”
Felix grins at him, opening his arms in a silent request for a hug. Jeongin can refuse if he doesn’t feel like being affectionate, Felix won’t be offended, but so far he never has. He always smells happy when he hugs him, so it seems that he meant it when he told Felix he didn’t mind hugs when they came from him.
As expected, Jeongin’s smile widens and he throws himself down on the grass in between Felix’s legs so Felix can wrap himself around him. Felix hooks his head over Jeongin’s shoulder and breathes in, expecting the omega’s usual soothing, happy vanilla scent.
Instead, he’s met with an overwhelming stench of alpha cedar, so strong and bitter that he chokes on it. Danger, his mind flashes, and he scrambles backwards to get away from it. Run.
He’s three metres away and about to jump to his feet when he gets a hold of himself and stops, digging his fingers into the grass and trying to think past the haze of deep-rooted panic. It’s like what happened earlier when he stepped outside, but a hundred times worse. His body is screaming at him to run, to hide, to get away from the danger—but there is no danger. It’s just Jeongin, and Jeongin would never hurt him. So what had he—
“Innie, did you use neutraliser before you came here?” Changbin asks, now completely serious. He’s dropped the cookies and is already on his knees, ready to jump into action.
Oh.
“Fuck,” Jeongin says, alarmed eyes widening in realisation. “Shit, Felix, I’m sorry.” He sniffs his denim jacket and pulls a face. “I met with Ilsung to discuss the witness statements.”
Oh.
Changbin leans in to sniff Jeongin’s jacket as well. “Jesus. His scent is all over you.”
“I know,” Jeongin grimaces. “He kept pushing pheromones, trying to get me to let him take the lead. It’s fine,” he says, waving a hand when Changbin’s expression darkens. “He’s just a dick, I can handle it. It’s just that the scent lingers after a while. I hadn’t realised it stuck to my clothes.” He shakes off his jacket and tosses it to the side, looking to Felix in concern. “I’m so sorry, Lixie. Are you okay?”
“Wow,” Felix manages with a weak laugh, trying to get his racing heart to calm down. “Seungmin wasn’t kidding when he said I’d want to flee from a scent I don’t like.”
“What do you need?” Changbin asks. “Space? Scenting? Should we call for Seungmin?”
“No, no, don’t.” Felix takes a deep breath and releases the death grip he has on the grass and one unlucky daisy flower. “I’m fine.” Changbin and Jeongin don’t look convinced, and he shakes his head. “I am. It just surprised me. I…” He looks to the jacket Jeongin just discarded. “Toss me that?”
Jeongin tilts his head, eyeing him.
“Um, no,” Changbin says. “Dude, if you think we’re handing you the jacket that nearly made you launch yourself straight into the next district to get away from it—”
The jacket lands in a heap next to Felix, who laughs at the incredulous expression Changbin shoots Jeongin. “Innie, what the fuck.”
Jeongin ignores him, looking at Felix. “You want to try again?”
“Yeah,” Felix says, eyeing the jacket. “I panicked when I stepped outside too, earlier. Seungmin told me to keep breathing, and it got easier.”
“Felix,” Changbin warns, unconvinced, but Felix picks up the jacket.
“No, I need to—I need to not react like this to scents I don’t like. I hate that I don’t have control over it, it makes me… it scares me. I need to know how my body reacts so I can overcome it.”
Changbin sighs. “Fuck. Fine. But at least let me get closer.”
Felix pats the grass next to him. That’s something he won’t say no to. The idea of having Changbin’s comforting scent right there if he needs it is reassuring.
Changbin scoots closer, placing a hand on Felix’s knee, and Felix steels himself, bringing the jacket back to his nose. He breathes in. Danger, his mind flashes, but this time he’s prepared for the onslaught, and he doesn’t give in to the urge to run. Heavy, tangy cedar fills his nose, and he scrunches up his face in disgust. Cedar can be a pleasant scent, but this one is gross, strong and dominating and reeking of arrogance.
He takes in another breath. It’s not the same as it was when he stepped outside with Seungmin. That was a lack of scent. This is harder, his body’s reaction much more visceral and much more difficult to ignore. But he keeps breathing, and after a minute he can smell Jeongin too, the alarm bells in his head subsiding enough for him to catch the underlying scent of calm vanilla that’s seeped deep into the fabric.
He can feel Changbin’s and Jeongin’s eyes on him, scanning him for any sign of serious distress. They don’t say anything though, simply letting him breathe and acclimate.
Slowly, very slowly, he feels his body uncoil from its tight, hunched-over position. It’s still hard—the instinct to run remains, a slow, pulsing pressure in his mind, but he’s in control now, no longer overwhelmed by his instincts.
He lowers the jacket away from his face, breathing in fresh air with a sigh of relief. “How long did that take?”
“I don’t know. About five minutes, maybe?” Jeongin is still where he was when Felix scrambled away from him. “Are you okay?”
Felix nods. “Yeah. This was good. Five minutes is way too long though.”
“Give it time,” Changbin says. “Seungmin said your reactions will get less intense eventually. Can I scent you?”
Felix sticks out his wrist, but Changbin leans in to rub his jaw along Felix’s neck instead, going straight for the most effective scent gland. Felix relaxes against him, humming in relief as the final tendrils of panic leave his system.
Jeongin crawls a little closer, just close enough that he can snatch the denim jacket back. “I’m going to take a shower,” he says as Felix looks at him. Then he grimaces. “Can we… agree to wait until after dinner to tell Seungmin I forgot the neutraliser? Minho-hyung said he’s including eggs as a side dish, so he’ll be in a good mood after.”
The corners of Felix’s mouth pull up. Seungmin’s inevitable exasperation is not hard to imagine. “My lips are sealed.”
“Thanks. Don’t stay out here for too long, yeah? Dinner will be ready soon.”
Changbin straightens. “Oh right, where are the—yah! I.N-ah, don’t you dare take those cookies!” He hauls Felix up with him, slinging him over his shoulder as if he weighs nothing more than a feather. He takes after Jeongin in leaping bounds and Felix yelps in surprise, scrabbling for purchase against Changbin’s back and fisting his hands into his shirt. “If you want me to stay quiet, this is not the way to go! Come back here, you little—”
Felix can’t see him, but he can hear Jeongin’s laughter as Changbin chases him across the garden back to the house. Resigned to his fate, he slumps against Changbin’s back, waiting for Changbin to reclaim the cookies or for someone to—
“Yah, what do you think you’re doing?” Minho demands as they race into the kitchen. Felix hears a thud and Changbin yelps. “He’s a person, not a sack of grain—put him down, you blockhead!”
“Ah, get your spoon away from—aish, I’m doing it, I’m putting him down, stop—”
Felix is lowered to the ground amongst a chorus of yelps and threatening movements from Minho, and finally gets a good look at the kitchen as he straightens. Minho is towering over Changbin, and Hyunjin is watching them from the kitchen island, looking delighted someone else is at the mercy of Minho’s spoon for once. Jeongin is leaning against a wall, laughing, the pack of cookies still in his hand.
His laughter disappears, however, when Seungmin’s voice comes from the doorway, deceptively quiet. “Yah, Jeongin-ah? Tell me you used neutraliser before you sought Felix out.”
It’s Felix’s turn to laugh as Jeongin’s face twists and both Seungmin’s and Minho’s eyes narrow to glare at him. He loves this pack. He loves—
As friends, he reminds himself as Seungmin closes in on Jeongin. He loves this pack as friends. That’s enough.
That’s enough.
Notes:
Sure, sure, come yell at me. BUT trust me, I promise that I won’t turn this into annoyingly angsty pining. I hate that dragged-out miscommunication trope as much as you do. There’s honestly a surprisingly small amount of pining in this fic, so don’t yell at me too loudly.
That said, this chapter comes with a bonus scene of Chan and Seungmin’s little chat once they disappeared around the corner. It’ll grant some insight into what happened, and also into the pack’s feelings in general.
Chapter 17
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Felix is helping Minho in the garden when he finally gets the chance to talk to him.
“Like this?” Felix asks, looking dubiously at the small hole he’s just dug.
Minho leans over. “Not that deep. Yeah, that’s better. Now just put in the seed and cover it back up.”
They’re planting courgettes. It’s Minho’s day off, and he’d announced at breakfast that he was going to spend it planting the final batch of seeds in the remaining empty plots in his vegetable patch. He’d asked Hyunjin for help, since the alpha had gardening experience, but he had two client meetings today and had declined with a pout. Felix had offered his help instead.
“If you want,” he’d added shyly when Minho looked at him. “I’ve never gardened before, so I might just get in your way.”
Minho had simply regarded him for a moment and then said, “You won’t. Come on. I’d be grateful for your help.”
“Wear Innie’s old clothes!” Hyunjin had shouted from halfway up the stairs. “I’m not letting you ruin your pretty new things.”
So they’d headed out after breakfast, and by now it’s late morning and they’ve successfully transplanted the tomatoes and planted cucumbers. Felix finishes the row he’s working on, making sure to leave enough space between the seeds like Minho had told him to, and then takes a moment to pause and wipe the sweat from his brow. It’s a warm day, and now that it’s nearing noon, the sun has gained strength significantly.
“That’s a lot of strawberries,” he comments, watching the rows of small green plants that cover a large part of the patch.
Minho snorts, not looking up from where he’s carefully transplanting peppers. “I could turn the entire garden into a strawberry field and it still wouldn’t be enough. Jeongin and Hyunjin are still resentful I’m planting beans and eggplants when I could use the space for strawberries instead.”
Felix laughs. That does sound like them.
“Pass me that netting?”
Felix gets up, only to gasp in surprise as a shock of pain lances up his leg. He tries to catch himself but tumbles straight into a row of strawberries.
“Felix?” Minho calls.
“Fine,” he grunts, digging his hand into his thigh and trying not to sound out of breath. “Just tripped.”
He didn’t. It’s another spasm, and a bad one. But he knows it’ll pass soon enough, and if Minho finds out, he’ll send him back inside. Felix doesn’t want to go back inside—he’s having fun, and it’s such a nice day out.
“You sure?”
“Yep.” He grits his teeth. He can ride this out. He just needs to…
A hand lands on his shoulder and he jumps, not even having heard Minho move.
“You’re not fine. What’s wrong?”
The cramp’s intensity worsens and Felix doesn’t dare open his mouth to reply for fear he’ll scream. He knows he’s beyond words at this point.
“You idiot.” Minho drops down next to him and takes his leg, starting the by now familiar massage.
Felix slumps forward against his shoulder, as much in resignation as in pain. He breathes in Minho’s familiar scent and feels Minho tilt his neck, allowing him better access. Giving in, he presses his face against the scent gland and allows the soothing ocean breeze to enter his system.
Minho doesn’t speak for the entire duration of the spasm. He merely switches between stretching and massaging with deft, experienced hands.
It takes a few minutes, but then the muscles give way. Felix sags in relief and removes his hand from his mouth, breathing hard. There’s a neat ring of teeth imprinted in the fleshy part of his thumb.
Now that the muscles have relaxed, Minho moves on to a deeper massage, still not speaking. The silence hangs heavy between them until Felix can’t bear it any longer.
“Sorry,” he says after catching his breath. “I’m sorry.”
“And what are you apologising for, exactly?”
“I shouldn’t have tried to hide it.”
Minho hums. “Any reason you thought that would be a good idea?”
Felix sighs. “You would have sent me back inside.”
Minho pauses his massage to look at Felix, his expression unreadable. “Would I have?”
“Um.” Well. Felix had been convinced he would, but now he’s not so sure.
“Seonghwa-ssi said you’re fine. I see no reason to question his judgement.”
Seonghwa had stopped by again yesterday for a second blood draw, to check if Felix’s levels had improved after taking his prescribed supplements for all those weeks. Chan had felt guilty about the producer meeting that had prevented him from being present this time, but Felix had told him it was fine. He knew Seonghwa now. He was no longer scared.
He still hadn’t been alone though. Minho and Hyunjin had been there instead, staying close to Felix, ready to intervene if Felix showed any sign of discomfort. Seonghwa hadn’t worn scent blockers this time, and upon entering the room, he’d waved his jacket in Felix’s direction to test his reaction to his scent. Instinctively, Minho and Hyunjin’s scents had spiked protectively, but Felix had still been able to catch Seonghwa’s natural honeysuckle scent. It was pleasant, and Felix had felt calm—there was none of the reaction he’d had to Ilsung’s cedar scent.
Noticing his lack of reaction, Seonghwa had smiled and stepped closer, telling Felix he looked well. It had been almost two months since his previous visit, and Felix knew the difference must have been stark. He’d beamed back, and Minho and Hyunjin had relaxed. The visit had gone smoothly after that, Seonghwa drawing another handful of blood samples followed by a second full check-up. (“Seungmin’s request,” he’d shrugged, “Though we all know there’s no need.”) Afterwards, he’d said that while they would need to wait for the lab results to be certain, he was pretty sure Felix was as good as healed. His pheromone levels were stable and the risk of a third drop had long since passed. Time would fix the rest—his energy levels, scent sensitivity, and apparently the occasional wayward muscle spasm.
Clearly, Minho had taken Seonghwa’s assessment seriously.
“Oh,” Felix says sheepishly in response to the alpha’s simple statement. “Now I feel stupid.”
“Good,” Minho says. He squeezes his calf and lets go. “You were.”
Felix huffs out a laugh. “Thanks.”
“If you want to stay outside, stay. It’s up to you. But we are taking a break.” He reaches out to toss Felix one of the water bottles he had brought.
Felix won’t argue with a break. The pain has passed, but his leg still feels heavy in the aftermath. He watches Minho as he swallows down the contents of half a water bottle of his own, a drop of water running from the bottle down his wrist. Somehow, Minho never does what Felix expects him to. He supposes it fits his character.
“Seungmin would have sent me inside,” Felix comments after a minute.
Minho lowers the bottle, twisting the cap back on. “Seungmin is also the one who took on sole responsibility for your health when you came here, and he’s not a doctor yet. He’s scared of messing up, and it makes him over-cautious.”
Felix thinks back to the plea in Seungmin’s eyes on Hyunjin’s birthday, when he’d begged Felix to let Seonghwa examine him. To the way he’d broken down a few days before that, terrified Felix would slip back into a drop that would kill him.
“I caused him a lot of stress,” he says eventually, quietly.
“If there’s anyone who caused him stress it’s me, considering your drop was my fault. But also, I think he caused himself a lot of stress.” Minho’s voice is quiet. “He takes on a lot, and he isn’t always the greatest at asking for help.”
Just like you, Felix thinks.
And suddenly, there it is. The hook he’d been waiting for. This is his chance to start the talk he promised Chan he’d have with Minho. This is the moment to do what Jeongin does and lead the conversation back to Minho, subtly enough that the alpha won’t notice until Felix has him where he wants him.
But Felix isn’t Jeongin, and he’s not clever enough for that. Even with this opening, he can’t think of a way to start the conversation that isn’t either an accusation or a direct question.
Beside him, Minho snorts. “Whatever you’re squirming about, spit it out.”
Felix sputters. “I… I wasn’t—”
“You were. What is it?”
He slumps. “You’re not going to like it.”
Minho’s raises an eyebrow. “Well. Now you’ve got my attention.”
“You haven’t told the others. What you told me, about your past.” Yup. There went any chance of subtlety. “I mean,” he continues hastily, “Not that you have to. Obviously. It’s just that… It’s just…”
“Did Chan put you up to this?”
Felix sighs. “He’s worried.”
Minho is silent.
“He’s scared it will happen again. You disappearing, I mean. I think he feels like he has failed you, as pack alpha and as someone who loves you, because he didn’t know what to do to bring you back last time.”
“It won’t happen again.”
Felix doesn’t know whether he’s talking about his period of absence, or the initial reaction he had at the mall that night. It doesn’t really matter. “Are you sure? Because things like that…”
“It won’t.” Minho’s voice is flat, emotionless.
“I dropped to my knees last week when I broke a glass in front of Chan.”
Minho looks up at that. Felix knows it’s new information to him—he’d asked Chan to keep it between them.
“I heard it shatter and I was kneeling, neck bared, begging for forgiveness before I even knew what I was doing. I didn’t realise it was hyung until he talked me out of a panic attack.” He shakes his head. “I thought I was past that, that I trusted you all enough that something like that wouldn’t happen. But I was wrong. And I’ll probably be wrong again.”
He plucks at a blade of grass near his leg. “I think I might want to try therapy, if I ever save up enough money. Maybe. It’s scary. But I just… I trust all of you but I’m still terrified of other alphas, and I have all these fucked-up things in my head that he told me and I want them gone. I want to work through it so I’ll stop having these reactions I can’t control.” Seonghwa had mentioned it during his visit. He told him that if Felix wanted to, he could set him up with a therapist. A safe one, where everything Felix said would remain completely confidential and off the record.
He takes a breath and looks at Minho. “You say it won’t happen again. But I think it could. I think there’s a good chance it will, if a similar situation occurs.”
Minho doesn’t reply.
“I can’t force you to tell them,” Felix says. “And even if I could, it’s not my business. But they already know something is up. Chan-hyung, but the others too, probably. Seungmin and Innie for sure.”
“Jeonginnie…” Minho pauses, but he’s broken the silence and Felix almost holds his breath in his attempt to stay still so he won’t scare him off. Eventually, Minho continues. “He was furious with me. After that night in the mall, after he woke up and found out what happened, what I’d done. He didn’t talk to me for weeks.”
Felix stares, eyes wide. He knew Jeongin had been angry. Jeongin had told Felix that he said some things to Minho that he regretted. But Felix hadn’t known he’d been that angry.
“It wasn’t…” Minho stares blankly ahead. “It wasn’t just you I hurt. Out of our pack, I hurt him the most. His trust in me. He didn’t want to be around me, and I didn’t blame him. I broke a promise.”
Felix feels stunned. But then, as he thinks back to the conflicted looks that had crossed Jeongin’s face the day they’d met up for coffee, as he remembers the way Jeongin’s scent had soured every time Minho was mentioned that day…
Minho is right, Felix realises. Deep down, it hadn’t really been anger. Jeongin had been incredibly hurt by what he’d done.
“Did you ever talk about it? Before I came here?”
Minho shakes his head. “No. That day in the kitchen, with his collar…”
Felix remembers that moment. The shock on Minho’s face, the small nod Jeongin had given him as he offered up his collar. The turmoil in Minho’s eyes as Jeongin had whispered, “Missed you.” It had been reconciliation. A message that he hadn’t been able to read the depth of at the time, but that Minho must have felt clear as day. I’m still yours. I still love you.
“I owe him the full story,” Minho says, shoulders tense. “Of all people, he deserves to know why. To know what I did. Who I am.”
There’s a dark thought behind those words, Felix can tell. Minho still thinks of himself as responsible for Jaewoo’s death. He wants to protest it, but at the same time he doesn’t want to interrupt Minho when he’s finally talking.
“I know he knows there’s something. Chan too. They all do. I need to tell them. I just… can’t.”
That makes sense, in a sad way. Felix had meant it when he told Chan he wasn’t special for knowing Minho’s story. He knows full well the only reason Minho told him everything is because Felix caught him right as he hit his breaking point. He’d fallen apart at the seams and the story had bled out of him along with the tears and the hurt.
It made sense that Minho, who’d needed to brace himself even to apologise to Hyunjin for missing his birthday, would clam up when trying to talk about trauma as deeply rooted as this. Hell, anyone would.
Felix doesn’t know how to solve that. It’s obvious that his packmates love him and won’t judge him, so if even that isn’t enough to crack the defences Minho has built around his trauma…
Except.
Is it obvious?
It’s obvious to Felix. But to Minho…
He deserves to know why. To know what I did. Who I am.
To Minho, who seems to think he’s no better than the guy who’d murdered his friend… it might not be obvious at all.
“He loves you,” Felix says. “Jeongin loves you. So does Chan-hyung. So do the others. They won’t judge you. Minho-hyung, there’s nothing to judge you for.”
Minho’s hand clenches around a handful of grass, the only sign that he’s listening.
“You’re a good person. You didn’t do anything wrong. You told me everything and I still think so, and I’m not even pack.”
Minho remains silent, and Felix continues.
“It’s like… It’s like saying I’m responsible for my sister’s death because I didn’t want to sit in the middle seat. If I hadn’t acted like a child and just sat there, she’d have been on the right side and she’d have survived. I was so convinced it was my fault before I told my friends here at school.” It had been a long time before he managed to confess it to Jake and Sunghoon. It was a persistent thought, and it still came up sometimes, but they had talked it through often enough, the three of them and their parents, and they had all been vehement enough that it no longer clanged around his brain as loudly as before. It had been the drunk guy who’d run the red light who was at fault, not Felix.
Minho’s story is similar, at least in that respect. He’s not to blame for anything that happened. But he doesn’t need to hear that from Felix. He needs to know he’s loved by his packmates, traumatic past and all.
“There is no way they’re going to think any less of you if you tell them. They love you.” Hesitantly, he places a hand on Minho’s shoulder. He’s no longer all that afraid that his touch is unwelcome, because Minho has never pushed him away or smelled uncomfortable, but this is a heavy conversation and he might not want it right now. But Minho doesn’t shrug him off. Perhaps he even leans infinitesimally into him. “I can’t force you. But I really, really hope you will tell them. You’ve carried this on your own for so long, and you deserve their support. Because they will give it to you, I know they will.”
He stops talking, having said all he can think of. It’s quiet for a long time as Minho keeps staring into the distance. Felix wonders what he’s thinking.
Eventually, Minho nods once, and the mood shifts. Felix knows the conversation is over. He doesn’t know what Minho has decided, but he hopes he’ll talk to his pack. He doesn’t deserve to walk around with this guilt for the rest of his life. He deserves to move past it, to be happy.
It’s up to Minho, though. This conversation was clearly a lot already, and Felix decides to change the topic to give him some space.
“I killed so many strawberries,” he says mournfully as he looks at the row of plants he’d fallen on.
Minho lets out a quiet laugh, relaxing as the mood lightens. “It’s a good thing we have raspberries too then, this year.”
Felix’s head snaps up. “What?”
Minho gestures towards a few planters on the other side of the patch. “Raspberries. Innie told us you liked them, so we got a few bushes.”
Felix stares. “For me?”
“Oh, I’m sure the others will enjoy them too. Better check for new ones every morning once they ripen, Lix-ah, or they’ll be gone before you get a chance to taste them.”
This time, Felix doesn’t hesitate before throwing his arms around Minho in a hug, squealing in delight. They got him raspberries. Not just the fruit—they’d bought five enormous raspberry bushes just because he’d mentioned to Jeongin that he liked them, once, on the first night they’d met. Minho lets out a quiet chuckle above his head, still smelling a little sulphury after the talk they just had, and Felix allows his scent to bloom around them in extra sweet happy gratitude, until Minho wraps his arms around him and relaxes into him.
He hopes the conversation helped. He really hopes it did.
***
“Don’t go outside, okay? Keep your phone on you, we’ll add you to the group chat. Text us every fifteen minutes to let us know how you’re doing.” Chan sounds stressed even as Changbin drags him to the door.
“I’ll be fine,” Felix tells him for the fifteenth time. “Go. It’s only for a couple of hours. I literally spent longer than that on my own in Innie’s room yesterday.”
“Text us,” Chan insists, and Felix laughs at the eye roll Jisung gives him from behind Chan.
“Fine,” he agrees. “Now go or you’ll be late.”
“And—”
“Bye Felix!” Changbin winks at him and pulls Chan away, his voice muffled as Jisung slams the door shut behind them.
Felix lets out another laugh and heads back to the living room, where he left his phone.
It’s Friday, and he wasn’t supposed to be home alone. Minho was supposed to be back from the studio by now, but one of his teachers had called in sick and he’d had to take over. Jeongin was at school, Seungmin was at work, and Hyunjin had a meeting with another client to paint one of her dogs. 3RACHA had been home when Minho called, but they had several important meetings they couldn’t skip.
Chan had tried though. It had taken half an hour of Felix’s, Changbin’s and Jisung’s combined efforts to convince him everything would be fine. They’d managed, but only barely.
Felix’s phone buzzes.
Red Light District
Jisung added you.
Jisung: welcome lix!!! ヽ(*⌒▽⌒*)ﾉ
Jisung: @everyone, felix is home alone bc minho-hyung had to stay at the studio longer, and channie-hyung freaked out so now lixie has to text us every 15 minutesChangbin-hyung: can we get an F in the chat for felix
Jeongin: F
Jeongin: hyung he was literally alone in my room all day yesterdayFelix: That’s what I said!
Felix: …Should I ask about the chat nameChangbin-hyung: lollll
Minho-hyung: For fuck’s sake.
Minho-hyung: Yah @Hyunjin this is your fault change the fucking chat name.
Minho-hyung: My class is starting do not fucking @ me or I’ll make soup from your eyeballs.Felix: …does Minho-hyung always swear this much in texts
Jeongin: he does
Jeongin: it’s greatJisung: hyung says aren’t u supposed to be in class (•ˋ_ˊ•)
Changbin-hyung: he’s actually doing the frown thing and he owes a little old halmeoni at the crossroads an apology now
Changbin-hyung: she dropped her orangesFelix: Oh my god
Jeongin: [image attached]
Jeongin: i am in class.Hyunjin: hi felixie!!! <3
Hyunjin: also innie did u just take a selca with ur professor in the background
Hyunjin: because if so ur my heroJeongin: he’s old
Jeongin: he won’t notice
Jeongin: case in point: he’s teaching the same lecture as last week and me and gyu are taking bets on how long it’ll take for him to realiseFelix: Does he ask like reflection questions at the end?
Jeongin: yea
Felix: Answer them before he can ask, if you still remember from last week
Jisung: YES
Hyunjin: YES
Jeongin: !!!
The texts go on for a while until Changbin and Jisung sign off as Chan pulls into the parking lot of the entertainment building, Hyunjin has to start painting, and Jeongin—after reporting he and Beomgyu indeed managed to stun his professor into a befuddled silence—has to get to his debating class. Felix knows that’s a class he shares with Ilsung, and he already feels sorry for him.
Sometimes Felix feels like Jeongin tells him things he doesn’t tell the others. He mentioned Ilsung in front of Changbin only once last week, but Felix gets almost daily updates on the shit Ilsung keeps pulling on him in the classes they share; the posturing and patronising language and the way he tries to manipulate Jeongin using pheromones.
He says he can handle it, and it’s not that Felix doubts that. He’s sure Jeongin can, but it’s not right. Surely there’s a school policy against things stuff like this, even if Jeongin is ‘just’ an omega?
Jeongin has asked him not to tell the others about it, and as much as Felix disagrees, he won’t betray his trust. He wishes there was something he could do to cheer him up though. Something he could give him, something—
His eyes drift to the kitchen. Maybe there is.
He hasn’t baked since he made the pancakes on Hyunjin’s birthday. But Minho said he could, right? That he was welcome to use the kitchen if he wanted to. And he’s home alone. There’s no one to disturb him—no better time to try.
He jumps up from the couch, heading for the kitchen cupboards to take stock of what’s there. He’s pretty sure they have everything he needs for brownies. What had Jeongin said he liked again? Peanut butter, right? He grins as he finds a jar in the cupboard above the counter.
He doesn’t bother looking up a recipe. He’s made brownies so often he could probably still do it in his sleep, even after all this time. And after all of the ingredient games he played with Aera, a small variation like peanut butter doesn’t faze him. He might not have made these before, but he’s sure he’ll be fine.
He ends up baking for the next few hours. He puts on music and goes through the once-familiar motions of sifting, mixing and pouring batter, pleased by how quickly it comes back to him. When the brownies are in the oven, he’s gotten so into it that he gets started on cookies with the bag of chocolate chips he found in the pantry. He keeps his promise and sends a picture to the group chat every fifteen minutes or so. He doesn’t want to give away what he’s doing, so the check-ins look a little like this:
Felix: [image attached] Look there’s a caterpillar on the windowsill
Minho-hyung: Glad you’re having a riveting day.
Jeongin: lmao
Jisung: hyung noo don’t be mean ｡･ﾟﾟ･(>д<)･ﾟﾟ･｡
Felix: Lol yes having a great time
.
Felix: [image attached] Ladybug!
Chris: WHY ARE YOU OUTSIDE?????
Felix: I took this two days ago stop worrying I haven’t left the house
Changbin-hyung: he’s hyperventilating
Chris: I’M NOT
Seungmin: Has he also forgotten how to turn off caps in his old age?
Chris: KIM SEUNGMIN
Seungmin: Yeah not helping your case here.
Seungmin: You doing okay Felix?Felix: Yup I’m fine!
Changbin-hyung: I thought you were being evaluated today and couldn’t be on your phone
Seungmin: Yes well someone threw up on me so you get me for a lucky three minutes while I change scrubs.
Changbin-hyung: …I regret asking
.
Felix: [image attached] The magpies are back!
Changbin-hyung: we should have added Felix way earlier I’m living for this nature documentary
Felix: I mean I’m limited to bugs and garden critters but I’ll do my best
Felix: There’s also a spider in the bathroom but I feel like Hyunjin won’t make it back alive if I send a picture of thatChangbin-hyung: he won’t make it back at all as long as the spider is there, pls take it outside
Chris: DO NOT GO OUTSIDE
Chris: Also bin turn off your fucking phone for this meeting or I’ll make sure you’re not lifting weights for a weekChangbin-hyung: Jesus-
Jisung: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Chris: I MEANT LOCKING HIM OUT OF THE GYM YOU PERVERTS
Chris: NOW TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONES THEY’RE STARINGFelix: …
Felix: I’ll tip the spider out the window
*
Two hours after the others left, Felix has a third batch of cookies in the oven and the kitchen smells delicious. He’s singing and dancing to a playlist Jisung had shared with him and turns to check on the oven timer, only to freeze.
Jeongin is standing in the doorway, a grin on his face.
Felix pulls a face. “How long have you been here?”
Jeongin’s grin widens. “Long enough. You sing well.”
Felix groans, burying his face in his hands. “Thanks,” he says, voice muffled. “I didn’t think you’d be back this soon.”
“My last class ended at three.” He drops his pack collar on the kitchen island and walks closer to peer into the oven. “Are those cookies? It smells amazing in here.”
Felix turns off the music that’s still blaring through his speakers. “I thought you had a library session with Ilsung after class.”
Jeongin hums. “Yeah. I told him I had a pack emergency.”
“I really was fine.”
“Oh, I know. It was Channie-hyung I was worried about. I thought he might explode if we left you alone for much longer.” Jeongin shoots him a grin over his shoulder, but Felix knows he’s lying. It’s clear that Jeongin would do anything to spend as little time with Ilsung as possible, and Felix doesn’t blame him.
“I’ll let the others know you’re back,” he says instead of pointing that out. He snaps a picture of Jeongin crouching in front of the oven door and opens the group chat.
Felix: [image attached] Innie is back! You can stop worrying now
Changbin-hyung: your finest wildlife photograph yet
Jisung: truly a prime specimen
Jisung: also are those cookies??Felix: Oh yeah I got bored and I may have gone a little overboard, I made so many
Felix: Sorry for using your kitchen without permission @Minho I promise I didn’t burn it downMinho-hyung: Who @ed me.
Felix: Oh shit sorry!!!
Minho-hyung: …It’s fine.
Minho-hyung: Also I told you you could use it.Changbin-hyung: damn
Changbin is typing something else, but Felix gets distracted when the oven beeps. He removes the tray of cookies from the oven and when he looks at his phone again, there are a few deleted messages from Changbin and Minho, followed by a simple:
Jisung: lol ANYWAY we have two more meetings and then we’re speeding back i don’t care about any more halmeonis with oranges i need to taste those cookies (۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶
“The smell,” Jeongin says reverently as Felix slides his phone back into his pocket. He’s leaning over the tray of cookies, inhaling deeply.
“Oh yeah,” Felix says. “I made you something. Close your eyes.”
“For me?” Jeongin spins around, his eyes already closed, and nearly topples over. He catches himself with a laugh, this one much more genuine than earlier.
Felix places one of the cooling peanut butter brownies on a plate and walks to him. “Hands up.” Jeongin obeys, and he places the plate in his hands. “Okay. Open.”
The moment Jeongin sees the brownie, dark brown with marbled swirls of golden peanut butter, his eyes widen. “Oh my god. Is this…”
“You said you liked peanut butter, right?”
The way Jeongin immediately crams half the brownie into his mouth is answer enough. He moans, and Felix laughs. “Oh my god,” Jeongin says again. “This is so good.”
“Well, you have fifteen more,” Felix says, gesturing to the tray on the counter. “They’re all yours.”
Jeongin’s eyes were closed in bliss, but they snap open to zero in on the tray. “I love you.”
The words are said so emphatically that Felix’s heart skips a beat. He’s glad Jeongin is staring so fervently at the brownies, because it gives him time to get his blush to go back down. By the time Jeongin looks back at him, he’s mostly managed.
Jeongin takes another bite. “So good.” His eyes drift back to the nearly complete rectangle of brownies and he frowns. “Have you even tried them yet? Here.” He shoves the remainder of the brownie in Felix’s direction, nearly smushing it against his lips when Felix doesn’t open his mouth quickly enough.
He laughs and lets Jeongin feed him, chewing slowly as he evaluates it. It’s good, he notes happily. He wasn’t too worried about the taste, he knew that would be fine. But he’s relieved he got the texture right, dense and just the perfect amount of gooey. He smiles at Jeongin and licks the smear of chocolate from his lips. “It’s good,” he says, pleased.
“Yeah they are.” Jeongin immediately puts more brownies on the plate and drags him off to the living room. Ten minutes later they’re curled up together on the couch with a plate of brownies and mugs of tea, walled in cosily between piles of cushions. It’s the first time Felix has done that here. The nesting supplies are always there, but neither he nor Jeongin actually use them much in the living room when the others are around. It feels decadent to build a nest right here in the open, scenting the pillows and not minding anyone’s comfort but their own.
Jeongin’s scent had been subdued when he first walked in, but it’s bloomed back into happy vanilla over the past fifteen minutes. He’s cuddled against Felix’s shoulder, his legs swung over Felix’s lap, his nose buried in Felix’s neck.
“Rough day?” Felix asks.
Jeongin releases a sigh. “Yeah.”
Felix cards a hand through Jeongin’s hair and smiles when the omega leans further into him. Jeongin really is freer with affection when it comes to Felix. It’s not that Felix has never seem him cuddle up to one of the others, but rarely of his own accord. It’s usually them pulling him in, and always Jeongin who pulls away first. It’s like there’s another side of him, cuddlier, softer, that comes out only when he’s with Felix.
They’re quiet for a while, just relaxing, until Jeongin murmurs, “I wasn’t really worried about Chan.”
“I know,” Felix says.
“I didn’t want to see Ilsung.”
“I know.”
“He’s just… He makes me feel so…”
Felix sees the emotion on his face and exhales in surprise. “Scared.”
“Yes. No. Angry, mostly. But… maybe a little bit. Sometimes.” Jeongin digs his hands into his eyes. “God. Even just admitting it makes me feel weak. He’s not even doing anything.”
Felix scoffs. “Um, he is. The way he talks to you? The pheromones? That’s no longer just bullying, Innie. That’s harassment, and it makes sense that you’re scared.”
“He caught a whiff of it yesterday,” Jeongin whispers, not looking at Felix. “I always work so hard to control my scent when we’re together, you know, to keep it neutral. But I don’t know, he had some stupid idea for the cross examination and I told him we needed to take another angle. And his scent spiked in anger, and I just… flinched.” He buries his face in his hands again, an edge of shame seeping into his scent. “And he noticed of course, and he smirked. Like I’d just proved him right.”
“That’s bullshit,” Felix says fiercely.
“I know. I know it is. But it’s…” Jeongin looks at him. “Do you know how many omegas are in SNU Law right now?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Eight. In total, across the whole programme. That’s like, less than one percent. About twenty percent are betas, and the rest are all alphas. And some of them are alright, but most of them already think I shouldn’t be there. Omegas should stay home and bear pups, or get a job that ‘suits their temperament’, because we could never handle the pressure, the long days, the stress of a courtroom. They think I’m not going to make it. Even most of the professors think so. And I know,” he continues as he sees Felix’s face. “I know that’s bullshit too. I know what I’m capable of, and I know I can do it. But it means that I can’t show weakness in front of them, or my life will get a hundred times harder. I can’t be soft, or sweet, or god forbid scared. I need to be strong and calm and professional, all the time, or they’ll win.”
“Jeongin…” Felix breathes.
“I just have to get through college,” Jeongin continues. “And then I can start my own practice with Gyu. Hyunjin-hyung already said he’d help with the money, and then we can help omegas like us who don’t have a foot to stand on in court. It’s just a few more years.”
“But Innie, this is killing you.”
Jeongin slumps. “It was fine. It really was fine, before this semester with Ilsung. I used to just ignore it, like the other omegas told me to do. People have always judged, but no one has ever…”
“Harassed you the way he’s doing. Innie, you need to tell the others.”
Jeongin shakes his head. “No. They’d insist on coming in to fix it. They let me handle a lot on my own, but they wouldn’t stand for this.”
“Yeah, because it’s wrong. It’s despicable what he’s doing, and if the pack can set him straight—”
“Our mock trial is next Friday,” Jeongin says. “It’s just one more week, and then I won’t have to work with him anymore. We’re never partnered up with the same person twice. Seven more days, and it will be over.” He turns pleading eyes to Felix. “Please. Please don’t tell them. If my pack comes in to sort out my problems, he’ll win.”
“It’s not about winning,” Felix sighs. “It’s about your safety.” It suddenly feels like he’s acting like a hyung, and it’s clear that Jeongin notices.
“Hyung,” he says, playing dirty. “Please. I can handle it. One more week and I’ll be fine.” He can see Felix wavering and says it again. “Felix-hyung, please.”
“Stop that,” Felix says, giving him a light shove. “Ugh. Fine. Fine. One more week. But make sure you’re not alone with him, okay? And keep your phone on you. Please text me updates when you’re meeting up.”
Jeongin stares at him, and his lips twitch. “I thought Channie-hyung was bad.”
“Jeongin,” Felix says, serious. “This is not like me being home alone for an afternoon. I’m really worried. I mean it.”
Jeongin’s smile drops, and he sighs. “Yeah. No, I get it. Gyu said the same thing. I promise I’ll be careful. And I’ll text you.”
Felix feels some of the tension drop out of his shoulders. “Thank you.” He reaches over and puts the plate with brownies on Jeongin’s lap. “And I’m glad you’re telling me, even if I know it’s just because I’m stuck here and can’t march into SNU myself.”
Jeongin snorts and takes another brownie. So does Felix, and they’re silent for a while as they eat.
Felix realises that he actually would. The thought is simultaneously surprising and the most natural thing in the world. Yes, the idea of confronting a random alpha is enough to make his stomach turn. But for Jeongin? He would walk straight into SNU and make sure Ilsung never harassed him again. He doesn’t know how, but he’d do it. He feels as fiercely protective over Jeongin now as he did that first night they met.
He’s drawn out of his thoughts when Jeongin speaks up again. “It’s not because of that.”
“What?”
“Me telling you. It’s not because I know you can’t do anything about it.”
Felix sends him a curious look.
“It’s because you’re an omega too. We’re… I don’t know. I feel different, with you.” Jeongin gestures to the way they’re sitting, and the nest. “I don’t do this with anyone else.”
So Felix had been right. Jeongin is softer with him.
“It’s not that I think the others would judge me for it. If I were more clingy, or asked for cuddles, or built nests like this more often. I don’t think they’d think of me differently, not really.” He snorts. “They’d probably be ecstatic. But that’s kind of why I don’t, you know?”
“Because they’d be ecstatic?”
Jeongin huffs. “I just… I guess I don’t want them to start expecting me to be more omegan.” He looks frustrated with himself. “I literally just said I didn’t think they’d view me differently. But I guess maybe some part of me does.”
Felix thinks he’s starting to see what he means. “You’re scared they’d start acting more like stereotypical alphas and betas if you acted more like an omega?”
“Yes. No.” Jeongin hides his face in his hands again. “Fuck, that sounds so bad. No, I know they wouldn’t be like that. I guess I’m just worried that if I started doing that, they’d realise they like me more that way. Soft and sweet.”
Felix bites his lip, contemplating. “Do you even want to? I thought you just didn’t like skinship that much.” He never expected this. Jeongin had always seemed so sure of himself. He knew exactly what he liked and didn’t like, and was never afraid of letting the others know.
“I don’t always,” Jeongin said. “I’m not like Sungie or Channie-hyung, or like you, I guess. I feel like you could be touching people all the time and you’d love it. I couldn’t do that. I need alone time.”
“But…” Felix presses, sensing that there is one.
“But sometimes…” Jeongin’s voice grows small. “Sometimes I want to, and I don’t. Sometimes I want to build a big stupid nest in the middle of the living room, and I go to my room instead. Sometimes I want to cuddle and be scented or be spaced and let them take care of me, and it feels like I’d sooner start speaking perfect Tagalog than ever get those words out.”
“Oh, Innie.”
“But I don’t want that all the time. Just sometimes. And after that I want them to still like me for me, to still see me as strong and independent.”
“And you think they won’t?” Felix asks, incredulous. “Innie, they adore you.”
Jeongin squeezes his eyes shut. “I know. And I feel terrible for doubting them. I’m just… scared.”
His scent spikes with shame, and Felix wraps himself tighter around him, releasing more pheromones in an instinctive attempt to soothe.
“It’s not because of them,” Jeongin says into Felix’s shirt. “Not really. It’s my parents.”
Felix blinks. “Your parents?”
Jeongin fidgets with the edge of a blanket. “I was raised traditionally. Alpha father, omega mother. I have two brothers and they’re both alphas. I was their only omega child, and I was raised differently than them. They got to play sports, I was taught to cook and do laundry. They were served before me at mealtimes, even my younger brother. They could talk and my father would take them seriously. And I don’t mean—I love my brothers. But I was raised to act a certain way, to wear certain clothes, to bow and kneel when appropriate, to submit to other sub-genders, while they got to mess around because ‘that’s just what alphas do’.” He sighs. “It’s how my family worked. And they didn’t do it to be mean, they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing for me. That it was what I needed, staying safely at home until I was ready to mate.”
Oh, I can cook, Jeongin had said all those weeks ago. My parents made sure I did, an omega’s duty and all that.
Felix is suddenly so grateful for the family he’d grown up in. Even as the only omega in the house, he’d never been treated differently than his beta sisters.
“And my mom never minded that,” Jeongin continues. “I think she was genuinely happy to be a stay-at-home mom and live her life that way. But for me… it was smothering. I wanted more. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to see Seoul. I wanted to study law.”
“So you enrolled at SNU?”
“I got in through a scholarship. My parents would never have paid for it, but with the scholarship they couldn’t stop me, and so I went. It was hard. I was alone, and despite everything, I missed home. But I was also free. And that meant everything. When I met the pack and realised I liked them?” He shakes his head. “I struggled a lot. It took a long time before I let them court me. And I made it very clear from the start that my autonomy came before anything else. If they ever tried to act like they owned me, or were in charge of me in any way, I was out. I made them swear that they wouldn’t, to me or any other omega, ever.”
Ah. That must be the promise Minho mentioned.
And listening to him talk, Felix gets it now, why Jeongin would have been angry with Minho after that night in the mall. Why he would have been hurt. Minho is probably even right; there is no way Jeongin has simply forgotten what Minho did. It doesn’t change what Felix said to him; he is still absolutely certain that Jeongin will understand when Minho tells him the full story. But Jeongin is so fiercely independent that he can see what Minho meant now, when he said his actions had damaged Jeongin’s trust in him. It’s clear that if Jeongin hadn’t realised that there was something else going on with Minho, he wouldn’t have let him back in so easily.
He can also see how Jeongin’s current struggles would have come to be. How Jeongin’s fear of losing his freedom had been so strong that his independence had become his sole focus, until he could no longer let go of the strong persona he’d built, even as his relationship with the pack had grown stronger and he started to want to.
“They never tried anything like that, of course,” Jeongin continues, still lost in his memories. “They were amazing. And of course, my parents were delighted when we mated.” He rolls his eyes. “I would be taken care of, thank god, because obviously I never would have made it on my own. They must have thanked Channie-hyung at least thirty times the first time they met.”
“You’re still in touch?”
Jeongin rolls his head in Felix’s direction with a smile. “They’re still my family. They’re not bad people, just… traditional. We want different things, but I still love them.”
Felix winces. “I’m sorry, that sounded so rude. I didn’t mean—”
“No, I get it. And well, you’re not completely wrong.” He huffs out a laugh. “They visit every year for Chuseok, and it is always a rough couple of days for all of us. They love me, but they disapprove of a lot of things I do. The ‘disrespectful’ way I treat my packmates, the fact that I’m still studying, me letting Minho-hyung do the cooking…” He laughs again, but there’s not much humour to it. “I love them, but none of us really mind when they go back to Busan.”
Felix thinks. “Doesn’t that help?” he asks eventually. “With the fear, I mean. Seeing that they’re so different from your parents and they don’t change even in front of them?”
Jeongin is quiet for a moment. “Yeah. Honestly, most of me doesn’t think that they would change, even if I did give in to my instincts every now and then. I do. It’s not like I don’t nest, or never hug them. I even let them space me sometimes, you’ve seen me sit with Chan-hyung.”
Felix has seen Jeongin sit with Chan, kneeling at Chan’s feet while the alpha read a book in an armchair. He’d freaked out when he’d stumbled upon them. He knows, theoretically, that subspace is supposed to feel good, to feel nice. Omegas don’t need it, despite what Korean health institutions say, but he knows most people like it. It’s a bonding activity to be shared between people who trust each other completely.
That’s not how it had been for Felix. For him, subspace had never been anything but torture. Scary at best, and agony at worst—anytime he’d been down, it had inevitably led to him falling, tumbling endlessly through the air down into a bottomless abyss. Except it hadn’t been bottomless, of course. He’d always hit the ground eventually, and the mental pain of the subdrop would hit him just as hard as the physical pain of whatever Kwang-ho was doing to draw him out of it.
So when he’d seen Chan and Jeongin, he had panicked. He’d panicked so badly that he hadn’t even known where he was anymore, until Changbin had stepped in and drawn him out of it. He’d softly pointed Felix to Jeongin’s scent, which had bloomed out into the room with his release of control over his pheromones. Jeongin had not smelled pained, or distressed, or even remotely uncomfortable. He had smelled completely relaxed. Chan’s hand rested in his hair, scratching gently as Jeongin leaned against him.
It had taken a long time for that to sink in, mind reeling at the clash between his memories and the peace of the scene in front of him. But it was true. Jeongin had confirmed afterwards that it had been his choice. There had been no forcing or coercion. He’d wanted it, and he could have pulled away any time.
“I might not always like it, but I am an omega,” Jeongin continues, drawing Felix out of his thoughts. “I don’t completely ignore what I need.”
Felix looks at him. “And yet.”
Jeongin sighs. “And yet I think I would do it more if there’s wasn’t a small part of me that’s afraid. Not even of them. I think I’m scared that if they did end up preferring me softer, I’d do it despite myself, just because I love them. I’d lose myself and it wouldn’t be anyone’s fault but my own. And that would destroy me.”
That’s… a lot. And Felix feels like no matter what he says, his words are not going to silence that voice in Jeongin’s mind. Jeongin clearly knows they love him, even knows, rationally, that they wouldn’t change. The only way for his fears to subside is for him to face them. To experience for himself that they won’t mind if he’s soft sometimes and then goes back to his usual independent self the next day.
It seems like Jeongin has come to the same conclusion, because he sighs and says, “I’m going to have to talk to them, aren’t I?”
He sounds so unenthusiastic about it that Felix laughs. “Probably. They love you though. It’s going to be fine.”
“Yeah.” Jeongin rolls his head on Felix’s shoulder again to look at him. “Don’t say anything yet? I’ll talk to them, just… not yet.”
“Of course.” Felix pats his arm. “And hey, if in the meantime you want to experiment, feel free to use me as a buffer. Just say the word and I’ll draw you into a cuddle pile with Channie-hyung, and you can pretend you’re just humouring me.”
He can feel Jeongin smile against his shoulder. “Sneaky. I might take you up on that.” Felix shifts his arm and Jeongin relaxes further into him. “I’m really glad you’re here, Lixie.”
“Me too,” Felix agrees, allowing the words to warm him. Even if they’re just friends, he’s so, so grateful he found Jeongin that night. “Me too.”
Notes:
What Minho said: “We got a few bushes”
What Minho should have said: “I found out you like raspberries and spent three nights researching the best bushes and soil to plant them in and then I bought five. Yes, Hyunjin and Jisung did tackle me into a hug when they found out and I had to glower at Chan for an entire day before he would stop looking at me like I hung the moon”Chapter 18 will be out next Wednesday! On Saturday, you’ll get a bonus scene of that day Felix walked in on Chan spacing Jeongin.
Chapter 18
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Hey, I finished this one,” Felix says the next day as he stops Jeongin in the hallway. He holds up the manga in his hand. “But I can’t find the next one. It’s not on the shelf.”
It’s Saturday afternoon and he’s spent most of it reading on the window seat in Hyunjin’s studio while he painted. He’s spent more than one afternoon there since the day Hyunjin painted him. He’d been hesitant at first, but when Hyunjin told him he really didn’t mind his presence, he’d slowly let go of his reservations. He’s even spent a few afternoons on the balcony when Hyunjin wasn’t home.
Jeongin frowns, checking the volume. “Oh. It might be in the den, Changbin-hyung is reading the same series.” He pulls a face. “I’ll check for you later, but I kind of have to go record right now.”
“Record?”
“Yeah, 3RACHA’s been working on new songs and I was supposed to be in the studio ten minutes ago.”
Jeongin keeps walking, jumping down the stairs two at a time, and Felix has no choice but to follow. “Wait, what? You sing? Professionally?”
Jeongin looks back, surprised. “Seungminnie and I feature in their tracks sometimes. You didn’t know?”
Felix definitely didn’t know. He thought it was just Chan, Changbin and Jisung who made music. “Seungmin too?”
A grin spreads across Jeongin’s face. “Oh my god, you’ve never heard him sing?” He grabs Felix’s hand and pulls him along. “You’re coming with me. He’s in there right now, you’re gonna love this.”
When they slip into the studio, Chan and Jisung are sitting at the mixing console and Changbin is sitting on the black couch against the wall, head tipped back as he listens. He looks up as Jeongin and Felix enter and smiles, patting the couch beside him in invitation.
It’s not the first time Felix has been here. When Chan gave Felix a tour of the house, they’d lingered in the studio for at least an hour as he proudly showed Felix around. He’d explained the functions of all kinds of buttons and programs and played him samples of tracks they’d been working on. It is a sleek space, all black leather furniture and state-of-the-art equipment, and could easily have felt intimidating if it wasn’t also so clearly lived in. There is a coffee stain on the carpet from where Jisung had dropped his americano once, and there are posters and album covers on the wall, both of their own music and of other artists they admire.
“What are you thinking?” Chan asks, looking over his shoulder at Changbin. “Oh, hey guys.”
“The notes need to be shorter near the end,” Changbin says. “He’s dragging them out too much right now.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Chan nods and turns back to the microphone. “Seungminnie? That was good, but mind the length of the notes towards the end. They need to be a bit shorter, okay?”
Felix can hear Seungmin’s “Okay” over the speakers and looks through the window of the recording booth to see him standing behind the microphone.
Jeongin drags him to the couch and they sit down next to Changbin.
Chan presses a button and the track starts playing again. Seungmin waits for the right moment and then begins to sing.
Felix’s mouth drops open.
“Nice. Let’s keep that one,” Chan says when Seungmin is done with the lines, looking over to Jisung to check. His tone is casual, like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Like Seungmin hasn’t just punched Felix straight in the gut with his voice, hitting notes with such depth and emotion that he finds himself blinking back tears.
Jisung nods in agreement, and Chan looks over his shoulder. “Binnie?”
But Changbin is grinning at Felix. “He’s good, huh?”
“What the fuck,” Felix manages. “What—”
Chan laughs, spinning his chair to face them. “Seungminnie and I.N-nie are 3RACHA’s hidden gems. They make their appearance on a few tracks every album, our fans love it. Nobody knows who they are, they’re just mystery voices hidden behind their stage names. Definitely a big contributor to our success.”
Felix blows out a breath, incredulous. He suddenly realises how little he knows about everything 3RACHA does and has accomplished, and feels a little stupid for not asking earlier. “How… How famous are you, exactly?”
“We have a decent amount of listeners,” Chan answers.
“He’s being humble,” Changbin says. “Our music is popular. We have a pretty big fanbase. We could go on tour if we wanted to.”
Felix stares. “Tour?”
“Definitely Korea,” Jisung agrees. “We’ve been gaining traction in Japan too.”
Holy shit. Holy shit, now he feels really stupid for not asking. “You’re going on tour?”
“Nah,” Changbin says. “I mean, it’d be an amazing experience, sure. But a tour would come with all sorts of promotion and PR and none of us are really looking for that kind of fame. It’s not like we’ve never shown our faces before, we do fansigns sometimes, but we all enjoy being able to go outside without being mobbed on the street. Sometimes people will recognise us and ask for an autograph, but it’s not too bad. We like it that way.”
They really are famous. They’re actual celebrities, Felix realises for the first time. If they wanted to, they could tour overseas. They could make their fame explode until the point paparazzi would follow them wherever they went.
“Do I need to do it again? Was the tone okay?” Seungmin’s voice asks over the speakers, and Chan turns back to the mic.
“Sorry, no, it was perfect. That was the last one for today, you can come back out.”
Felix feels a little dizzy. In an attempt to pull himself together, he looks to Jeongin. “So wait, I.N is your stage name? I thought it was just an English nickname Chan-hyung made up.”
Jeongin laughs, obligingly leaning back into Changbin’s side when he slings an arm around his shoulder. Felix genuinely can’t tell if he’s just humouring Changbin or if he’s craving the touch himself. Jeongin has clearly perfected his mask over the years, and it’s impossible to tell what he’s really feeling just from surface pheromones. He shrugs. “Well, it’s definitely a nickname now. But it started off as a stage name when they needed something to credit me by and I didn’t want to use my full name.”
“Does Seungmin have one too?”
“Do I have what?” Seungmin asks as he steps through the door.
“A stage name,” Chan repeats when Felix just stares at Seungmin, the echoes of his voice still ringing in his head like a beautiful, haunting melody.
“I just use Seungmin,” he says, shrugging his jacket back on. “There’s lots of Seungmins and it’s not like I sing at work or school so nobody knows it’s me, if they even listen to 3RACHA.”
“Hey,” Changbin says. “Everyone listens to 3RACHA.”
Jisung rolls his chair back to high-five him. “Hell yeah.”
“That was amazing,” Felix tells Seungmin. “I had no idea you could sing like that. How have I never heard you sing?”
Seungmin smiles. “I tend to practise in here, or in my room. Unlike some people, who won’t stop belting out songs in the shower even at two a.m.”
He doesn’t have to clarify who he’s talking about. Everyone is already looking at Jisung, who merely grins. “Songs sound better at night, and I stand by that.”
Seungmin rolls his eyes and gestures at the door. “Okay, I have to run, if you don’t need anything else. I promised Hyunjin I’d help him drive those paintings over to his client.”
“Yeah, we’re done,” Changbin answers, before giving Jeongin a nudge. “Innie, get your pretty little butt in that booth. We still have Hannie’s part to record after yours.”
“Drive safely,” Chan calls over his shoulder as Seungmin leaves the room. Seungmin shoots him a thumbs-up without looking back and disappears.
“Is it okay if I stay?” Felix asks, watching Jeongin step into the recording booth.
“Of course!” Jisung brightens, jumping up from his chair and flopping into the empty spot on the couch next to Felix, ignoring Changbin’s grumbles as he’s forced to move. “Hyung, you need to direct anyway. It’s your part.”
“Oh shit,” Changbin says, and leaves to join Chan at the mixing console.
Felix watches as Jeongin steps up to the mic and does a vocal warm-up before going through a few test runs of his lines as he listens to the guide. He’s good. His voice is very different from Seungmin. Felix wishes he knew enough about music to describe it, but he doesn’t. It’s just pretty, clear and bright and just very Jeongin.
It’s fascinating to watch Chan and Changbin direct him. They’ll ask him to add more air or lengthen a note or change his pronunciation of a word, often making changes so subtle that they go right over Felix’s head. They don’t stop until they’re satisfied with the result.
“That was the last one, I.N-nie,” Chan says over the mic. “You’re all done.”
Jeongin exits the booth, and Felix cheers. “That was amazing! Innie, you were so good!”
Jeongin beams at him. “Thanks! You have a good voice too though. The way you hit those low notes yesterday? I was kind of sad you spotted me, I wanted to keep listening.”
Felix is too busy blushing and protesting to notice the sudden silence in the room. That is, until Changbin speaks up.
“Lix-ah…” he says slowly, eyes narrowed in speculation. “How low can you go, exactly, with your voice?”
Felix turns to him, surprised. “Me?”
“He sounds incredible when he wakes up.” Chan has spun his chair around and there’s an excited spark in his eye. “The question is—”
“—whether he can do it on purpose?” Jisung says. “Oh my god, that would be—”
“Yeah,” Changbin agrees. “That’s why I asked.”
They’re all staring at Felix now, whose brain got stuck at “he sounds incredible when he wakes up”. He shakes his head, trying to pull himself together and not sound like a complete idiot. “What?”
Great. Excellent job.
“Can you make your voice low on purpose?” Chan asks, leaning forward.
“I-I mean, yeah,” Felix says, a little dazed by the intensity in his gaze. “It’s nothing special though.”
“Say something?” Jisung asks eagerly. “I mean, if you want to. We’re just curious.”
“Um.” Felix clears his throat. He’d done this before with Jake and Sunghoon, in a reversed Annyeong Cleopatra game. He had won, and they’d looked impressed, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. “Ha,” he says, testing his range. “Ha. Haa.” There. That’s it.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m Felix.”
“Holy fuck,” Changbin says, as Jisung screams in excitement. “Felix. Where have you been hiding that?”
Felix flushes. Chan is grinning and Jeongin’s eyes are wide with shock.
“That was way deeper than I thought it would be.” Changbin lets out an incredulous laugh. “Damn. That’s hot as fuck.”
Jeongin smacks him on the arm, and Changbin laughs harder. “Sorry! It is though.”
Felix is suddenly ridiculously glad he’s wearing clothes, so they can’t see how far his blush is spreading.
“Honestly?” Chan shakes his head. “Felix, if you would ever consider featuring in a track… God. The things we could do with your voice.”
Featuring in a track?
“Me?” Felix squeaks, his voice suddenly so far removed from its earlier bass that everyone cracks up. Even Felix huffs out a laugh, although he buries his face in his hands in embarrassment.
“Yeah, you!” Jisung pokes him in the stomach. “Do you have any idea how cool you sound? Please, Lixie?”
“I…” He doesn’t know what to say. This trio, who he’d just discovered could easily turn South-Korea upside down if they chose to, want his voice in one of their songs? It’s too bizarre to wrap his head around.
“You don’t have to,” Chan says, voice softening. “We’re all just excited because you sound incredible. But if you’re not comfortable, just tell us to drop it and we won’t bring it up again.”
“You don’t have to decide now,” Changbin adds. “Think about it. We’d love to work with you, but it’s not as if we’re running low on material.”
Chan snorts. “Not with Hannie writing three songs a day.”
Jisung’s eyes sparkle. “If Lixie says yes, I already have so many ideas.”
“Don’t pressure him,” Chan warns him, tossing a pencil in his direction. He looks at Felix. “Seriously, don’t feel like you have to. Just think about it, there’s no rush.”
Felix nods, his head still spinning. He’s relieved that they’re giving him time. Of all the things he expected when he followed Jeongin in here, this was not it, and he has no idea if he wants to do it or not. He is flattered though. Hearing them this excited, this complimentary, just over his voice? Of course he’s flattered.
“Alright. Get in there, you,” Chan tells Jisung, gesturing for him to get off the couch. “I want to get this song recorded today.”
Jisung sighs but obligingly disappears into the booth. Felix feels awkward, not knowing what to say after all of that, but Jeongin saves him by flopping down on the couch next to Felix. He picks up the manga Felix had brought with him and turns to Changbin.
“Hyung, do you still have the next one in the den? Felix was looking for it.”
Changbin looks up, amused. “I’m still reading it. Are you catching up to me, Lix-ah?”
Felix laughs, relieved at the change of topic. “Maybe you’re just slow.” When everyone else laughs too, he shakes his head. “It’s okay, I can wait.”
“Nah,” Changbin says. “You can read it first. I will get—”
“Guys, come on, don’t just send me in here and then ignore me,” Jisung pouts over the mic, and Changbin rolls his eyes.
“I’ll get it for you after we’re done pandering to our spoiled brat in there. You two staying to watch?”
Felix thinks of the way Jeongin leaned into Changbin earlier, and then of their talk yesterday, and looks at him, an open offer on his face. Do you want to stay? Do you want touch?
With the way Jeongin is turned towards Felix, Chan and Changbin can’t see his face. And after a second of hesitation, Jeongin’s face falls open, and his thoughts are clear as day. Yes, his eyes say. Please. He looks a little uncertain, like he’s ashamed by it, and Felix is not going to let that stand. If Jeongin wants a hug, Felix will get him that hug.
“I want to stay,” he says immediately in response to Changbin’s question. He turns pleading eyes to the beta. “But could you… Could you maybe direct from here? I… kind of want cuddles.”
It’s a bold question, and not even a month ago he wouldn’t have dreamed of asking it. But he’s initiated touch before in the past few weeks, and even if he hadn’t—for Jeongin’s sake, he’d do a lot more than ask potentially embarrassing questions.
This question, though, is not embarrassing. Changbin’s face lights up and he gets off his chair so fast it nearly topples over. “Hell yeah. I only need to listen. Channie, you’ve got the mic.”
“Yah,” Chan grumbles, but it’s clear from the smile in his voice that he doesn’t mean it.
“You too?” Felix begs Jeongin, whose eyes sparkle with amusement at how desperate he’s acting, but there’s gratitude in them too.
Changbin immediately grins, scent spiking with glee. “Oh yes. Innie, scoot over. You’re not escaping me this time.” He ushers Jeongin to the side so he can drop down in between them, slinging his arms over their shoulders.
“Fine,” Jeongin sighs, but Felix can see the small smile on his face as he looks at Felix once more before melting into Changbin.
Baby steps, Felix thinks as he curls into Changbin’s other side. They’ll get there.
***
The next morning, they’re having brunch when Seungmin says, “Felix has an announcement.”
Felix flushes. “Seungmin!”
It’s too late though—everyone is already looking at him. Everyone is there except for Chan and Changbin, who had ended up working until deep in the night and are still asleep. Jisung had worked late too, but apparently Jeongin had tripped over him on his way out of the nest and he hadn’t been able to fall back asleep. He’d gotten up grumpy, but brightened considerably at the stack of pancakes that awaited him when he’d entered the kitchen. Felix had teamed up with Minho in preparing brunch that morning, so the end result was a nice mix of sweet and savoury.
“It’s nothing,” Felix says as everyone watches him curiously. “I just got my lab results back, and Seonghwa-hyung says I’m all better.”
“What?” Hyunjin’s eyes widen and he nearly knocks over a pitcher of orange juice in his excitement. “Felix! That’s amazing!”
“That’s definitely not nothing,” Minho agrees.
“We have to celebrate!” Jisung exclaims around a mouthful of pancake.
“Does that mean you can go out again?” Jeongin asks.
“I think so,” Felix says. “But he said that I might still struggle with scents for a while so I have to build it up.”
Seonghwa had called that morning, apologising for both the early phone call and the wait for the results. Their packmate Mingi had been out of town for a few days and had only been able to get back to the lab last night. Seonghwa had sounded incredibly pleased with Felix’s results, however. Apparently his hormone and pheromone levels had stabilised completely, and many of his nutrient deficiencies had significantly improved. He said he’d leave a prescription with Yunho at the front desk for some final supplements to get the remaining levels back up.
“We should go out,” Seungmin says, taking a sip of tea. “Not anywhere too busy, but it’ll be good to push your boundaries a little.”
Jisung grins at Felix. “Anywhere you want to go?”
Felix doesn’t have to think about it. He’s known exactly where he wants to go for months. He grins and looks at Minho. “Yes. But I need to use your oven.”
*
“Are you finally going to tell us where we’re going?” Hyunjin asks as they walk out of the parking garage.
Seungmin and Jisung are walking behind them, quietly bickering about pet lizards. Jeongin had wanted to come too, but he had a study meeting with Ilsung. (“Online,” he’d reassured Felix when he had pulled Jeongin aside later, concerned. “Don’t worry. Go have fun.”)
“Just a friend’s place,” Felix answers, just like before. “You’ll see.”
It’s not busy, but there are other people walking around, and Felix catches hints of their scents as they walk past. A beta woman with a stroller who smells like hyacinths. A group of kids, rushing past in a heady cloud of intermingling scents. An alpha man whose deep musk makes Felix’s shoulders tense. That niggling feeling of unsafety is still there in the back of his mind, longing for him to turn tail and head back to his nest, head back home. He stumbles when he realises what he’s just thought, and he’s glad when Jisung speaks up before his mind can start dissecting that piece of information.
“You okay?” He eyes the people around them and moves a little closer, taking Felix’s hand.
“I’m fine,” Felix says, even though his shoulders relax the moment Jisung flanks his empty side. Hyunjin notices, and grabs his other hand. It’s not as bad as when he first stepped outside a few weeks ago, but it’s still overwhelming, and he’s glad they’re staying close. “We need to turn right here.”
They head around the corner and Hyunjin looks around, frowning. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I know this street.”
Felix hides a smile and keeps walking, spotting the familiar green door up ahead. He forgets all about hiding and staying close, though, when Aera herself steps out of her bakery with a piece of chalk, ready to change something on the sign next to the door. His grin widens and he drops Jisung’s hand, breaking into a run.
Behind him, he hears someone curse and take off after him, but he ignores it.
“Halmeoni!” he calls.
Aera spins around, eyebrows shooting up when she sees him. “Yongbok-ah?”
She opens her arms just in time for Felix to crash into them. “Hi,” he says breathlessly. He wonders if he should feel awkward—he’s never been this affectionate with her before, hugging her out of the blue like this. But he’s missed her, and he’s felt awful about vanishing for three months without a word of warning.
She doesn’t seem to mind though, holding him tightly before leaning back to brush a hand across his cheek and take him in. “Yongbok-ah. Felix.”
There’s rushing footsteps from behind them. “You couldn’t have kept a normal human pace for one more minute, Lixie?” Jisung is panting, already out of breath.
Seungmin snorts at him. “It was barely a hundred metres. Pull yourself together, Sungie.”
Felix laughs, breathing in Aera’s familiar dark cherry scent. Although it doesn’t have the instant relaxing effect on him the pack’s scents do, her scent doesn’t register as unsafe, to his relief. He steps out of her embrace with a grin, ready to introduce everyone.
Hyunjin beats him to it. “You!” he exclaims, pointing an accusing finger at her.
Aera cocks her head before a light of recognition enters her eyes and her mouth quirks up. “Me.”
Hyunjin narrows his eyes, still pointing. “You sold us burnt pastries!”
Her eyes twinkle. “Did you enjoy them?”
Hyunjin sputters in offence, and Jisung and Seungmin look between them. “You… know each other?”
Felix grins. He’s been waiting for this moment ever since Hyunjin said he’d come with them.
“They were like coal,” Hyunjin says, scrunching up his face. “And we tipped you for them!”
Aera laughs, a familiar creaky cackle that makes Felix’s grin widen.
“I’m confused,” Jisung says. “Jinnie, you’ve been here before?”
“It was before Felix came to us,” Hyunjin answers, not looking away from Aera. “When we were visiting all the bakeries in Heukseok-dong to find him. I was here with Innie, and…” His eyes narrow. “You told us you didn’t know him.”
Aera scoffs. “You came into my bakery, looking for an omega who was obviously on the run, and you expect me to just hand him over to you? I’ve never seen anyone act more shady.”
“We weren’t shady—” Hyunjin splutters.
“She thought you were Kwang-ho,” Felix says. “I never even told her I was hiding from anyone but she figured it out anyways.”
Aera pats him on the arm. “You’re not subtle, child.” She sounds casual, but Felix has known her for too long to be fooled. Her eyes are sharp, taking in the way Felix interacts with the others as well as the fact that he just casually offered up the name of the alpha he ran away from.
Hyunjin is still sputtering and Jisung is still staring, so it’s Seungmin who gets his priorities straight first. He lowers into a polite bow of introduction. “Hello, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Kim Seungmin, Bang Pack beta.” He tilts his head as he straightens.
“Nice to meet you, Seungmin-ah.” Aera doesn’t bother with formal honorifics. “I’m Kang Aera. Just call me halmeoni.”
Jisung and Hyunjin recover themselves and offer their own introductions.
“And yeah, alright, fine,” Hyunjin sighs as he straightens from his bow. “I get why you did what you did. As much as I resent you for the burnt pastries.”
Aera laughs and gestures to the door. “Let me make it up to you then. I have mocha buns in the oven.”
Hyunjin immediately brightens. “In that case, I could be swayed to forgiveness.”
They all enter the bakery. It’s mid-afternoon and it’s usually quiet this time of day, especially on Sundays, so there’s nobody else there. Felix has asked Aera before why she even bothers opening on Sunday, but she said she enjoys the routine, and it’s not like she has anything better to do.
Aera gestures to the small table near the counter. “Have a seat.”
“I’ll make tea,” Felix says, stepping behind the counter.
“Yes,” Aera says. “You do that. I need to talk to you.” When he disappears into the kitchen to put the kettle on, she follows him. She checks on the oven and then turns to him, eyes narrowing. “You have some explaining to do. Where on earth have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you!”
They might be in the kitchen, but there is no door separating them from the others, and Felix knows they’ll be able to hear their conversation. He can hear them too after all, talking quietly among themselves. Then their voices rise, and he realises they’re giving them some privacy. His heart warms, even as he lowers his head in apology. “I’m really sorry, halmeoni. I was… I got really sick.”
She regards him, staying quiet for a moment. Then she sighs. “You didn’t have the flu that day you were last here, did you.”
“No,” Felix admits. “I was dropping.”
Aera shuts her eyes. “I knew it. I knew something was wrong. I should have pressed. Yongbok-ah, you should have said.”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
She shakes her head, looking exasperated. “You did that anyway, by looking like death warmed over and then disappearing for three months.” She stands unmoving for a moment before sighing out through her nose and drawing him in by his sleeve. “I thought you’d died,” she says as she gives him a hug. “God, child, you’ve taken twenty years off my life.”
Felix smiles into her shoulder. “Good thing you’ll live until at least three hundred then.”
She squeezes his arm in reproach, and he laughs.
“So you were dropping,” she continues, pulling back to slide a tray of mocha buns out of the oven. “And they found you?”
“I called them,” Felix says. “Apparently. I barely remember it. But it was an extended drop and I thought it would get better, but I only got more and more out of it until I dropped to my knees in front of Chef Dong-soo.”
Her head snaps back towards him. “Did he—”
“No,” he hurries. “He was just pissed. And I ran away before anything else could happen.” He shrugs. “I got fired, though.”
“Good riddance,” she mutters, sliding the buns onto a rack to cool.
“I called them,” Felix says, looking at the buns. “And they came. They took me home with them and took care of me all throughout my drop.” He looks up. “Halmeoni, I was unconscious for two weeks. They’re a pack of seven, and four of them separated from the others for over two weeks to take care of me. They didn’t leave the room once.”
There’s an edge to her expression that tells him she has realised exactly how serious his drop must have been, but she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, after a moment, she shakes her head. “That must have gone over well with you when you woke up.”
He huffs. She knows him well. Not a surprise, after how often he’s refused her offers of help. “Yeah, no, I freaked out. I felt so guilty. But they were… They’re…”
“Good people? Like you hoped they were?”
He smiles at her. “The best.”
She pats his arm. “Good. I’m glad. You’re still staying with them?”
“Yeah, I lost my apartment when I wasn’t there to pay rent and also, they kind of broke down the door to get to me. My landlord wasn’t too pleased about that.” He turns to the kettle when it switches off with a click, the water now boiling. “I’ve stayed with them since I woke up, because I still relied on their scents a lot. I originally planned to leave as soon as I was better, but they asked me to stay.”
Aera laughs. “And they actually got you to say yes? Oh, I like them.” She turns to the doorway. “Let me meet them properly. I need to find out how they did that, in case I ever try to help you again.”
Felix pulls a face as he follows her out of the kitchen. “Jeongin is a law student, and I didn’t realise I was walking into a trap until it was too late. He played dirty.”
“And aren’t you glad he did?” Hyunjin grins at him as soon as they come into view. “Now you get to stay with us! We’re a delight, Felixie, don’t pretend you don’t love us.”
“Less and less by the second,” Felix grumbles. He can’t quite hide the blush on his cheeks, but he hopes it passes as mere embarrassment at the teasing. He quickly ducks behind the counter to grab some mugs.
“Nah,” Jisung says. “You baked us all those cookies. You definitely love us.”
“You baked?” Aera cuts in, voice coloured with surprise.
“Oh!” Felix jumps up and rushes to his bag next to Seungmin’s chair, glad for the distraction. He doesn’t think he could respond to another one of those statements without giving himself away. “I have something for you.”
He walks back to Aera and opens the Tupperware box, holding it out to her. “They’re ginger biscuits, because they’re your favourite? I tried to make them the way you do, but we didn’t have all the ingredients so I had to get creative.” She doesn’t respond, merely stares at the box, and he suddenly feels foolish. He winces, gazing down at his shoes. “I… don’t know why I made them. I mean, obviously you can do it yourself and they’d be much better, so it was kind of stupid, I’m sorry, you don’t have to t—”
“Yongbok.”
He falls silent. Then there’s a finger under his chin, gently tipping it up so he’s looking her in the eyes.
She’s smiling. “I love them, child. Thank you.”
She’s completely genuine, her scent fond. Still, he mumbles, “You haven’t even tried them.”
“We have,” Seungmin says casually.
Felix turns, pulling a face. “You tried the first batch, and I messed that one up.”
“Yeah, and they were still amazing!” Jisung waves a hand. “So if these ones met your stupidly high standards, they’re definitely perfect.”
There’s a snap as Aera breaks a biscuit in half, and Felix looks back at her in time to see her pop a half into her mouth. She hums as she chews. “Lemon honey?”
Felix nods. “I wanted them to taste like lemon but they came out too soft when I added lemon juice. The first batch I made, the dough was definitely too soggy. And then I found the honey. I know they’re different from yours.”
“If you want to use a lemon without affecting moisture levels, use lemon zest instead of juice. It’s dryer that way, and you get the same taste. Arguably a better one, depending on what you’re making.”
Now that she says it, it’s obvious. He should have thought of that. She’s examining the cookie intently, completely professional. Felix knew she would be, and he wanted her to, despite his nerves at giving her something that couldn’t possibly match her level of expertise.
“But they’re good,” Aera continues. “The honey works, and you managed to balance the sweetness well. That requires some thought with a substitution like this. You did a good job, child.”
Felix feels himself flush again, but this time with pleasure. “Thank you, halmeoni.”
“You’ll only get better with practice. Keep baking, Yongbok-ah.” She holds his gaze, and he knows what she really means. Don’t give it up again, she’s saying.
He knew she would understand the true significance of his gift. Because as often as they’ve discussed recipes, for all their conversations and ingredient games, Felix had never baked as long as he’d known her. Every time she offered him the use of her ovens or asked him to bake with her, he’d refused, afraid of the pain it would bring up and scared to ruin the few good memories he had.
“I won’t,” he promises. Now that he’s started again, he doesn’t think he could stop unless the pack told him he could no longer use their kitchen. But the cookies and brownies he made on Friday had been gone within a day with everyone singing their praises, and both Changbin and Hyunjin had already asked him for more.
“Good.” She nods approvingly, gives him another pat on the arm and then turns around. “Now, about that tea.”
Felix helps her carry over mugs and teabags, and Jisung immediately stands to offer Aera his seat.
“I’m afraid I only have three chairs,” she says as Jisung plops down on Seungmin’s lap. “I might have a stool somewhere. Yongbok, can you—”
“It’s fine,” Felix says, seeing Hyunjin reach out a hand to him. “I’ll sit with Jinnie.”
He settles on Hyunjin’s lap and the alpha immediately wraps his arms around his waist, hooking his chin over Felix’s shoulder. He rubs his cheek over Felix’s scent gland once, sending a warm stream of cocoa through Felix’s system. It’s a comfortable and familiar move, something they’ve done a hundred times, and Felix doesn’t think anything of it until he notices Aera looking at them. Their eyes meet and she raises an eyebrow, a spark in her eyes. He colours, but doesn’t say anything.
She watches him for another second and then turns to get the mocha buns from the kitchen now they’ve had some time to cool.
“She’s nice,” Jisung says. “I like her.”
“She’s the best,” Felix agrees, leaning forward on Hyunjin’s lap to steep the tea. He throws a grin over his shoulder. “She was so proud of herself for hiding me from you.”
Hyunjin huffs. “Innie and I thought she was senile. She honestly looked like she might accidentally give people money if they bought something instead of taking it. We tipped her like a hundred thousand won out of concern and bought all of those horrible scones out of guilt, because we were a bit stressed and short with her and she looked like she was about to cry. She fucking scammed us.”
Everyone bursts into laughter, and Felix’s eyes go wide even as he giggles. “She didn’t tell me that.”
There’s a familiar cackle from the kitchen doorway, and Aera bustles back in. “You were very gullible. Very sweet.” She places the buns on the table in front of them and then gestures to the display case behind her. “Eat up. Any pastries you want to take home today are yours for free.”
Hyunjin sends her a pretend glare, but then waves off her offer, dropping the theatrics. “It’s fine. I’m honestly just glad Lixie had someone looking out for him.”
“I never did enough.” Aera shakes her head as she sits. “But I love him like my own.”
“You did,” Felix protests immediately. “You were literally the reason I didn’t starve by the end of every month.”
Judging by the way Hyunjin’s arms tense around him, that bit of information was perhaps a little darker than he’d intended.
“That’s not what I meant, Yongbok-ah,” Aera continues. “You needed safety, and people around you. I never managed to give you that.” She smiles. “But it looks like you found it yourself.”
“Damn right,” Hyunjin mutters, and Felix knows that while he can look down to hide his expression, there’s no hiding the pleased spike in his scent at Hyunjin’s words.
“Have you known each other long?” Jisung asks as he takes a mocha bun.
“A little over two years,” Aera says. “When he flooded my shop.”
Felix sighs. “It was only a puddle. And I would have stayed on the doormat. You told me to come in.”
“He looked like a drowned rat,” she continues, pretending not to hear him, “And then he ate three of my cinnamon rolls.”
Because she’d practically force-fed him, and then sent him home with two loaves of bread. He’d been way too timid and wary for that level of boldness, and he knows she’s just teasing to lighten the mood. And it’s working, because both Seungmin and Hyunjin laugh.
“Have you tried to stop after just one when it comes to halmeoni’s baking?” he asks them, deciding to go along with it. “Because I dare you to try one of those buns and leave the rest.”
“I already know that’s not happening,” Jisung says, who’s already finished half of his. “These are crazy good.”
Hyunjin and Seungmin dig in too, and Felix laughs at the expression on their faces.
“Oh my god,” Hyunjin says, closing his eyes. “I get why Innie was raving about those donuts now, if they were anywhere near as good as these.”
“The raspberry ones you sent me home with four months ago,” Felix tells Aera when she tilts her head curiously. “I shared them with Jeongin when I met him that night.”
Has it really been four months? That’s crazy. But it was January when they met, and the icy chill of winter has been replaced by the warmth and sunshine of late spring.
Aera’s expression clears in understanding. “Well, in that case, bring him along next time and I’ll make him some.” She winks. “I still have to make up for those burnt pastries, after all.”
They stay for a few hours, just chatting and eating pastries. Occasionally a customer walks in and Aera or Felix gets up to help them. The others look surprised the first time he slides off Hyunjin’s lap to move behind the counter, but Aera doesn’t blink an eye. He’s helped her often enough during his visits that she’s stopped putting up protests and just lets him do it. It was the one thing he could give her in return for everything she did for him, and she knew it was important to him. The only times Felix doesn’t get up are when the customer is an alpha, and that’s something he doesn’t have to explain to her.
He’s just sat back down after selling two cornbreads when Jisung’s phone dings. It’s Minho, asking if they can stop by the store on their way back. Apparently he’s making Felix something special to celebrate, and he needs a specific kind of vinegar he doesn’t have at the house. It’s about time to leave anyway, their tea finished and the pastries gone, and Felix follows Aera to the kitchen to help clean up, still a little flustered by the fact that Minho is cooking something just for him.
“So how long have you been courting?” Aera asks, and Felix chokes on his own spit.
“What?” he manages, whirling around to face her. “We’re not courting!” The words come out in a high-pitched hiss. He doesn’t want the others to hear, even if the chances of that happening are small, considering the loud and heated debate they’re currently engaged in. The pet lizards again, from what he can gather.
“Child, you’ve been cuddling and scenting right in front of me all afternoon. I’m not blind.”
“That’s not- they’re just- that’s—” Felix sputters. “It was a drop thing. They had to. I couldn’t go for ten minutes without their scents at first.”
She raises an eyebrow, not buying it. “But you’re better now. That’s what you said, right?”
“Well, yeah. But I only got the news this morning. It’s just… it’s just habit. We’re just friends.”
“Friends do not look at each other the way you look at them, Yongbok-ah.”
Felix’s heart drops. It’s that obvious? Shit. He needs to work harder on controlling himself. If they find out—
“Friends do not look at each other the way they look at you either,” Aera continues, and Felix freezes. “Again, Yongbok, I’m not blind. Those boys are head over heels for you. And I’m proud of you for letting them in. They seem like good kids, and lord knows you deserve some good people in your life. Let them love you, you hear me?”
“I… But they’re… they’re just…”
She shakes her head as she walks past him, patting him gently on the head. “If you’re not mated by Chuseok, child, I’ll eat my hat.”
Notes:
Can we all agree that we love Aera? I think we can.
Chapter 19, the day of Jeongin's mock trial, will be up next Wednesday. On Saturday in the bonus scenes, Minho talks to Chan.
Chapter 19
Notes:
Firstly, Minho and Chan’s conversation (last weekend’s bonus scene) is technically set after the first scene of this chapter. This first scene was originally intended as a bonus chapter, but it’s from Felix’s POV and after some reflection, I decided it would work better in the main story.
After that scene, we’ll get to Jeongin. Important information:
TW: to everyone who has been with me for a while: I messed up a trigger warning at the start of the story, and I’m really sorry. I said this story won’t contain non-con and I was thinking about Felix’s past when I wrote that. Now while I promise that in this chapter nothing happens, an attempt at sexual assault/non-con is made, in a roundabout way. For anyone who would like more details before reading, I’ll put a brief description in the end notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“You okay?” Jisung checks as they walk through the dairy aisle.
“I’m fine.” He is. His eyes keep scanning the people around him and he feels on edge, but he is not panicking. He is fine. He was expecting this.
It’s Monday, and they’re grocery shopping. Being here is a lot, and Felix had known it would be. There are many people in the grocery store, and many, many scents. But exposure is the only way to get over his scent sensitivity, so when Minho said he was going grocery shopping, Felix had asked if he could come along. Jisung had been up and off the couch in a flash, yelling that he was coming too.
Minho had sent him a suspicious look, and now that they’re here, Felix understands why. Jisung has been pulling bags of candy and cookies off the shelves since the moment they entered the store. Felix was surprised Minho didn’t protest more, but then he realised that every time Jisung’s back is turned, Minho tosses a few bags back. Jisung hasn’t even noticed. When Minho saw Felix looking, he simply smirked, and Felix grinned.
It’s fun to watch them, and they provide a nice little distraction as he tries to keep his brain from overloading at the sheer number of scents present in the store. It had been easier in Aera’s bakery yesterday, but then again, he’d basically been in Hyunjin’s lap all afternoon, and he hadn’t smelled a lot of other people. This busy grocery store is quite the step up, and his hands are balled into tight fists by his side. He’d blame it on the scent sensitivity, but honestly, this tension is familiar. Ever since he escaped Daegu he’s always felt it to some extent when going outside, even when he lived alone before his drop.
“Yongbok-ah, is there anything you need?” Minho asks, making Felix look up. They’ve been calling him Yongbok ever since they left the car, and it had taken Felix by surprise. He hadn’t expected them to remember.
“Huh? Oh, no.” He takes a breath. Jisung is nowhere in sight, and he wants to be helpful. “But if want me to grab you anything, I can.”
Minho rolls his eyes. “I want you to grab the things you need.” When Felix merely blinks, confused, Minho sighs. “You’re telling me you didn’t run out of vanilla extract yesterday? And I thought you wanted to bake more cookies and needed brown sugar and pecans.”
Oh. Yeah, he did say that. Minho keeps a well-stocked kitchen, but most of his supplies are savoury, not sweet. And with everyone asking him to bake again, it might not be a bad idea to get a few things. He looks around. If he’s going to get ingredients for his baking, he should be the one to pay. “I’ll grab a basket.”
Minho lets out an irritated huff. “Absolutely not. Just toss them in.” Felix opens his mouth to protest and Minho says, “Yongbok. How many of the cookies you made on Friday did you get to eat?”
“Um. One?”
Minho nods decisively. “You’re not paying for our food.”
“You’re paying for mine,” Felix grumbles, but he can already tell Minho is not going to budge on this.
And indeed. “Grab your sugar,” is all Minho says as they turn into another aisle, and Felix sighs and relents.
He walks over to rows of sugar on display and studies them. He needs brown sugar, but there are various kinds. For most recipes he would use light brown sugar, but he thinks the caramel undertones of the dark brown sugar would go best with the pecan cookies Hyunjin had asked for. He’s so focused on the labels that he forgets to keep an eye on his surroundings, and therefore doesn’t notice the alpha woman coming up behind him until she’s already reaching over his shoulder to grab something in a cloud of heavy amber.
Felix’s lungs seize and he flinches so violently he knocks five bags of granulated sugar to the floor before stumbling away, mind screeching with panic. Before he can trip to the ground, Minho is there, steadying him and then stepping in front of him. He keeps hold of Felix’s wrist as he shields him, either in an attempt to soothe or to make sure Felix doesn’t run off. But even though the instinct to run pulses strongly through his mind, the instinct to bury himself further into Minho is stronger, and he’s plastered himself against Minho’s back before he even knows what he’s doing, his free hand curled tightly into the fabric of Minho’s jacket. Vaguely he is aware that he is not in danger, but his body certainly seems to think he is. His heart is racing and his thoughts feel slippery through the haze of panic, and he sucks in sharp gasps of Minho’s scent in an attempt to ground himself.
“Seriously?” Minho hisses at the woman, who has stepped back in alarm. “You couldn’t have waited ten seconds until he was done?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, genuinely startled. “I didn’t mean to scare him.”
Minho scoffs and turns back to Felix, not sparing the woman another glance and merely pulling Felix back to the cart and scanning his face to check on him. He doesn’t ask if Felix is okay. He can smell him, and he can probably hear Felix’s heart pounding from where he is. He just clicks his tongue and draws him in for a hug, releasing a wave of fresh ocean air that flows around Felix and finally begins to wash away the remaining panic.
It’s only when Minho drags his wrist over Felix’s neck gland that his head fully clears, and he takes in a long breath. Shit. They all knew this might happen when they came here, but he’d been working so hard on making sure it wouldn’t. The fact that it did anyway, over something so small, makes him feel embarrassed and incredibly frustrated. This would never have happened a year ago, his control used to be so much better.
“Sorry,” he mumbles to Minho. He realises how desperately he’s clinging to the alpha and his cheeks heat. Despite this, it still takes him another full ten seconds to uncurl his fingers from Minho’s bomber jacket and step back.
Minho lets him, although he keeps hold of one of Felix’s wrists. Felix’s doesn’t protest. The contact is grounding, and Minho’s thumb presses into Felix’s scent gland with just the right amount of pressure to be soothing.
“I’m sorry,” the woman says again. She’s looking at Felix now. “Are you—” She cuts herself off and looks at Minho instead. “I’m sorry,” she says with a bow. “For scaring your omega.”
Felix stares at her, wide-eyed. “Oh, I-I’m not—”
But Minho’s scent flares with irritation, and he snaps, “Apologise to him, not me.”
“Just being polite,” she says placatingly, but then turns to Felix. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Felix manages, somehow getting the words out around the shock of this woman thinking Minho is his alpha. Which, alright. Minho stepped in to protect him, and he scented him, but still—
He takes another deep breath and then gives the woman a deep bow. “I apologise.” Minho makes a disapproving noise in the back of his throat, but Felix ignores him. He overreacted. She only went to grab a bag of sugar. This is his fault, not hers. He looks at the bags of sugar he knocked to the ground. “I’ll clean up. Sorry.”
“No,” Minho says, at the same time the woman says, “Oh, no need, sweetie. I’ve got it. You stick to your alpha, alright?”
Felix’s cheeks heat further. Minho doesn’t say anything, but surely Felix shouldn’t just let her think that he’s… that they’re…
Before he can correct her, Jisung returns. “Hey!” he says, “I found—” His eyes widen the moment he catches a whiff of the air between them, and he rushes forward in a flood of cinnamon. “Oh my god.” He carelessly tosses a few cans into the cart and cups Felix’s cheeks. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Nothing happened,” Felix says, flustered. “I’m fine.”
The woman puts the last bag of sugar back on the shelf and turns. She nods her head in polite, apologetic greeting to Jisung, and then leaves the aisle.
“I’m fine,” Felix insists to Jisung. “It was just her scent. I overreacted.”
“You didn’t,” Minho grumbles, “She was rude and should have fucking waited.”
Felix smiles a little. “No, I’m pretty sure this was on me. But thanks.”
Jisung eyes him. “Do you wanna go back to the car?”
“No,” Felix says immediately. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Jisung asks. “Because I would get it if you wanna leave.” He looks over at Minho and smiles wryly. “With the amount of times we’ve had to leave a crowded place because I got anxious, I would honestly be the last person to judge.”
He means it. They both mean it. If Felix told them he’d rather go, they’d abandon this full cart of groceries and take him home right now. His heart warms. “I want to stay,” he says, because he does. He wants to work through the discomfort of overwhelming scents so his body will stop overreacting like this. That was the point of coming here, and he doesn’t want to just give up. He feels better now. He wants to stay.
Minho narrows his eyes. “The second it gets too much, you tell us.”
“Okay,” Felix promises.
Jisung slips his hand into his, and Felix looks over. Jisung smiles and entangles their fingers. The warmth in Felix’s chest spreads a little further, and he smiles back.
“Which sugar did you want?” Minho asks, heading back to the shelf.
“Oh. Um, the dark brown one. No, the one to the right.”
Minho grabs the bag of sugar, drops it into the cart and then steers it out of the aisle. Jisung squeezes Felix’s hand and they follow. Jisung doesn’t wander off again. As they walk, with Minho occasionally checking with Felix for the rest of the ingredients he needs, Felix ponders Jisung’s words.
“Do you still get anxious?” he asks Jisung as Minho compares the marbling on two beef loins.
“Hm? Oh. Sometimes.” Jisung shrugs. “I think by now it’s just part of who I am, or something. Part of how my brain works. I don’t know. It’s annoying when it flares up, but it’s way better than before.” He’s quiet for a bit as they watch Minho frown at one of the loins. “I had therapy for a long time, and the pack has helped a lot. Them as people, but also the bond itself. I feel more stable. And when I do get anxious, it’s easier to calm down when they’re with me.”
Felix thinks about that. What Jisung is saying makes sense. Mating bonds are supposed to help people stay healthy; there are physical benefits to mating aside from the intimacy and symbolism. People’s immune system improves, and most people feel more energetic. His mom had always said that the day she mated his dad, she felt five years younger.
It hadn’t been like that when he was mated to Kwang-ho. Perhaps because of all the games Kwang-ho liked to play, but maybe also because his bond to the alpha had been one-sided; Felix had never returned the bite. He couldn’t have, even if Kwang-ho ordered him. It’s the one thing Alpha Voice couldn’t make him do. Without that true, primal desire to bond (which Felix had certainly never felt with him), he couldn’t bite him back, it wouldn’t have worked. That hadn’t mattered in the eyes of the law, of course. An alpha’s bite was all that was needed to register a mate, and Felix had been his, reciprocal bite or not.
He’s glad that Jisung’s bond to the pack is strong enough to bring those kind of health benefits along with it. And honestly—of course it is. Of course their bond is strong. He’s seen the way they interact, seen how much they love each other. They must have all felt it when Minho was gone for a while, but if the bond had weakened then, it is back just as strong as before now, Felix is sure of it.
“Still doing okay?” Jisung asks quietly, and Felix realises he’s been staring at a row of pork chops for a full minute.
“Yeah,” he says honestly, looking up again. There are still a lot of scents in the store, but Jisung is sticking so close that along with other people’s scents, he gets a whiff of cinnamon every time he breathes in. It helps.
He still feels a little silly for overreacting earlier. He was always tense before his drop, but he was never this jumpy. But then again… he was never this present either, was he? Not out in public. He was never this open. He usually kept most of his emotions locked away so something like this didn’t happen. But today, with Minho and Jisung, that no longer felt right. He didn’t want to shut part of himself off. So he kept himself open and vulnerable to scents and his surroundings, which unfortunately meant that something which would not have fazed him much a year ago now resulted in this.
It will get better, he tells himself. He just needs to be patient. The mental voice sounds a lot like Seungmin, and he sighs in wry amusement. “Yeah, I’m good,” he tells Jisung. He takes another deep breath of the strong blend of scents around him and then lets the alpha lead him down the frozen food section, where Minho disappeared. He can do this. It will get easier.
***
It does get easier. He goes out with them every day, to stores and cafés and for walks around the city, trying to reduce his scent sensitivity as quickly as possible so he can start looking for a job. It’s frustrating to wait, but he knows it would be useless to apply somewhere when he can’t yet handle a full shift of changing scents and pheromones. But he’s making rapid progress and aside from that small mishap in the grocery store, it’s going well. He doesn’t think he’ll need to wait too much longer.
During that week, Felix keeps thinking back to Aera’s words.
Friends do not look at each other the way they look at you either.
She must have been wrong, surely. But as much as he wants to dismiss the idea, her words have kindled a niggling hope in the back of his mind that he can’t quite shake. Because if there’s a chance, any chance at all that she’s right…
It’s a dangerous thought, and probably a stupid one. Both Changbin and Chan had told Felix outright that they would never court him, and he knows it’ll only hurt more if he opens himself up to the idea only for them to reject him again.
Still, he can’t help but observe them as the days go by. Do they treat him differently than they would treat a friend? He has no idea. They’re affectionate, and they light up when they see him, but they’ve always done that. Minho and Jisung had been protective in the store, but that’s not new either. Perhaps if he knew how they acted around their actual friends, he might be able to tell, but due to his previous quarantine he has never met any of them.
The main thing that keeps that flicker of hope stubbornly aflame is the fact that they haven’t stopped touching him. He’s stable now, he’s healthy—there’s no need for touching or scenting or for them to stay close the way they do, but they haven’t stopped. With Jeongin, he can understand it, after their recent conversation. But Seungmin and Minho still rub their wrists along his own or across his neck when they get home, Chan and Jisung draw him into cuddle piles all the time, and Hyunjin and Changbin still spend more nights in Felix’s nest than they do in the den. None of them need to do this any longer, but they all still do.
It’s enough to fuel that pesky little flame, and it leaves Felix feeling both excruciatingly hopeful and terribly confused. He’s too scared to bring it up though, terrified that they’ll stop when they realise what they’re doing. He knows he’s only deluding himself if that’s the case, but he can’t help it. He’ll take anything they’re willing to give him.
On Friday, he’s in the studio with Chan, and they’re the only ones home. Everyone is either at work or at school and Changbin and Jisung have gone out to get a new gaming console, after Jisung accidentally knocked their old one to the floor yesterday (to both Seungmin’s and Jeongin’s dismay, who had just been about to reach their third star in Overcooked).
Chan is working on a song for their upcoming album, adding effects and samples and playing the track over and over again to check the flow. Felix is lying on the studio couch, reading the manga Changbin had handed to him a few days earlier. He’s so engrossed in the story that he doesn’t notice Chan spinning his chair around until he speaks.
“Minho talked to me.”
Felix blinks, lowering the manga. When the words register, however, he sits up. “What? Like, really talked?”
Chan nods. “Last night.”
Felix can’t decipher the expression on his face. “Did he tell you… everything?”
“He told me about Jaewoo, if that’s what you mean.” This time, the emotions on Chan’s face are clear. Pain. Sadness.
Felix feels a flash of sympathy. “It was a difficult conversation.” It’s not a question, but Chan still answers.
“Yeah. He… yeah. It was rough. God, I never knew…” Chan rubs a hand across his face. “No wonder he had all these walls up when we met him. God.”
Felix watches him. He hadn’t noticed anything off about Chan or Minho that morning, but clearly Jeongin isn’t the only one in this pack who’s able to hide their true feelings.
“He blames himself,” Chan says after a while.
Felix sighs. “I know.”
“He was thirteen.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know if I wanted to shake him or cry when he said that.”
Felix huffs out a quiet, sad little laugh in agreement. “He was scared of your reaction. He’s so convinced it’s his fault that he was sure you’d all hate him too.”
Chan shuts his eyes. “Yeah. I had a feeling.” He opens his eyes again. “Thank you, for talking to him. He wouldn’t have told me if you hadn’t.”
“No,” Felix says slowly, “I think he would have. He wanted to. He was just scared.”
“I’m still grateful.”
They’re silent for a minute, just processing. Felix feels relieved. He hadn’t doubted that Minho would someday tell his pack, but that he’d managed it so soon after their talk, even if it was just Chan for now… It must have taken a tremendous amount of courage, and he’s so proud of him.
“There’s a reason I’m telling you this,” Chan says. “I mean, I probably would have talked to you anyway, but there’s something else.”
Felix watches him curiously. “What is it?”
“Minho said he’s willing to go to therapy.”
Felix’s eyes widen. “Really?” He had not expected that.
Chan laughs quietly, a little incredulous himself. “Yeah. I didn’t even have to bring it up. He did. There’s one condition though.” He looks at Felix. “He’s willing to go to therapy, if you go too.”
Felix blinks.
“He said you told him you wanted to go,” Chan says. “That you thought it could help you. But that you would need to save money first.”
He had said that. He’d meant it when he told Minho he wanted to go, and that thought was only further cemented when Jisung told him how much therapy had helped him, but it was more wishful thinking rather than an actual plan. He knows there’s no way he’s ever going to make that much money from off-the-record kitchen jobs.
Before he can point that out to Chan, Chan says, “Minho said he’ll go, if we pay for your therapy too.”
Felix’s mouth drops open. “That’s…”
Chan’s mouth quirks up. “As annoyingly devious as you would expect from someone like Minho? Yes.”
He’s right, it is. This is exactly the kind of thing he should have expected. Except that he hadn’t thought Minho would talk to Chan this fast, let alone willingly agree to go to therapy.
“Listen,” Chan says. “If you were just thinking out loud when you mentioned it, you can say no. I think it’s a great idea, but if you’re not ready, you’re not ready. But if you want to go and the only thing holding you back is money, please take this deal and save me from having to convince Minho on my own.”
Felix hesitates. He does. He does want to go. But… “I can’t just ask you to—”
“You’re not asking. I’m offering.” Chan huffs and shakes his head. “Not that any of us would refuse you if you did ask. You… you mean a lot to us, Felix. Your wellbeing is important to us. We really don’t mind spending money on you.” He chuckles. “In fact, I can tell you we enjoy it. You made Hyunjin’s year by letting him shop for you. We want to see you happy, and we happen to have the money. You’d be doing us all a favour if you let us take care of you.”
Felix’s traitorous heart skips at least five beats during Chan’s talk. That was not a confession, he tells himself firmly. Stop reading into things.
Still, Chan’s utter sincerity makes it hard to refuse. Because if he means it, if they really don’t just do it out of obligation but because it would actually make them happy, then he can see their point. It’s how he would feel about them, if their positions were reversed. If he had money, he’d want to use it to make them happy too.
“You really won’t regret it?” he checks. “I can’t pay you back. Probably not ever. I don’t want you to start paying for me and have it become a thing you feel you’re supposed to do. I don’t want you to…” Start resenting me for it. Start seeing me as a bother, and wishing you’d never met me.
He doesn’t know how long he’ll get to keep them in his life, but he’ll die before he lets money of all things be the thing that comes between them. He doesn’t say that, but Chan seems to get the gist of what he’s thinking anyway.
“We won’t regret it,” he says. “Tell you what. You let us pay for therapy, and maybe some other things if you need them, and we promise that the moment any of us start having doubts about this arrangement, we’ll talk to you. I can’t imagine that happening, but I promise we’ll tell you. And the same goes for you. Complete honesty, from both sides.”
“Everything on the table,” Felix mutters, thinking back to Hyunjin’s story.
Chan looks amused. “Exactly. No judgement, no lies. What do you say?”
After the moral guilt of not contributing, the main thing holding him back from accepting the things they were offering was the fear that they would resent him once he became too much of a burden. That fear is still there, but if they really want to help him financially and they promise to talk to him before they reach that point…
“Okay,” he says. “Yes. If you’re really willing to pay for me, I… I’d be grateful.” Because well. He really does want to see a therapist. He is so done with being betrayed by his own brain.
Chan lets out a relieved laugh. “Oh good. Thank you. I was not looking forward to talk Minho into going alone.”
“He knew what he was doing.” Minho had known very well that Felix meant every word when he talked to him about therapy, and that he wouldn’t be able to refuse an offer like this.
“Probably,” Chan agrees. But for all Chan’s outward relief, Felix thinks Minho wouldn’t have made the offer if he didn’t actually want to go himself. “Do you want to find a therapist yourself, or would you like me to look into it?”
“I’ll give Seonghwa-hyung a call. He said he knew someone safe, off the record.”
“Oh.” Chan blinks. “That’s right, of course you need… Yes. Do you know if—”
Chan’s phone starts ringing, and he turns back to the desk to grab it. “Oh, it’s Innie. His trial must be over by now. Jeonginnie!” he says brightly as he answers. “You’re on speaker, I’m with Felix. How did your tri—”
“Hyung?”
Both Chan and Felix freeze.
“Innie, are you crying?”
“Hyung, he- he made me, and I didn’t want to, and I- I—” Jeongin is definitely crying. He is sobbing so hard they can barely make out his words.
“Who?” Chan jumps out of his chair. “Who made you, Jeongin what’s wrong?”
“He… He… I tried not to, but his Voice—” Jeongin chokes on another sob and coughs wetly. “I’m gonna be sick. I’m gonna—” His voice cuts off and is replaced by the sounds of retching.
Felix feels his heart drop to his stomach. Chan looks frantic in his confusion, trying to get Jeongin to breathe as the sounds of retching subside, but Felix knows exactly what happened. “Ilsung,” he breathes. He raises his voice so he can be heard over the line. “Ilsung used his Voice on you?”
Jeongin cries harder. “He made me—he made me… I can’t say it, I can’t I can’t I can’t—”
The gentle, homely scent of coffee shifts to something hot and dangerous, overwhelmingly strong and furious. Chan’s hand is clenched so tightly around his phone that Felix is surprised he hasn’t crushed it yet. “Where are you,” he grits out, clearly trying to control himself so he doesn’t scare Jeongin further. “Innie,” he continues when Jeongin only keeps crying. “Hyung is coming, yeah? I’m on my way. But I need a location.”
“School,” Jeongin sobs. “’M in a bathroom.”
Chan is already out of the room, storming up the stairs to the main hallway. Felix is right on his heels.
“I l-l-locked the door.”
Jeongin’s voice is tiny, and it’s clear that Chan recognises the state he’s in. “Good job, I.N-ah. You’re so smart. So good.”
“’M not. I’m dirty, they’re gonna kick me out, I’m—”
“You’re not,” Chan says firmly. “And they’re not. You’re perfect, and it’s going to be okay. I’m on my way.” He flings himself around the kitchen doorway to grab his car keys from the drawer, and then he’s rushing to the garage.
“Start the car,” Felix says as Chan moves past him, “I’m coming, I’ll be right there, give me ten seconds.” He doesn’t bother waiting for an acknowledgement before sprinting to the bedroom—Chan has one focus right now, and that’s getting to Jeongin as quickly as possible. And it’s a good focus, but Felix’s mind is clear, and Jeongin will be a lot more comfortable if Felix can pack him a bag.
He’ll need to be quick about it though, because Chan will definitely leave without him if he isn’t in the car by the time Chan starts it. He dashes through the room at record speed, thanking every deity that is out there that the pack hasn’t stopped sharing his nest at night. He snatches up shirts and sweatpants and on a whim, grabs Seungmin’s medical bag on his way out. Better safe than sorry.
He’s out the front door in under a minute, sending up another grateful prayer for the slowly opening automatic doors to the garage that held Chan back. He doesn’t know if Chan will stop for him once the doors open, so when the gap is big enough, he slips through and jumps into the passenger seat.
“—deep breath for me, Innie,” Chan is saying, his hands tight around the steering wheel. The phone is lying on the dashboard. “Nice and slow, okay? Oh, good job love, just like that.”
The doors open and Chan books it, the car shooting out of the garage at a frightening speed. Felix manages to snatch the phone from the dashboard before it can fly off, and then looks at Chan. “Hyung, your seatbelt.”
When Chan doesn’t react, Felix leans over to lock it for him.
“You’re coming?” Jeongin asks, sounding small.
“We’re coming,” they both promise at the same time.
“Of course we’re coming, Innie,” Felix says, keeping his voice light. It’s about twenty minutes to Jeongin’s university, he knows. “We will be—”
There’s a slam on the other end of the line and Jeongin screams.
“Jeongin!” The car swerves a little on the road as Chan whips his head towards the phone in Felix’s hand, and Felix yelps.
“Fuck,” they hear someone say over the sound of Jeongin’s cries. “Jeongin, no, please open the door, it’s just me okay?”
The voice sounds soft, gentle, but it’s still someone trying to get to Jeongin, and Chan looks ready to rip the steering wheel right out of the dashboard. Before he can say anything, Jeongin’s breath hitches. “Gyu?”
Gyu. Beomgyu. Jeongin’s friend, the only other omega in his year.
“Yeah. Can you open the door? It’s only me.” There’s a click, and then Beomgyu goes, “Oh, shit. Oh, Jeongin, what happened—”
Jeongin starts crying again, and there’s a rustle on the other end of the line.
“Innie?” Chan’s eyes are focused on the road again, but his voice is tight.
“Oh, you’re on the phone—no, it’s okay, I’m not taking it from you. Who are you talking to there, Jeonginnie?”
“Hyung,” Jeongin mumbles. “’N Lix.”
“Hello, Bang Pack?” Beomgyu tries over the line.
“Beomgyu? It’s Chan.”
“Oh, hey hyung.”
“Is he hurt? What’s going on?”
“I… He doesn’t look hurt. He just smells panicked.” There’s a pause, and Felix can see Chan’s hands relax the tiniest amount. “What happened, Innie? The trial went so well, and then I tried to find you afterwards and you were gone.” A brief pause. “It was him, wasn’t it. He did something. That fucker, I knew I—oh no, don’t cry. It’s okay, you’re alright.”
“He used his Voice,” Felix says, Jeongin’s cries tearing him apart. “But we don’t know what for.”
“His Voice? Fuck, I didn’t think he’d cross that line.”
“Neither did I,” Felix admits. But he should have. He should have known. He should have done something.
“Can someone please tell me who you’re talking about and why I’m the only one who doesn’t know about it?” Chan spits out, gritting his teeth. They take a sharp turn and Felix yelps as he’s thrown to the left.
It’s only then that he notices how fast they’re going. His eyes widen. “Hyung, you need to slow down.”
“What I need is my omega, who’s alone and in tears because someone hurt him!” Chan’s voice is little more than a growl, and his eyes are glazed over.
“You need to slow down!” Felix repeats, heart beating faster as they near an intersection. “The light is red—”
“I don’t care!”
“WELL I DO!” Felix bellows. “HIT THE FUCKING BRAKES, CHRIS!”
Whether it’s the language or the volume, Chan jumps and slams his foot down, and they jerk to a stop in front of a red light just as cars from the right start moving. They’re both breathing hard, and Felix’s hands are clenched tightly around the edges of his seat, the phone dropped in his lap. He’s shaking, trying to suppress the memories of screeching metal and smoke.
Chan’s eyes have cleared, the protective alpha haze gone. “Fuck,” he hisses. “Oh my god. Lix, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Felix says, voice trembling. He grits his teeth. Now is not the time for flashbacks. This is about Jeongin. “Let’s stick to the traffic rules, alright?” Without waiting for a reply, he picks up the phone again. Jeongin is keening, Beomgyu’s quiet voice trying to soothe him, and Felix winces at the extra panic their screams must have caused him. “Innie, we’re okay. We’re fine. We’re coming, okay?”
“Hyung?” Jeongin asks, voice muffled.
“Yeah,” Chan breathes, still pale. “Yeah, Innie, we’re on our way. We’ll be there soon.”
“Beomgyu-ssi?” Felix asks.
“Yes?”
“Can you talk to Innie while I fill Chan-hyung in?”
“Yeah. Come here, Jeonginnie. I have some water, let’s take a few sips, yeah?” There’s a shuffle as Beomgyu takes care of Jeongin, and Felix lowers the phone to his lap again so he can talk to Chan.
“I’m so sorry,” Chan says before he can say anything. He’s speaking in English, and that’s probably a good idea. Fewer potentially triggering words for Jeongin to pick up on. “I didn’t mean- I wasn’t thinking, and oh god, your family, I’m so—”
Felix’s face softens, though his heart is still beating too fast. “I know. I’m not angry.”
“Fuck, I could have—”
“I know. That’s why you need to take a few deep breaths, okay? You’re not going to be of any use to him if you’re panicking too.” He puts a hand on Chan’s arm. “He’s not alone, Chris. His friend is with him. We’ll find out what happened and he’s going to be okay.”
He hopes. Fear still has his stomach in a tight knot, mind jumping from one horrible thing Ilsung could have done to him to the next.
Chan takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “What do you know?”
“He was partnered up with an absolute asshole alpha for this project. Baek Ilsung. One of those ‘omegas should know their place’ types, and he’s been harassing Innie all semester. Trying to bully him into following his lead, even using pheromones and stuff.”
“He what? And nobody told me?”
“It was only one more week.” Felix closes his eyes. “It was one more week, and Innie thought it would be fine. He asked me not to say anything.”
How he regrets it now. He should have pressed. He should have insisted that Jeongin tell them, this should never have happened, whatever it was.
“Oh, shit shit shit, okay—” There’s a frantic scramble on the other end of the line, and then more retching noises. “Let it out. Aish, Jeonginnie. It’s okay.”
“How much longer?” Felix asks as they listen, the sounds of Jeongin’s distress filling the car like a soundtrack from hell.
“Two minutes,” Chan says tightly. “We’re close.” Switching to Korean, he adds, “We’re almost there, I.N-ah. Hang on for hyung, okay? I love you.”
Jeongin murmurs something unintelligible, and Beomgyu says, “Yes. Alpha is coming. Just a little longer. Here, rinse your mouth, it’s okay.”
A few minutes later they reach the SNU Law building, and Chan parks haphazardly on the pavement, not bothering with the parking garage. They’re out of the car and running for the entrance within seconds, ignoring the irritated looks of students as they push past them. There are a lot of people here, with a vast variety of scents, and yet Felix barely even smells them, too focused on getting to Jeongin.
“What bathroom,” Chan hisses as they sprint through the glass doors. “Ask him what—”
“Where are you?” Felix asks Beomgyu. “We’re here, where do we go?”
“From the main entrance, take the stairs up to the third floor. We’re in the left wing, A side, in the bathroom at the end of the hall. They’re here, Jeonginnie. Your pack is here.”
Chan runs, and since he is not carrying a backpack and medical kit, he is faster. Felix is about ten seconds behind him by the time he reaches the bathroom, and when he rushes in, Chan is already on his knees in front of an open stall, Jeongin in his lap.
“Hyung,” Jeongin sobs, clinging to Chan like he’ll disappear if he loosens his grip.
“I’m here. You’re okay. I’m here.” For all Chan’s panic on the way here, now that he has Jeongin in his arms, he is dead calm and completely in control. Jeongin seems to be operating purely on instinct, baring his neck, and Chan doesn’t waste a second before unclasping the collar and licking across his scent gland. He nuzzles against it, scenting him thoroughly. “It’s alright, love. I’ve got you.”
Felix walks closer, getting close enough to smell him, and feels an overwhelming rush of relief when there is no scent of cedar in the air. Whatever Ilsung had done, he hadn’t touched him. The air is acrid and sharp with Jeongin’s panic though, just like that night in the alley, and that’s something Felix never wanted Jeongin to smell like again. Underneath that, there’s a heavy, bitter note of shame, and that’s even worse.
“Innie,” Felix breathes, and falls to his knees next to Chan and a boy with dark shoulder-length black hair that must be Beomgyu. He grabs the backpack he’d brought with him and starts pulling out clothes. Changbin’s tank top. Minho’s t-shirt. Jisung’s pyjamas.
Chan lets out a breath, sending Felix a grateful look. “Look what Lixie brought you, Jeongin-ah.”
One by one, Felix rubs the clothes over Jeongin’s wrists, his neck, drapes them across his shoulders. It’s not as effective as if the pack were here, but Jeongin huddles into the clothes gratefully, shuddering with relief with each newly added scent. When Felix goes to reach for more though, Jeongin stops him with a hand on his sleeve. “Lix,” he mumbles. “Want you.”
Momentarily stunned, Felix blinks at him, but then Jeongin gives his sleeve another tug and he leans forward. His eyes flicker briefly to Chan, but when Chan simply gives an encouraging nod, he stops hesitating. He leans in to nose thoroughly along the free side of Jeongin’s neck, rubbing his jaw over the scent gland until Jeongin smells like him. Jeongin sighs and melts further into Chan. Felix strokes a hand through his hair before leaning back a little to check him over. Just like Beomgyu said, he doesn’t seem to be hurt. Speaking of whom…
Felix turns to look at the boy next to them. He is clutching a half-empty water bottle and fiddling nervously with the cap. “Beomgyu-ssi?” he checks.
The boy nods. “You can skip the honorifics, it’s fine. You’re… Lix? I’m sorry, I don’t know—”
Felix frowns at him before he realises why Beomgyu sounds so confused. “You might know me as Yongbok?” Beomgyu’s expression clears, and wow, Felix has really grown used to being called by his real name if his pseudonym only occurred to him belatedly like this. He knows Jeongin has told Beomgyu that Felix is staying with them—the school may have bought the Stage 4 omega drop excuse the pack had given them to excuse Jeongin’s weeks of absence, but Beomgyu knew his packmates would never have let Jeongin drop that badly. Felix didn’t know exactly what Jeongin had told him, he’d never asked, but apparently Jeongin had been discreet. He hadn’t even used his real name.
Until now, that is. But with the state he’s in, Felix can’t blame him for forgetting. “What happened?”
Chan has started murmuring soothing words into Jeongin’s ear to distract him, but Felix knows he’s listening.
Beomgyu rakes a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. They did their trial and they did a great job, they won. And then I went to find Innie afterwards and he was gone. The thing is, so was Ilsung. I saw him drive off almost immediately after class.”
“But Innie said he used his Voice,” Felix says slowly. “So he told him to do something?”
“That’s my guess, yeah.”
“Has he ever done that before?” Chan asks. Jeongin doesn’t show any signs of having heard them, and Felix doesn’t know if he’s sinking into some sort of subspace or if he’s just choosing not to listen.
“Not that I know of. I don’t think so. Innie would have said if he had.”
“Yeah,” Felix agrees. Jeongin may have been adamant on handling things himself, but if Ilsung had started using his Voice, there’s no way he wouldn’t have spoken up. That crossed too many lines.
He looks back at Jeongin. The worry is still there, and he still wants to know what happened. But with Jeongin here in front of him, safe and unhurt, the urge is not as pressing as before. It can wait, he thinks. Jeongin’s comfort is more important. It can wait until Jeongin is ready to share.
Chan, however, doesn’t seem to agree. “Innie,” he starts slowly, pushing him back from his shoulder a little so he can look him in the eye. “I need you to tell us what happened.”
Jeongin shakes his head.
“Because whatever happened, I will fix it. I promise you. But I can only do that if you tell me what he did.” Chan’s voice is soft but firm. It’s not an empty promise. Felix can hear it, and so can Jeongin.
“I…” Jeongin’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “He…” His eyes fill with tears, and a new surge of shame fills the air.
“Did anything happen during the trial?” Beomgyu asks, shifting forward a little.
Jeongin shakes his head.
“Did he talk to you afterwards?”
This time Jeongin nods.
“And he used his Voice to tell you to do something?”
Another nod.
Felix can see what Beomgyu is doing now. It’s similar to the witness examinations he has seen Jeongin practise. Easy questions with simple answers, quick-fire style. It’s clever and more importantly, it’s working.
“Right,” Beomgyu says, thinking. They had sort of established the story up until there, after all. “Did his command involve another person?”
Jeongin squeezes his eyes shut and nods.
“More than one?”
A shake of his head.
“Okay. A student?”
Another shake.
“A professor?”
Jeongin starts crying again. Chan hugs him close. “Innie,” he says, his own voice filled with pain for the state Jeongin is in. “Please tell us. Whatever he made you do, it’s not your fault. There’s no cause for shame. It wasn’t you, and we all know it.”
It’s quiet for almost a minute, and Felix doesn’t dare to breathe for fear of breaking the anticipatory silence.
“The trial went well,” Jeongin whispers. “I did really good. Even… Even p-professor Kim said so.” His eyes briefly flicker to Beomgyu, who nods.
“You were amazing.”
“And I thought I would finally be rid of- of Ilsung. But then he pulled me aside in the hallway and he... w-with his Voice, he said... He told me to shut up and listen. And then he told me to… to go to Professor Kim’s office, wait for him to arrive, and then d-drop to my knees and s-submit. And I had to say… I had to say…” He breaks off and keens, a horrible low sound filled with shame.
“It’s okay,” Chan says. His voice is still soft, but Felix can see the way his hands are clenched into fists.
Jeongin takes a deep breath and his next words come out in a rush, as if he knows he’ll only get them out if he’s too quick for his brain to catch up. “I had to say I know I could have done better during the trial, but I’d do anything if he’d consider upping my grade, and I could make him- could make him feel good.” He chokes on the last few words and nearly retches again. Chan’s hands tighten around him to move him back to the toilet if he needs it, but he swallows and curls in on himself with a shudder.
Felix lets out an incredulous breath. Jesus. That’s…
“And I t-tried not to,” Jeongin chokes, tears dripping down his cheeks again. “But I couldn’t. I c-couldn’t s-stop, I wasn’t strong enough—”
“That’s not your fault,” Felix and Beomgyu say at the same time.
“That’s right,” Chan agrees, tipping Jeongin’s head up. “No shame, remember? These were his actions, not yours.” When Jeongin just averts his eyes, he taps his cheek with his thumb. “Say it, I.N-ah. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Not my fault,” Jeongin whispers. He doesn’t really sound like he believes it.
“Good job. What…” Chan falters for a split second before getting control of himself again, and Felix can see the struggle on his face. “What did your professor do? Did he… He didn’t…”
Jeongin shakes his head. “He yelled at me. He said I was d-disgusting, and a w-w-whore, and that I’d be expelled—” He breaks off on a sob, and Chan immediately pulls him in.
“That’s not happening,” he says, fire in his eyes. “I told you I’d fix it. And I will. None of this is your fault, and I’ll make sure this is set straight.”
“They won’t believe you.”
Chan laughs, and it’s not a nice sound. “Oh, they will. I’ll make sure of it. Come on. Let’s get you home, and hyung will take care of the rest, okay?”
Jeongin seems too tired to argue and just nods against Chan’s chest.
Chan shifts his grip and stands, lifting Jeongin up with him. Minho’s shirt falls from Jeongin’s shoulder, and Felix catches it before it can reach the ground. He drops it back on Jeongin’s chest, who curls his hand into the fabric.
“We’ll get you home,” Chan repeats, “And we’ll get you to your nest, yeah? And we’ll—”
“Wait,” Beomgyu says, stopping Chan before he can exit the bathroom. He looks apologetic. “Innie, do you want to walk down?”
“What?” Chan frowns at him. “I’ve got him, he doesn’t need to walk.”
But Jeongin’s eyes have widened, clarity returning. “Yes,” he says, struggling against Chan’s grip. “Put me down, hyung.”
Chan sets him down but keeps an arm around his waist. “Innie, I can carry you.”
“No. No, I need to walk out on my own.” Jeongin breaks free from Chan’s hold and moves to the sink to splash water on his face. “Fuck, I look horrible.”
“I have a facemask.” Beomgyu holds one out to him and Jeongin accepts it gratefully.
“Thanks. Do I still smell panicked?”
Beomgyu leans in and sniffs. “Not that strongly. You should be fine. And we’ll stay close, they’ll smell us before they smell you.”
Jeongin nods, face determined. He reaches out to grab the collar from Chan’s loose grip and clips it back around his neck. It’s shocking, the sudden shift from exhausted, post-panic attack omega to his usual calm and collected demeanour.
“This is because of those other alphas you told me about?” Felix asks. He gets what Jeongin is doing, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.
“What other alphas,” Chan growls. He’s been doing well with regard to control, but at the mention of other alphas that could be harassing Jeongin, he looks ready to snap and throw his omega over his shoulder to book it out of here, protests or not.
“Not like that,” Beomgyu says, helping Jeongin straighten his hair and clothes. He’s handing the pack’s clothes back to Felix, who puts them back in his bag. “But you know law school isn’t the most omega-friendly place, and appearances are important. We’ve worked hard for the respect that we have, and if you carry him out of here like a damsel in distress…”
Chan clenches his teeth. “I don’t like this,” he tells Jeongin.
Jeongin merely shakes his head and turns back to the door after a final dusting off of his knees. With the facemask, he looks pretty much back to normal. His eyes are red and puffy, but if he looks down, nobody will notice. Felix can see his hands trembling though, and he gives one of them a quick squeeze in encouragement.
“Five minutes,” Beomgyu says, noticing the same thing. “Just until you reach the car.”
Jeongin takes a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
*
They do not make it to the car.
In fact, they don’t even make it out of the hallway before someone rounds the corner and Jeongin stops in his tracks so abruptly that Felix crashes into him.
“Shit, sorry,” he murmurs. He means to step back to allow Jeongin some space, but Jeongin clutches his arm and steps back into him.
Chan is at his other side in a heartbeat. “What is it?”
“Jeongin-ssi?” The man at the other end of the hallway walks closer. “It is you.” He does not sound pleased.
Jeongin grips Felix’s arm so tightly that Felix suspects he’ll have bruises. He seems unable to do anything but stare at the man. It’s Beomgyu who saves him by dragging him into a bow. “Professor Kim,” the omega greets.
Ah.
Well, fuck.
“Beomgyu-ssi,” the man acknowledges politely, if a little tersely.
“Professor Kim?” Chan repeats, taking a half step in front of Jeongin.
The man has stopped in front of them and looks to Chan. He’s wearing a well-tailored suit and his short black hair is neatly combed. He’s an alpha and looks to be in his forties. “That is me. If you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to Jeongin-ssi for a moment.”
Chan bites back his initial reply and looks to Jeongin for guidance. It’s clear what Chan wants to say, but he’s willing to let Jeongin take the lead here.
Unfortunately, Jeongin seems to have frozen completely. All his earlier determination and bravado went out the window the moment he laid eyes on the man. He’s not in any state to have this conversation, and they can all see it.
“I’m sorry,” Chan says firmly, taking back the reins. “Jeongin isn’t feeling well. We’re taking him home.”
“And who might you be?” the professor asks, raising an eyebrow.
“We’re his packmates.” Chan doesn’t even hesitate in including Felix in his statement, and he feels a flicker of surprise.
Kim’s eyes drift from Chan’s sweatpants and loose tank top to Felix’s tangled hair and his lack of collar. They’d both rushed out of the house without a second thought for appearances, and Kim does not look impressed. At least Felix’s long hair hides the faded bitemark on his neck. Professor Kim manages to refrain from commenting, and instead looks back to Chan. “I’m afraid your omega has made some… distasteful decisions today that will impact his schooling here. I can’t let him leave before we talk to the dean.”
Jeongin whimpers, and Chan steps forward. “He is not feeling well,” he says again.
Kim does not back down. “I’m sure he isn’t,” he spits. “Neither am I, after what he did.”
For the first time, Felix realises that Jeongin is not the only victim of Ilsung’s actions. Misplaced as his anger might be, this man has a reason to feel wronged.
“It wasn’t him—” Felix starts, at the same time Beomgyu says, “Ilsung’s the one who—”
“Perhaps,” Chan interrupts, “We should take this to the dean, rather than discussing it in the middle of the hallway.” He looks to Jeongin. “We’ll clear this up and then we can go home. Do you want to go? I can simply send you to the car with Yongbok and talk to them myself.”
Felix blinks at the use of his fake name again. Despite what just happened with Beomgyu, he wouldn’t have remembered to use it right now. Yet Chan did, seemingly without effort.
Beomgyu squeezes Jeongin’s hand as the silence stretches and Jeongin steels himself. “It’s about me. I need to be there.”
Chan turns back to the professor. “To the dean, then?”
Kim lets his eyes slide over all of them and then nods stiffly. He leads them down a flight of stairs and to a hallway filled with offices, before knocking on one of the doors.
Someone calls for them to enter and they step into the room. It’s a spacious office, with a large L-shaped desk and a long bookcase against one wall. It looks exactly like Felix would expect a university dean’s office to look like, all dark wood and leather upholstering. The man sitting behind the desk is tall and broad-shouldered, clearly an alpha too. Sharp eyes take them in as they enter.
“That was quick, Junghyun-ssi,” he tells professor Kim.
Kim nods at Jeongin. “He was still here.”
The dean lets his eyes drift across the rest of them. “And the others?”
“My name is Bang Chan, pack alpha. This is Yongbok. We’re Jeongin’s packmates,” Chan says again, gesturing between him and Felix. This time, Felix manages to keep the surprise from his face, although his heart still skips a beat.
“I’m Choi Beomgyu,” Beomgyu says with a bow. “I’m a student here. Jeongin and I are friends.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard your name before.” The dean’s eyes fix Beomgyu with an unreadable look. “That subgender bias essay of yours certainly sent some ripples through the department.”
“Thank you, sir.” Beomgyu bows again. The dean’s comment wasn’t a compliment, and they all know it. Felix can see the smirk Beomgyu is trying to hide.
“My name is Kang In-hyuk.” The dean gestures to the chairs in front of his desk. “Have a seat, all of you.”
They sit down. Jeongin is still huddled in on himself and while he had said he wanted to stay, it’s clear that it’s taking everything he has to keep himself together. Felix decides to screw propriety and settles on the armrest of Jeongin’s armchair. He suspects these men are going to see Jeongin cry anyway, so he might as well offer some comfort while it happens. Jeongin is too tense to relax, but Felix can feel him lean into him anyway, and he will take it.
“Alpha Bang Chan-ssi,” the dean starts, and Jeongin stiffens further. “I am unsure what your omega has told you, but I presume you know what we’re all here for. I’ve heard Junghyun-ssi’s side of the story. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
Chan doesn’t respond. Instead, he looks to Jeongin, to check if he wants to speak for himself.
Jeongin opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. He meets Chan’s eyes once and then turns his gaze back to the floor. He doesn’t look up again. He seems stuck, and after a moment he wipes his hand across his eyes. Felix doesn’t need to see the wetness to know that he’s crying; he can smell the salt in the air.
“Do you want me to tell them?” Chan asks him, leaning over to rest a hand on the back of his neck. When Jeongin nods, he turns to the dean and professor, and tells them everything they know. About Baek Ilsung’s behaviour throughout the term, about his harassment and discrimination, and finally about today’s events. He’s aided by Beomgyu, who fills in details that he’s witnessed that Chan won’t know. Felix stays quiet, focused on carding his hand through Jeongin’s hair in a soothing rhythm.
When Chan finishes, it’s silent for a long while.
“This is a grave accusation,” the dean begins. “What you’re saying could ruin Baek Ilsung’s career before it starts.”
“I am aware,” Chan says tightly. “I want it to.”
Professor Kim looks sceptical. “Baek Ilsung is one of my best students.” He points at Jeongin. “Maybe he’s just lying. He dropped to his knees in front of me and offered to blow me for credit, and now that it didn’t work, he’s blaming one of my top students to get out of the mess he made.”
“Jeongin is one of your top students too,” Chan reminds Kim, his jaw clenched.
“We’ll have to call in Baek Ilsung,” the dean says. “Although it will be his word against Jeongin’s. Do you have any evidence to back up your omega’s story? Video, audio, anyone to corroborate his account of what happened today?”
Chan looks to Jeongin, who shakes his head, looking miserable. Felix gets why. If it’s his word against Ilsung’s, Ilsung will win. The accusation is too outlandish, and these men’s opinions of Ilsung are too high to believe Jeongin’s story. If there’s no evidence to back it up, there’s no way they’re going to believe one of their favourite students used his Voice to command a fellow student into sexual harassment.
The dean sighs. “If there is no evidence, I’m afraid that—”
“If you think,” Chan snaps, “That I am going to walk out of here and let you ruin Jeongin’s life by refusing to even consider that he might be telling the truth, then you’re insane.”
“And yet, without proof—”
“Oh, none of you have witnessed any harassment this semester? None at all?” Chan laughs, the sound sharp with anger. “I’m sure I can find more than enough evidence once I start digging.”
The dean is not fazed. “A bit of banter is not the same as an accusation of Voice, Bang Chan-ssi, and you know it.”
“A bit of banter—” Chan starts, furious, but Felix sits up.
Voice. Voice.
“I have proof,” he says.
Everyone’s heads whip towards him. “You do?”
Felix leans forward, giddy with relief. “I do, I do!” He grabs Seungmin’s medical kit and pulls out the black case, unzipping it to reveal the familiar analyser. He’s sat through hours of Seungmin’s daily examinations, and since Felix kept expressing interest, the beta had taught him everything the machine could do. He had told Felix about the different types and subtypes of pheromones and then quizzed him on it just for fun. Felix had never expected to need the information, but he knows exactly what to do.
“When an alpha uses their Voice on an omega, it creates a large spike in modulator pheromones, the B-type. It’ll be traceable for hours afterwards, and there’s nothing else that can cause it.” He looks up to see five incredulous faces. “It’s true, I swear. You can look it up, or ask an omega clinic.” He holds up the machine. “This is a pheromone analyser. Innie, can I?”
Jeongin stares at him with wide eyes, the beginnings of hope edging into his expression. He unclasps his collar and tilts his head, allowing Felix to press the metal end to his scent gland.
There’s a minute of tense silence as the machine works, and then it beeps. Felix checks the readings and smiles, pleased. “See? It shouldn’t be above fifteen. This is like five times higher than it’s supposed to be.” Then he frowns, looking at Jeongin. “That must suck, actually. I’m sorry. You must be exhausted.”
Jeongin huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “That’s the least of my worries right now.” He looks up at professor Kim, Felix’s newfound evidence giving him confidence for the first time since they’d run into the man. “I swear it’s true, professor. I know it looked… But I would never… I would never…” His face contorts and his scent twists in shame.
“It’s not like he screwed up his trial,” Beomgyu adds. “He did well. Even you said so in class, sir. He’s been doing well all semester, he didn’t need extra credit. Why would he even risk it?”
Kim hesitates. He still looks affronted, but it’s clear he doesn’t have an answer to that question.
“I will call the medical department to verify your story,” the dean says eventually. “I will need to take a picture of those readings.”
“Of course.” Felix steps closer to let the dean snap a picture of the analyser, ignoring the urge to flinch away from his scent. The entire office smells like him, strong and musky and alpha, and it makes his skin crawl. Still, he steels himself and says, “You should call in Baek Ilsung. Test his pheromones, or his blood. The evidence will be there.”
The dean studies him for a moment and then says, “We will.”
Felix nods and scurries back to his chair, relieved to get away from the alpha’s intense scent.
After that, there’s an awkward moment where they all stare at each other, and then the dean says, “Bang Chan-ssi, you are free to take your omega home. I will contact you as soon as we know more.”
“And Baek Ilsung?” Chan asks, eyes sharp.
The dean’s eyes flicker to Beomgyu and Jeongin. “While SNU Law isn’t the most… suitable track for omegas, we do draw a firm line at any form of active harassment that we are made aware of. If you’re telling the truth, you can rest assured that Baek Ilsung will be expelled.”
Jeongin lets out a shuddering breath, and allows Beomgyu to pull him in so he can hide his tears in his friend’s shoulder.
“Jeongin-ssi,” professor Kim says.
Jeongin wipes his eyes and looks up, a little embarrassed.
“If you’re telling the truth, then…” He looks like he’s swallowed a lemon and he sounds stiffer than ever when he continues, “Then I apologise. For the things I said.”
“It’s okay,” Jeongin manages, his voice surprisingly steady. “I thought it was disgusting too.”
Professor Kim coughs awkwardly. “Right.”
“We’re free to leave?” Chan asks the dean, clearly wanting nothing more than to get Jeongin home.
“Yes. This is all we need for now.”
They rise, and Felix wraps an arm around Jeongin’s waist. “Let’s see if Channie-hyung’s car is still there. He kind of parked illegally.”
“I’ll handle anyone who tries to fine me,” Chan grumbles, and this time Jeongin does smile. It’s watery, and weak, but it’s a smile.
“You wanna outlawyer a law department, hyung?”
“Try me.” Chan goes for stern, but his relief at Jeongin’s smile is too obvious and his answering smile ruins the effect entirely.
“I’ll call down to parking,” the dean offers, to all of their surprise. He’s still only talking to Chan and not Jeongin, but his demeanour has changed now that it’s looking more and more likely that Jeongin was telling the truth. Perhaps he’s looking to appease Chan so he won’t sue them. “Your car will be there. Leave the lawyering to your omegas. They seem to be better at it.”
With a start, Felix realises he means him as well as Jeongin, and his cheeks flush.
“Thank you,” Jeongin says with a bow, and everyone else follows suit.
The dean looks to Jeongin for the first time. “Get some rest, Jeongin-ssi. We’ll be in touch.”
Notes:
Brief description of what happens (this won’t be depicted in the chapter, it’s what Jeongin tells Felix and Chan afterwards): Jeongin’s classmate Ilsung uses his Voice on Jeongin to order him to go to his professor’s office and offer sex in return for study credits. Jeongin has no choice but to obey and make the offer. His professor gets angry and yells at him to get out and that he’ll be expelled (which was Ilsung’s intention) so nothing happens, but Jeongin (rightfully) freaks out and calls Chan in a panic afterwards.
Actual end notes:
This was a heavy chapter, wasn’t it? I’m sorry. Jeongin deserves the biggest hug.As for the next update: since I decided to include my prepared bonus scene in this chapter, there’s no bonus chapter on Saturday. I'm going to try to get Chapter 20 out to you this weekend, since I think you will all want to read the aftermath of this as soon as possible. However, after that you’re going to have to wait a bit while I sort out ~life stuff~ and get some writing and editing out of the way before I get back to posting. Sorry! But I hope you’ll understand <3
Update for anyone checking in today: I'm gonna need a little bit longer to edit, I hope to get the chapter out to you on Sunday!
Chapter 20
Notes:
Me: ah yes, I'll get the next chapter out on Saturday, I've got Thursday and Friday so surely that'll be fine.
Me, on Friday: [adds 1000 more words that need two days of editing]BUT WE MADE IT. Here you go. The aftermath.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As the dean promised, Chan’s car is still there, and there’s no disgruntled city officer towing it away. When they reach it, Chan turns to Beomgyu and places a hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you so much for your help, Beomgyu-yah. Can we drop you off at home?”
Beomgyu shakes his head. “Nah. Yeonjun-hyung has an English Phonetics class right now and his building is close. I’m supposed to meet him there, he’s driving us home.” He looks to Jeongin. “Are you going to be okay?”
Jeongin has managed to leave the building on his own two feet without anyone supporting him. He looks dead tired though, and Felix can’t blame him. Alpha Voice takes a lot out of you, especially when you fight it. He had been exhausted all the time when he’d lived with Kwang-ho. Ironically, he’d felt more energetic while living on the streets and surviving off half a meal a day than when he’d been mated.
“I’ll be fine,” Jeongin says, putting on a smile to reassure his friend.
Felix is sure Beomgyu sees through it as easily as he and Chan can, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he pulls Jeongin into a hug. “Get some sleep. I’ll text you later. I love you.”
“Love you too,” Jeongin mutters. “Thanks, Gyu.”
“Anytime.” Beomgyu turns to Felix. “It was nice to meet you. Jeongin talks about you a lot.”
“Me?”
Beomgyu laughs. “Oh yeah.” He darts a glance at Jeongin and shakes his head. “He’s too out of it for me to tease him. Alright, I’m off. Hyung, if Innie is too tired to text me, will you let me know how he’s doing?”
“I will,” Chan promises, and with that, Beomgyu heads off towards the education buildings.
Jeongin crawls into the backseat of the car, curling up against the door, and Felix looks at Chan. “Are you okay to drive?”
Chan gets what he means immediately. “I’m clearheaded,” he says. “What happened earlier won’t happen again, I promise. I’m really sorry it did.”
Felix watches his face. He’s calm, and the haze that had glazed over his eyes is nowhere to be seen. He’s not lying. Felix nods, and slips into the backseat after Jeongin.
It takes less than a minute for Jeongin to fall asleep, his head resting on Felix’s shoulder. Felix has an arm wrapped around him and it’s a little awkward with the seatbelts, but he wouldn’t let Jeongin go right now even if there were ten seatbelts strapping them in.
“Is he asleep?” Chan asks, checking the rearview mirror.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
They’re quiet for a minute, the only sound the rumble of the car and the sounds of traffic around them.
“I cannot believe you brought the analyser,” Chan says finally. “And those clothes. You thought of everything. I just rushed out the door like an idiot.”
“You were acting on instinct,” Felix says, watching him in the mirror. “And you got us there as quickly as possible, it was a team effort. I can’t even drive, I would have been useless on my own.”
“I’m really, really glad you were with me, Lix. You saved us in the office there.”
“I shouldn’t have had to.”
Chan sobers. “No. None of this should have happened.” He looks at Jeongin again. “I can’t believe I didn’t know how bad it was for him this term. I thought he was just stressed because he’d missed some classes.”
Felix shakes his head. “He wasn’t behind. He’d caught up on the classes he missed like a week after we left the guestroom. It was just this project with Ilsung which made this semester so bad. Before that, it was mostly just what Beomgyu said, making sure to appear strong and confident, not showing weakness. Like high school, except a bit worse.”
Chan is quiet for a moment. “He tells you so much.”
“Hyung…”
“No,” Chan says, “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I’m glad he has you. You’re an omega too, it makes sense the two of you would bond. You understand him in ways we never could, as much as we love him.”
Felix is silent. Finally he says, “I should have said something.”
Chan glances in the mirror again, meeting his eyes briefly before looking back at the road. “Maybe,” he says slowly. “But I get why you didn’t. If Innie trusted you with this… Yeah. I get why you wouldn’t have, as much as I wish I had known about this. I’m not angry.”
Felix didn’t think Chan would be. And it hadn’t felt right, to betray Jeongin’s trust. But he still feels guilty. If he’d told them, could he have prevented this?
“We need to tell the others,” Chan sighs. “I want them home, for Jeongin.”
Felix looks down. Jeongin’s face has gone lax with sleep, and he looks peaceful. “I don’t think it’s urgent,” he says. “He’ll probably be out for a while.”
Chan huffs out a wry laugh. “Yeah. Fine. You caught me. It’s for me. I need to know everyone is safe.”
Felix’s expression softens. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Chan says honestly. “I want to break something, and I want to cry, and if I start letting myself think about what could have happened, I might just throw up. I’m not okay at all, and I need everyone close right now.”
The honest matter-of-factness of his words surprises Felix. It shouldn’t have, because Chan hasn’t had any difficulty opening up about his feelings before. He’s a talker. If something is wrong, he’ll talk it through until it’s fixed, or until people feel better. It’s nice. You tend to know where you stand, with Chan.
“Do you want me to text them?” Felix offers.
“Please.”
Felix goes to take out his phone and then realises he didn’t bring it. It must still be in the studio. “Can I use your phone? I left mine at home.”
Chan wordlessly unlocks his phone and hands it to Felix. Felix opens the group chat, ignoring the missed calls and messages from Changbin and Jisung.
It has been one (1) day since Jisung broke something
[3:37 pm]
Chan: Hi this is Felix. First off I need you to not freak out because we’re fine
Changbinnie: well that’s ominous
Hannie: where r u???? we got home and u were both gone (｡•́︿•̀｡)
[Chan is typing]
Hyunjinnie: yeah ok i am definitely freaking out whos with me
Hannie: me
Changbinnie: yeah me
Minho-yah: As much as I hate to say it, me.
Seungminnie: Me. What’s wrong?
[Chan is typing]
Hyunjinnie: this is actually stressing me out why is felix using hyungs phone
Hyunjinnie: where is heChan: Hyung is driving, I forgot my phone. Him and me and Innie are on our way back from Innie’s school bc an asshole alpha classmate used his Voice on him. (repeat: don’t freak out he is okay)
Minho-yah: What
Hannie: WAHT
Changbinnie: WAS IT THAT FUCKING ASSHOLE WHOSE SCENT WAS ON HIM THREE WEEKS AGO
Changbinnie: I’m going to fucking murder himMinho-yah: The asshole whose scent what
[Chan is typing]
Hyunjinnie: oh my god is he okay
Seungminnie: Lix said he was
Hyunjinnie: yes well excuse me if i dont believe that innies okay after someone uSED THEIR VOICE ON HIMDFDKFJKLDF
“I’m screwing it up,” Felix tells Chan with a grimace, halfway through another message. “I’m typing one-handed and it’s too slow and they’re all freaking out.”
“It’s not you,” Chan says, eyes on the road. “They’d freak out no matter how you told them. This is a lot.”
Alright. Yeah. Felix supposes it is. He turns back to the chat, where messages are flying across the screen so fast he can barely read them before they disappear. He decides to record a voice message.
“Hey,” he says into the phone. “Innie isn’t hurt. It’s a long story and we’ll explain everything when we get back, but nobody touched him and he’s going to be okay. He’s sleeping now. His Mod-B reading was like 78, Seungmin, so it hit him kind of hard. He’ll probably be out for at least another few hours, but hyung said—”
“Hyung wants you all home where I can see you and make sure you’re all safe,” Chan interrupts from the front seat, and Felix holds the phone closer so he’ll be heard. “And I could really use a fucking hug. That’s all. I.N-nie is fine, and we’ll be home soon.”
Felix presses send, and the chat quiets down a bit as they listen.
Seungminnie: 78? God he must have fought like hell.
Hannie: what does thta mean isit dnagerous
Minho-yah: I’m on my way.
Seungminnie: No no he’ll just be tired, it’s not dangerous at all.
Hyunjinnie: me2 b there in 10
Chan: See you soon
Chan: Drive safely please
*
Chan really does drive carefully this time. In fact, he drives so carefully that by the time they get home, Minho and Hyunjin are already there, waiting for them on the driveway with Changbin and Jisung.
Minho doesn’t even wait for the car to stop before throwing open the door and leaning in to get to Jeongin. Felix helps him lift Jeongin out of the car, unclasping his collar so Minho has access to his scent gland. The others crowd around him immediately, anxious to reassure themselves that Jeongin is okay.
“What the hell happened?” Minho demands after removing his lips from Jeongin’s scent gland. Jeongin doesn’t wake, but he does relax a little further as his packmates scent him.
“Inside,” Chan says. “We’ll tell you everything, but let’s get him comfortable.”
So they carry Jeongin inside. They have only just got him settled on the couch, curled up on Minho’s lap and wedged in by Hyunjin and Jisung on either side of him, when Seungmin bursts through the door. “How is he?” he asks, stalking forward and dropping to his knees in front of the couch. He takes hold of Jeongin’s wrists, both to scent him and to get a read on how he’s doing. He looks outwardly calm, but he smells rattled.
“He’s not dropping,” Felix says. It’s unnecessary, since he’s sure they can all tell that from Jeongin’s scent alone, but he knows Seungmin values data. “Because I checked those levels too and they were fine.”
Seungmin looks over at him. “His Mod-A?”
“Below 20. Like 16, I think. And I checked his Sig-C and Sig-K and they were normal. I don’t know if I should have looked at any others, but he’s not dropping.” He doesn’t remember the acceptable values for all the pheromone readings on the analyser, but the ones for drop he could rattle off in his sleep.
Judging by the way Seungmin relaxes, those were the ones he wanted anyway. He doesn’t even ask to see the analyser. He just trusts that Felix read the data right, and Felix feels humbled by that trust.
“Okay,” he says, rubbing his wrist over Jeongin’s and inhaling deeply. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Lix.” Seungmin stares at Jeongin and then over at Chan. “What happened?”
This causes everyone to look at Chan, who sighs. “It’s a long story. And it’s going to make you very, very mad. I am going to tell you, but I need you to keep calm for Innie’s sake.” Everyone nods tersely, and Chan starts talking.
Telling everybody is just as chaotic as Felix expected. Despite Chan’s warning, everyone is furious, and the air is filled with tense scents and raised voices that are hastily toned down again whenever Jeongin stirs.
“And then he just passed out?” Jisung asks fearfully after Chan finishes, holding one of Jeongin’s hands. “Is he okay?”
“He is fine, just sleeping,” Seungmin says. “He’ll feel better when he wakes, he just needs to sleep it off.”
“Sleep it off?” Changbin echoes incredulously. “He’s just been fucking assaulted, Seungmin! He is not fine! Fuck, I can’t believe this.” He rakes a hand through his hair and both looks and smells like he wants to punch something.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Seungmin says. “I meant physically.”
Chan squeezes his shoulder. “We know. Binnie is just worried about what this will do to him.”
“Aren’t we all?” Hyunjin hasn’t let go of Jeongin since he laid eyes on him, his arms wrapped tightly around him despite the fact that the omega is in Minho’s lap. “Who the fuck does something like this, what the hell is wrong with that guy?”
“I want to kill him,” Changbin says, hands clenched into fists. “I’m going to—”
“We are not going to do anything until Jeongin wakes up,” Chan starts firmly, projecting his voice and scent just enough to make it clear he’s making a pack decision and will not accept any argument. He meets their eyes one by one, including Felix. “We are not going to act, or speak, or make any decisions for him unless he asks us to. The last thing he needs right now is us taking away more of his autonomy.” Jisung and Seungmin nod, and Hyunjin and Changbin look displeased but don’t argue further. Minho doesn’t say anything, but Felix doesn’t think he disagrees.
“Only Jeongin can tell us what he needs,” Chan continues. “Whatever it is, we’ll give it to him. This is about him. Not us. I want you to put your own feelings aside for now, and focus on him.”
Changbin sighs, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t mean I wouldn’t do that. Of course I’m putting him first.”
“Good.”
“Even if he needs space,” Minho speaks up, and they all look at him. “He might need time to process. When he wakes, don’t coddle him if he doesn’t want it.” He meets everyone’s eyes until they nod back, some more resigned than others.
Felix shifts a little closer to the couch so he can put a hand on Jeongin’s ankle. Chan is right. This was a violation of Jeongin’s autonomy in the worst possible way, and none of them know what it will do to him. He’s worried. For now, Jeongin is sleeping and he looks fine, but when he wakes… yeah. Felix can’t help but worry.
*
At dinner a few hours later, Felix is still worried. He’s not the only one—everyone at the table looks ready to wrap Jeongin up in blankets and scents the moment he asks. But Jeongin claims he’s fine. Has been insisting they treat him like normal from the moment he woke up.
It had become clear immediately that Minho knew Jeongin well. Jeongin had let everyone scent him again, but after that he’d drawn away from the cuddle pile.
“How are you feeling?” Chan asked carefully, one hand still on Jeongin’s arm.
Jeongin rolled his head to get a crick out of his neck. “Better. Way less tired than before.”
“Good. That makes sense, Seungmin said you’d feel better after a nap. That you’d need to sleep off the worst of it and that your pheromone levels would go down after that. Or something.” Chan was hovering, rambling, and Jeongin could tell.
“Hyung, I’m okay,” he said firmly. “I’m sorry for scaring you all.”
“Scaring us?” Hyunjin spluttered. He stepped forward. “Innie, that dick used his—”
“I know,” Jeongin interrupted curtly, shaking off his hand. “I was there.” He took a breath. “And it sucked. But I don’t want you to baby me right now. Please. I need some space.”
Hyunjin looked crestfallen for a moment, but he nodded. “Okay. If that’s what you need.”
“It is.” And with that, Jeongin had disappeared into the bathroom for a shower and then went to his room until Minho called everyone back down for dinner.
Which brought them here. In the chair next to Felix, Jeongin keeps his eyes fixed on his meal, raising his spoon to his mouth almost mechanically. He hasn’t said a word since they all sat down except for a simple “I’m fine” when Seungmin asked how he was feeling. Everyone makes awkward conversation around him, attempting for the normalcy Jeongin claimed he needed, just like Minho had predicted.
And yes, sure. Minho knows Jeongin well.
But right now, Felix knows him better, and he is one hundred percent sure that Jeongin does not need space right now. Felix knows exactly how disorienting the aftermath of Alpha Voice can be. How the body will scream for comfort—he had felt it every time it happened with Kwang-ho, and he hadn’t even had people to seek comfort from. For Jeongin, who knows the safety and warmth of a pack, his instincts must be screaming even louder.
Jeongin doesn’t give into them though. He had earlier, in the bathroom at school. He’d willingly curled up to Chan and Felix then, fully in tune with what his body needed. But it’s like the moment Beomgyu reminded him of how it would look if Chan carried him out of there, he’d shut that part of himself down. It’s that fear again, of letting himself be too omegan around the others and them liking him better that way.
But he needs them.
It’s obvious. In the way Jeongin holds himself, his arms tensed as if he needs to fight his own muscles to keep from reaching out for the others. In the tightness in his jaw that locks away the whine that Felix knows has been building in his throat since they sat down. In his scent. Jeongin is sitting between Felix and Changbin, but he’s closest to Felix, and Felix can smell a hint of the anxiety coursing through him. It’s extremely impressive that he’s managed to keep his pheromones under such a tight lock and key that nobody else has picked up on it.
But he can’t go on like this. As much as Felix wants to respect his decisions, this is a stupid decision that’s going to cause him serious pain if he keeps it up.
He leans in to whisper in Jeongin’s ear. “You need them. Please stop fighting.”
Jeongin stiffens, but he shakes his head.
“They love you, Innie. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Jeongin shakes his head again, harder this time.
Around them, everyone is pretending they’re not watching their interaction, but Jisung has missed the meat on his plate three times now and keeps bringing empty chopsticks to his mouth. Even if they can’t hear what Felix is saying, they’re all keyed in on them.
Felix hesitates. He can’t force him, can he? It’s not really his place.
But when that hint of anxiety in Jeongin’s scent starts to shift to one of genuine distress, he snaps. He can’t stand this any longer. He kept Jeongin’s secret once, and it resulted in this. He refuses to make the same mistake again. He’ll keep as many secrets as Jeongin wants him to, but not ones that will hurt him.
“I’m sorry,” he tells Jeongin, before looking at the others. “Guys?”
They all look up immediately. So does Jeongin, the dullness in his eyes making way for alarm.
Felix takes a deep breath. “If Innie wants you all to take care of him tonight, wants you to hold him close and treat him like the most precious omega in the world—” Jeongin makes a sound of protest, but Felix ignores him, “—but he wants his space and independence back tomorrow. Would you be disappointed?”
It’s silent for three long seconds before Chan asks, “Disappointed?” He sounds bewildered, looking between Felix and Jeongin.
Felix nods. “Yeah. Would you secretly love seeing him soft and cuddly like a ‘proper’ omega, and be disappointed if he’s back to normal tomorrow?”
“What?” Jisung’s mouth drops open. “Of course not.”
Hyunjin leans forward. “Innie, we love you. We like that you’re fierce and bad-ass.”
There’s a chorus of agreements all around the table.
“Is that why you’re shutting us out?” Changbin asks. “Because you’re scared we’d start resenting your independence? Not because you actually want space?”
Jeongin starts shaking, and Felix grabs his hand under the table.
“Innie.” Chan’s voice is serious. “Do you want us close right now?”
Let go, Felix begs him silently. Give in, just let go.
“Please,” Jeongin whispers, and bursts into tears.
Felix has never seen them move as quickly as they do then. They’re beside him in a flash, and Minho has Jeongin swept out of his chair and into his arms in less than three seconds.
“It’s okay,” Hyunjin says, holding Jeongin’s cheeks between his hands. “We’ve got you, baby.”
“I’m not weak,” Jeongin gasps through his sobs, “I’m not, I just—”
“This isn’t weakness,” Seungmin says.
Jisung nods. “This is love, Innie. Let us love you.”
“Let us take care of you for tonight,” Changbin says, stroking his hair.
“Let go, jagiya.” Minho brushes a kiss across his forehead.
“We have you,” Chan says, squeezing his hand. “Just let go.”
And Jeongin does. His hold on his pheromones breaks, and the room fills with the scent of fear, of pain, of intense distress. The whimper he’d been holding back finally escapes him, and he buries his face in Minho’s shirt. “I was so s-scared,” he cries, shattering all of their hearts.
“I know. I know, baby.” Hyunjin is crying too, but his scent is steady as he nuzzles against Jeongin’s free scent gland.
“I tried to stop, but I c-c-couldn’t move. I was too weak—”
Everyone is making shushing noises, trying to soothe him, but it’s like the dam has burst and everything Jeongin had been bottling up comes pouring out. “And I—and I knelt… and I said—and I felt so dirty. And- and- and pr’fes’r Kim looked like he w-wanted to hit me, an’ I wanted h-him to, b-because I was so gross, an’ he c-called me a whore an’ I was—” Jeongin’s words are nearly unintelligible now, slurring together through hiccups and sobs.
His proclamation launches a series of fierce protests, and they crowd closer around him. The words don’t seem to get through to Jeongin though. He is beyond reasoning right now, completely falling apart into a mess of instincts and tears.
“Den,” Chan says, and it’s an order. “He needs his nest.”
Minho doesn’t need to be told twice. He spins on his heel and marches out of the room, everyone following close behind so Jeongin won’t lose sight of them. The room is empty within seconds.
Felix is still sitting in his chair, everything in him longing to race after them. He wants to be with them. He wants to build Jeongin a nest with all his favourite pillows, wall him in cosy and snug. He wants to join his pack and hold Jeongin close and reassure himself that his youngest packmate is safe.
Except they’re not his packmates. He doesn’t have that kind of claim on any of them, and he certainly has no right to enter their den. He’s relieved that Jeongin is safe and finally letting himself be cared for and yet he feels like crying, his emotions going haywire after the day they’ve had.
Fuck. Chan wasn’t the only one who could use a hug.
He closes his eyes and leans forward, resting his head in his hands. He feels hot tears drip down his wrists.
“Lix?”
He whips his head towards the voice, quickly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Hyung?”
Chan is standing in the doorway, watching him. His face twists, and he reaches out a hand. “Come on.”
Felix stares at him. “But you’re… the den.”
“I’m inviting you into it.”
“But I’m not pack,” Felix says weakly.
“I don’t care. Come on.” When Felix doesn’t respond, Chan steps towards him. “I know Innie wants you there. We all want you there. If you don’t want to, that’s okay. But you are welcome in our den.” He reaches out to brush a stray tear from Felix’s cheek. “Join us?”
His other hand is still in the air, palm up in a silent offer. Felix feels his eyes fill with fresh tears, of gratitude this time, and relief.
He takes Chan’s hand. Lets Chan wipe the new tears from his face, lets him draw him out of his chair, and lets himself be guided up the stairs to the den.
There’s a thrum of hope behind every beat of his heart.
***
Felix wakes up to the sound of a quiet conversation. He’s curled up against a warm body and there’s a hand softly stroking his forearm.
“…for today?” It’s Seungmin’s voice.
“I already did,” Chan replies softly. “I rescheduled our meetings. They weren’t important.”
“I thought you were meeting with the head producers of HYBE.”
“Like I said. Unimportant,” Chan repeats. “Innie comes first.”
There’s a low chuckle from behind Felix, and he recognises the sound as Changbin. He’s in Changbin’s arms.
“What, you disagree?”
“Nope.” Changbin’s grin is audible in his voice. “Just like seeing you all protective.”
There’s three quiet beeps and Felix doesn’t need to open his eyes to know it’s the pheromone analyser. “He’s fine,” Seungmin says after a second. “Like I told you.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” Chan says. “Felix said his pheromones were five times as high as they were supposed to be, and I—”
“Only his Mod-B reading. It’s what helps the body process Alpha Voice, especially in the aftermath. It’s a good thing. Innie just fought it really hard, so the level spiked high. Not dangerous, just tiring.”
It’s quiet for a moment. “He sounded just like you, in that office,” Chan says then. “You should have seen him, Minnie. He was brilliant. I had no idea he knew so much about all of this.”
“We spent a lot of time with this thing. He was curious, so I taught him.” There’s a smile in Seungmin’s voice. “He’s clever. To not only remember which reading he needed, but know exactly what the level should be in a moment like that? He’d ace an official SNU Med pheromone quiz, I’m sure of it. I’m definitely telling the Kim pack about this. They’re gonna love this.”
Changbin laughs quietly. “I wish I could have seen those people’s faces when he pulled out medical grade hospital equipment like it was nothing.”
Chan huffs. “That definitely stunned them for a second.” He falls quiet and then adds softly, “I owe Lix everything. If he hadn’t been there yesterday…”
“Then I would have said the same thing Felix did, and had them check both Innie and Baek Ilsung for traces of Alpha Voice. It would have been fine, hyung, the effects remain traceable for hours. He wouldn’t have gotten away with this.”
“No,” Chan says, “That’s not what I meant. If Lix hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t even have made it to SNU. I…” He takes a breath. “I was panicking. I was so out of it, I nearly ran a red light before Felix yelled at me. He had to scream at me before I realised what I was doing and hit the brakes. There were cars coming from the right, I would have… I would have fucking killed us both if he hadn’t snapped me out of it.”
“Jesus,” Changbin whispers. “Chan-ah…”
“I know,” Chan says. “I know. I’ve felt instincts before, but never like that. I’ve never lost it like that. We came to a stop in front of that red light and he was shaking, Bin. Jeongin was nearly hysterical on the other end of the line because of our screaming, and Lix looked like he was going to throw up. I wanted to fucking kick myself. I nearly did the same thing that guy who killed his family did because I couldn’t keep my shit together.”
Felix is starting to feel guilty about eavesdropping like this. At first he’d just been comfortable, content to listen to their voices, but then the conversation shifted to this and he can’t just lie here and pretend anymore.
“But you didn’t,” he says, opening his eyes.
Chan’s eyes fly to his immediately, troubled and guilt-ridden. “Felix.” He’s lying across from them, Jeongin still in his arms. Seungmin is sitting cross-legged next to them.
“I’m fine. You listened to me. Nothing happened.”
“I could have—”
“But you didn’t,” Felix repeats. Yes, it had scared him, scared him badly. For a second, he’d heard the crash and screech of metal and the sound of his sisters screaming. But Chan hadn’t been drunk. He hadn’t been careless on purpose, he’d been panicking, and most importantly, he’d listened to Felix. He hadn’t even lashed out at him in his haze, he’d stopped. He’d felt terrible the moment he realised what he’d almost done. Felix doesn’t want him to beat himself up over something that didn’t happen. “Hyung. You were stressed. We were all stressed. You already told me it won’t happen again. It’s okay.”
Chan doesn’t say anything for a minute, but then releases a long breath and nods, relenting. “I’m still sorry,” he says. “I want you to know that I’m not just dismissing this. I won’t get behind the wheel again without calming down first.”
His face is grave, the words like a vow. It’s not the first vow Felix has gotten from Chan, and something tells him it won’t be the last. But Chan hasn’t broken a single one, and Felix knows he won’t break this one either. He smiles and nods back at Chan, and then shifts his attention to Jeongin. He’s still out, his face a little puffy from crying so hard last night, but he looks peaceful. One of his hands is curled loosely into the fabric of Seungmin’s sweatpants.
Someone has opened the curtains and sunlight is falling in through one of the windows, allowing Felix to take in the room by the light of day. The den is cosy, with a pretty wooden accent wall behind the headboard and soft orange lighting along the walls. There are a few bookshelves and décor pieces, but most of the room is taken up by the bed. He thought his bed in the guestroom was big, but it is nothing compared to the monstrosity they’ve set up in this room.
Last night, he’d been a little too preoccupied to fully take in the space. When they’d reached the room, Jeongin’s distressed keening had filled their ears the moment Chan opened the door, and Chan had made a beeline for the bed immediately. Felix had hesitated by the door. Chan had said he was welcome, but…
Hyunjin looked over his shoulder. “Oh, you brought him.” His voice was filled with relief. “D’you see that, Innie? Lixie is here.”
It was clear that Jeongin was not seeing anything, with the way he was nearly fully covered by Minho and Jisung, but his keening quietened as Chan leaned in to press a kiss to his temple.
Hyunjin held out his hand in invitation, and Felix went to him as if pulled by a string. He stopped by the edge of the nest. This was Jeongin’s space, and he wouldn’t just enter uninvited. But the moment Jeongin’s eyes found his, he reached out his hands. He was clearly already deep into subspace, eyes wide and glossy. “Lix,” he sniffed.
Felix stopped thinking and practically launched himself onto the bed to get closer. He grabbed Jeongin’s hands, tangling their fingers together. “Hey, Innie. I’m here.”
At that moment, a pillow fell down from a pile near Jeongin’s head, and Felix blinked, actually looking at the nest for the first time. It was definitely nest-shaped, but it was… a mess. Haphazardly stacked blankets, pillows and clothes littered the space, nothing like Jeongin’s usual carefully layered build. Felix reached out and trailed a hand across a ribbed pillow that he’d never seen Jeongin use before. And sure, he’d never been in the den before, but Jeongin didn’t even like ribbed fabrics.
“Here’s more pillows.” He looked up to see Changbin exit from a large walk-in closet, his arms full of pillows that he dumped onto the bed before spreading them out clumsily.
“I thought these were his special pillows,” Seungmin said from behind him. “Do you want these green ones, Innie?”
He held up more ribbed pillows, and Jeongin whined. Changbin reached out to place a rolled up blanket near his head, and Felix slapped his hand away before he even knew what he was doing.
His eyes widened. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean— Just, not there.”
Changbin didn’t look offended, merely turning to Felix with pleading eyes. “Please build him a nest,” he begged. “We washed the sheets today, and he hasn’t had time to rebuild it. He doesn’t want to let go of hyung, but he needs a nest, and Minnie and I have no idea what we’re doing.”
For a second, Felix hesitated. He’d never built a nest on his own, Jeongin had always helped. What if he tried, and he made Jeongin’s panic worse?
Then his eyes fell on Jeongin’s tear-streaked face, and his resolve hardened. Jeongin said Felix was good at building nests. And right now, Jeongin needed him. He snapped into action. “High or low nest, Innie?”
“High,” Jeongin sniffed. “Please.”
“Do you want scents on every side, or just near your head?”
“All ’round,” Jeongin mumbled.
Felix squeezed his hand. “I’ll build you the best high nest ever.” He turned to the pile of materials and after a moment’s contemplation, shoved everything off the bed. He would need to start from scratch. At least Jeongin was already lying on a few soft blankets and Felix wouldn’t need to move him. He stepped off the bed to sort through the blankets and pillows. It looked like Seungmin and Changbin had mixed up decorative pillows with nesting materials, and he tossed out everything with coarse fabrics or hard buttons or zippers.
He threw a pile of soft blankets onto the bed. “Can you all scent these?”
If he had any thought beyond getting Jeongin the nest he needed, he’d have felt embarrassed about the way he was completely taking over their den not even two minutes after being granted entrance. Nobody protested though, and he even thought he caught a hint of relief on some of their faces at being given a task they could actually do to help.
Felix stepped into the closet Changbin had come out of earlier. It was massive and nearly entirely dedicated to clothes, but on the right were shelves stacked high with soft materials and the blocky pillows he’d need to build Jeongin a high nest. He wasn’t surprised Jeongin had asked for one. It would have been his first choice too. It felt nice to be properly walled in like that, especially in moments of distress like these.
Felix started gathering pillows, marvelling at the sheer number of them. Back in Australia, he had built nests with his sisters sometimes, just for fun. But Felix had still been a child, and there hadn’t been a need for proper nesting pillows. They had made do with couch cushions and unzipped sleeping bags. They had never had these kind of materials. This closet was every omega’s dream.
“Can I help?” Seungmin asked from behind him.
“Yeah.” Felix nodded to the block pillows. “I need all of these.”
With Seungmin’s help, they got everything Felix needed to the bed, and he started building. He took his time, making sure everything was straight and organised. He made the walls highest near the headboard, and then let the slides gradually slope down so people could exit from the end of the bed. In between layers of pillows, he added scented blankets and clothes like mortar, slowly building a wall of scents.
Jeongin’s eyes trailed him as he worked, and he relaxed further with every layer Felix added. He was no longer crying, soothed by the scents of his packmates and their gentle hands on his skin and in his hair. They were murmuring softly to him, calming him down further.
“Look at that, Innie. The prettiest nest, all for you.” Hyunjin brushed a kiss against Jeongin’s wrist gland.
“There,” Felix said, straightening a few final pillows and sitting back on his heels. He’d never felt as satisfied building a nest before. There was something about providing for another omega, for Jeongin, that settled something deep inside him.
He took one of the remaining pillows that had everyone’s scents on it, rubbed it across his neck to add his own scent, and moved across the bed back to Jeongin. Gently, he lifted Jeongin’s head to replace the pillow he was currently lying on with the freshly scented one. The moment Jeongin’s head sank into it, he went limp, breathing in and rubbing his cheek against it for comfort.
It took barely a minute for him to crash, wrapped up safely in Jisung and Minho’s arms. Chan drew a blanket over them and Felix watched Jeongin’s face relax into sleep. He startled briefly when arms encircled him from behind.
“Thank you,” Changbin muttered. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Felix leaned back into him, only noticing now how tired he was. It wasn’t even that late, but it had been a long day. This was not the first day he’d gone without naps, but it was certainly the most stressful one. He yawned, and Changbin pulled him down into the blankets with a chuckle.
“Sleep, Lix-ah. I’ve got you.”
And surrounded by everyone’s scents, in the best nest he’d ever built, Felix had curled himself against Changbin’s chest and followed Jeongin into sleep.
And apparently Changbin hadn’t let him go all night, because it’s morning now and he’s still there, one of his arms still slung over his waist. Felix goes to sit up and Changbin obligingly raises his arm so Felix can wriggle out from under the blankets and shift closer to Jeongin.
“Did he sleep okay?”
Seungmin brushes a lock of hair from Jeongin’s forehead. “He had a nightmare earlier. But we managed to soothe him back to sleep before it could wake him up.”
Felix’s heart clenches in sympathy.
“We’re all staying in today,” Chan says. “If he wakes up and he wants space, that’s fine. But until then, we’re keeping him close.”
“I can’t believe he thought we would take away his freedom,” Changbin mutters.
“He didn’t.” Felix hooks his pinky finger with Jeongin’s. “He knew you wouldn’t. He was just scared he’d find out you secretly liked him better soft, and that he’d instinctively change his behaviour to make you happy. It wasn’t you he was scared of, it was… himself, I guess? Or just what might happen.” When Seungmin opens his mouth to ask more, Felix shakes his head. “You should talk to him about it, not me. I’ve already said way more than I should. Hell, I promised him I wouldn’t say anything at all, and I threw that completely out the window last night. I feel bad enough about that.”
“Don’t,” Jeongin murmurs, and Felix jumps. The omega opens his eyes and smiles, hooking his pinky tighter around Felix’s. “I was spiralling and I would never have gotten the words out. I needed that. I was supposed to talk to them anyway. I’m not mad.”
“Innie.” Felix slumps in relief and intertwines their fingers properly. He knew Jeongin needed it and he didn’t regret his actions, per se. He’d do it again. But he’d still broken a promise, and he did worry how Jeongin would react once he woke up and could think clearly again. He’d braced himself for anger, so Jeongin’s easy acceptance is a pleasant surprise.
“Jeonginnie,” Chan breathes, relieved. “Hey.”
Jeongin rolls his head to look back at him, still smiling. “Hi. What time is it?”
“Around eight thirty. How are you feeling?”
Jeongin stretches himself like a cat, spine arching, before relaxing back into Chan. “Better.” When he sees their expressions, he huffs. “No, I mean it this time. My head was a mess last night, everything felt wrong. I felt wrong, I felt so… unsafe. But I feel better now. Settled. I guess having you all here really helped, and this nest.” He breaks off to gesture at it, smiling.
“Thank god for Felix,” Seungmin mutters. “We were just distressing you further and Binnie-hyung looked ready to tear his hair out by the time Lix took over.”
Jeongin frowns, thinking back. “Did you try to use the ugly green throw pillows my aunt gave us?”
Seungmin sighs. “So that’s where we went wrong.”
Changbin stares at him. “Why were they even in the closet? If we’d known, we would have—”
Chan snorts. “Don’t pretend like you’d have been able to build this even if you’d known about the pillows.”
“It smells so good,” Jeongin says happily, trailing a hand across one side of the nest. He looks to Felix. “You added your own scent?”
“I—yes.” Felix blushes. “It’s just that you seemed to want me here, so I thought—”
“No, I did. I do. It’s perfect, Lixie. Thank you.” Jeongin rolls over. “Man, I’m starving.”
“The others are making breakfast,” Seungmin says. “They’ll be back soon.”
Jeongin shoots up, alarmed. “What, they want to bring it up? No. No, I’m not letting anyone ruin me and Lix’s nest.” He scoots down the mattress to the foot of the bed and steps down. “We’re eating downstairs.”
“We didn’t want to assume you’d be okay leaving the nest.” Chan looks at him, suddenly serious. “Are you? There’s no wrong answer, but I need you to be honest.”
Jeongin is quiet for a second, but he meets his gaze. “I’m okay leaving the nest,” he says finally.
The moment of hesitation does not escape Chan’s notice. “Jeongin-ah.”
“I am,” Jeongin insists. He swallows. “But I think I’d like to have you close today. If that’s… if that’s okay.”
Chan smiles at him. “Yes love, we’ll stay close.”
“But I won’t want that every day from now on,” Jeongin says, unable to hold back the warning. Felix can see the nervous twitch of his fingers.
“Good.” Changbin slides off the bed and pats Jeongin’s butt, a grin on his face. “I need you to put hyung in his place every now and then. We need our I.N-nie fiery and sharp, or I dread what will become of this pack.”
“Yah,” Chan says, throwing a balled up sock in Changbin’s direction. The beta bats it away and it hits Seungmin in the face, who splutters indignantly.
Jeongin chokes on a laugh, and Changbin’s grin softens into something more tender. “You know we don’t care, right? If you want cuddles, say the word. If you don’t, that’s fine. We want you to be you, however you want to be. Whatever makes you happy. That’s all we need.”
Jeongin releases a long breath and wraps his arms around Changbin’s middle, closing his eyes. Changbin presses a kiss into his hair.
“Most of me knows that,” Jeongin mutters into his shoulder. “Really. I do trust you. It’s just this stupid little voice that I can’t…” He sighs. “Keep telling me. I’ll get there.”
“We’ll add it to the pack calendar in the kitchen,” Chan says, stepping out of bed and brushing a kiss to Jeongin’s crown. “New daily task. ‘Tell Innie We Love Him, Cuddly or Not’.”
“That’s a terrible task name,” Changbin tells him. “I thought you were a lyricist.”
Chan rolls his eyes. “What did you want, rhyme and a rap beat? I just woke up. Ask Hannie to come up with something poetic.”
Changbin tilts his head. “Well, if we add a—”
“No,” Seungmin tells him. “No songwriting before breakfast. Come on,” he says to Felix, grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the nest. “If we let them get into this, we’ll be here all day.”
*
They end up spending the day in the garden.
The pack had asked Jeongin seriously if he wanted to stay inside today, but he’d vehemently declined.
“I don’t need that,” he’d said. “I want you close, but I don’t want to hide from the world.”
Nobody mentions Ilsung. The dean had emailed Chan last night that Ilsung had been expelled, and that he would call on Sunday with more information. They inform Jeongin of this, but Jeongin only gives a short nod, and it’s clear that he’s not ready to talk about it. That’s okay. If what Jeongin needs right now is a relaxing day in the garden, then that is what he’ll get. They’ve got more than enough time to discuss everything later.
And so that afternoon, Felix finds himself stretched out on the swing bed in the garden, swaying gently in the breeze. He’s lying on his back, one hand under his head and the other resting in Jeongin’s hair where the omega’s head is pillowed on Felix’s stomach. They built another nest here, this one simpler, since they’ll have to take it down by the end of the day. Beside them, Hyunjin is sitting cross-legged, weaving a flower crown. They’re quiet, listening to the sounds around them. Changbin and Chan are playing soccer over by the apple tree, and the rhythmic sound of the ball and their occasional laughter drifts over on the breeze. A little closer by, Minho and Seungmin are working in the vegetable patch, and Felix can hear them bickering.
“Yah, Kim Seungmin,” Minho says, voice rising. “Has your face met this bag of fertiliser yet? Because push that watering can away from me one more time and I’ll introduce you.”
Seungmin giggles and there’s a scuffle as he presumably darts out of Minho’s reach. Minho huffs and Felix smiles to himself. This childish playful side of Seungmin is one he hadn’t even known existed until he started recovering from his drop and the danger of him slipping back into it passed. Seungmin is still serious and quiet when the situation calls for it, but he’s nowhere near as tense. It’s nice to see these moments where he’s relaxed and enjoying himself.
“Scoot over,” Jisung says from beside them, and Felix lifts his head to see him standing next to the swing.
“What? Nooo,” Hyunjin whines. “You’ll crush my flowers.”
“I have snacks.”
Hyunjin’s face brightens. “My flowers will survive. Can he come in?”
This last question is directed at Felix and Jeongin. It’s their nest.
“Of course,” Felix says immediately, smiling at Jisung.
Jeongin opens one eye. “What snacks did you bring?”
Jisung grins. “Lixie’s vanilla cookies. Give me some credit.”
“Access granted,” Jeongin says, turning his face into Felix’s stomach. He inhales deeply, makes a pleased sound in the back of his throat and then sits up, yawning. Felix’s cheeks colour, but he focuses on shifting backwards so there’s room for Jisung.
“I have juice too,” Jisung says as he places a tray in the middle of the nest.
“Oh, thank god. I’m so thirsty.” Jeongin grabs the pitcher and one of the glasses, only to nearly spill the whole thing down Hyunjin’s chest as Jisung climbs into the nest and causes the swing to sway wildly.
“Watch out!” Hyunjin says, leaning forward to steady the pitcher. “You’re not ruining another one of my shirts like this. This is silk.”
Jeongin rolls his eyes. “Considering the last time it happened it got you me, I don’t think you have a right to complain.”
“He’s got you there, Jinnie,” Jisung says, pressing a kiss to Jeongin’s cheek. “I’d let Innie spill a thousand coffees on you if it meant he’d join our pack.”
“What?” Felix asks. He can sense there’s a story there.
Hyunjin perks up. “Oh, he never told you how we met?”
“Here we go,” Jeongin sighs, handing Felix a glass of juice.
“So here I was,” Hyunjin starts, shifting into a more comfortable position. The fact that he’s put down his flower crown tells Felix exactly what kind of story they’re in for, and he grins in anticipation. “Walking across campus on a beautiful Tuesday morning, heading to my first Oriental Painting class, enjoying the warm sunshine—”
“It was winter and like four degrees,” Jeongin says.
“—looking stunning in my brand new cashmere cardigan. Changbinnie had dropped me off and I was early and everything—”
“You were fifteen minutes late.”
“—and I was excited for this class. I just knew it was going to be a good day. And then!”
“I crashed into him.”
“He crashed into m- hey! I’m telling the story.” Hyunjin pouts, looking so disappointed that Felix laughs out loud. Jeongin chuckles too, but makes a show of taking a big bite out of one of the cookies to indicate he’ll stop interrupting.
“So yes. He crashed straight into me and spilled an entire iced americano down my cardigan and my pants. And as if that wasn’t enough, he also smacked me in the face with his law book.”
Felix laughs harder and looks at Jeongin. “You didn’t.”
“It was an accident,” Jeongin grumbles. “I tripped and I was just trying to catch my balance.”
“You got him good though,” Jisung pipes up. “He had a black eye for like a week. We all thought he’d gotten in a fight when he got home, Changbin-hyung was ready to punch someone. And Jinnie just went, ‘I met an angel. I’ve been blessed.’ We almost took him to the hospital to check for concussion.”
Hyunjin frowns, remembering. “Oh, yes. Minho-hyung was particularly insistent.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re an idiot.” Jeongin takes another cookie. “Unfortunately, I didn’t know that at the time, and I brought him back to the dorms so he could borrow some of my clothes.”
“You left me outside, soaked in coffee and half-blind because my eye was swelling shut.”
“Of course I did. The omega dorms were off-limits for alphas. And even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have invited you into me and Gyu’s room, guilt or not. Giving you my clothes was bad enough.”
“You shared a room with Beomgyu?” Felix asks.
“Yeah, for our first year. After that I moved in with the pack.”
“We met in like, the first month of classes,” Hyunjin tells Felix. “And it took us a full year to win him over. He was relentless, Felixie. Viciously sharp-tongued. Every compliment we gave him, he practically spat back in our faces.” His eyes sparkle. “We all fell for him before the month was out.”
It took a long time before I let them court me, Jeongin had said. Considering everything Jeongin told him about the reasons he’d come to Seoul, Felix can picture it.
“For a long time I thought you were just playing with me,” Jeongin says. “Looking for a challenge. Taming the bratty omega, something like that. It wasn’t until that night at the club that I realised you were serious.”
Felix leans forward to take a cookie and makes an inquisitive sound. “What club?”
“When the first semester ended, we went clubbing, me and Beomgyu and some of the other first-years. Honestly probably the stupidest thing we ever did, but we just... We’d all passed our exams and we wanted to celebrate, you know? And we were with a group, we thought we’d be fine. So we went to this club in Itaewon.” Jisung shuffles up behind Jeongin, who settles back against his chest with a satisfied little hum. “And it was fun, good music, good drinks, me and Gyu danced a lot. And then there was this alpha.”
Felix can see where the story is going. “Oh no.”
Jeongin pulls a face. “Yeah, exactly. She was like, demanding to step in and dance with me. And Gyu kept telling her to fuck off, that he was my boyfriend, anything to get her to leave. But Gyu is an omega too so really all that did was excite her more.”
Hyunjin lets out a little growl. “Fucking bitch.”
“So we decided to leave,” Jeongin continues, lips twitching at Hyunjin’s comment. He seems too amused and light-hearted for this story to end badly, and Felix relaxes again. “Only when we got outside, we realised she’d followed us. So Gyu, being drunk, told her we had an alpha. Multiple alphas, who would be soooo angry when they found out what she was trying to do. And she just laughed at us because we were both clearly unmated.” Jeongin huffs out a little laugh. “And then I, also being very drunk, remembered I still had Hyunjin-hyung’s number from when I lent him my clothes. So I called him.”
Felix feels his lips stretch into a smile. He looks at Hyunjin in anticipation. “He called you?”
Hyunjin is already grinning. “Oh, he called me.” He gestures to Jisung. “It was like, one a.m. The five of us were having a movie night when my phone rang. Innie’s name alone confused me, because just a day earlier he’d ignored me completely while I rambled at him for half an hour. And then I picked up and fucking inhaled a piece of popcorn because he started with, ‘Alpha, alpha, I’m yours, right?’”
Felix bursts into laughter along with Jisung, and even Jeongin giggles.
“It was so funny,” Jisung says. “One moment he was in Minho-hyung’s lap, all relaxed, and the next he was doubled over on the floor, wheezing.”
“It took him so long to get his act together,” Jeongin laughs.
“Can you blame me?” Hyunjin asks. “You just kept going. Kept calling me alpha, kept begging, words slurring, and somehow I was supposed to just instinctively get what you meant?”
Jeongin laughs harder, and Jisung pokes Hyunjin’s leg, the only part of him he can reach. “There were definitely some other instincts that got triggered.”
“Like you would have done any better,” Hyunjin grumbles. “He was practically moaning in my ear, Ji.” He looks back to Felix. “And then, just as I was trying to figure out if he was in subspace, he said, ‘Alpha, I’m putting you on speaker. Tell her me and Gyu are yours.’”
“That changed things really quickly,” Jisung says. “He went like, dead serious as soon as he realised what the call was about. I’ve never seen him shift moods that fast. He put the phone on speaker and gestured for Channie-hyung to start recording.”
“He was amazing,” Jeongin says. “For as much as you hate lying, you’re a brilliant actor.”
“I grew up playing a part,” Hyunjin says. “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I can’t do it when it counts.”
“He went all pet names and possessive alpha, immediately. The first thing he asked was where we were. And when Gyu called for our ‘other alphas’, Minho-hyung caught on right away and joined in.”
“We all did,” Jisung adds. “Even Binnie-hyung, because it’s not like the girl would have been able to tell from his voice. We also got in the car like, immediately.”
“They didn’t technically need to,” Jeongin says, “Because as soon as there were five angry voices on the other end of the line, the girl slunk off. If it had been one alpha she probably would have stayed, but with five people who’d be out for revenge, it wasn’t worth the effort.” He smiles, remembering. “Gyu and I burst into laughter the moment she was out of sight. In our drunken haze it was the best ruse we’d ever pulled off, and we were so proud of ourselves.”
“They weren’t even paying attention to the phone anymore.” Hyunjin rolls his eyes. “We were practically screaming at them to tell us what was happening, but nothing aside from some muffled sounds and voices.”
“I think I slipped it back into my pocket?” Jeongin says. “I don’t remember. That’s where my memory gets hazy.”
“You did,” Jisung tells him. “The moment you mentioned the club we jumped into a car, and the hyungs were plotting murder the entire way there. They’d come up with three different ways to find you and four murder-and-escape plans by the time we got there. I’m glad Channie-hyung deleted that recording afterwards, because if the police ever got their hands on it, we would have been screwed.”
“And then we get to the club,” Hyunjin continues, really getting into it now, “And there they are on the curb, sharing a bowl of tteokbokki they got from a place on the other side of the road, just giggling. I rush over to check on them, and Innie just goes, ‘Hyung! What are you doing here?’”
Felix laughs.
“His entire face lit up as soon as he saw us though,” Jisung adds. “He was adorable, all tipsy flushed cheeks and toothy smile.”
Jeongin drops his chin to his chest, embarrassed. “Stop,” he whines.
“What did you do?” Felix asks Hyunjin.
“Once we made sure they were safe and nobody had touched them, we offered to call them a taxi and wait with them until it arrived. And Innie,” Hyunjin raises his eyes to the sky as if asking for strength, “All pouty and seductive, batting those puppy eyes, he goes, ‘I want to go home with you.’”
“Now I know you’ve all told me that’s what I said,” Jeongin says, “But what I meant was ‘drive us back to our dorm, in your car’. That should have been self-explanatory.”
“We figured that was what you meant,” Jisung says. “He’s just being dramatic.” He pats Jeongin consolingly on the shoulder and looks back to Felix. “So we drove them back to campus and even had the brains to remember it might look weird if they were delivered back to the omega dorm by four alphas, so we had Changbin-hyung do it.”
“Innie was so clingy,” Hyunjin grins. “The whole way back he was practically in Minho-hyung’s lap, and Binnie said that when he dropped them off, he got three hugs.”
Jeongin pulls a face. “Yeah, I don’t remember any of that.”
“You were pretty wasted,” Jisung laughs. “Cute though. Very happy.”
“Well I wasn’t happy the next morning, when I woke up with the mother of all hangovers and texts from four alphas and a beta asking me how I was doing after last night. If I hadn’t so clearly smelled just like myself and Gyu, I would have puked for sure. But Gyu remembered more of the night than I did, and we puzzled it together. I was mortified when I realised what I’d done.”
“He didn’t text us back for like, two weeks,” Jisung says. “If Jinnie hadn’t seen him on campus we would have thought he’d died.”
“I was embarrassed! And also…” Jeongin sighs. “I was forced to do some self-reflection. Because I’d been telling myself they just wanted an omega to play with, that they were just really into the game instead of me. But if that were the case, they had the perfect opportunity that night, and all they did was take care of me and of Gyu and drive us home. Even their texts afterwards were polite, not demanding or gross at all.” He shakes his head. “So yeah, I had to admit that I was wrong. That they might actually like me.”
“And then you freaked out,” Jisung chuckles.
Jeongin huffs. “Yes. And then I freaked out. Because I’d come to SNU for me, for my freedom, not to get shackled down by a pack of five within the first year I got there.”
“You must have liked them back though,” Felix says. “You wouldn’t have freaked out if it meant nothing, right?”
Hyunjin points at him. “See! He gets it!”
“Well, it took me another month to figure that out,” Jeongin says. “In the end it was Gyu who talked some sense into me.”
“We were sort of friends by that point though?” Jisung muses. “We were talking more, and we had coffee sometimes. But that was all there was to it, even if we were hopeful because of the shift.”
“And then he asked if we could meet up, all of us. We were half convinced he was going to tell us to get lost.” Hyunjin laughs. “But instead he sat us down to lecture us about omega rights and how he wouldn’t ever bow down to any alpha who thought they were better than him.”
Jisung chuckles. “We were so confused, until by the end of it he suddenly went all quiet and timid and was like, ‘So I guess if… if you can respect that, then… thenyoucancourtme.’”
Felix grins at the redness in Jeongin’s cheeks. “That’s so you.”
Hyunjin is grinning too. “Right?”
“It was not a smooth courtship,” Jeongin admits. “I was very hesitant to place my trust in their hands, and I almost broke it off so many times.”
“You were scared,” Jisung says, squeezing his waist. “We all understood that.”
“So we took it at Innie’s tragic snail’s pace,” Hyunjin sighs, and Jeongin smacks him on the thigh. He laughs. “Kidding. We got there, didn’t we? None of us minded, I.N-nie. We loved courting you.”
“Looking back, it was kind of nice,” Jeongin allows. “At the time I was a little busy freaking out every other day. But you were all very attentive. Gyu said I was never allowed to break it off, if only for the food Minho-hyung was making me every day.”
Felix laughs. He takes another bite of his cookie and focuses hard on the taste in order to keep his scent steady and free from longing. He wants what Jeongin is describing. He wants to be courted by them more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.
If you’re not mated by Chuseok, child, I’ll eat my hat.
He’d tried hard to suppress the hope Aera’s words had kindled, but with the way they keep treating him… Minho hadn’t denied being his alpha, and Chan had called him pack in public. Not once, but twice. They’d invited Felix into their den, and looked happy to have him there.
Maybe it isn’t completely unreasonable to hope?
His eyes drift to where Hyunjin’s hand is resting on his calf, his alpha pack ring gleaming in the sunlight. He doesn’t even seem to realise where his hand is. Contemplatively, Felix places his own hand on top of it, and Hyunjin doesn’t even blink before flipping his palm and intertwining their fingers. Felix smiles. Maybe it isn’t unreasonable at all.
There’s a shout from the vegetable patch, and Felix looks up to see Chan’s eyes widen in shock as he realises he shot the ball right into Minho’s cauliflowers. Minho gives chase immediately, eyes flashing murder, and Felix lets himself be distracted from his thoughts by Changbin’s delighted cackles as Chan takes off across the field with an alarmed yelp.
He smiles, warmth spreading through him. There’s no use thinking about it now. For now, he is here, and he’s got their friendship. And maybe... maybe he can let himself dream of more.
Notes:
The pack, upon reaching the den after marching out of the dining room: “??? Where’s Felix?? What do you mean our eighth packmate didn’t just follow us into our den uninvited what’s wrong with him- hyung GO GET HIM?!”
This chapter was a comfort chapter, because both we and Innie sorely needed one. In the next chapter: The dean calls. Jeongin tries to forget about what happened and discovers that that doesn’t work quite as well as he would like. Felix demands to be added to the cleaning schedule, and he and Seungmin clean a bathroom. (some of these events may be more important than others)
On Wednesday, you’ll get a bonus scene of Jeongin calling Hyunjin during his night out (Hyunjin’s POV). Believe it or not, that’s the first bonus scene I ever wrote for this story, before I even started posting it. I think it’s a fun one.
After that, like I said, I’m gonna take a little break to focus on writing (and also, you know, life, but writing is more fun). I don’t have a release date for the next chapter, but know that I’m working on it! (as well as like, the ten thousand bonus scenes I want to write lol). I'll probably be back in the bonus scenes before I get to Chapter 21, so make sure to subscribe there if you're interested and don't want to miss an update!
Little update (21 Feb): I am working hard on the main story, but in the meantime I’ve also started posting Jeongin’s prequel bonus chapters (how he met and joined the pack). For anyone interested, they can be found here.
Chapter 21
Notes:
HELLO! I’ve missed you!
I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I’m (for now, anyway) not going back to a regular update schedule and will be releasing chapters as I finish them. The good news is that this is because I realised I accidentally rushed through some things in my first draft, and I have been adding to the story to fix that. So in the end, you’ll get more content <3
That said, let’s get on to this chapter! When I started writing this story I had this rule that chapters should be at least 4k, and yet here I am with this 12k monstrosity that could not be split up in any way, so- enjoy, I guess?
TW: This chapter deals with Jeongin’s emotions about what happened, so keep in mind that references to Ilsung’s actions will be made. Aside from that, the last scene in this chapter gets a little intense. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but for trigger warnings, please see the end notes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It is Sunday when the dean calls. Up until then, nobody had mentioned Ilsung at all. Jeongin hadn’t brought him up, and they have all been taking their cues from him.
The dean calls Chan, of course. They’re all in the living room after dinner when his phone rings. “Bang Chan,” Chan says as he picks up. It only takes a few seconds for his face to darken and he says tightly, “Hold please.” He mutes the call and looks to Jeongin. “It’s the dean. Do you want to take this call, or do you want me to handle this conversation? No judgement either way.”
Jeongin, who’s sitting in between Minho and Seungmin, goes tense. He doesn’t answer for a few seconds but finally admits, “You. But I want to listen.”
Chan nods and puts the phone on speaker. What follows is a brief summary of Friday’s events after they left; the university had indeed called Baek Ilsung in for a blood test, and model student or not, not even he had been able to talk his way out of that one. Both professor Kim and SNU had filed charges, and Ilsung had been expelled immediately. He’d been given the weekend to pack his bags and move out of the dorm, but the dean assures them that starting tomorrow, he will be banned from campus.
The man sounds a lot more amiable and apologetic than he did on Friday, and Minho takes to ridiculing him by imitating everything he says in an annoying little voice, causing Jeongin to smile despite his tension. Chan, who has been politely hm-ing and yes-ing to what the dean is saying, sends Minho a dry look, but he smells amused.
It’s only when the dean apologises to Chan instead of Jeongin that Chan snaps and lets loose. “Are you serious?” he spits. “I can tell your so-called justice is so blind you couldn’t see basic human rights if they smacked you in the face, but in case you’ve somehow forgotten, one of your students got assaulted and you blamed him. It’s Jeongin who needs an apology from you, not me.”
Jisung’s mouth has dropped open and Hyunjin and Changbin are grinning widely. Felix thinks this outburst probably won’t make the dean like Jeongin any better, but at that moment, Jeongin doesn’t seem to care very much. He doesn’t even flinch at the bluntness of Chan’s words, merely smiles as Chan puts the man in his place.
He does grimace when the dean relents and tells Chan to tell Jeongin—Minho rolls his eyes so hard they nearly fall out of his head—to come find him in his office before class whenever he is ready to go back to school so he can apologise in person.
“Sorry,” Chan says to Jeongin after the call has ended. “That wasn’t quite my intention.”
“It’s fine,” Jeongin sighs. “I’m gonna have to face them anyway.”
“You don’t have to go back yet,” Jisung says. “You can stay home for a bit, take some time off.”
Jeongin shakes his head immediately. “No. I need to go to class.”
“Jeongin-ah,” Minho says, but Jeongin shakes his head again.
“I want to go to class. I just want to go back to normal.”
They’re all quiet for a few seconds, and Felix can see Chan and Minho exchange a glance. Before they can say anything, Changbin asks, “And Ilsung?”
Jeongin tenses up. “What about him?”
“What do you want us to do to him,” Changbin explains. “We’ve been waiting for you to reach a decision, but we need—”
“Nothing,” Jeongin says.
Changbin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Nothing?”
“Yeah. I want to just forget it happened.”
“Jeongin,” Chan says, “I don’t think—”
“I’m not broken,” Jeongin hisses.
“I’m not saying that you are. I know you’re not. But I’m not sure this is the kind of thing you can just ignore, love.”
“I’m not ignoring it,” Jeongin argues. “I’m deciding. He’s been expelled. If SNU and Kim filed charges, it’ll end up on his permanent record. He’s not getting into another university if SNU sent him away. There’s no need for me to do anything else, so we’re not going to.”
Changbin laughs and the sound is sharp. “You’re joking, right? He assaulted you—”
“Yes thank you,” Jeongin says through clenched teeth. “I was there.”
“And you’re just gonna let him walk?”
“He’s already facing consequences—”
“Not fucking enough, and you know it—”
“—so there’s no need for you to—”
“—I want to beat him up—”
“I don’t want you to!” Jeongin yells, stunning Changbin into silence. “I thought this was my choice?”
“It is,” Hyunjin says, “But—”
“Then I’m choosing to drop it,” Jeongin says, looking everyone in the eye. “And I’d like all of you to respect that choice, the way you promised me when we started courting.”
A new silence falls, and Felix lets out a breath. As much as he knows they would all like to keep arguing, he knows Jeongin has them there. The last thing the pack wants to do right now is take even more autonomy away from him, or break a promise they made him. He’s not surprised, therefore, when after a minute Chan sighs and says, “Alright. If that’s what you want.”
Jeongin nods. “It is.”
“I.N-ah,” Changbin tries one last time, but Jeongin glares at him and snaps, “No. Drop it.”
Changbin presses his lips together into a thin line, clearly displeased, but doesn’t speak up again.
Felix feels conflicted. He can see why the pack would want to make sure Ilsung suffers the consequences for what he did, but he also understands Jeongin. He wouldn’t want to confront Kwang-ho again either. The very thought makes him ill. He gets wanting to move on, and unlike him, Jeongin isn’t bound to Ilsung in any way. He can move on.
Theoretically, anyway. Felix hopes, for Jeongin’s sake, that the omega will be able to.
***
On Monday morning, Chan asks Jeongin again if he wants to stay home, but Jeongin is adamant. He’s going to stop by the dean’s office before school, and then go to class, and Ilsung is banned from campus so he is going to be fine. It’s easy to tell that he’s nervous, but he still refuses to let anyone come with him.
“You already rescheduled your meeting once,” he tells Chan over breakfast. “You’re not doing it again.”
“Let me come then,” Minho says. “I can cancel my morning class, and—”
“No. And not you either,” he tells Hyunjin and Seungmin, pointing with his chopsticks. “You have a meeting with the gallery and you have a test.” He sighs when he sees their crestfallen faces. “Look. Ilsung is gone and Gyu said he’d meet me in the parking garage. It’ll suck, but I won’t be alone. I’ll be fine.”
Felix swallows his mouthful of toast. “I’ll go.”
They all look at him.
“I’ll come with you,” he says again, looking at Jeongin. “If you want. I know I’m not pack, and I know you already have Beomgyu, but if you would like to have someone else there, I’d be happy to go. It’s not like I have any meetings.”
Chan releases a breath and his shoulders unclench a little. Still he asks, “You’d be okay with seeing the dean again?”
Felix nods. It hadn’t been comfortable, sitting in the dean’s alpha-saturated office that day, but he had managed, hadn’t he? He’ll be fine. This isn’t about him.
Jeongin doesn’t look away from Felix, but he’s wavering. “But you’ll be stuck there. I can’t drive you back until the end of the day.”
Felix shrugs. “I’ll take the subway. It’ll be good practice, with the scent thing. Or I can stay and come to class with you, if that would make you feel safer.”
“No,” Jeongin says, “No, you don’t have to do that. I’m not nervous about class. I’ll have Gyu. It’s just that meeting with the dean that’s…”
“Then I’ll be there for that. And then I’ll go back home.”
“You really won’t mind?” Jeongin checks, and Felix knows he has him. The relief is audible in his voice.
“Of course not.” He smiles softly, and then lets it spread into something cheekier. “Besides, he said I was good at lawyering. If I impress him again, he might offer me a scholarship.”
Jeongin laughs, and the tension breaks. “You don’t want to become a lawyer.”
Felix grins. “God, no.”
“We have to go,” Changbin tells Chan, pushing his chair back.
Across the table, Jisung groans, thumping his head on the kitchen island. “They’re punishing us for cancelling on them. An eight a.m. meeting on a Monday? That’s barbaric.”
Changbin circles the island and presses a firm kiss against the top of Jeongin’s head before leaning in to scent him. “I love you. Be safe.”
Jeongin leans back into his chest. “Love you too.”
Jisung and Chan get up to follow Changbin’s lead, scenting Jeongin before they leave. When Chan is done, he turns to Felix. “Thank you for going with him. Will you be okay on the subway?”
Felix shrugs again. “Only one way to find out.” Chan’s brow furrows, and Felix huffs. “I was joking, hyung. I’ll be fine.”
But Chan’s expression doesn’t lighten, and before Felix even knows what’s happening, the alpha has leaned in to rub his jaw across Felix’s scent gland. Coffee blossoms around him, and Felix’s eyes widen in surprise before he relaxes into it. He loves Chan’s scent. It’s strong, and safe, and—
“There,” Chan says, pulling back. He smells satisfied. “You next, Bin.”
“Oh, that’s smart.” Jisung perks up as Changbin leans in, catching on. “Like a buffer.”
“It’s a good idea,” Seungmin agrees, getting up as well. One by one, they all scent both Jeongin and Felix. They were probably already going to scent Jeongin, there’s no way they were letting their omega leave the house unscented after what happened on Friday, but the fact that they’re doing the same for Felix, just in case he gets uncomfortable around other people’s scents on public transport, is just really very sweet.
“Thank you,” Felix says when they’re done. His cheeks are warm.
“Anytime,” Chan says. “Text us updates, please. Both of you.”
They promise.
“Or if you need us,” Chan adds. He looks at Jeongin. “Anything you need, I don’t care what we’re doing. Call us.” When Jeongin sighs and promises again, Chan looks at Felix, who smiles and promises a second time too. Chan looks like he wants to say more, but Changbin drags him out of the door before he can come up with another speech.
“We should go too,” Jeongin says with a sigh. “I promised Gyu I’d be early so we could talk first.”
“Okay,” Felix agrees easily.
Jeongin looks at him, amusement dancing in his eyes. “You wanna go like this?”
Felix follows his gaze down to his pyjamas and freezes. “Fuck.” He jumps up and rushes out of the kitchen to get dressed, everyone’s laughter following him down the hall.
*
On the way to SNU, Jeongin’s nerves gradually seep back into his scent, and Felix can’t blame him. To distract him, he asks Jeongin about his friendship with Beomgyu, and learns that they’ve been friends ever since they met on the first day of classes. Jeongin shares some stories of the things they got up to, and Felix likes Beomgyu more with every word Jeongin speaks. He learns that Beomgyu moved out of the dorms a year after Jeongin did and lives with his boyfriends now. He’s not mated yet, but Jeongin is sure it won’t be long. By the time they arrive at SNU, Jeongin’s scent has lightened considerably.
This time, they park in the parking garage instead of haphazardly on the pavement, and Jeongin takes them straight to a spot in the very back. They have barely stepped out of the car when a blur streaks past Felix and launches itself at Jeongin. Felix’s heart shoots to his throat.
“Innie!” says the blur, and Felix’s heart drops back down as he realises who it is.
“Oof.” Jeongin catches himself against the car door. “Gyu.”
Beomgyu releases him. “Well, don’t sound too excited to see me, or anything.”
Jeongin dusts off his clothes. “Why would I, if you’re just here to crush me to death?”
“Leading question. You’re not getting a confession out of me.”
“You’re so lame,” Jeongin snorts, but he’s smiling and he leans in for a proper hug. “Hey.”
“You okay?” Beomgyu asks, his voice softer now.
Jeongin nods, letting him go with a squeeze. “I’m good.”
Beomgyu lets his eyes linger on him for a second and then nods. “In that case, may I congratulate you on Ilsung’s long-awaited expulsion? You succeeded where many of us have failed. Who’s next on your hitlist? Jisul? Sungeun? Seokwon? Oh, I would pay just to spit in Seokwon’s coffee.”
Jeongin huffs. “Shut up, before others hear you.”
“My Jeonginnie, ridding this college of scum, one asshole alpha at a time.”
Jeongin shoves him, and Beomgyu laughs. Jeongin gestures at Felix. “It’s Yongbok-hyung who should get the credit for that anyway, not me.”
“Oh!” Beomgyu’s face lights up as he spots him. “Hi Yongbok-hyung. Or… Lix? I’m still not clear as to which one you actually go by.”
Jeongin stills, a flicker of alarm in his eyes as he looks at Felix. Felix shrugs at him as he rounds the car. “You called me Lix on Friday. When you were out of it.”
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry.” Beomgyu is an omega too, and he’s Jeongin’s best friend. If he were the kind of person that would put Felix in danger, Jeongin would never be friends with him. Felix looks around. There’s the sound of car tires turning noisily on the resin floor farther down in the garage, but they’re alone. “You trust him, right?”
“With my life,” Jeongin says without hesitation. “But you don’t have to—”
“It’s okay,” Felix says. He turns back to Beomgyu. “My real name is Felix. Yongbok is the name I use in public so I won’t be found.”
Beomgyu looks from him to Jeongin and then gasps. “Yang Jeongin, are you harbouring a criminal?”
“What? No!”
Felix laughs. “Oh yeah. A mastermind, me. Wanted for murder in at least three countries.”
Beomgyu grins and pats his arm. “You might not want to say that in a building full of lawyers. Just some friendly advice.”
“Noted.”
“You’re not actually a criminal, right?” Beomgyu narrows his eyes at him, as if he’ll be able to read Felix’s rap sheet on his forehead.
Felix brushes his hair away from his neck to show his faded mating bite. “No. Just running from the outdated law that will take me back to my former alpha.”
Beomgyu’s face falls. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
His eyes drop to the mark on Felix’s neck. “How long has it been since…”
“Almost three years. I was living on my own before I met Innie in January.”
Beomgyu grimaces. “Damn. You must have been young when you were mated.” Then, perhaps recognising that Felix doesn’t really want to talk about this, he tilts his head. “So. You’re not a school friend of Seungmin-hyung’s, are you?”
Felix looks at Jeongin, confused. “Is that what you told him?”
“I had to come up with something. Felix-hyung is actually the one who found me in the alley that night,” Jeongin tells Beomgyu.
Beomgyu looks like he’s having a revelation. “So that was you. You’re the one who—with Minho-hyung?”
Felix smiles, no longer bothered by the mention of that night. “That was me.”
“And then he dropped,” Jeongin continues. “Twice. We got to him that second time and he’s been staying with us ever since.”
Beomgyu is silent for a minute as he rearranges the puzzle pieces in his head. “You know, this makes a lot more sense. I was wondering why you went from desperate to find the pretty omega who rescued you to never mentioning him at all and instead obsessing over Seungmin-hyung’s friend.”
“Gyu!” Jeongin smacks Beomgyu on the arm, and the omega yelps.
“Ow, Jesus, fine. I was kidding.” But he winks at Felix when Jeongin isn’t looking, and Felix feels his cheeks colour at the implication. “You smell healthy now. Are you all healed?”
“Yes,” Felix responds honestly. “I feel better than I have in years.”
“Good.” Beomgyu turns back to Jeongin. “Does that mean I can finally come by again? Because I need to beat Jisung-hyung in Mario Kart and Changbin-hyung still owes me money.”
Jeongin looks at Felix in a silent question, and Felix grins. “Only if I can join in.”
“Deal.”
*
The meeting with the dean only takes about ten minutes. The man frowns briefly when he notices that Jeongin hasn’t brought his pack alpha, or any of his alphas, but he wisely keeps quiet. This time, nervous or not, Felix is sure Jeongin would have snapped at him.
The dean apologises on behalf of SNU and offers Jeongin therapy if he needs it. Jeongin stiffly declines, and Felix gets why. The kind of therapy institutions like this would offer is traditional—the kind where alpha psychologists treat omegas with kid gloves and focus on dropping them into subspace so they are easier to influence and their mental issues easier to ‘fix’.
That’s why a “no” had been on the tip of his tongue when Seonghwa had mentioned therapy to him. The idea of being put into subspace, let alone by a stranger who could do anything they wanted, was enough to make cold sweat break out on his back. But Seonghwa had assured him that it would not be that kind of therapy, and Felix knows he wouldn’t lie about that. He should probably give him a call, after his talk with Chan last Friday.
After his apology, the dean makes a few awkward inquiries into Jeongin’s health, which Jeongin answers as succinctly as he can get away with. Neither of them seem particularly excited to be having this conversation, and it isn’t long before the dean dismisses them and they step back out into the hallway. Jeongin looks relieved. Felix feels relieved too, because while he would have stayed there for Jeongin a lot longer than this, he’s glad to get away from the alpha’s scent.
“Are you sure you’re okay to travel back on your own?” Jeongin checks with Felix as he and Beomgyu walk him out. Since the meeting was so short, they still have about fifteen minutes before the start of their first class.
“Yes,” Felix insists. “I’ll be fine.”
Jeongin watches him for a moment and then, after a surreptitious look to make sure no one is paying attention, draws Felix in for a hug and a quick scenting, adding vanilla to the enticing blend of scents that already hangs around him. “Be careful. Text me when you get back.”
“I will,” Felix promises. “You too. Text us if it’s too much today, okay?”
Jeongin nods and Felix steps back, ignoring Beomgyu’s smirk three feet to their right. With a final wave he heads off in the direction of the nearest subway station.
It’s nearing the end of the morning commute, and Felix stands in a quiet corner of the platform to wait for his train. He’s charged his card with some of the cash from the envelope Chan had given him. He should start looking for a job soon. He suspects he’s going to feel uncomfortable regardless of scents, simply because of his fear of alphas. The dean’s black tea scent hadn’t even been a bad scent, and it had still made his skin crawl. But that’s not scent sensitivity—that’s his own stupid brain, and that’s not a good enough reason to keep putting it off.
He takes out his phone as he steps on the train and takes a seat, keeping his eyes on the people around him in case anyone tries anything. There are a few new messages from Jeongin in the group chat.
Nobody touch the chicken in the fridge or I’ll deep-fry your balls (that means you, Bin-ah)
[9:02 am]
Jeongin: meeting was fine @everyone you can stop worrying
Jeongin: he just apologised and asked some questions
Jeongin: +offered me omega therapy lmao
Jeongin: which of course i gratefully accepted bc i have not been feeling like myself, a properly behaved nice and sweet omega, in so very many years and i am longing for an alpha stranger to fix me (^ ◡ ^)Jisung: you used an emoji!!
Jisung: i
Jisung: i don’t like itHyunjin: no ur right thats fucking terrifying
Jeongin: good
Jeongin: i wanted to claw his eyes outHyunjin: there he is
Hyunjin: theres the ruthless omega we all know and loveJeongin: uwu
Jisung: stoooop *(>д<)*
Felix smiles to himself, content to simply read along. Something feels off though, and he scans the subway car again for any signs of leering faces or anyone who looks like they might approach him. He hates travelling by public transport. It’s why he used to always walk everywhere—well, that and the fact that buses and trains cost money.
It takes him another minute to realise why he feels so weird. It’s because he doesn’t feel unsafe.
No one is staring at his uncollared neck, no one’s scent has spiked in predatory arousal, no one has even looked his way since the moment he got on. It’s bizarre. This has never happened to him before, ever. Travelling by public transport is a nightmare at worst and uncomfortable at best. He has never just been ignored like this. Hell, there’s an unmated alpha sitting right across from him, and he hasn’t looked up from his phone once.
The bewilderment keeps him tense and on edge for another two stops before he realises it’s his scent. Or rather, his lack of scent. The pack scented him so thoroughly this morning that he smells… he smells mated.
It’s a dizzying realisation.
He really does. He smells like pack. A large pack, intimidating enough that not even his lack of collar makes people want to approach him and risk his mates’ ire when they find out. He huddles a little further into his jacket, where the scents are strongest, and breathes.
His phone buzzes.
Jeongin: felix are you on the train yet?
Felix: Yeah I made it!
Chris: Are you doing okay? The scents are not too much?
Felix: No no I’m fine! I don’t even really smell them
I only smell you. I only smell like you. I feel safe, on a public train, and I’m so fucking grateful I could cry. I love you all so much.
He doesn’t write any of that, of course. But he thinks it. And maybe… maybe one day he’ll say it. The thought sends nerves tingling down his spine and he quickly shies away from it, but… maybe. Maybe, one day, he will.
***
Felix doesn’t know if he’s surprised or not when Jeongin is completely fine when he comes home that afternoon. “It went well,” he reassures everyone who checks in on him. “Gyu spent the entire day spreading rumours about why Ilsung got expelled.” His eyes sparkle with amusement. “At least half our debating class now thinks he plagiarised all of his essays since the entrance exam, and the second-years believe he broke into professor Jeon’s office to hack her computer and edit his grades.”
It’s a relief to see him in good spirits after his first day back, and yet, they can’t help but worry. After dinner that night, Minho asks him if there’s anything he wants, and Jeongin merely shrugs. “Just be normal.”
Everyone looks hesitant at that, and for the first time, instead of getting irritated, Jeongin goes quiet. He swallows. “Please. Don’t… don’t treat me like I’m broken, please. I don’t want that.”
Chan reels him in for a tight hug and presses a long kiss to the top of his head. When Jeongin squirms in protest, Chan smiles into his hair. “One protective hug. And then I’ll be normal.” He holds Jeongin for a second and then adds quietly, “We don’t think you are broken, I.N-ah. I said that yesterday, and I meant it. We all know you’re not. We just want you to know that if there’s anything you need, you can come to us. We want you to, and we won’t think any differently of you afterwards. We swear.”
Felix watches everyone nod, and Jeongin slumps against Chan’s chest. “Alright. I will. Thanks.”
He doesn’t need it though, not that night. He’s not hiding his pheromones, and they can all tell that he genuinely is fine. He’s relieved that the day went well, and amused at Beomgyu’s antics, and happy at the taste of Minho’s jjajangmyeon. There’s no fear or anxiety in his scent, and they all relax.
So on Monday, Jeongin is fine. Tuesday, however, is a different story.
Felix is helping Seungmin clean the bathroom, because now that he’s healthy again, he’d demanded to be added to the cleaning schedule. If he’s their… housemate now, or whatever he is, he does not want to be treated like a guest. They’re in the den bathroom, which he can enter now because he is still sleeping in the den. He’d hesitated on Saturday when they went to bed, because they hadn’t talked about the fact that Felix spent the night there and Felix would have understood if it had been an exception for the night just because of Jeongin. But Changbin had merely drawn him into the guestroom, motioned for Felix to grab his pyjamas, and then pulled him up the stairs to the den, all without saying a word. Felix had smiled at him, scent flooding out in relief, and Changbin had patted his head and nudged him into the nest. Nobody had even blinked an eye.
A part of Felix wishes they had. Wishes that they would address it, acknowledge it, talk about it. And yet another part of him hopes that maybe this just means that they all already know. That they’re on the same page, and just… not in a rush. And if that’s the case, then maybe they’re right. With what just happened to Jeongin, maybe now is not the time to change things into something more, and until that time comes, they can all just be content with what they’ve got at the moment. Felix kind of likes that idea. He could still be wrong about their feelings, and half the time he honestly still thinks that he’s got to be delusional because he can’t fathom why they would want him, but… he’s in their den. That has to mean something. Kwang-ho hadn’t even let Felix into his den most of the time. But they did, without an ounce of hesitation.
Surely that means something?
“For someone who was so adamant about being added to the schedule, you’re doing suspiciously little cleaning,” Seungmin comments, startling Felix out of his thoughts.
“Sorry,” he laughs, a little nervously, and quickly dips his hands back into the bucket to rinse out his sponge.
“It’s fine. Pass me that bottle?” Seungmin holds out a hand, and Felix hands him the yellow spray bottle he’s motioning for.
They clean in comfortable silence for the next fifteen minutes. It’s often like that with Seungmin, and it’s nice. They’re the only ones home right now. 3RACHA has another meeting, Minho is at his studio, Hyunjin is with a client, and Jeongin has class until three. He should be back soon though, he promised them that he wouldn’t study in the library for the next few days. He’d masked it as doing the others a favour, but Felix suspects that even if that’s part of the reason, another part of him must prefer the comfort and safety of the house.
He doesn’t expect to be proven right so very viscerally when Jeongin comes back, but the moment the door of the den opens and slams shut again, they know something is wrong.
They both jump up and rush to the bedroom. Jeongin is standing by the foot of the bed, looking tense and pale. They can’t smell him, because his pheromones are reeled in tightly, but in a way, that is just as telling as if he’d let his scent flow out freely.
“Innie?” Felix asks, taking a step forward.
But before he can do anything else, Seungmin has dropped his gloves to the floor and walked forward, pulling Jeongin into a tight hug.
Jeongin stands stiffly for five seconds and then clenches his hands tightly in the back of Seungmin’s shirt. “Hyung.”
Felix’s eyes widen. Jeongin never calls Seungmin hyung. And then Jeongin’s control over his scent breaks, and Felix can smell the anxiety, the lingering panic.
“It’s okay,” Seungmin says, calm and quiet. “Let’s get into the nest, yeah?”
Jeongin nods into Seungmin’s neck, and Seungmin guides them up onto the bed. He does not let Jeongin go, and Jeongin stays close. Seungmin releases a steady stream of pheromones that softens the sharp edges of Jeongin’s vanilla into something gentler.
Seungmin seems to have the situation well in hand, and yet Felix can’t bear to stay away when Jeongin smells like that. He quietly slips onto the bed himself, shuffling up behind them and brushing a hand through Jeongin’s hair. Jeongin shudders into the touch, but doesn’t move away from Seungmin. They sit like that for several long minutes, nobody speaking, while Jeongin’s scent slowly evens out.
“Sorry,” Jeongin says eventually, face still buried in Seungmin’s shoulder.
“Don’t be,” Felix says, and Seungmin hums in agreement.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Seungmin says simply.
“Nothing happened.”
“Today,” Seungmin says pointedly, and Jeongin huffs.
He takes a breath and finally pulls away from Seungmin’s neck, sitting back on his heels. He rubs a frustrated hand down his face. “I just… thought I saw him. Today.”
Seungmin’s eyes sharpen. “Did you?”
“No. It wasn’t him. He’s banned from campus. It was just someone who vaguely looked like him, and I…” He stares down at his knees, shame edging into his scent.
“You panicked,” Felix says quietly.
Jeongin doesn’t answer that, but they all know Felix was just stating the obvious. “Gyu had to…” He clenches his jaw. “Gyu had to fucking pull me into a bathroom to calm me down before anyone saw.”
“When was this?” Seungmin asks. His voice is casual, non-judgemental, and that’s probably the only reason Jeongin admits, “This morning.”
Seungmin hums. “You held out for a long time.”
“I shouldn’t have had to hold out,” Jeongin hisses. “I’m not weak, and he wasn’t even there, it’s stupid.”
Seungmin eyes Felix for a second and then says, “Like it is stupid that Lix panics sometimes?”
“No, that’s different.”
“Why?” Felix asks, not offended by Seungmin’s comment. It’s the point he would have made too, if given a bit more time.
“That’s…” Jeongin looks at him, incredulous. “You can’t seriously compare what happened to me to the hell you went through.”
Felix shrugs. “Maybe not. But I’m not sure it needs a comparison. It’s not like panic is all that rational anyway. If you feel it, you feel it.”
Jeongin doesn’t reply for a minute, and they all go back to silence. Felix continues to brush his fingers through Jeongin’s hair, slow and soothing, until Jeongin says quietly, “The panic isn’t even what bothers me most. It’s that… it’s that I still feel so fucking dirty.”
Seungmin looks at him, head slightly tilted. “You know they were not your actions.”
“I still did them. He said…” Jeongin swallows. Looks away. “He said to make it believable. So the way I made the offer—”
“Was his. Not yours.”
Jeongin shakes his head, and Felix gets why. Kwang-ho’s commands were never sexual, so it’s not quite the same. But he is still intimately familiar with the shame. Because being made to do things you don’t want to do and just having your body move of its own accord… sure, they might not be your actions. But it is still your body that moves. Your lips that speak the words. He leans forward and hooks his chin over Jeongin’s shoulder. “I know,” he says softly. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Did you—when he, to you—” Jeongin doesn’t even get his words out in a full sentence, but Felix knows what he means anyway.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “No escape, right? You’re there, but you’re trapped.”
Jeongin nods jerkily.
“There’s nothing that makes you feel weaker,” Felix continues. “Less human.”
A tear slips down Jeongin’s cheek.
“And the more you struggle, the weaker you get. Until in the end, you’ve got no choice but to give in.” He can feel Jeongin’s shoulders begin to shake, and he wraps his arms around his waist, hugging him close. “And you do what his Voice tells you to, even if everything in you wants to throw up or claw your own skin off. But you can’t do even that, because that’s not part of the command. And then afterwards…” He closes his eyes. “Afterwards, the command is gone. And aside from the physical aftereffects, all you’re left with is your own emotions. The humiliation, the shame. The fear. Because if it happened once, it can happen again, right?”
Jeongin sobs, and Felix feels his own tears trail silently down his cheeks onto Jeongin’s shoulder. He usually tries not to revisit these memories. They hurt. They hurt a lot. But he needs Jeongin to know that he’s not alone. He takes a breath. “It’s the worst feeling in the world. And nothing about it is your fault. Not what you said. Not what you did. Not even the way you did it. It wasn’t you.”
Jeongin falls apart in his arms, and Felix wraps himself tighter around him. As Jeongin twists around so he can bury his face in Felix’s neck, Felix briefly meets Seungmin’s eyes. He’s been silent throughout everything Felix said, just listening.
Jeongin cries, smelling sad and angry and scared. Felix holds him close. “It’s not your fault,” he says again. “And it’s horrible and I know it doesn’t fix a single thing. But there was nothing you could have done. It’s not your fault.”
He’s saying the words for Jeongin, and he means them. But there’s something about saying them, about how deeply he means them, that resonates painfully in his own chest. Because if it’s not Jeongin’s fault, then... is it his? He carries so much shame for the kinds of things Kwang-ho made him do, feels so stupid and weak because of them. But if Jeongin couldn’t have done anything to stop it, then…
The logic tracks. And yet, the thought doesn’t quite make it past rationality. He doesn’t quite believe it yet. He’s sure that Jeongin, crying in his arms, feels the same way. Because it feels like your fault, with something like this.
But it’s not.
It’s not.
He holds Jeongin tightly and lets him cry, only moving to a lying-down position so he can hold Jeongin better. He breathes in Jeongin’s scent to distract himself from the ache in his own chest. Seungmin stares at the two of them for a while, but after a few minutes, he lies down next to them, on Jeongin’s other side. He doesn’t say anything, but presses his forehead against Jeongin’s shoulder blade.
When Jeongin quiets down, neither of them pull away. They don’t move at all, not until Jeongin shifts first, sitting back up. His eyes are red and swollen, but he’s no longer crying.
Felix and Seungmin follow him up. They watch him for a moment, and then Felix asks, “What do you need, Innie?”
Jeongin takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna go to my room for a bit. I wanna be alone.”
Felix pulls a face. “Jeongin.”
“No, I need to be alone for a bit. I need to think.”
Felix was afraid that Jeongin was suppressing his needs again, but now that Jeongin repeats it, he realises that the omega’s scent is open. Honest. He’d told Felix before that there are times when he needs to be alone, so perhaps this is simply one of them, as much as Felix would like to keep him here. And so he nods, relenting.
Seungmin tilts his head. “I take it you don’t want to talk over dinner?”
Jeongin’s mouth quirks up and he shakes his head.
“I’ll keep them quiet for you,” Seungmin says, “If you let someone check in with you later. You can go back to your room after dinner and you don’t have to say a word where everyone’s present. But talk to someone today.”
Jeongin sighs. “Yeah. Alright. I will.”
Seungmin smiles, and clearly everything’s settled with that. He pats Jeongin on the arm and then waves his hand. “Okay. Now shoo.”
Jeongin laughs out loud, and Seungmin’s smile widens. Felix feels his own lips curl up in relief at hearing Jeongin laugh. He doesn’t lean in to hug Jeongin again. He kind of wants to, but he’ll follow Seungmin’s lead here, because the beta seems to know exactly what Jeongin needs right now.
“Thank you,” Jeongin tells them, before leaving the nest and slipping out of the room.
Felix watches the closed door for a while, just in case he comes back, but it remains closed. And then Seungmin flings a rubber glove in his face, and Felix splutters in surprise.
“Come on. We have a bathroom to clean.” At Felix’s incredulous face, Seungmin smirks, amused. “Bet you’re regretting your demand to be added to the schedule now, hm?”
Felix huffs, but gets out of the nest and follows Seungmin back into the bathroom. His mind is still with Jeongin though, even as he starts scrubbing the shower cabin. After a few minutes, he asks, “Will he really be okay alone?”
“He will be,” Seungmin answers. His voice is quiet enough that it’s clear he was still thinking about it too. “He’ll talk to someone tonight.”
“You sure?” It’s not that he doubts Jeongin’s word, it’s just that Jeongin has such a hard time initiating emotional conversations, and Seungmin is going to leave that part up to him. Felix isn’t sure if he’ll be able to take that first step.
But Seungmin only shrugs. “Yeah. We’ve done it before. Sometimes he needs space and doesn’t want the others to question him until he’s ready, and I’ll mediate.” He tilts his head. “I can’t always get him to talk to someone. But I think today he will.”
Felix nods and dips his sponge back into the bucket. Seungmin would know. He’ll have to trust that. They go back to cleaning.
“I’ve never seen him scared like that,” Seungmin says after a while. “I mean, he was skittish when we met, in a way. He nearly didn’t even join the pack because he was scared. But I’ve never seen him like this.”
No. Of course he hasn’t, because this fear is different. The fear of Voice is something deeper. Felix knows this fear. He keeps his eyes on the shower floor, but says softly, “You don’t understand, Minnie. I don’t think you could ever fully understand just how terrifying it is to live your life knowing that nearly half the population has the power to make you do anything they want.”
Seungmin lowers his gloved hands to his lap. Slowly, he says, “It’s statistically unlikely.” The words aren’t dismissive, just pensive. “Use of Voice without consent is frowned upon even in traditional households.”
Felix smiles without humour, glancing over his shoulder. “And yet it still happens, right? There’s no law.”
“There’s a law against using Voice on mated omegas.”
Felix huffs. “Not for an alpha’s own mate. Trust me.”
Seungmin winces. “No. I’m sorry.”
“And even if Ilsung technically broke a law, he still did it. He still had that power.” In the end, being an omega is just not safe. Technically, anyone could use their Voice on him, on Jeongin, and they would be helpless. Quietly he says, “Most people are good. I get that. Rationally, I get that. But Seungmin…” He swallows and looks over again. “It’s hard to trust solely in the good of humanity when you know how bad it will be if you’re wrong. It’s like… it’s like walking blindfolded through a minefield because people tell you they’re not supposed to go off, and all you can do is pray that they’re right. It’s terrifying. You can’t understand how awful that is. Of course Jeongin is scared.”
Seungmin is quiet for a very long time. Long enough that Felix thinks he won’t reply at all. But finally, he says, “You’re right. That’s horrifying. I’m so sorry.”
Felix gives a little shrug. “It is what it is. There’s nothing to do about it. I just wanted to explain.”
“Yeah,” Seungmin says absently, staring at the sink. He doesn’t say anything else, and Felix feels a little guilty. He didn’t say it to make Seungmin feel bad. He just knows that without experiencing life the way he and Jeongin do, it’s very, very hard to truly understand how scary it can be. And Jeongin especially is fantastic at never showing his hardships, so of course his pack doesn’t know how bad it is. They know parts of it, they’re not ignorant, but the deep awful core of it? They can never understand that. And that’s not their fault at all, but he thinks it is important for them to know, especially while Jeongin is going through this and can’t tell them himself.
Felix doesn’t like talking about it either, but he knows he has less difficulty opening up than Jeongin does. He hopes that Seungmin is right and that Jeongin will talk to someone tonight. And if he doesn’t, Felix resolves quietly, he’ll seek Jeongin out himself and initiate the conversation for him. Seungmin isn’t the only one who can mediate.
*
In the end, that turns out not to be necessary. Felix doesn’t know what Seungmin told the others, but over dinner, no one asks Jeongin anything. They let him eat in silence and let him leave afterwards, and none of them say a word to him. They don’t even touch him. By the time Felix goes to bed, he’s pretty sure Jeongin is still alone in his room. He exits the bathroom (leaving Hyunjin chilling on the edge of the tub in a bathrobe as he waits for his facemask to dry) and crawls into bed in between Minho and Seungmin, wondering if he should ask one of them to check up on Jeongin.
But then Jisung and Changbin walk in, and Minho mutters, “Hyung’s still with him?”
“Mm,” Changbin agrees. “He’s gonna stay the night.”
Minho’s eyebrows shoot up. “Damn.”
Changbin smiles. “Growth.”
Minho exhales. “You can say that.” He looks over at Seungmin. “How the hell did you manage that?”
Seungmin snorts. “We all know that wasn’t me. Thank Lix.”
Felix blinks. “Me? I didn’t do anything.” It was Seungmin who had made Jeongin promise to talk to someone tonight.
Changbin just laughs and walks into the bathroom to join Hyunjin, and Jisung grins at Felix before following him.
“I didn’t,” Felix insists. “Minnie made a deal.”
Minho shakes his head and huffs out a laugh. “Sure, Lix-ah.”
“No, it really was Minnie,” Felix says again, confused, but Minho yanks on his leg and he tumbles backwards into the blankets with a yelp.
“Hush,” Minho tells him. “Go to sleep.”
Felix turns his head to look at Seungmin, whose eyes are crinkled with laughter in the soft orange glow of the wall lights. “Good night, Felix,” is all he says before closing his eyes, still grinning.
Felix is still confused, but both Minho and Seungmin have closed their eyes, and it’s clear the conversation is over. He sighs, grumbling a little, but then Minho hooks an arm over his chest to reel him in, and any grumbling is immediately replaced by happy warmth as he cuddles closer into Minho’s chest. Fine. He doesn’t need to know. “Good night,” he whispers, and Minho squeezes his arm.
***
The next morning, they’re in the kitchen for breakfast when Chan and Jeongin walk in. One of Chan’s arms is wrapped around Jeongin’s waist, and he pats his hip, whispers something in his ear and lets go when Jeongin laughs. Chan smiles at him and then sits down at the kitchen island, reaching for the coffee pot.
Jeongin takes a seat in between Felix and Seungmin. Without looking up from his textbook, Seungmin gives him a little nudge, and Jeongin nudges back, and Seungmin smiles.
Felix watches Jeongin in relief. He seems to be doing well. He smells stable and at ease, nothing like yesterday’s turbulent anxiety. Felix is about to ask him quietly if he slept well when Chan swallows down a big gulp of coffee and says, “Alright. Pack meeting.”
His tone is serious, and everyone straightens immediately. Seungmin closes his book and Jisung opens his eyes for the first time since he dropped into a seat.
“It wasn’t me!” Hyunjin blurts, wide-eyed.
Jeongin shoots him an baffled look. “What wasn’t you?”
Hyunjin gestures to Chan. “Whatever this pack meeting is for. It wasn’t my fault.”
Minho narrows his eyes. “…Why would it be your fault?”
“Well, I don’t know! The last time I didn’t see a pack meeting coming you all ganged up on me.”
“Yes,” Seungmin says dryly. “Because you turned on the washing machine without checking your pockets and slathered two tubes of oil paint all over the inside of the machine.”
“And then didn’t tell us and tried to fix it yourself,” Changbin adds, “Meaning you ran three more cycles and used so many harmful cleaning chemicals that we had to buy a new machine.”
“I thought it would come out,” Hyunjin sulks, pouting, and Felix struggles to hold back his laughter.
Jeongin rolls his eyes. “Trust me when I say I’m as surprised as you are, but for once, this meeting isn’t about you.” He reaches out to accept the bowl of rice Minho hands him and looks over at Chan.
Felix fidgets. If they’re having a pack meeting, should he go? Even if they’ve got… whatever it is they’ve got going on, he is not technically pack, and he isn’t sure if he should be here for this. But before he can offer to go upstairs, Chan starts talking, and he realises it would be more disruptive if he left now. He’ll just stay quiet and let them have their meeting.
“Innie and I talked last night,” Chan says, “And this is his pack meeting, not mine. I’ll let him tell you what he has to say.”
When everyone looks back to Jeongin in concern, Jeongin rolls his eyes. “It’s nothing,” he says, reaching for the kimchi. “I just want you to enact pack revenge on Ilsung.”
Changbin knocks over his coffee, scent spiking in joy. “Really?”
“Hyung!” Jisung whines, staring down at his now soaked toast.
Changbin ignores him, eyes fixed on Jeongin. “You want us to beat him up?”
“No,” Jeongin says, “Calm the fuck down.”
“Let him talk,” Chan reminds Changbin, as Minho tosses a tea towel at Changbin’s head and motions for him to start cleaning.
Changbin grumbles but does as he’s told, though his eyes remain on Jeongin, fervent and hopeful.
“I don’t want you to beat him up,” Jeongin says. “But I do want him to pay. So hyung is going to press charges and get as much out of that as we can. He should be more successful than SNU and professor Kim, given that it’s his ‘property’ that was damaged.” He rolls his eyes.
“Oh.” Changbin slumps back in his seat. “Right. Legal revenge.”
Jeongin’s lips twitch, and he adds casually, “And then this afternoon, I want you to find Baek Ilsung and let him know why he made the stupidest fucking decision of his life by messing with me.”
Changbin’s entire face lights up. “Oh my god. Oh my god, yes.”
Hyunjin is grinning too, but Seungmin’s eyes are wide and Minho’s eyebrows have shot up. Jisung gapes at him. “Seriously?”
And—yeah. Felix gets that shock. He feels it too. Because Jeongin wanting revenge on Ilsung is one thing, but for him to ask his pack to do it for him…
Seungmin looks at Chan and then back at Jeongin. “What on earth did you talk about?”
Jeongin shrugs. “Hyung said he wanted to rip Ilsung’s throat out with his teeth, and it made me think.”
Everyone whips their head to Chan, who sighs. “Out of everything I said, that is not exactly what I wanted you to take away from that speech.”
Jeongin’s lips quirk up. “It was memorable.”
Changbin stares at Chan like he hung the moon, and Chan lets out another long sigh. “Just get to your plan, please.”
Jeongin smiles and takes a sip of coffee. “Thankfully for both hyung and Ilsung, I don’t want him to do that. I want you all to enact revenge, but not by beating him up. I want you to scare him. Make him feel the fear he made me feel.” His eyes flash. “I want to set my pack loose on him, and I want to watch.”
There’s a slow shift in the scents around the table, from shock to dark, vindictive pleasure.
“Oh my god,” Hyunjin says, nearly vibrating out of his seat. “That means I get to dress you up. Right? Please tell me that means I get to dress you all in suits and hyung gets to go all mafia boss on him the way he did on Lix’s landlord.”
Changbin pulls a face. “I’m not wearing a suit.”
“But—”
“No,” Changbin says, “We’ll be in public. That’s just gonna look stupid, not scary.”
“If I may,” Chan tries, but Hyunjin is on a roll now.
“But it will look so hot, and everyone will drop to their knees because they’ll either want to fuck us or beg for their lives, and—”
Seungmin slaps a hand over Hyunjin’s mouth, who goes on for another muffled five seconds before falling silent. “Hyung?” Seungmin says pointedly.
“Yes, thank you,” Chan says, “Before we talk about clothes, I need you all to know that while I said ‘pack meeting’, joining me this afternoon is optional. If any of you do not want to come along, neither me nor Innie will hold that against you. You do not have to tell us why, and we will not ask.” He trails his eyes across the group. Felix quickly picks up his mug of tea and takes a long drink so Chan won’t need to decide whether to pity-include or awkwardly exclude him. This is pack revenge. Whatever’s going on between them, he should not be there for that. “We will respect each other’s decisions the way we always do.”
“I really don’t care if you don’t want to come,” Jeongin agrees. “In a way, this is for you more than for me. If you decide to not do this at all, that’s fine too.”
“Hell no,” Changbin says. “I’m going.”
“Yes,” Chan says dryly. “We gathered as much.”
“Me too,” Seungmin says, and Minho nods. “Yeah. I’m coming too.”
They don’t need to ask Hyunjin, who looks like he’s two hours into his mental fantasy of how hot this is going to be, so everyone looks at Jisung instead. Jisung fidgets. “I…”
“You don’t have to, Sungie,” Chan says. “If this is not your thing, no judgement.”
But Jisung shakes his head. “No, I wanna come. If you’re not actually beating him up, I wanna come.” He looks at Felix. “Are you going?”
Felix startles. “Me?”
“Yeah.” Jisung looks at him like it’s a completely normal question. Felix looks at the others, and nobody looks weirded out. They’d bring Felix along on their pack revenge, just like that. Warmth spreads in his chest.
“You really don’t have to,” Jeongin says softly, and Felix realises he’s been quiet for too long. “And honestly, if the idea of us doing this makes you genuinely uncomfortable, I’m calling it off altogether.”
“No,” Felix says quickly, “You don’t need to do that. I’m fine. I can come.”
Jeongin eyes him. “You want to come?”
Felix meets his eyes, the situation suddenly dawning on him. “You’re going?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’m coming too.” There’s no way he’s letting Jeongin face Ilsung alone. Not that he will be alone, of course, he’ll have all of his packmates with him, but Felix just… he can’t let Jeongin do this and not be there. He’s suddenly ridiculously glad they’re inviting him along, because the thought of staying back while Jeongin faces Ilsung again is enough to turn his stomach. He has to be there in case Jeongin needs him. He just has to.
“Are you sure?” Chan asks. “Because I meant what I said, we won’t actually hurt him. But we will manhandle him a little, and we will get mean. I would understand if that’s too much.”
But Felix is already shaking his head. He trusts them, and he needs to be there. “I’m coming.”
Chan studies him carefully and then nods. “Alright. Then let’s plan.”
*
In the end, they do not wear suits. Hyunjin had argued heatedly for a good ten minutes, until Seungmin pointed out that Felix didn’t have a suit, and if he had to borrow one it wouldn’t fit him properly, and wouldn’t that ruin the image? And Hyunjin had dropped the idea so fast it nearly gave Felix whiplash.
Instead, they’re wearing semi-formal outfits. They’re all dressed in black trousers and black, white or burgundy dress shirts, and Hyunjin spends a long time styling everyone and adding accessories. Minho nearly strangles him with the fifth belt he is handed, but the end result…
Well. Let’s just say Felix has to take a very deep breath when Chan and Minho leave the den bathroom with their sleeves rolled up, and when he notices the way Changbin’s black dress shirt stretches across his chest, and the way Jisung’s ringed fingers sweep his hair away from his forehead, and—yeah. After that he stops looking too closely.
He himself is wearing a flowy black blouse that’s tucked into dark trousers, as well as a gold watch he was told to put on and a necklace that he probably doesn’t want to know the price of. He looks good though, he has to admit. The last time Hyunjin styled him he looked soft, but not now. There’s still a hint of omegan softness, with the way the silk blouse billows gently around him and the way his lips are tinted pink from the lip balm he dabbed onto them, but the outfit is black and sleek and matches the rest of the pack.
They all match perfectly, and Hyunjin nods in satisfaction as he takes them all in once he is finished. And regardless of all the sighs he received throughout the process, none of them can deny that they look like a cohesive unit this way, and an intimidating one at that.
“Alright,” Hyunjin smirks. “Let’s bring him down.”
And so, at around four p.m., Chan turns into the street of the café where Ilsung works. Jeongin didn’t even know he worked there; to everyone’s surprise, it was Jisung who brought that up. “His Insta is public,” is all he said with a shrug, aiming for nonchalance but smelling more than a little pleased with everyone’s surprise.
Chan pulls into an empty parking space and turns off the engine. “Everybody still okay with this?” he checks, meeting their eyes in the rearview mirror before they get out. When everyone nods, he smiles, looking surprisingly soft and gentle for what they’re about to do. “Alright then. Let’s go.”
They exit the car. The air is tense now, and Felix takes a deep breath, wiping his hands on his trousers. He has no reason to feel nervous, because he won’t be doing anything. He’ll be staying back with Jeongin, Seungmin and Jisung and letting the others execute the plan. But he’s nervous anyway, a tense sort of anticipation curling up tight in his stomach.
Jisung gives his hand a brief squeeze, and Felix exhales. “One word,” Jisung reminds him, and Felix nods.
Yes. One word. One word and all of it stops. Chan insisted on that, for all of them. The moment any of them get uncomfortable or want to leave, they can either walk out if they want the others to continue, or tell everyone “bullet” and the whole thing ends. Felix is resolved not to use it, but it’s... nice. That it’s there.
Together, they walk across the street to the café, with Chan in front, Felix and Jeongin on either side of him, and the others in a V behind them. Everyone had checked with Felix whether he was okay with being in front, but he is. He’s nervous, but this is what Jeongin wants, and he is not going to deny Jeongin anything. Not in this. He can handle a little nervousness.
They walk in. The coffeeshop isn’t large, but it’s cosy, with cheerful yellow walls and benches with pillows along the walls. For all its cheerful atmosphere though, the moment they enter, something shifts. It’s probably mostly because of Chan. For once, he’s not controlling his scent, letting it flow openly around him, and the coffee is strong and dark with anger. The anger is controlled, of course. Felix knows that. But to anyone who doesn’t know Chan, it won’t smell that way, because his scent really is that strong.
Conversation at the tables closest to the door falters and stops, and people start looking over at the eight people who’ve just walked in.
There are three baristas behind the counter, but Felix only recognises one from the pictures Jisung showed them. A tall alpha with sleek dark hair and strong features, who turns as they walk in and opens his mouth to ask them something. Their order, maybe, or for them to leave or tone down their scents so they won’t disturb the other customers. And then his gaze falls on Jeongin, and he freezes.
Chan smiles, sharp and dangerous. “Hello, Baek Ilsung.”
In what is a fit of either bravery or extreme stupidity, Ilsung doesn’t run or even back down. Instead, his eyes flash with incredulous anger. “Seriously?” he hisses at Jeongin. “Getting me expelled wasn’t enough?”
Jeongin doesn’t answer. Felix can see the tension in his frame and smell the angry turbulence in his scent, but he’s sure Ilsung won’t be able to pick up on that from where he is. Jeongin only turns to Chan and says coolly, “Make him pay.”
It’s an order, short and brusque, in a way Jeongin would never have gotten away with in a traditional pack. An omega, ordering his pack alpha around? Any traditional alpha would have burst into laughter, or gotten angry, or simply ignored the statement entirely. But Chan doesn’t. Chan bows, like Jeongin is in charge, and then straightens. “With pleasure.”
I want to set my pack loose on them, Jeongin said, and I want to watch.
And that’s what they give him.
Even though they talked it through, even though Felix knows exactly what’s going to happen, the sheer speed with which they move still takes him by surprise.
Changbin and Minho stalk forward and behind the counter, each grabbing Ilsung by an arm and bringing him out in front.
“Sorry,” Chan tells the other two startled baristas. “Pack business. If you want us to take this outside, we will.”
But they shake their heads. Judging by their collars, they’re both omegas, and Felix is pretty sure he catches a gleam of interest in their eyes.
Chan turns to the other customers. “Any of you want us to take this outside?”
There’s more head shakes and spikes of interest. That tracks. People like drama.
“Alright then,” Chan says. He motions for the others to move to the side, where they’ll be able to see everything but won’t be in the way. Felix follows Jeongin to stand near an empty table, and Seungmin and Jisung move to flank them. Hyunjin remains behind Chan, who directs his attention back to Ilsung. Minho and Changbin have finished marching him out in front of Chan, but they do not let him go, keeping their hands firmly wrapped around Ilsung’s arms.
Chan cocks his head. “Anything to say before we start?”
Ilsung is pale now. “You can’t do this.”
Chan lets out a mocking little laugh. “And you made it to your fourth year of SNU Law?”
“Which he got me expelled from,” Ilsung hisses, glaring around Chan at Jeongin. “I didn’t even touch him. This is bullshit.”
“Yeah, those are not the words I wanted to hear,” Chan says mildly, before stepping forward and getting close. Ilsung tries to rear back, but with Minho and Changbin’s firm grasp on his shoulders, he can’t move an inch. His scent spikes, and this time, it does spike in fear.
Still, he glares defiantly at Chan. “So what, you’re gonna beat me up? That’s what this is?”
“Oh, no,” Chan says, smiling. “Not me. I’m harmless, Ilsung-ah.” Without looking back, he waves a hand, and Hyunjin steps forward. “He’s the one you don’t want close. And he’s got something a little different in mind for you.”
Felix watches in amazement. They’re… really into this. He knew Hyunjin would be. But Chan is really giving this performance his all, and based on his scent, he’s getting more than a little satisfaction out of the way Ilsung is still trying to move away from him. They talked everything through in detail; the moves they’d make, the things they would say. None of this is new to Felix, and yet seeing it is something else entirely.
But as good as Chan is, it’s Hyunjin who’s the true performer, and that becomes clear the moment he steps forward. Everything about him radiates danger, equal parts lazy and sharp. And his scent... Felix blinks in surprise. Hyunjin smells deeply, sadistically hungry, and his scent is mean in a way Felix knows Hyunjin would never be. There’s not a hint of his earlier excitement in his scent, even though there should be. It should not be possible for Hyunjin to smell like this, and yet he does.
Chan lets his hand stroke lightly down Hyunjin’s back as if to give him permission to move forward and then steps back, letting Hyunjin do what he’s best at. And Jeongin said it before, that Hyunjin is a good actor, but it’s only now that Felix realises how true it is. Hyunjin was born for this. He lets his eyes trail down Ilsung’s body and then up again before taking a slow walk around him, completely silent. One of the baristas has turned off the music, and there’s hardly any sound in the shop at all, even the other customers watching with bated breath. As Hyunjin walks, Ilsung cranes his neck to follow him, another nervous spike of cedar bursting in the air. Hyunjin returns to his spot in front of him and cocks his head, just watching, letting the tension build. His scent darkens further.
And then Ilsung opens his mouth to speak again, and Hyunjin shoots forward, making Ilsung jump and snap his mouth shut. “No,” Hyunjin says, voice dangerously soft. “I do not believe I want you to talk yet.”
Ilsung looks at him. Then looks at Chan, and tenses his arms against Minho and Changbin’s hold. But he’s stuck. It’s sinking in now, that he’s stuck, that they legally have the right to do whatever they want with him, so long as it’s within the limits of pack revenge for his crime. Those limits, however, leave a lot of room for interpretation, and it’s clear that Ilsung knows that. He isn’t stupid, and now that he’s realised that they know exactly what they’re doing, he stops uttering meaningless protests. He glances at the door, and Hyunjin’s hand snaps out to grip his chin, forcing his head back. “Ah-ah. Eyes on me.”
Ilsung clenches his jaw, but looks back at him.
“Better.” Hyunjin lets a slow smile spread across his lips. “Now, I’d say you owe us something, Ilsung-ah. Let’s have some fun, shall we? On your knees.”
Ilsung stares at him, a slow horror dawning in his eyes.
Hyunjin cocks his head slowly, keeping Ilsung’s attention fixed on him so that he visibly jumps when Changbin hisses in his ear, “Did he stutter? Get on your fucking knees.”
“No,” Ilsung says, panicking now. “No, I—”
Minho shoves him down, and his knees hit the ground hard.
Hyunjin spreads his legs, his scent shifting with the first stirrings of arousal. Felix blinks again, because that’s not something Hyunjin is feeling at the moment, he’s sure of it. And yet it’s present in his scent.
“Please,” Ilsung says, trying to shift away from Hyunjin’s thighs. “Just beat me up, just don’t make me—” He cuts himself off when Hyunjin tips his chin up.
“Not so fun when you’re on this side of things, is it? Being made to do things you don’t want?” Hyunjin eyes Ilsung carefully. “Though really, I’m not sure you’ve learned that lesson yet.” He looks at Changbin and Minho. “Think we need to make him beg for it? He was so good at sounding desperate and slutty when feeding his words through someone else, after all. Surely if he wants it so badly, we can give it to him? I know we’re in public, but oh well. A university, a café. What’s the difference?” He shrugs, trailing his eyes meaningfully down.
Felix looks over at Jeongin to check how he’s doing. Jeongin knew, of course, that this was the angle they were going for. He was the one to suggest it, and they discussed it for a long time before Chan agreed. But planning it is different than seeing it, and he wouldn’t blame Jeongin if seeing it is too much. He notices Chan checking over his shoulder too, and knows that they’re all keeping an ear out in case Jeongin wants to call it quits. But Jeongin doesn’t want that at all. He smells darkly satisfied, and is watching the scene in front of them with blazing eyes.
“No,” Ilsung says again, a little more desperate now, “No, come on, not that. Please.”
“You don’t want it?” Hyunjin asks, eyes widening in exaggerated surprise.
Ilsung is breathing hard. “No.”
“And why should I care about what you want?”
Ilsung opens his mouth, and closes it again. It’s clear he realises that any answer he could give them would backfire. They should care because it’s wrong? Because it’s gross, and immoral? Because Ilsung is an alpha and Jeongin isn’t? None of that would work, and he knows it. Finally he says, “I knew he wouldn’t do it. Kim. I knew he wouldn’t, he’s uptight as shit, I knew your omega would be fine.”
It’s a feeble protest. His voice is weak, because even he knows that that’s not an excuse either. It’s not enough.
And indeed, Hyunjin is not moved. “Mm, no,” he says. “I don’t think those are the right words.”
Ilsung stares up at him in disbelief. “You seriously want me to beg for it?” He smells nauseous.
Hyunjin holds his gaze, eyes like steel. “I want you to say the words you think you should be saying.”
Ilsung blinks. But again, he is not stupid, and they can see the moment it clicks. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Hyunjin tilts his head. “Hm?”
“I’m sorry,” Ilsung says, louder. “I’m sorry, okay, is that what you want to hear, I’m fucking sorry.”
Chan steps forward again to stand next to Hyunjin. “Who are you apologising to?”
“You,” Ilsung grits out. “You, all of you, I’m sorry, alright?”
“No,” Chan says, his scent curling around Ilsung like the caress of a whip. “It’s not alright. Do better.”
Tears well up in Ilsung’s eyes, and next to Felix, Jeongin’s scent spikes in satisfaction. “I’m sorry,” Ilsung chokes out, shuddering at the intensity of Chan’s scent. Any defiant anger drops out of him, and he’s shaking now. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it, I’m sorry.”
Chan’s expression darkens. “Do. Better.”
“I’m sorry!” Ilsung yells through a sob. “I won’t ever do it again, I swear. I’m sorry, I—”
Chan growls and grabs him by the collar of his shirt, the tendons in his forearms visible. “Do. Better.”
Ilsung chokes, staring wide-eyed into Chan’s eyes, and then finally, finally moves his eyes to Jeongin. “I’m sorry,” he says, tears spilling over. “I’m sorry.”
“For what,” Minho growls, fingers digging hard into Ilsung’s shoulder, and Ilsung flinches.
“For using my Voice,” he cries. “For making him- for making you do that. I’m sorry, Jeongin-ssi, I’m sorry.” He’s fully crying now, ugly and gross.
Felix isn’t sure if he’s actually sorry or if he’s just scared of what they’ll do to him. But this is the best they’re going to get, and they knew that going in. This wasn’t about receiving heartfelt apologies. This was about fear and humiliation, and well. Felix would say they did a pretty good job of that.
Suddenly, Jeongin leaves his side and moves forward, taking him by surprise. This was not part of their plan—aside from the start, nothing in their plan involved Jeongin, because he said he didn’t want to be part of it. But apparently, he’s changed his mind.
Jeongin walks forward until he’s standing in front of Ilsung. Chan and Hyunjin wordlessly shift to make space for him. They can’t know what Jeongin is doing either, but they roll with it seamlessly. Jeongin looks down, and Ilsung averts his eyes.
“Ah-ah,” Hyunjin says, dragging a finger along the column of Ilsung’s throat and tipping his chin back up. “Look at him.”
Ilsung swallows. He looks up.
Jeongin stares down, and their eyes meet. There’s three seconds of complete silence, and then Jeongin smiles. A tiny little smirk, barely more than a quirk of his lips. He holds Ilsung’s eyes for another second and then turns away, walking off and through the door.
Immediately, Minho and Changbin shove Ilsung away, disgusted. Hyunjin wipes his hands on his trousers before heading for the door himself, Minho and Changbin on his heels. None of them spare Ilsung another glance. They leave him on the floor, tear-stained and reeking of fear and shame, and follow Jeongin out the door without another word. Chan turns back to the baristas and other customers and bows. “Apologies for the interruption, everyone. Have a nice day.” He leaves a generous tip on the counter and then turns to Felix, Seungmin and Jisung.
He holds out a hand to them, and they leave the café without looking back.
Outside, they find the others crowding around Jeongin. They’ve moved to a place just around the corner, out of sight of the café windows.
“—okay?” Hyunjin is saying. He bites his lip, a little nervous, and he smells normal again. “Was that what you wanted?”
Jeongin stares at him for a second before launching forward and flinging his arms around Hyunjin’s neck. “Thank you.”
“Oh, thank god.” Hyunjin wraps his arms around Jeongin’s waist and holds him tight.
Jeongin doesn’t move away for a long time. They can all smell the tears, but nobody comments. They all just crowd close, and let Jeongin cling to Hyunjin. Hyunjin lets out a long breath and kisses Jeongin’s neck. “You’re so fucking strong,” he tells him. “I’m so proud of you. Thank you for trusting me to give you this.”
Because that’s what this was. For all his excitement and dramatics during their preparations, this was Hyunjin’s gift to Jeongin. The only thing he could give him that would help, in a way that none of the others would have been able to manage.
When Jeongin pulls back, his eyes are watery, but he’s smiling. “Thank you,” he tells all of them. “You were amazing.”
“You’re welcome, love,” Chan says, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I’m glad it was what you wanted from this.”
Jeongin laughs. “Are you kidding me? He fucking cried and I think he nearly wet himself. Yes, this was what I wanted from it.”
They all laugh with him, relieved that it all went well.
“You’re okay?” Seungmin checks, and Jeongin smiles.
“Yeah. Hungry though. Can we get pizza?”
There’s more relieved laughter, and Minho reels Jeongin in to kiss his temple. “Whatever you want.”
Jeongin leans into him and rests his head on his shoulder, and Minho wraps his arm tighter around his waist as they start walking back to the car.
They all follow, no longer in any kind of orderly formation, but in their usual rag-tag chaos. Felix ends up in between Hyunjin and Chan, who halts them briefly before they cross the road. “You alright after all of that, Hyunjinnie?” he asks, placing a hand on Hyunjin’s arm and brushing their wrists together.
Hyunjin’s face softens. “I’m good, hyung. None of that was real.”
“To him it was,” Chan says, still scenting him.
“But that was the point,” Hyunjin says. “I knew that going in. I’m really fine, I swear. This was for Innie.”
It’s clear that he means it, and Chan relaxes and drops his wrist. “Okay. In that case, you did a fantastic job.” Hyunjin beams at him, and Chan turns to Felix. “And you? I hope we didn’t scare you.”
“I don’t think you could ever scare me,” Felix says truthfully.
“Accidentally trigger you, then.”
Yeah. Technically, that’s always a possibility. If he’s completely honest, he was a little scared that that might happen today. He called Seonghwa yesterday and he’s starting therapy next week, and he’s looking forward to it. The idea of no longer needing to dread things because they might trigger him is such a nice thought. He can’t wait to get more control over his mind.
To his relief though, today nothing happened. Not even Ilsung scared him, though perhaps that was because Ilsung was scared shitless himself. “I really am fine,” he tells Chan, who squeezes his shoulder.
“I’m glad. You up for pizza?”
Felix grins. “Hell yeah.”
Together, they cross the road and walk back to the car. Felix gets the sense that Chan will be checking in with everyone at some point tonight, just to make sure they’re okay. He’s sure many of them will give him shit about it, but he thinks it’s nice that Chan does this. That he’s so careful about everyone’s mental health and boundaries.
When they reach the car, he climbs into the seat next to Jeongin, who really does look better after all this. Satisfied, and ready to move on. And Felix is sure that he’ll still struggle with what happened, but this time, he believes that Jeongin will be able to move forwards.
Jeongin leans into him as he fastens his seatbelt. “Thank you for coming,” he says softly. “I know you did it for me.”
Felix leans over to nudge him back. “Of course. You’d do the same for me.” The words are out before he’s even thought them through, and he almost apologises, but Jeongin merely says, “Of course I would.”
Felix exhales, feeling warm. He closes his eyes so they won’t tell on him and spill all his feelings, and listens to the pack as they bicker about pizza toppings. There’s a smile on his face the whole way there.
Notes:
TW: the last scene of this chapter will depict the pack’s revenge on Ilsung. Everything they do is premeditated and agreed upon beforehand and they all know they won’t be doing anything, but they do make Ilsung believe they’re going to sexually assault him. Again, nothing happens, their goal is fear, not assault. But it might be good to know that going in.
Actual end notes:
So I'm not going to lie, I greatly enjoyed writing that. Very satisfying. I'd say forgive me for my sins, but... I don't think you'll mind too much?If anyone wants a little snippet of the pack’s reactions to Felix looking like that, you can find that here. Because I mean, we all know Felix isn’t the only one who would be affected.
At some point this week, you’ll get a bonus scene of the conversation Chan had with Jeongin (yes, the one where he tells Jeongin he wants to rip Ilsung’s throat out (among other things, because that was NOT HIS POINT, I.N-AH)).
In the next chapter: Felix visits Aera, and starts therapy. I don't have a release date for you, but know that I'm, as always, working on this story daily. Hope you have a nice day!!
Little update (May 10th): I've posted a requested bonus scene of Jeongin's first time being spaced. Very soon I'll post another requested bonus scene of the pack's group chat over the course of Felix's stay with them, featuring a lot of pining. We'll get to Chapter 22 after that (gimme some time to fix things pls bear with me 🙏)
Chapter 22
Notes:
Hello hello! I know it always feels like an eternity since I last posted (especially for those who only follow the main story and not the bonus scenes) but when I say that this story is on my mind 24/7 and I work on it every day I MEAN IT.
For those who missed it and are interested, there are two more bonus scenes up of 1) Jeongin’s first spacing, and 2) the pack’s group chat over the course of Felix’s stay with them.
That said let’s get on to the chapter, I hope you enjoy it! <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Thinner, Yongbok-ah,” Aera says, stopping as she walks by and peering over his shoulder. “Yes, that’s better.”
Felix is cutting strawberries into slices, and focuses on making them thinner. It’s Sunday, and he’s been here for about an hour. The pack offered to drive him over, but Felix said he wanted to take the subway again, and so instead they’re compromising and Chan will be picking him up at five. It’s not necessary, Felix is sure he would be fine, but Chan said he had to go out to run a few errands anyway and it wouldn’t be any trouble to pick him up.
The first thing Aera had asked him when he came in was if he was still baking, and when he said yes, she pointed him to the kitchen and told him to wash up. They’ve been working on a strawberry cake ever since, while he tells her about everything that has been going on with Jeongin. The omega seems to be doing better now. It’s like their revenge on Ilsung settled something within him, and he’s been a lot less tense. Felix is sure he hasn’t forgotten about what happened, because well, Alpha Voice is not exactly the kind of thing you forget. He’s sure the wariness and fear will remain. But Jeongin hasn’t panicked again, and that counts for something.
“So how’s the courting going?” Aera asks as she effortlessly slices a cooled-down vanilla cake down the middle.
The question catches Felix so off guard that he nearly cuts his thumb off. “We’re not courting!”
She sends him a look. “Child, you just told me they brought you along for their pack revenge, and I can smell them on you from here.”
Felix splutters. “I… I just…” He falters and puts down his knife, staring down at the worktop. He could cut the conversation short. He’s mostly certain that she would let him. But maybe… Maybe it would be nice to talk about this with someone else. Maybe he needs to. He takes a deep breath and looks up again. “I swear we’re not courting. But I think… there’s something there? Maybe? I mean… maybe not, I’m not sure, but…” He shifts nervously. It feels scary to say it out loud. Like now that he’s said it, he’ll be struck down by lightning for lying, or worse, the universe will take them away from him for being greedy.
Aera seems to notice his struggle and her face softens. “There’s something there, child. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”
“They invited me into their den,” Felix admits quietly. He watches her eyebrows shoot up. That seems to surprise even her. “It was when everything happened with Innie, so it was a weird day. And I thought it might just be an exception for that one night. But it’s been a week and I’m still sleeping there.” The words keep coming now, like he can’t hold them back now that he’s started talking. “I like them so much, halmeoni. They’re so kind, and they make me feel safe, and I haven’t laughed this much in years and they’re just… I love them.” The last words are a whisper and he closes his eyes, suddenly so overcome with feelings that he can’t bear to watch hers.
“You smell like them,” she says again after a quiet pause. Felix can hear the smile in her voice. “They’re still scenting you—more now than the first time you were here.”
He nods.
She pats his arm. “Have some faith, Yongbok-ah. Those boys are not letting you go anytime soon. Not ever, from the looks of it.”’
Her words fill him with warmth, and yet he swallows. “But halmeoni, I’m…” He voices one of the fears that’s been simmering in his chest. “I’m already mated.”
She sends him a look of disapproval. “You are not.”
“On paper I am. I won’t ever be theirs. So I just…” He looks away. “I don’t know why- why they would want…”
Her frown deepens. “Yongbok, do you honestly think they’ll care a wit?” When he doesn’t say anything, she sighs. “When Jihye and I mated, we didn’t register our bond for two years.”
He blinks up at her. “What?”
She shrugs. There’s a twinkle in her eyes. “Ji had a hag of an alpha grandmother who did not like me, and we wanted the inheritance.”
He laughs, shocked. “Halmeoni.”
Her lips pull up into a smile. “Not the point. The point is that we were fine. Sure, some things worked a little differently and we had to be careful, but both of us knew that going in and it didn’t matter all that much. We knew our bond was real, and that was all we needed.”
Felix feels his heart clench. He wants that. He wants that with them.
“When they finally get their heads together and ask you,” she continues, making his head snap up, “They will know that too. They’re not stupid. Your situation is more complicated than mine and Jihye’s, but they’re aware of that. They know what they’re getting into, they’ve known for months, and none of them care. Those boys love you, Yongbok-ah. Of all the things you could worry about, that’s not one of them.”
Her words fill him with a fierce gust of hope that stokes the fire of want inside his chest. “I love them so much,” he breathes, feeling both scandalous talking so openly about the feelings he’s kept inside for so long, and elated to finally share them. “They make me so happy. I have never felt the way I feel with them, I’ve never felt so much. And they smell so good, and every time they scent me, I can go outside and no one bothers me. Even on the subway. It’s crazy.”
Aera looks at his starry-eyed expression and smiles sadly. “I should have offered to scent you ages ago. I’m sorry, Yongbok. I failed you in that.”
He blinks. “What?”
“I didn’t offer on purpose, because I knew you were wary of alphas. I know it wasn’t because of me,” she adds before Felix can protest. “I simply did not think you would be comfortable with something as intimate as that. I’m sorry for not asking.”
“It’s okay,” he says, after a while. “I probably wouldn’t have been, at first.” It had taken him a long time to trust her. She’d been the first alpha he’d let some of his walls down for after Kwang-ho, and he’d been so scared he was making the wrong choice and she would hurt him too. But she hadn’t, and he knows now that she never would. “I do trust you, though,” he says. He suddenly needs to make sure she knows that. “I have for a long time. You… you got me through a lot.”
“Took you long enough to start accepting food,” she mutters, but she reaches out to squeeze his arm and he knows she got what he meant. It wasn’t just about the food. Then she shakes her head. “I’m glad they make you happy, even if I don’t understand what they’re waiting for. I almost feel like I should step in.” She scoffs, offended. “Inviting you into their den, without any formal offer! Those boys, I swear. What on earth are they thinking?”
He smiles at the look on her face. “I don’t mind, halmeoni. Don’t say anything? I could still be wrong.”
“You’re not wrong, Yongbok-ah,” she says, walking past him to get to the fridge. “Because that would mean I am wrong, and that is impossible.”
He laughs, and she pats his shoulder. “Now keep working. Those strawberries aren’t going to slice themselves.”
“Yes, halmeoni.”
*
When Chan comes to collect him an hour later, the cake is finished and ready for pick-up, and Felix is sweeping the front of the shop.
“Hyung!” he says brightly when the door chimes and Chan walks in. He drops his broom and bounces over.
Chan smiles back. “Hey, Lix.” He looks from Felix to the broom and chuckles. “Are you cleaning? One cleaning schedule isn’t enough for you?”
“I got to bake a cake,” Felix tells him excitedly. “Come meet halmeoni! Halmeoni!” He dives back into the kitchen, where Aera is taking inventory of the fridge. “Halmeoni, Channie-hyung is here.”
Aera looks up. “Is he now?” She puts down her list and straightens.
Felix catches the glint in her eyes and falters. “Don’t… Don’t tell him what I told you. Please?”
She shakes her head. “I won’t, Yongbok-ah. Your secret is safe with me and anyone who has eyes.” She cackles at the look on his face and pats his arm. “Now introduce me.”
She follows him to the front of the shop, where Chan is studying the pastries in the display. When he sees them entering, he looks up. “Hyung!” Felix says. “This is halmeoni.”
“Kang Aera,” Aera says. She eyes Chan carefully, who stands up straight.
“Hello. I’m Bang Chan. It’s an honour to meet you, Felix talks about you a lot.”
“Likewise,” Aera says, and even though she promised, Felix can’t help but tense.
But before she can say anything else, Chan folds himself into a deep bow. “I want to thank you, for everything you’ve done for Felix. I’m so, so glad he had you.”
Felix blinks in surprise, and then feels more surprise when Chan doesn’t rise. He maintains his bow, waiting for Aera’s acknowledgement. Felix snaps his head over to Aera, who cocks her head, studying him. Finally, when Chan shows no signs of hesitation or impatience, she snorts. “Oh, you’re an honourable one, aren’t you. Get up, Chan-ah. I have done nothing that deserves this level of grovelling.”
Chan rises, but his face remains serious. “I’m still grateful.” He looks at Felix. “I don’t think you would have trusted us as quickly if you hadn’t met her first.”
Felix thinks about that. His brain had been so messed up after he escaped Daegu, and without Aera… yeah. Chan is probably right. He would still have helped Jeongin that night, he knows that. But with how that night ended, he doubts the coffee meet-up would have happened if there hadn’t been at least one person he’d learned to trust again, worry for Jeongin or not. And if Aera hadn’t had that talk with him before he dropped, if her words hadn’t still lingered in his brain, he might not have called the pack at all that day.
Aera studies Chan for another moment and then only says, “Trust is earned.”
Chan meets her gaze and smiles softly. “Thank you.”
Aera nods, and then turns to the display case on the counter.
Felix looks between them, feeling like some conversation just took place that he didn’t quite catch.
“So what do you do for a living, Chan-ah?” Aera asks as she starts sorting out the case.
“Oh,” Chan says. “I make music with two of my packmates.”
She hums. “What kind of music?”
Chan chuckles, a little self-conscious. “Ah. We dabble, but mostly hip-hop, I guess.” When she doesn’t say anything, he explains, “Like, rap beats and—”
Aera sends him an unimpressed look. “I know what hip-hop is, child. I have Apple Music.”
Felix giggles, and Chan’s cheeks flush. “Sorry.”
She shakes her head. Counts a shelf of pastries and makes a quick note. Keeps her eyes on the baked goods, but asks, “So you run a pack of seven, hm?”
Chan brightens. “I do.”
“Sounds busy,” Aera comments, looking over, and Chan laughs.
“Not a moment’s peace.” Then his face softens. “They don’t actually need me to run them though. I like to think we run each other.”
Aera tilts her head. “You’re their pack alpha.”
“I am. But…” Chan thinks for a moment and then shrugs. “I know I carry the bond. But we’re not really a pack for hierarchy, you know? It’s mostly just a formality.”
“Paperwork doesn’t always mean all that much, right?” Aera asks innocently, and Felix stiffens.
Chan smiles, wide and honest. “Yes, exactly.”
“You do a lot, hyung,” Felix says quickly, before Aera can do anything more than send him a smug look.
“Ah, thank you, Lix,” Chan says, chuckling. “I don’t though.”
“You do.” It started as a way to keep Aera from saying too much, but now he means it. Chan is incredible and does so much for all of his packmates. The pack would be nothing without him, and they all know it.
Chan flushes, a little self-conscious. “No, I really don’t do anything special. I just… care. For the people I love. That’s all.”
Aera studies him for a moment and then she softens. “It takes a lot of work to love people right, child. Give yourself some credit.” Her words seem to stun Chan for a second, and by then she’s already turned back to the display. “Apple or peach?”
“Peach,” Chan says automatically, and then he blinks. “What?”
“Have a fruit tart, Chan-ah.”
Seemingly still on autopilot, Chan holds his hand out, and she drops a peach tart into it. Chan looks so comically confused by the sudden presence of the pastry on his palm that Felix grins. He only turns back to Aera when she presses an empty paper bag into his hands and gestures at the display. “Go on, Yongbok-ah. Take the rest of these raspberry donuts home with you.”
Felix lights up. “Really?”
“I still owe Jeongin some, if I recall correctly. I can’t have him thinking those burnt scones are the best I can do.”
Felix laughs. “I’m sure he knows.”
“He will if you bring him those donuts.” Aera gives him a stern look and nods meaningfully at the display, and Felix smiles and starts scooping up donuts.
When he’s done, he looks back at the broom, and then at Chan. “Hyung, can we wait a few minutes? Just until I’m done cleaning?”
Aera rolls her eyes. “Go, Yongbok-ah.”
“No, I can help.”
“You did help.” She gestures to the cake on the counter. “You helped plenty. Go home. Get some rest before your therapy session tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Right. He’d told Aera about it earlier, but he’d momentarily forgotten about it.
“It’s going to be okay,” Chan says, misinterpreting his silence.
“I know,” Felix says, and he means it. It’s therapy, not torture. It’s going to help him. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Aera huffs out a croaky laugh. “That’s not something I’ve heard anyone say about therapy before.” She frowns. “Then again, that might be because it’s mainly that wretched Park Sumi who I hear complain about it, and that’s a lost cause if I ever saw one.”
“Halmeoni!” Felix laughs.
“What? It’s the truth.” Aera shrugs, and then turns to him. “You, on the other hand, are not. Good luck tomorrow, child.” She pats his cheek, and Felix breathes in cherry. Dark, sour-sweet and alpha—but familiar. Not a part of him flinches.
He smiles. “Thank you.”
He’s going to be fine.
***
Felix is going to throw up.
“You’ve got this,” Changbin tells him as he watches him shift nervously from foot to foot in front of the door.
Felix balls his hands into fists and takes a deep breath. Changbin’s hand is a reassuring weight on his shoulder, and he focuses on it. He takes another breath. He wants this. He’s got this.
He lifts his hand and rings the doorbell.
It’s a long, tense minute of waiting before the door is thrown open by a young man wearing a bright grin. “Hi!” he says. “Yongbok-ssi?”
His cheerfulness clashes sharply with Felix’s frazzled nerves, but he manages a smile that probably looks more like a grimace. “I—yes. I’m Felix.”
The man checks behind Felix, but the hallway is empty. “Just being careful. Didn’t want to shout your name from the rooftops. I’m Wooyoung. Come in, come in, both of you.” He ushers them in and shows them where they can put their shoes. Then he turns around and bellows, so loudly that the entire apartment building must be able to hear him, “San-ah!”
There’s a crash from farther into the apartment and a muffled curse, before, “Yah, Young-ah, could you give it at least a week before saddling us with another noise complaint?” A blond-haired man appears behind Wooyoung, fixing him with an irritated look. It disappears when he sees Felix and Changbin.
“Hi,” he says with a warm smile. “I’m Hongjoong. It’s good to see you well, Felix-ssi.” He tilts his head at Changbin. “And Changbin-ah, hi, nice to see you again.”
As they exchange pleasantries, Felix takes his shoes off and looks around. He hadn’t expected to ever visit Seonghwa’s home. But when he had called him back about therapy, it turned out that the therapist he’d mentioned was one of his own packmates. Their beta San works as a therapist for the clinic, but he’s taken private clients before. It doesn’t happen often, considering most of the omegas they help choose not to stay in Seoul, but he was more than willing to set up an appointment with Felix.
“You have a nice place,” Changbin comments as he slips out of his shoes.
It’s true. The apartment building has only two apartments per floor, so even if they haven’t seen the rest of it, it must be large. Not entirely surprising, considering they share it between eight people. The entranceway would be crowded if the four of them were squeezed into it, but Wooyoung stepped back as soon as Felix and Changbin entered, and Hongjoong is still in the living room. It looks casual, but Felix suspects they’re deliberately keeping distance from him, since they’re both alphas. Seonghwa had told him they would, even if Felix had said it wouldn’t be necessary. He’s… a little grateful for it now, though. Both alphas are far away enough that Felix can’t quite pick up their individual scents, although of course the apartment is suffused with all eight of them. It smells foresty.
“Ah,” Hongjoong waves a hand in response to Changbin’s remark. “I’m sure you’re used to more luxury. Hwa told me about your place.”
Changbin chuckles. “Before that, I lived in a trainee dorm with eleven other teenagers and then in a mouldy studio apartment the size of a cardboard box. I would’ve killed for a place like this. He steps into the living room, looking relaxed and right at home. He whistles. “Good sound system.”
“Right? Mingi bought it,” Wooyoung says, grinning at him.
“He did,” Hongjoong agrees, before dragging Wooyoung away when he reaches for the remote. “And you’re not showing it off right now. We need to go, we’re already late.”
“What? Why? Our shift isn’t for another hour.”
“Yunho called. An omega came in and he suspects abuse. She’s in screening with Yeosang right now, but I want to be there in case we have to step in. Seonghwa’s shift ends soon, and he’ll need us there.”
Wooyoung’s whiny pout is immediately replaced by seriousness. “Right. I’ll grab my bag.” He disappears down the hallway.
“Get San too!” Hongjoong calls after him, and they can hear Wooyoung pound furiously on a door two seconds later. “Sorry, Sannie just got back from the clinic,” he tells Felix, who’s still hovering in the doorway to the living room. “He’s taking a quick shower.”
“I-It’s okay,” Felix stammers. “We’re here early.”
He was scared they’d be late, and had sat nervously perched on the stairs near the front door long before they needed to leave. Eventually, Changbin took pity on him and just ushered him into the car. Felix suspected he took a few detours to pass time, but he didn’t know the roads well enough to tell for sure. They still arrived ten minutes early.
Originally, he planned to take the bus. But when he told the others about it, they’d immediately vetoed the idea. “I know you were fine on the subway before,” Chan said. “But you can’t honestly tell me you want the added stress of travelling before your first therapy appointment. Or afterwards.”
At the time, he felt a little guilty about making Changbin drive all around the city, but now he is glad for it. He’s so nervous that what little he’s eaten today sits like lead in his stomach, and he thinks that if he’d had to sit in a crowded bus or subway car on the way here, he might just have thrown up.
The nerves hadn’t been there yesterday, but he woke up this morning feeling terrified. He doesn’t know what he was thinking before. He’s no longer looking forward to this at all.
Wooyoung walks back into the room, a bag slung over his shoulder. He’s followed by a dark-haired man Felix hasn’t seen before. His hair is still a little damp from the shower and he’s dressed in comfortable clothes. That must be San.
And all of a sudden, his muscles lock up, his body so tense he’s standing ramrod straight by the door. For a second, he can’t breathe, and then Changbin is there, tugging him into his chest.
“I’m fine,” Felix chokes out.
“Do you not want to do this?” Changbin asks, in a quiet mutter just for Felix. “Because we can still just go.”
Felix shakes his head vehemently. He wants this. He does. He’s just being stupid. He was so determined when he told Chan he wanted this. Excited, even. He remembered the therapy his sister had gotten when she was younger, and how much it had helped her with her anxiety. He remembered Jisung telling him how much better he feels now after a few years of therapy. In his mind the idea of therapy seemed… simple. He’d come here and they’d fix the stupid things in his brain. He hadn’t really let himself think past that, hadn’t let himself consider what that would entail.
Now, faced with San, he is forced to come to terms with reality.
There won’t be a magic button San will press that will fix him. There will be prying questions, and painful answers, and Felix is going to have to reopen wounds that have taken him years to sew shut.
It’s scary, and suddenly terrifyingly real.
“Lix-ah,” Changbin says.
“No,” Felix says, stepping out of his arms. He takes a shallow, shaky breath, and looks at San. “I want to do this.”
Because what’s the alternative? Go back home because he’s scared? Changbin would let him. They’d all let him. But nothing would change if he did—he’d still be fighting the same fears and triggers and flashbacks and everything would stay the same. They would let him go home. But he can’t let himself.
San doesn’t say anything. He just watches Felix, expression calm and unreadable. Then he nods, and turns to Hongjoong. “You are leaving?”
“Yeah.” Hongjoong checks his watch and curses. “Yunho said Yeosangie would try to stretch it out, but we need to go now. Young-ah—”
“Yes, I’m ready, let’s go.” Wooyoung takes a step forward before pausing, and Felix realises he’s blocking the doorway. He quickly steps into the living room so he’s out of their way. Changbin moves with him. Felix feels embarrassment creep up on him for acting like such an idiot right in front of them, but as Wooyoung walks past, he just flashes Felix a grin and a thumbs-up. “Stage 6 to up and running in two weeks? You’ve got this, man. I’m rooting for you.”
Felix manages a smile back, a little less strained than before. “Thanks. Good luck at work.”
“Thank you,” Hongjoong says as he follows Wooyoung to pull on his shoes. “San-ah, Hwa said he’d call you later to let you know who’ll make it back in time for dinner.”
“Got it,” San says, as Wooyoung and Hongjoong leave the apartment with a rushed, “Love you, bye!”
And then they’re alone. For a long minute, they just look at each other.
“Hello,” San says then, still from the middle of the living room. He gives a little bow. “I’m San, but you probably gathered that.” He doesn’t make a move to step closer.
Felix bows back. “Felix.” The bow helps, since it means he can’t see San’s face. He’s almost tempted to stay there, but that would be ridiculous. He straightens.
“I’m Changbin,” Changbin says.
“Nice to meet you.” San tilts his head. “Are you the one who put an ungodly amount of sugar in Seungminnie’s morning coffee?”
Changbin laughs. “That was an accident, I mixed up his and Jisungie’s, but I wish I could have been there to see his face. He must have been so grumpy.”
San’s eyebrow rises. “He merely vowed revenge, actually. Has he not done anything yet?”
Changbin’s grin drops, and Felix laughs at the disturbed look on his face.
Whether San planned it or not, that breaks the tension, and Felix feels his shoulders relax a little.
“So, Felix-ssi, there are a few ways we can do this,” San begins, looking back to him. “We can either talk here in the living room, or go to the office down the hall. The office has been de-scented, but if you would rather stay out here in the open, I’ll send everyone a quick text so they’ll know not to come home for the next hour or so. Take your time,” he adds when he sees Felix open his mouth. “Think about it. Be honest.”
Felix closes his mouth again on the automatic ‘whatever you’d prefer is fine’ and considers. On the one hand, it would be nice to be in a more scent-neutral space for the conversation they’re about to have. He doesn’t really know these people or their scents, and although their pack scent isn’t unpleasant, it makes him feel slightly out of place. On the other hand, the office would be an enclosed space where he’d be alone with San. Just the word ‘office’ is enough to make his stomach tighten.
Kwang-ho’s office had been a dark, heavily curtained room, and Felix had knelt next to his office chair for hours and hours as Kwang-ho gave him conflicting orders that meant Felix would fail no matter what he did. He would tell him to be quiet but also talk to him in such a way that made it clear Felix was supposed to respond, so whether he did or didn’t… Felix flinches away from the thought.
He is sure his scent spikes, but neither San nor Changbin move, although there’s a sudden slight smokiness in the air, a burst of soothing pheromones. Felix can’t smell San at all, because he’s wearing scent blockers. The beta is still watching patiently, not bothered by Felix’s silence at all. He’d kick his own packmates out of the house so Felix will feel comfortable. He’s not Kwang-ho.
“Can I… Can I see the office? First?” Felix asks tentatively. If the room is dark, he knows he won’t be able to stay there without panicking, no matter how kind San turns out to be. He’s far too on edge for that.
“Of course,” San says easily. “It’s the second door on the left, go take a look. I’ll wait right here.”
He steps aside so Felix can pass, and when Felix moves towards the hallway San had indicated, Changbin follows him without a word. He rests a hand on Felix’s shoulder again, and Felix is grateful for the touch. He pauses in front of the door, hesitates for a second, and then opens it.
It’s not dark.
It’s as bright as the rest of the apartment—brighter even, considering the sun is shining on this side of the building and the large window is letting in the light. There’s a couch on one side of the room and a bookcase next to it. On the other side, there are three desks and three computers, with headsets and coloured keyboards that tell Felix the room is also used as a gaming space rather than just a work office. It makes it infinitely less intimidating.
He exhales, and Changbin squeezes his shoulder. “Alright?”
“Yeah.” He breathes in, and San was right. He cannot smell the pack in this room. “I’m good.”
“Do you want me to stay?” They’d discussed this before. Changbin had offered to be there for the session. In the room if Felix wanted, or just nearby in case he needed him.
“No,” Felix says, just like he did earlier. “You can go to the store.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.”
“I’ll be fine.” Probably. He still feels nervous and shaky, but he trusts Seonghwa, and Seonghwa trusts San. That’s enough, right?
Changbin can probably see the half-truth in Felix’s eyes, but he doesn’t comment. “Okay,” is all he says. “Here, take this.” He reaches into his bag and presses something into Felix’s hands.
It’s a shirt. Felix blinks.
“We’ve scented it. In case you get anxious.”
Felix’s eyes snap up to Changbin’s in surprise. He brings the shirt up to his nose and breathes in, and immediately feels his shoulders relax. It carries everyone’s scents, strong and soothing, and he lets out a small sound of relief. Deliberately scented fabrics like this are much more potent than worn clothing, the pheromones stronger and more effective. This can’t have been a spur-of-the-moment idea. Seungmin, Minho and Jeongin had left early in the morning and their scents are on it just as strong. They must have really planned this.
“Thank you,” he breathes, and Changbin wraps an arm around him in an easy side hug.
“Of course, Lix-ah.”
Together they walk back to the living room. San is no longer there, but they can hear noises from the kitchen. He sticks his head around the corner when he hears them. “Hey. Have you made a decision? And would you like a drink? I’m making tea.”
“Tea would be nice,” Felix says. “And the office is fine.”
“Good,” San smiles. “Changbin-ssi, are you staying?”
Changbin looks at Felix, as if checking one last time if he’s sure. When Felix doesn’t say anything, Changbin says, “No, I’m going to run a few errands while you do this. You said an hour?”
“Approximately, yes.”
“I’ll be back before that,” Changbin assures Felix.
“In that case, take this.” San grabs something from a drawer and tosses it in Changbin’s direction, who catches it easily. “Spare key. Let yourself in when you get back, no need to wait out in the hallway.”
Changbin’s looks surprised for a second at the display of trust, but then he grins. “Thanks. I appreciate that.” He turns to Felix. “If you need me, call me. I’ll come back immediately.” Felix nods and Changbin reaches out. “Okay. Come here.” He draws Felix in for a hug, and Felix goes gratefully. “I’m proud of you,” he whispers in his ear. “You’ve got this.”
Felix can’t help but hold on to his shirt for a second, but then he lets go. “Thank you.”
Changbin pats his arm and steps back. “See you in an hour, Lixie.” And with a final wave, he disappears into the hallway to slip his shoes back on and then he’s gone.
Felix exhales.
“Jasmine okay?” San checks from the kitchen. “We also have mint, and some kind of weird spicy winter blend that Seonghwa-hyung bought.”
“Jasmine is fine, thank you.”
“Okay. You go ahead to the office, I’ll be right there.”
Felix does as he says and takes a hesitant seat on the edge of the couch, the shirt still clutched in his hand. He brings it to his nose again and inhales deeply, closing his eyes. It’s crazy how quickly it lowers his racing heartbeat.
When San walks in a minute later, he hastily lowers the shirt, cheeks warming.
The beta looks unfazed. “Scented?” he checks. “That’s smart. Comfort items can really help with things like this. Please use it whenever you want.”
He puts Felix’s tea on a side table next to the couch and then drags one of the office chairs away from the desk so he can sit across from him.
Before Felix can start to feel nervous again, San speaks. “First off, you can call me hyung, if you want. You don’t have to. If maintaining that distance makes you more comfortable, we can talk formally.”
Felix will do anything to take the formality out of this. He doesn’t want to feel like he’s being… tested, or evaluated, even if that might be exactly what San is doing. He might not be able to talk if it’s stiff and proper like that.
“I would… can we, informally?” Clearly he isn’t able to talk in actual sentences regardless, and he looks down, his cheeks heating.
San doesn’t seem to mind. “Of course, Felix. Did Seonghwa-hyung tell you anything about what we were going to do?”
“Um. Talk?” His voice is a squeak. Come on. Speak, for god’s sake. “He said there… he said it wouldn’t be omega therapy.” There. A full sentence.
“Oh, no, absolutely not.” San pulls a face. “I would never do that. I mean, I’m a beta. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But it’s one of the most invasive kinds of therapy and despite popular opinion, it tends to do more harm than good.”
Felix nods slowly. There aren’t many beta therapists, as far as he knows. Or maybe there are, for alphas and other betas. But for omegas, therapy is always like what the dean offered Jeongin, and those psychologists are all alphas.
“Here we will just talk,” San continues. “And you can tell me when you’re uncomfortable, and we’ll work through that. I might ask questions that you won’t like, but this will only work if you feel safe enough to talk to me. I won’t push you further than you’re willing to go.” He gestures to a closet. “There are nesting materials in there, if you want them.”
San has a steady presence that puts Felix at ease, and his voice is calm and reassuring. He shakes his head at the offer though. He can’t nest here, in a strange place with someone he barely knows. Maybe some omegas could, but he can’t. He still feels far too self-conscious about nesting to do it in front of anyone other than the pack.
San flips open a notebook. “Could you tell me why you’re here?”
Felix stares at him. “I… Don’t you already know?”
“I have your medical history—well. Your most recent history, from the moment you dropped, based on what we have from Seungmin and the tests Mingi ran. But that’s all physical, and I doubt you’re here because of the drop alone, even if those can be traumatic. If I’m wrong, you can tell me. But if there’s something else you want to work through with me, you need to let me know.” He smiles at the expression on Felix’s face. “I can’t read your mind, Felix. I’ve never met you. I don’t know your past, or your goals, or what you’re aiming to get out of these sessions. But I’d like to know, and I’d like to help you.”
Felix exhales. Yeah. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. “I…” He falls silent. How does he describe his problems without going into everything? He doesn’t know how to explain his fears without explaining the reasons why, and the last time he told people it took almost an hour, and that’s not what San asked him—
“It’s okay,” San says, before he can spiral. “Take a breath. We’ll do this differently.”
Felix feels his face flush with shame. He can’t even answer a stupid question.
“Don’t be ashamed. You haven’t done anything wrong. This is hard. I won’t judge you.” San waits for him to look up again before he continues. “Is it okay if I ask you some questions? Just to get to know you better?”
Felix nods. His fingers itch to bring the shirt back to his nose, but it feels weird to do that in front of San.
“Use it,” San says, nodding at the shirt when Felix looks at him.
“I thought you couldn’t read minds,” he mutters, and San laughs. It eases the shame inside of him, and he brings the shirt up to take a breath. It helps.
“You didn’t grow up in South Korea, right?” San asks.
“No,” Felix says, absently rubbing the fabric against his face. “I was born in Australia.”
“Did you live there long?”
“I came here when I was fifteen.”
San makes a note. “Ah, you lived there for a long time. Why did you move?”
“My… my family died.”
*
An hour later, Felix is exhausted. Somehow, he actually did manage to get through most of his story. He didn’t tell San everything, didn’t go into the terrible details that would drag his mind to that familiar edge of numbness, but to his surprise, San didn’t ask him to. He just listened and seemed content with however much Felix was willing to share. On occasion he would interrupt to ask for a clarification, but mostly he let Felix talk, taking notes and nodding encouragingly whenever he faltered. Telling his story felt different this time. When he told the pack, everyone else had been just as emotional as he was, the room heavy with their combined grief. They had all rushed to comfort him as soon as he broke down.
San didn’t do that. San didn’t smell like anything, and when Felix cried, he handed over tissues and waited until he was ready to talk again, ever calm and collected. It didn’t feel judgemental—just different. Professional, Felix supposed. San’s professionalism meant that Felix was able to tell him the basics about his family, and his uncle, and being taken by Kwang-ho and living with him, without completely breaking down. He hadn’t even cried for most of it.
“Thank you for telling me all of this, Felix,” San says, capping his pen. “This is not easy, and you’ve worked hard today. Are you okay with meeting me again on Thursday so we can finish your intake?”
Felix nods, drained. He’s come this far. He can’t quit now.
“Perfect. Do you want to go see if Changbin-ssi is back yet?”
Yes. Yes, he wants Changbin. He wants to go home, to the others and to his nest, and not think about anything else today.
San must see it on his face, because he smiles softly. “Let’s go find him.”
Felix follows San out of the room, still holding the scented shirt in his hand. It’s lost quite a bit of its effectiveness after Felix clutched it tight for an hour, his distress slowly seeping into the fabric. They enter the living room and Changbin is waiting for him, just like he promised. He’s sitting in one of the armchairs, watching something on his phone, but the moment they come in he jumps up. “Felix.”
Felix doesn’t say anything. His throat feels tight and his heart hurts. He simply walks straight into Changbin’s arms and drops his head against his shoulder.
“Oh, Lix-ah.” Changbin wraps his arms around him, and Felix’s can’t stop his tears from spilling this time. Changbin presses a kiss to his hair. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.”
Faintly, he can hear San disappear into the kitchen, and the clinking of glasses. He’s giving them some space, and Felix is grateful. It takes him a few minutes to pull himself together enough to straighten. Changbin lets him take a step back, but keeps one of his arms around him, slipping it down to his waist to hold him close. “You okay?”
Felix nods, too tired to speak.
“You ready to go home?”
“Please,” he whispers.
“Alright.” He turns to San, who has stepped back into the living room. “We’ll be leaving now. Chan-hyung will be in touch about payment.”
San smiles and shakes his head, taking back the spare key Changbin holds out to him. “Have him fight it out with Hongjoong-hyung.” He glances at Felix. “Take care, Felix. I’ll see you on Thursday.”
“Thank you.” Felix manages a polite bow and then lets Changbin pull him to the entranceway, not even protesting when the beta kneels down to put Felix’s shoes on for him.
He barely remembers the walk back downstairs and out to the car. But Changbin opens the car door for him and buckles him in like a child, and Felix feels like he could cry again.
“I’ve brought you something,” Changbin says after he’s slipped into the driver’s seat. He grabs a brown paper bag from the centre console and hands it to Felix. When Felix doesn’t immediately make a move to take it, Changbin opens the bag for him, taking out… a pastry.
A raspberry pastry, with a golden crust covered in a fine dusting of sugar.
“I texted the others for the address of your halmeoni’s bakery,” Changbin says when Felix just stares at it. “And I asked her for something with raspberries. She gave me this, said it was your favourite. Didn’t even want to let me pay for it. I had to slip money under the basket of bread on the counter, although she definitely saw me do it. She’s… well.” He huffs. “She’s very perceptive. Anyway. I figured you could use a pick-me-up after this.”
Felix can’t speak. This is… It’s so sweet, so thoughtful, and he is feeling so raw and fragile that it cracks him right open, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks.
I love you, he thinks. He’s glad for the tightness in his throat, because without it, he would have said it too. I love you. I love you.
The words pulse through his body like a heartbeat, as Changbin wipes the tears from his cheeks. As he carefully wraps Felix’s hands around the pastry and guides it to his mouth for a bite. As he tucks a lock of hair behind his ear, and starts the car, and drives him home.
*
The rest of the day is quiet. The moment they get back, Felix is pulled up to the den by Jeongin and Jisung, to a new, freshly scented nest, clearly built just for him. It’s another high nest, like Jeongin wanted to return the favour, and he hands Felix the soft blue blanket from his room before drawing him into it.
“Do you want to talk, or do you want cuddles?” Jisung asks once they’ve settled into it, and in response Felix merely buries his face into his side.
“Okay,” Jisung says, and that is that.
They don’t make him talk. None of them do. They just scent him, and stay close, and most of the pack spends the rest of the day in the nest. They don’t even really focus on him, they’re just there. Seungmin’s laptop is resting on Hyunjin’s back so that he can study, Chan is wearing headphones so he can edit, and Jeongin, Changbin and Jisung are playing a game of Mario Kart on their Switches. Felix is tucked in between all of them, his face pressed against Jeongin’s thigh and Hyunjin’s hand tracing little drawings on his back. Felix thought Minho was at work, but apparently he was in the kitchen, because when he eventually walks in, it’s to call Changbin and Jisung downstairs so they can help him carry up trays of food.
He spreads a sheet over all of their laps so that none of the food will actually get in the nest. Felix tries to offer eating downstairs, but they all tell him no and he gives up quickly. He doesn’t want to leave the nest, and he’s intensely grateful that none of them even seem to consider eating somewhere else, not even Jeongin.
He doesn’t have much of an appetite, but he accepts the bites of food Minho offers him anyway. Simple comfort foods, all things that Minho knows he likes. Felix feels Minho’s eyes on him, and tries to sit up straighter. “I’m okay,” he says, pulling himself together. “It wasn’t bad.” Because as drained as he feels, the last thing he wants is to give Minho the impression that therapy is some horrible thing that he should be staying away from (even if, right now, it kind of does feel a little bit like a horrible thing that Felix would like to stay away from).
But Minho only shakes his head. “Stop that,” he says, his voice drowned out by his packmates’ loud exclamations as Jisung drops a piece of chicken onto the sheet. “It’s okay if it was.”
“It wasn’t,” Felix insists. “It wasn’t, I swear. It just… I just…”
“Felix,” Minho says quietly. “I’m going. It’s not your job to convince me to go.”
“I’m gonna keep going,” Felix vows anyway, because he needs Minho to know that. “Because- because we made a deal. Right?”
Minho sighs and squeezes his thigh. “We made a deal. Now stop acting like you’re fine.”
Felix feels the corners of his mouth lift, just the tiniest bit, despite the rawness of his soul. “Okay.” And when Minho holds out an arm to him, he leans into his side and allows himself to grow quiet again.
He wasn’t lying though. He is going to keep going. He’s determined now, for himself as much as for Minho. His words to Aera from yesterday drift back to him, and he knows they’re true. Therapy is going to help him.
Even if his chest hurts and his eyes burn with the memory of tears. It is going to help. It might, apparently, just take a while to get there.
But maybe that’s okay. He allows Seungmin to intertwine their fingers and feels the warmth of his hand spread into his own. Feels the pack’s presence around him, their scents mingling into the world’s most soothing fragrance.
Maybe he’s allowed to take his time.
Notes:
It’s been a long time since we had a Changbin bonus scene but for this chapter, you’re getting two!
1) A little bonus scene of his visit to Aera’s bakery, during which Aera definitely doesn’t threaten him with a knife at all, because she promised Felix she wouldn’t say anything and so all she does is talk about pies. Truly. It’s not her fault if Changbin interprets it differently.
2) A scene that actually takes place the morning after this chapter, just before the opening scene of the next one, in which Chan and Changbin talk courtship.Next up in Chapter 23, Felix goes job hunting, definitely goes about it Very Smartly and does not panic for a single second, and gives Hyunjin an aneurysm.
Chapter 23
Summary:
Sometimes you need to slide a few steps backwards in order to grow.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The next morning finds Felix sitting cross-legged in the swing bed in the garden, bent over his phone. A little ways off, Hyunjin is watering his plants with the garden hose. It’s a nice day, sunny but not too warm, and the garden smells like flowers and wet earth.
He’s busy adding another address to his list when Chan and Changbin drop into the swing bed beside him. They’re both freshly showered, and Changbin immediately flops over into his lap. “Morning.”
Felix smiles down at him. “Hey.”
“How’re you doing?” Chan asks, ruffling his hair.
Felix huffs and blows a lock of hair back out of his face. “I’m good.”
“Yeah?”
He nods and looks up apologetically. “I’m feeling better today. Sorry about yesterday.”
Chan pulls a face. “Don’t you dare. You’re going to therapy to hopefully eventually make things easier for yourself, but none of us expect the process to be smooth. Just take things at your pace. We’re happy to support you in whatever way you need.”
Felix sighs, even as part of him warms. “Okay.”
“You do want to keep going?” Chan asks. “With San?”
“Yes,” Felix says. Yesterday was a lot, and he’s kind of glad he doesn’t have to go back until Thursday, but he meant what he told Minho last night. He won’t quit. And San was kind. Felix doesn’t want a different therapist. “He was nice. I like him.”
Chan smiles. “Alright. Then don’t worry about anything else, okay?”
Felix bites his lip. “Is it expensive? The therapy?”
Chan shakes his head, amused. “When I said ‘anything else’, money was implied.”
“But—”
“We’re happy to pay for you,” Changbin pipes up from his lap. “But even if we weren’t, the Kim pack would not have let you pay for your own therapy anyway.”
Felix blinks.
“They really wouldn’t have,” Chan agrees. “If you hadn’t been able to pay, your therapy would have been free. Hongjoong said Seonghwa felt very stupid when he realised he’d forgotten to mention that to you.”
Changbin snorts. “It took some bartering to convince them to let us pay for it at all, considering how much we’re already sending them every month.”
“You’ve been paying them money?” Felix asks, confused. And then, in horrified realisation, “For me?”
“No,” Chan says hastily. “Well—kind of, at the start. But not because they asked us to. Like I said, they would have done everything for free. But the things they do aren’t cheap, and we have more than enough money. Of course we were going to compensate them.”
“We’ve settled on a monthly donation,” Changbin adds casually. “Because they do amazing work, and we’d like to help them do more of it.”
“What was it we helped them get last week?” Chan asks, looking down at Changbin.
“Drugs,” Changbin deadpans, and Chan smacks his shoulder.
“Aside from medicine.”
Changbin grins. “An analyser of sorts, I think.”
“Yeah. I forgot the name but it’s for blood,” he tells Felix, “so that they can start analysing samples at home and don’t have to sneak around the lab so much. It’s safer that way, you know?”
Felix stares at both of them. They’ve been donating money so that the Kim pack can help omegas like him. They’ve been doing that all this time. “You… Really?”
“Yep,” Changbin tells him with a pat to his cheek. “So don’t you worry about your therapy costs, alright? They’re nothing.”
They’re not nothing. Felix knows they’re not nothing, because there’s no way therapy isn’t expensive. But to them… to them it probably isn’t. The difference between their wealth and Felix’s lack of it staggers him sometimes, even if he believes them when they say that they don’t mind paying for him. It still feels wrong, to live solely off their funds without contributing at all.
It’s exactly what he plans on rectifying this week, and he takes a breath. “I’m gonna find a job.”
Chan cocks his head. “They wouldn’t let you pay, Lixie. You don’t need to.”
“I want to,” Felix says. “Not because of the therapy. But for rent and groceries and stuff.” He woke up with the thought this morning. The determination from last night about therapy was still there, and it had grown roots and stretched to another area of his life. He’s been putting it off, job hunting, because he knows it’s going to be difficult and he knows he’ll hate it. But that’s not an excuse. It’s not like he wants to spend the rest of his life sitting around doing nothing—he wants a job, wants to feel useful and contribute, and it’s time to build his life back up.
Chan glances at Changbin and then says, slowly, “You don’t have to pay us. You don’t have to find a job, if you don’t want to.”
“But I do want to. I said that weeks ago. I’m gonna find a job.”
“It’s about more than just the money?” Changbin asks. He’s talking to Felix, but looking at Chan. “It’s about the independence?”
“Yes,” Felix says, glad he understands. He holds up his phone. “I’ve been updating my list of places that are hiring. I’m gonna go out and stop by tomorrow.”
Chan watches him, sends another glance at Changbin, and then says, “Okay. Alright. Would you like me to come with you?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“I can. We’re not too busy, I can join you and help make sure—”
“No,” Felix says again, firmer this time. “I don’t want you to. I want to do this on my own.” He’s been leaning on them for months. He needs to prove that he can do things by himself.
“Oh would you look at that,” Changbin tells Chan cheerfully. “A no.”
Chan sends Changbin an exasperated look, but then turns back to Felix. “No jobs like the one you had though, right?”
Felix looks up at him, a little confused.
“It’s fine if you want a job,” Chan says. “I get that, and I won’t argue with you over it. But I want you to have a job that you like, a job that will add to your happiness rather than take away from it. And Bin told me the chef at the last restaurant you worked at kicked you so hard your hip was purple for a week, so Felix, no jobs like that.”
Oh. He’d forgotten he told them about that.
“He only did it once,” Felix mumbles, but when Chan’s face darkens, he quickly changes tactics. “I know, hyung. I don’t want a job like that again either.”
That’s the truth. It’s a sneaky truth though, because he knows he won’t get a job that he likes. There are no jobs he likes for people like him, that’s not how the world works. He knows exactly how he’s going to get a job, and it won’t be by being picky. But Chan doesn’t need to know that; it’s clearly better if Chan doesn’t know that, and Felix knows he’s a good liar, so long as he feels like he can justify the reason behind the lie. With this he can, because knowing the truth would only hurt Chan.
Chan eyes him, but then nods slowly. “And you’re really sure you want to do it alone?”
“Yes,” Felix says. He does want to do it on his own, but even if he didn’t, he knows he can’t let them come with him. “I am.”
“Okay,” Chan sighs, although he still looks worried. “Today?”
“No,” Felix says, looking away. A hint of shame creeps up, but he still admits, “I kind of… I am fine, and I wanna continue with therapy. But I… I don’t think I want to go out today. If that’s okay.” If he has to go out and deal with alphas today in the way he knows he has to, it’s not going to go well.
“A no and a boundary,” Changbin mutters nonsensically, smirking up at Chan.
Chan ignores him and rubs Felix’s knee. “Of course that’s okay. You can take as much time as you would like.” He looks at the still mostly bare surface of the swing they’re sitting on. “Would you like me to bring you some nesting pillows?”
“Yes,” Felix decides after a moment, because the idea of building another swing nest actually sounds really nice. “I can get them myself though, it’s fine.”
But Chan is already up. “Don’t bother, I’ve got it.”
“Hyung—”
“Just let him do it,” Changbin says. “You’ll make his day. Besides…” He looks over at where Hyunjin is still watering flowers, and his eyes glitter. “This will give us time to squeeze that hose shut and make Jinnie spray himself in the face.” He holds out a hand, grinning. “You in?”
Felix laughs, and lets Changbin pull him out of the swing and down the garden path.
***
“What are you planning to do?” Chan asks Felix the next morning over breakfast. He looks sleepy and rumpled from a late night in the studio, but had dragged himself out of bed the moment he remembered Felix would be going out today, even going so far as to drag Changbin and Jisung up with him. The worry from yesterday has returned tenfold, and he doesn’t even seem to have noticed that Seungmin has been poaching pieces of his sausage for the past five minutes and he now only has rice left.
Felix shrugs. “Just ask around. I’ve got a list of hotels and restaurants and stuff, they often need people.”
“And you’re just going to ask them for illegal employment?”
“Well, that’s not what I’ll call it,” Felix says. “But yes. I’ve done it before, hyung, I know what I’m doing.”
“And you—”
“He’s not the only person in Seoul to make money under the table,” Jeongin tells Chan. “Like eight percent of the population works illegally, it’s really not that uncommon.”
“I know,” Chan says, “I just—”
“If he says he wants to do it on his own, you’re not stopping him,” Jeongin cuts him off, his voice and scent tighter now. “You have been overprotective of him since he got here, and he doesn’t need your permission.”
Felix watches Jeongin lash out on his behalf, feeling both grateful and a little embarrassed.
Chan blinks. “No, I… I know. I didn’t mean…” He rubs a hand down his face as Jeongin’s words sink in. He looks around the table, a little lost. “Is that really what I’ve…” He trails off, clearly coming to a realisation on his own. “Fuck.”
“You need to tone it down,” Jeongin continues, glaring Chan down. “He’s not helpless.”
Chan’s face falls. “I’m sorry,” he says. He’s quiet for a moment and then looks at Felix. “I know you’re not helpless. I didn’t mean to imply that you were. I’m just worried.”
“I’ll be fine,” Felix says.
“Yeah,” Chan says unhappily. “I… Yeah. It’s just that I think it would be easier if—”
“Hyung,” Jeongin growls, and Chan bites his lip.
“We’ll scent you,” Seungmin tells Felix.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Changbin agrees, looking at Chan. “We’ll do it thoroughly. They’ll know not to exploit him if he smells like all of us. He’ll be okay.”
That at least drains some of the tension from Chan’s shoulders. “Right, yes. That’s a good idea.”
“We can, right?” Jisung asks Felix.
“Of course,” Felix says, because he knew they would probably do that. He also knows he can’t keep their scents, but that’s a problem for later Felix.
“See?” Jeongin tells Chan. “Stop coddling him. He’s gonna be fine.”
“Yes, alright,” Chan says, raking a hand through his hair that’s still sticking up. He doesn’t look entirely reassured, but he clearly no longer has any arguments left. “Just… be careful, Lixie.”
“I will,” Felix promises, and he means it. Of course he’ll be careful. He knows better than any of them how to be careful about his identity, how to slip through the cracks and make sure people won’t look too closely. And while he really does want to prove that he can do something on his own, he also knows that that’s the other reason he can’t let any of them come along. He knows exactly what he needs to do to get a job, and they’re not going to like what that looks like.
*
The first thing he does when he arrives in his old district an hour later is duck into a public bathroom to change clothes. He nearly ran into Seungmin on his way back from the garage, but in the end managed to smuggle the clothes out unseen. Now, in a cramped bathroom stall with walls inked in black marker, he takes off his sweater and shrugs into the ratty old t-shirt he brought. It still smells faintly like laundry detergent, but it looks shabby, and that’s what he needs. That’s step one. He can’t show up looking immaculately dressed. He needs to look desperate, or this is never going to work.
After he’s pulled a beanie over his head to hide his blond hair and exchanged his jeans for his old ones—ripped and threadbare in a way that was definitely not part of their original design, still unflatteringly baggy on him despite the fact that he’s back at a healthy weight now—he looks down at himself. He bites his lip, contemplating carefully. People will see the jeans and t-shirt first, so he thinks he can get away with the sneakers and the backpack. They’re new, but he purposely chose the black ones, because they’re the least flashy. They should be okay, probably.
Besides, it’s not really the bag or sneakers that are going to give him trouble. His eyes fall on the can of scent neutraliser he swiped from a shelf in the laundry room, and he hesitates. He has to. He knew that this morning. The pack scented him so thoroughly that anyone could smell them on him from across the street. He knows it’s stupid to wear the clothes and not get rid of their scents, nobody is going to hire him if he smells like this, but…
He doesn’t want to. He really, really doesn’t want to.
He’s surprised at how strong the feeling is. The idea of using the neutraliser actually makes him feel sick, which is stupid, because he no longer needs their scents. And yet at this moment it feels like he does, because everything in him recoils at the thought of removing them. He’s already anxious at the fact that he’ll have to talk to strange alphas, and the idea of doing it without the protective buffer of their scents makes his stomach turn.
He can’t get a job like this though. He has to use the neutraliser.
He swallows hard.
But… he’s got time, right? It’s only nine. He can… he can try a few places like this first, surely? Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe it will work.
He stares down at the can for another few seconds before resolutely zipping his backpack closed. He’ll try it this way first. Who knows. Maybe it will be easier than he remembers.
*
It’s not easier.
The man at the first hotel he visits isn’t even mean, and yet he fails within five minutes.
“G-good morning,” Felix stammers after the beta concierge he met has taken him to her supervisor. The man is an alpha, as Felix expected, and the musk in his scent puts him immediately on edge. Hazelnut. Not even unpleasant, but strong. Alpha. Unfamiliar, not like Aera’s scent. He breathes through his mouth, trying to keep a clear head, trying to find the mindset he used to do this in. “I, um.”
The man—Ko Hoyoung, according to the plate on his desk—looks to be in his late sixties, and he smiles at Felix. “Looking for employment?”
Felix gives a quick nod, fighting the urge to step back and then keep going, back and back and out of the room.
“We are still looking for some room attendants,” the man says, turning away to rummage through a drawer. “Let me look through your CV and I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange something.”
Time for the hard part. Felix takes a breath. Hazelnut. He regrets it immediately, but manages to stammer, “I d-don’t have a CV.” The alpha looks up, and Felix rushes out, “B-but I can work hard, I swear.”
Ko Hoyoung frowns. Looks Felix over, taking in his ragged appearance. “No CV?”
Felix shakes his head.
The alpha cocks his head, studying him. He’s clearly clever enough, because his next question is accompanied by a raised eyebrow. “No bank account either, I take it?”
Felix exhales. See. No need to ask for anything illegal if the person you’re asking comes to the right conclusions themselves. “I… please. I’m a hard worker, you won’t regret it.”
The man studies him for another long moment and then shakes his head. “No, kid. I don’t know what pack you’re in, but I’m not taking you on without a contract.”
“I-I don’t have—”
“I may be getting on in age but my nose works fine, boy. You don’t live alone.”
Felix slumps. “They wouldn’t do anything.”
The alpha shakes his head. “I’m not risking that. I’m sorry, you’re going to have to try somewhere else. Good luck, kid.”
And with that, he sends Felix back out the door. Once he’s back out on the street, Felix huffs in frustration, even as he gratefully breathes in deep lungfuls of fresh air. The man wasn’t rude at all, and yet Felix can still feel anxiety bubble low in his stomach, just from talking to him for two minutes.
This outcome is what he was expecting though. This is why he brought the neutraliser. Hiring an illegal employee is dangerous, and not just because it’s against the law. Normally, employment contracts include waivers that protect employers from pack revenge. Without those, there’s no predicting the danger a worker’s pack might cause. This wasn’t a problem for Felix before—the only scent he carried with him was his own, weak and sour from hunger and the aftereffects of the bond severing. But right now, with seven more scents clinging to his skin, all healthy and strong and protective, there’s no way he’s going to get hired.
He considers the neutraliser again, can almost feel the weight of the can in the backpack he’s carrying. He has to use it. He knows he does.
His stomach clenches.
He struggles for a full five minutes, and in the end still keeps the backpack firmly on his shoulders. He’ll… he’ll keep trying like this, for now. He’s only visited one place, after all. Maybe someone will just… not notice.
He knows it’s a stupid thought even as he thinks it, and he’s proven right when he’s turned away from the next four hotels on his list. It takes him a full two hours. It shouldn’t have taken anywhere near this long, but after each try his chest and skin felt tight with the urge to flee, and he had to take time to calm down and work up the nerve to try again. At the last hotel he visited, the alpha woman he spoke to actually got angry with him and threatened to call the police, and panic screeched through him so sharply that he’d fled the building before she could even finish her sentence.
That was ten minutes ago, and he’s calmed back down now, although he’s still huddled against the wall in an alley in between a dumpster and a stack of crates. An instinctive hiding place, a place that feels safe, after all those months he spent on the street.
The sheer level of anxiety that circles in his chest is incredibly frustrating, because it didn’t use to be this way. He used to do all of this just fine. He remembers it, remembers the way he interacted with the chefs in Man-sik’s restaurant all day, the way he ran errands and talked to people when he needed to. He was fine, back then. Calm, and composed. But it’s like the past three months with the pack have dismantled all of that, and now all he has are loose scraps and frayed ends.
He has managed to keep it together so far, but only because of the scents that are wrapped around him like a security blanket.
Unfortunately, it’s exactly those scents that are the problem.
He could keep trying. He could. But he knows that nothing is going to change so long as he smells like this. So long as he smells like there’s a large pack of seven people that will come after any employer who tries to use Felix in a way they don’t like, there’s nothing in it for them. They can’t exploit him, and without a contract, nobody is going to be crazy enough to take Felix on.
He’s never going to find a job if he smells like them.
He exhales. He needs to use the neutraliser.
His hands tighten around the backpack in his lap. He has to. He needs to stop whining and just do it.
With stiff fingers, he unzips the backpack and takes out the can he brought. It’s one of the leftover cans from when the pack still had to de-scent every time they came home. There’s still quite a few left, because someone had clearly gone overboard in ordering them, and when he took it this morning Felix knew this one wouldn’t be missed.
He holds it up, aiming for his neck.
His hand shakes.
He has to.
Nausea rises up inside him, and every instinct screams at him to stop.
But he has to, he has to get a job so he needs to stop being a baby and just press down, just do it—
His finger presses down. There’s a telltale click as the can gets ready to spray, and that’s it. Pure panic lances through him, and he hurls the can away like it burned him. It hits the wall on the other side of the alley and clatters to the ground, but he’s already curled in on himself, too busy trying to suck in air, any air at all past the seizing of his lungs.
He wheezes, his vision blurring with panicked tears. He presses his face harder against his knees, trying to get himself together. Ironically, it’s once again the fact that he’s breathing in the pack’s scents that eventually helps his lungs open up again, a little bit more with each wheezing breath.
“Fuck,” he growls out when he has air again, frustrated tears spilling over.
He can’t do it. He can still feel it inside of him, that panic, the jagged edges of it slicing into his chest. It’s right there, ready to flip over into an actual panic attack in the blink of an eye. Losing the scents would do it, he can tell. It would tip him right over into the abyss, there’s no doubt in his mind. If he gets rid of the scents, he’s going to fall apart completely.
He thought he was stronger than this. He thought he’d improved, because he managed to talk to the dean for Jeongin and he even attended Jeongin’s pack revenge, and if there’s anything that should have made him panic that was it. And yet it’s this, just the very thought of existing without their scents for a few hours, that would send him over the edge. He isn’t strong at all. He’s weaker than he’s ever been.
He angrily wipes at his eyes.
In his pocket, his phone buzzes, and he takes it out.
rice tomatoes eggs shrimp ginger sesame nobody change the name until ive been to the store pls
Chris: How’s it going Felix? You okay?
Jeongin: stop being a helicopter parent
Jeongin: but @Felix if you want to let us know how you’re doing then you canSeungmin: Who are you trying to fool here.
Jisung: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Felix stares at his phone, more tears welling up. He went out to prove that he can do this one thing on his own, and it’s only been a few hours and he’s already failed. He’s not going to get a job if he smells like them, and yet he’s too stupid and cowardly to go without their scents, so he might as well go home.
He can’t though. He can’t bear the thought of going home now, of facing them when he’s proven again just how weak and stupid he is, just like Kwang-ho always told him. He clenches his hands into fists and suppresses the urge to scream, furious with himself.
He can’t face them yet. He wipes his eyes again and starts typing.
Felix: Lol yes don’t worry I’m fine!
And with that he locks his phone, slips it back into his pocket, and rises. He snatches the can of neutraliser off the ground and stuffs it back into his bag, and then walks out of the alley. He sets his jaw. He’s not giving up. He just needs to calm down and clear his head, and then he can try again.
*
He walks without purpose, but his feet lead him down familiar streets before he’s even consciously decided where he’s going. When he finds himself in front of the green door, he just huffs and enters. Sure. It might even help him calm down.
When he steps in, Aera is just exiting the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel.
She looks up at the sound of the bells above the door, and her eyes land on him.
Felix knows what she must see and smell; the tattered outfit, the way his eyes are still a little red from crying, and the defeated frustration that’s oozing out of his every pore. “Hi halmeoni,” he mumbles sullenly.
She narrows her eyes at him. He expects her to question him, but after a long silence, all she says is, “Avocado and black beans.”
Felix stares at her. “Huh?”
“Avocado and black beans,” she says again, waving him over as she turns around. “We’re making brownies. You’re in charge.”
He blinks, even as he automatically follows her into the kitchen. An ingredient game, he realises, like they used to play. But… “Black beans?” he asks incredulously. Aera loves experimenting with different ingredients, but this seems like a stretch.
She shrugs. “Custom order. Some sort of gluten-free new-age health thing. Go wash up, tell me how to make them.”
“But I don’t know how to make them.” He’s already at the sink though.
“Then you’d best start thinking.”
She starts setting out equipment while Felix washes his hands. No ingredients, of course. He’ll have to figure those out himself, even if he’s sure that she already knows exactly how to make the brownies. He puts on the apron she hands him and, with a hint of relief, lets himself be drawn into the distraction she’s offering him.
“Tell me, Yongbok-ah. What are we using?”
He pulls a face. “Beans, apparently.”
She clicks her tongue in disapproval. “Stop letting your judgement be clouded by what you think you know. Think about beans. What are they like? What qualities do they have?”
A philosophical study on beans is the last thing he thought this day would include, and yet it’s somehow better than everything that came before it. He takes the time to consider it. “They have a lot of texture,” he says finally. “I guess if you puree them you could use that to thicken the batter without using flour, maybe?”
Aera smiles at him. “And the avocado substitutes…?”
“Um. Oil or butter, I guess? But wouldn’t you still taste it? It doesn’t sound good.”
“Only one way to find out.”
They end up baking for the next three hours. Once the first batch is in the oven, they immediately start on a second one, tweaking the recipe slightly. Occasionally, Aera steps back into the shop to help a customer, trusting Felix to make the batter on his own. He periodically sends texts to the group chat so they’ll know he’s still alive and won’t worry too much, but otherwise focuses on the brownies. Over the course of their baking, his anxiety and frustration slowly subside into something quieter, and his shoulders loosen a little.
Somehow, the first attempts aren’t as disastrous as Felix thought they would be. They at least look like brownies, although they’re too flat and they don’t taste good. They try again, adding baking powder and changing the proportions of sugar and cocoa. By the time they cut into batch five—less sugar than batch four, but with an added drop of vanilla extract—they know they’ve got it.
“So,” Aera says as they start mixing up a new bowl of batter for the actual order. “Are you going to tell me why you showed up here looking like that, or do we need another bake before you’re ready?”
Her voice is casual and she doesn’t look up from the avocado she’s cutting.
Felix stills where he was measuring cocoa powder, and lowers his cup. He knew the question would come. She’s let him bake for hours, but he knew he wouldn’t leave the shop without giving her an explanation.
“I was looking for a job,” he says eventually.
She doesn’t reply, smoothly removing the avocado pit.
“It didn’t go well.” His voice is bitter. “And I knew it wouldn’t, I know I need to remove their scents and I tried, but—”
At that, she snaps her head up. “You tried to remove their scents? What on earth is wrong with you, Yongbok?”
He clenches his hands. “I have to look a certain way, halmeoni. I need to manipulate my way into a job or I’ll never get one.”
“You mean you need to make yourself as vulnerable a target as possible so they’ll be tempted by the idea of manipulating you. So they’ll get a cheap worker they can exploit without so much as a slap on the wrist.”
“Yes,” he says, a little sharper than he intended. “Because those are the only kind of jobs I’ll get, and that’s the only reason I got hired last time. But last time I didn’t smell like a pack of seven, and I know I’ll never get a job unless I get rid of their scents.”
Aera’s face is as incredulous as her voice when she says, “You just told me last Sunday that their scents make you feel safe, and now you’ve decided it’s a good idea to remove them?”
“I don’t have any other—”
“You do realise it wouldn’t just be for today, right?” she points out. “If you do it like this, you can’t smell like them after they hire you, either. You’ll have to use neutraliser to remove their scents every time you go to work, and you’ll lose all of that comfort and safety that’s making you so happy.”
Her voice is calm, but her words are like a dagger to his chest. He knows. He knows. He’s just been trying not to think about that. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he says eventually, tightening his jaw in renewed frustration. “Because I couldn’t do it. I knew I had to, and yet I panicked before I could even try, because apparently I’m so weak now that I can’t do anything on my own without panicking like the pathetic little omega he always said I—” Kwang-ho’s smirk flashes through his mind, and he cuts himself off abruptly, breathing hard.
Aera clicks her tongue again. “You are not pathetic,” she tells him firmly. “You are not weak. You are strong and resilient and have been dragging yourself out of hell since the first time I met you.”
Felix stares at her, too stunned to respond.
“I’ve seen you slowly drop your guard around me,” she continues, scooping the avocado into the mixing bowl as if this is any ordinary conversation. “Despite what you’d been through, you chose to let me in. You chose trust over isolation, even if it brought fear along with it.” She wipes her hands on her towel. “It was hard for you. I could see it. I think it was easier for you to interact with those bastards at the restaurant you worked at than spend five minutes with me, especially those first few months. Because you let me in, and shut yourself off around them.”
He looks away, staring down at the worktop. It’s true, he realises. He somehow managed to keep himself together around all the alphas in Man-sik’s kitchen, too scared to lose his job and end up back on the streets, but all of his fear and panic reared up with a vengeance every time he stepped into this bakery. He fled the shop so many times, sometimes right after catching the barest whiff of the alpha musk in her scent.
“And now that you’re with them, you’ve opened yourself up even further. You’ve let them in too, probably deeper than you even realise. I do not know everything you’ve been through, but I can see how much you’ve healed since you met them. You can’t just flip a switch and go back to that hard shell you used to carry, Yongbok-ah. More importantly, you can’t just decide to erase the safety you’ve found in their scents and expect to be as calm and clear-headed as you are with them.”
“But…” He swallows. “But I was calm before. I was living alone, and I did it without panicking. For years. So I thought…”
“You were calm,” she agrees, stepping towards him. “But you were not living, Yongbok-ah. You were surviving.”
Survival mode, Seungmin’s voice whispers in his head.
He exhales. She rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you’d survive again, if you had to do it on your own. You are strong. But you wouldn’t do it with the openness and joy I’ve seen in you in the past few weeks. You would shut down again, because that’s what you would need in order to make it on your own.” She squeezes his arm. “Don’t go back to that, child. You’ve made so much progress. Don’t do that to yourself.”
The realisation that she’s right is not a shock so much as a subtle shift of acceptance. Because somewhere, deep down, a part of him already knew this. He just… forgot. But Seungmin had told him the same thing, about surviving, and Felix had realised it himself too, that day with Minho and Jisung in the grocery store; that he is more open now, that things have changed. That he used to keep most of himself locked away, and that things are harder now that he is staying present.
But he really did think he’d improved, with the dean and Jeongin’s pack revenge. And yet… the pack had been there for that, hadn’t they? They’d been present. He’d had their scents and them. And yes, he’s managed public transport on his own a few times, but he didn’t have to interact with any alphas there at all. He could just huddle into the pack’s scents and stay unnoticed. Today… what he did today was different. Interacting with alphas on his own and trying to do it without their scents really was different from the things he’s managed before.
It makes him feel the tiniest bit better about what happened earlier, and yet he still doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that their scents hold this much power over them. That he’s this dependent on them. Surely that’s not normal, panicking at the very idea of going without them when they’re not even mated.
“But isn’t it stupid?” he whispers. “That I need their scents like this?”
It’s her turn to look away for a moment. When she looks back at him and speaks, her voice is quiet. “When Jihye died and I lost her scent, it took me months to leave the house. Worse than the grief, worse than the pain of the bond breaking, was losing her scent. I didn’t know I could need something that viscerally. Not until it was gone.”
Felix’s eyes widen. “Halmeoni.”
There’s a hint of pain in her scent, but her eyes are dry and she looks calm. “So no, child. I do not think it is stupid. I think it makes you human, and you deserve every bit of comfort and happiness they can give you. Enjoy it, please. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Felix stares at her, emotion swirling inside his chest. In a way, he knows exactly what she’s saying. Because when his family died, losing their scents had been horrible. He hadn’t been bonded to them either, but it had still been like a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. It had taken him a long time to start healing, and if it hadn’t been for Jake and Sunghoon and their families, he probably wouldn’t have been functional at all. It’s not the same now, of course. The pack is still alive and he still has their scents, but… “I don’t want to go without their scents anymore,” he breathes.
“Good. You shouldn’t.”
“And…” He averts his eyes, staring down at the cutting board on the worktop. He swallows, and admits the thing he’s been secretly thinking ever since he made his plans yesterday. “And I don’t want a job like the one I had.” This confession feels more shameful, like he’s reaching for more than he’s allowed.
Her eyes flash. “Damn right. You’ll never work in a place like that again, not if I have anything to say about it. I’m still waiting for names, Yongbok-ah, because I am not above taking down a restaurant.”
He lets out a laugh. It fades quickly though, and then he sighs. “But I don’t know what to do now, halmeoni. If I can’t go without their scents and I can’t get a job with them…”
She eyes him. “You do want a job?”
He nods. “I want to feel normal. I want to feel useful.”
“Then work for me.”
He snaps his head up. This again. “No.”
“Be quiet and listen to me. This is not a pity offer.” At his incredulous expression, amusement flashes across her face, and she admits without a hint of shame, “Two years ago, it was a pity offer. A year ago, it was a pity offer. It’s not now. You know your way around the kitchen. You know this shop, you know its clientele. I’ve seen you bake. You’re talented, Yongbok-ah. You’re creative, and with some proper guidance you could become a great baker.”
She pauses, but he doesn’t interrupt. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, too shocked by all of the compliments she’s throwing his way. They’re genuine. Aera doesn’t do false compliments.
Her eyes bore sharply into him. “You want to tell me no. Presumably because I would lose my shop if anyone found out you work here illegally?”
He nods numbly.
“Well, I’m not getting any younger. Oh, I know I still look spry and lively, but running this place is a lot of work, and I’m starting to feel it. Before too long, I won’t be able to keep up. A few more years, perhaps, and then I’ll lose this shop regardless. But if I have you… Yongbok, if you work for me, it’s much more likely that you will extend the bakery’s life, rather than shorten it.”
He stares at her. “That’s still a risk,” he says weakly.
“One that I am more than willing to take. The idea of needing to slowly reduce the quantity and perhaps even the quality of my wares because my old bones can no longer keep up with demand? That is far, far worse than the chance of things falling through because I’m taking on a slightly illegal protégé.”
“You… you could hire someone else though. Someone legal.”
She scoffs. “If you think I’m leaving this shop in the hands of some snot-faced punk from the academy who doesn’t know the place, doesn’t know the neighbourhood and its people, then you don’t know me at all, Yongbok.” She’s practically spitting fire, and he knows that it doesn’t matter if the pastry chefs she’s talking about are not like that at all. She’s stubborn, and she won’t budge on this. “This is not a pity offer,” she repeats. “I’m asking because I truly believe it would be best for the bakery and for me. I don’t want anyone else. I want you.”
It seems she is done talking, because she merely watches him and raises an eyebrow in expectation of his answer, as if she didn’t just turn his world upside down. But Felix only stares back, wide-eyed, and finally she huffs. “Yongbok-ah. Do you, or do you not, want to work in this bakery?”
Of course he wants to work here. He’s dreamed of working in a bakery ever since he was six and first realised the job existed. But surely he can’t just… he can’t just…
“Felix. I need an honest answer.”
“I…” He averts his eyes. But when she keeps watching him expectantly, he relents. “Yes, I want to work here. Of course I do. But—”
She smiles, satisfied. “Then you’re hired.”
“But—”
“Ah-ah. You’re hired. That’s final.”
She’s… fully set on this. He is not going to change her mind no matter what he says, he can tell. And very slowly, a flicker of hope lights in his chest. “Are you sure?” he asks, completely overwhelmed.
“Absolutely.” She turns. “Let’s take a break and set up your contract.”
“My what?”
“Your contract,” she says as she opens the door to the stairs that lead to her living quarters. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you dare panic and run off on me again. I might be old, but I will chase you down the street if I have to.”
He snorts, and then lets out a full, slightly hysterical laugh as she disappears up the stairs. She would do it too.
*
An hour and a half later, the final batch of brownies is done, the order has been packed, and Felix has signed his contract. An actual contract, even if she’ll never file it. “It’ll be between us,” she said. “But it’s an agreement nonetheless, and it’s important to me that you have it. I will not renege on its terms.” So Felix will work for her three days a week, starting with half days. He’d tried to protest this, but she was adamant about easing him into it slowly. “If it goes well, we can add to it, but we’re starting with this. I want you to focus on therapy, and this will give me the chance to work out my finances.” Of course, that last statement very quickly put a stop to any of his pleas for more hours and instead made him protest payment at all, but she shushed him. “I have more than enough money to pay you. I would just like the time to run some calculations and take a good look at my accounts.”
In fact, when Felix saw how much she’ll be paying him, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. It’s nothing like the couple thousand won an hour he used to get at Man-sik’s. It’s not even the minimum wage—she’s paying him a proper salary, with vacation time and paid sick leave. He wasn’t able to hold back his tears as that sunk in, and she watched him fondly as he recollected himself.
When the pack’s texts to him start growing a little more concerned, probably because of his short responses, he texts them that he’s with Aera and that he’s going to work for her. The mood lightens immediately at that, with everyone congratulating him and telling him how happy they are for him. For the first time all day, he’s able to send a genuinely excited reply back.
“Alright,” Aera says, after watching him text for a few minutes. “I’m kicking you out. Go home, Yongbok-ah.”
Felix winces and puts his phone down. “Sorry. I’m being rude.”
She shakes her head. “Go home. Your mates are waiting.”
His cheeks flush. “They’re not my mates.”
“They will be.”
He squirms, because saying it out loud like that still feels like tempting fate. “They—”
She sends him a look. “One of your boys stopped by this week for no other reason than to buy you a single pastry, and tipped me a hundred thousand won.”
Felix’s eyes bulge. Jesus, Changbin.
“Go home to your pack. I’ll see you next week.”
When he stands, she hands him a bag. “Here. Take these brownies. Be sure to give Hyunjin this one, it’s from the first batch.”
He grins. “Just when he’d begun to trust you again.”
She winks. “Got to keep him on his toes.” Then she ushers him out the door. “Now go. I’ll see you next Tuesday.” When Felix turns to leave, she adds, “And Yongbok?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you dare use any neutraliser before you show up here next week. If you do, I will drag you back to your pack myself.”
He laughs, relief spreading in his chest. “Yes, halmeoni.”
*
It’s only when he’s already on the bus that he remembers he’s still wearing his old clothes. He briefly considers changing back when he gets off, but in the end dismisses the thought. It no longer matters, he’s found a job and he knows Aera won’t want him to wear these clothes anyway. This will be the last time he wears them. It’s fine.
When he gets home and walks into the kitchen, he finds Hyunjin, Chan and Jisung gathered around the kitchen island.
“Felix!” Hyunjin exclaims, unwrapping himself from Jisung’s back and turning around. “Congratu—” He gets his first good look at Felix’s outfit and gasps so violently that Chan, who’s standing across from him folding laundry, spins around and knocks a stack of t-shirts to the floor.
Hyunjin lets out a cry. “What are you wearing?”
Felix huffs. “My old clothes.”
“That was rhetorical, I did not need an answer. Why? Why would you wear those?” Hyunjin wails, marching towards him. Dismayed, he plucks at the hem of Felix’s shirt, too big and with a grease stain on the side that’s so deeply soaked into the fabric that not even the pack’s high-end laundry detergent had been able to get rid of it. “That question I do need answered. Why would you do this to me, Felixie, after everything I suffered when you first got here—”
“I do believe it was Felix who was dying, at the time,” Chan says mildly, but he’s eyeing Felix, tense worry gathering behind his eyes.
Hyunjin takes a look at Felix’s tattered jeans and practically hisses. Felix hasn’t seen this particular blend of horror and disgust on his face since the day Minho discovered a wasp nest in the garden shed.
Jisung approaches too, hovering worriedly at Felix’s side.
“I’m fine,” Felix tells him, and then looks at Chan, who is watching him in tight concern. “I am.”
“Oh,” Hyunjin says, face falling in belated realisation. “Right.”
Chan presses his lips together and then stalks forward to draw Felix into a hug. “I fucking knew it,” he mutters. “I knew you’d do something like this. I dropped it this morning because Innie got to me, but what the hell, Felix?”
“I had to,” Felix says apologetically.
“No you didn’t.” Chan’s hands tighten on his shoulders, but it’s Jisung who speaks next.
“Why would you do this?” he asks quietly. “Did you think you had to get a job in order to stay, even if it was like this?”
“No,” Felix says honestly. He knows they won’t kick him out. “I didn’t. But I wanted a job, and this was the only way.” When they all look ready to protest, he sighs. “Do you know how long I looked for jobs last time? It took me weeks. Weeks of searching, of trying to make myself look presentable and convince them I was better off than I was, and it was only when I hadn’t eaten in three days and was on the verge of collapsing that someone hired me. I knew I wouldn’t find a job if I looked like I had money, I had to make sure I looked desperate, or they would never—”
Chan shakes him by the shoulders, looking pained. “Stop. Stop, don’t say that, don’t—”
“It’s true,” Felix insists. “I had to—”
“You can’t do this, Felix. You- it’s dangerous, don’t you get that?”
For the first time, and so suddenly it takes him by surprise, Felix feels anger. Maybe it’s the frustration of the morning catching up with him, but his eyes flash. “Don’t I get that?”
Chan falters. “I…”
“Of course I get that,” he snaps. “I lived like that for years. I lived on the street for months before I got my apartment. You don’t get to tell me about danger.”
There’s a stunned silence as everyone stares at him, and then Chan bows his head, contrite. “I’m sorry.”
And with that, all of Felix’s anger evaporates just as quickly as it came, shame filling its place. It’s been a long time since he snapped at someone like that, and he looks away. “Sorry.”
“No,” Chan says, “You’re right. I was worried, but I shouldn’t have talked down to you. I apologise.”
“I knew you would worry,” Felix admits, softer now. He’s still staring at the countertop. “It’s why I didn’t tell you. Because I knew it was the only way. I don’t like it, but that’s how it is.”
“But,” Hyunjin whispers, very hesitantly. “Why?”
“Because I have nothing, Jin.” His voice is quiet. Hollow. “I don’t have my name. I don’t have credentials or an ID or a bank account. I don’t have rights. I have nothing, and I never will.” He sweeps his hair back just enough to indicate the faded mating bite on his neck. “He would find me the moment I get careless.” His chest feels tight, and his biggest fear spills over his lips before he can hold it back. “I don’t even know where he lives now. He could be right here in Seoul. I could run into him and I wouldn’t even see it coming.”
The thought sends shivers down his spine, and his lungs constrict. He used to think that for a long time, after he fled to Seoul. That Kwang-ho had followed him, and that maybe he didn’t find him this day, but tomorrow he would. As the years passed, the fear had dulled slightly from constant exposure, but it never disappeared.
The others share a look, and then Chan says, “He’s in Daegu. He still lives in Daegu.”
Felix stares at him. “What?”
“Park Kwang-ho, thirty-two, born in Pohang.” Chan’s voice is quiet. “We tracked him down.”
Cold dread grips Felix’s spine. “No.”
Chan squeezes his shoulder. “Hey. Everything is fine. He doesn’t know about this, and he won’t find out. We would not risk you, Felix. You are safe, and we will keep you safe.”
Felix tries to breathe around the ice in his lungs. “But- but—”
“When you told us your story, I contacted the Kim pack. I gave them his name and asked them if they could find out his address. Yunho pulled up his hospital records for us. There were about fifteen Park Kwang-hos in Daegu, but only one of them had you as his registered mate.” Chan’s eyes are solemn. “I am sorry for going behind your back on this. This was back when you were still recovering, and I did not want to stress you out further or risk another drop. But we needed to know where he lives, for the same reasons you just mentioned. We knew he lived in Daegu when you got out, but he could have moved in the meantime, and if he’d moved to Seoul, we needed to know about it.” Before Felix can panic, Chan says, “He didn’t. He still lives in Daegu. Suseong District.”
Felix swallows. Tries three times before his throat opens enough to choke out, “Cheongsu-ro?”
“Yeah.” Chan’s eyes are soft. “Same place?”
Felix nods, trying to suppress memories of the house, of the way it smelled, of dark, vicious sandalwood—
Jisung slips his arms around his waist and squeezes. “Breathe.”
He sucks in a breath. It smells like cinnamon, and it helps.
“You’re safe,” Chan says again. “Because he hasn’t moved. But we couldn’t be sure about that without checking, and this was too important not to. For you, and for us.”
For them? Suddenly, Felix blanches. He is here illegally. He doesn’t know the law too well and they’ve never said anything, but if they- if Kwang-ho finds out, can he— “You,” he whispers. “Are you in danger. Because I’m here?”
“No,” Chan says immediately. “No, not at all. I just meant that your safety is important to us.”
“But if he finds out I’m here—”
“We’ll be fine,” Jeongin says from the doorway, and Felix whips his head over. He has no idea how long he has been there, but clearly long enough to know exactly what they’re talking about. He’s watching Felix, and his expression is pained. “We did not directly wrong him. You had long since broken your bond by the time we met you, and while official government and health institutions are required to notify him when they encounter you, the law is vague when it comes to civilians. It would be easy enough to find a loophole. At most, we’d have to pay a fine for withholding information. He could try and sue us for more money, but he wouldn’t win. We didn’t steal you away from him. We haven’t broken any laws. There’s no danger for us.”
“But the last thing I want is to let it come to that,” Chan says, “Which is why we pulled his hospital records. We needed to know where he was.”
“He’s really still in Daegu?” Felix whispers.
“Yes,” Jeongin says, walking closer.
“And he- he won’t find out? He won’t see, that you did that, that you- that I’m here—”
“He won’t,” Hyunjin says, wrapping his arms around him right over Jisung’s. “If there was a chance of that happening, hyung would never have done it.”
“If there was a chance of that happening, Yunho wouldn’t have risked it either,” Chan adds. “He’s got skills, that one, that’s for sure. He shouldn’t even have access to Daegu hospital records from here, and yet he had Kwang-ho’s within the hour.”
Felix’s mind is still reeling. He trusts Chan. He trusts that Chan wouldn’t risk his safety, and that the Kim pack wouldn’t either. But he’s still terrified at the thought of them doing something like this again and Kwang-ho finding out. Because Kwang-ho is clever, has always been so much cleverer than Felix, and they don’t get that. They don’t know how smart he is, they don’t understand. So he says tightly, “You can’t do it again.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” Chan starts, but Felix shakes his head. Shakes Hyunjin’s and Jisung’s arms off of him and sets his jaw. “No. No, you need to- you can’t do this again.”
“We wanted to ask you if we could also check his—” Jeongin tries, but Felix snaps, “No! Don’t look for him, don’t go near him, don’t touch anything that’s connected to him.” Despite his attempts to stay firm, his chest tightens and he’s starting to sound breathless. “I don’t want you to. You can’t, you can’t do that. You- please, you- please—”
“We won’t,” Chan says firmly, cupping Felix’s cheeks to stave off the rising hysteria. “We won’t, Felix, I promise. We won’t go anywhere near him. We’ll settle for knowing where he is, and we won’t dig into him any deeper. We haven’t so far, and we won’t. I swear to you.”
“You too,” Felix gasps at Jeongin.
“I promise,” Jeongin answers, guilt edging into his scent. “I’m sorry, Lixie. I promise, I won’t go digging.”
“Me neither,” Jisung says.
“We couldn’t, really,” Hyunjin adds. “We’d need the Kim pack for that, none of us have the skills. But we won’t.”
“We won’t,” Chan agrees, brushing his wrist over Felix’s neck in a reassuring burst of coffee. “And even though they already know, I’ll let the others know too, alright? Park Kwang-ho is off-limits.”
The weight of their vows hangs in the air, and Felix finally feels the band around his lungs ease a little. “Okay,” he says, exhaling shakily. “Okay.”
“You might like to know, though,” Hyunjin starts hesitantly, and Felix looks up, “that the bastard was hospitalised for a week last year because of a kidney stone.”
Felix lets out a startled laugh. It’s more hysteria than actual amusement, but the others look relieved to hear it anyway. The remnants of fear still sit cold in his stomach and he doesn’t want to think about Park Kwang-ho a second longer than he has to, but a tiny part of him can at least somewhat appreciate the fact that the alpha had been in enough pain last year to earn himself a hospital stay.
“You okay?” Jisung asks him softly when a silence falls.
Felix takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly, gathering himself. “Yeah.”
“Sorry for not telling you,” Chan says again. “I know we should have, but at first we didn’t want to risk your health, and then it felt jarring to start the conversation out of the blue.”
Felix shakes his head. A part of him gets what Chan is saying, why they wouldn’t have told him, but that’s not the point. He takes another slow breath, and once his voice is calm and firm again, he says it one more time. “Don’t look him up again.” He looks each of them in the eye. “Ever, I mean it. He’s smart. He’s dangerous. If he- if he finds me, if I have to go back, I won’t make it out a second time.”
Jisung’s eyes are wide, and Hyunjin grabs Felix’s hand, tears welling up.
And Felix doesn’t mean to hurt them, but it’s the truth. They need to know that. If Kwang-ho finds him, he will die. Whether the alpha kills him immediately or in a few years when he accidentally takes a game too far, it doesn’t matter—Felix will not make it out alive again.
“We won’t go near him,” Jeongin promises again, a little pale. “We won’t risk you. We would never risk you.”
The others nod and promise again too, and Felix knows they mean it. Knows his words have sunk in, that they really get what’s at stake. “Okay,” he says. “Alright. I trust you.”
It’s quiet for a moment as they all watch him.
“You’re okay?” Chan checks.
He nods.
“Okay,” Chan says. Then he takes Felix’s hand. “But Felix. You don’t have nothing.”
Felix blinks.
“You said you have nothing, but you don’t.” Chan’s voice grows quiet, but very firm. “You have us. We’re here for you. We would have helped you today.”
Felix looks away. “I just wanted to prove that I could do something by myself,” he mumbles. “Anything. Because I’ve been useless for so long already. And I failed. So—”
“You aren’t useless,” Jeongin says fiercely.
Jisung nods vehemently. “And you didn’t fail? You got a job.”
“Halmeoni offered me one,” Felix says. “That doesn’t count.”
Hyunjin blinks. “Why does that not count? I work because people offer me jobs.”
“And Minho-hyung only has his studio because his old teacher offered to let him take it over,” Jisung says. “That’s just how life works sometimes.”
When Felix can’t immediately come up with a reply, Chan says, “That’s what I was going to say this morning.” He glances at Jeongin with a wry smile. “I dropped it because Innie rose to your defence in a way I couldn’t quite refute fifteen minutes after waking up, and I forgot the point I was trying to make. But what I was going to say was that most people get under-the-table jobs through word-of-mouth, not by asking directly the way you did, without any references. Without a contract, an employer needs to know they can trust you. Any one of us would have helped you get an in somewhere—not because we think you can’t do things on your own, but just because life is not meant to be that hard. It’s okay to let people support you and take an easier way if it’s offered to you. Not everything needs to be a struggle.”
Felix already feels his eyes burn with tears, but Chan isn’t done.
“And I think you feel weak for needing help sometimes, but honestly—your life is harder than any of ours. I hate that it’s like that for you, I hate that something as simple as getting a job is so dangerous and complicated for you that you would need to resort to this.” He gestures to Felix’s clothes. “But that is not your fault. It’s awful, it’s horrible, but not your fault. You were thrown into this situation through absolutely zero fault of your own, and so if there are things that you need more help with than other people would, then accepting that help does not make you weak.” He squeezes Felix’s shoulder again. “I get your need to be independent, I do. It’s what all of us want for you too. And we will always support anything you do to get there, but when you know that doing something on your own is going to harm you, Felix, you have to let us help.”
Felix lets out a shaky breath. Both at the intensity in Chan’s voice and at the confusion his words evoke, because… he didn’t think it would harm him. It just seemed like the logical way to do it. In fact, he’d been sure this was the only way to do it, it hadn’t even occurred to him that there might be other options. “I wasn’t trying to do something harmful,” he whispers. “It just made sense. Doing it this way.”
“Of course it did,” Chan says quietly. “Of course it made sense. It’s what you knew. It’s how you survived. But we want you to live, honey, not just survive. You don’t need to run yourself into the ground anymore, not with us. So please let us help you bear the hardships you never did anything to earn.”
For a second, Felix has absolutely no idea how to respond to that, but then Chan adds another quiet, “Please,” and his composure breaks. He wraps his arms around Chan’s waist and buries his face in his chest as tears spill over.
Chan’s arms come around him in response, and the others plaster themselves against Felix’s back.
“I’m sorry for not explaining myself better this morning,” Chan mutters into his ear. “I should have.”
“That was my fault,” Jeongin says quietly, and there’s an undertone of guilt in his scent again. “I didn’t realise that was where you were going with it, hyung.”
Chan sighs. “No, you weren’t wrong either. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and you were completely right.” He pulls back just enough to be able to look Felix in the eye. “I have been overprotective of you, and for that I am sorry. You’re not helpless, you don’t need me to coddle you the way I have been, and I should have seen that.”
Felix watches him, a little stunned. “No, you- you haven’t been—”
“No, I have,” Chan says. “I’m a protective person on the best of days, and you came to us on the verge of death. It drew out instincts that I normally try to keep a lid on. Innie was right to call me out on it.”
The words take Felix by surprise, because Chan has never been protective in a way Felix didn’t like. Aside from pulling Kwang-ho’s records behind his back maybe, but Chan already explained why he did it and Felix knows he won’t do it again. But aside from that, Chan has been amazing. Chan makes him feel safe. “It’s okay,” he says, and he means it.
“It’s not,” Chan says, looking grave. “I think I’ve been subconsciously undermining your right to make your own choices, and that can’t continue. I apologise, and I promise I’ll do better.”
Felix still feels confused, but it looks like it’s important for Chan to say it, and so he only nods. “Okay.”
Chan’s shoulders relax, and then he presses gently, “In return, will you promise to let us help when things are harder for you than they would be for us?” He glances at Jeongin and then smiles back at Felix. “We can talk about the extent to which you want our help. Like I said, I won’t take your choices away from you again. But promise me you’ll let us help when you need us. We’re here for you.”
Felix breathes in the scents around him, warm and affectionate. Feels their eyes on him, concerned but soft. Caring. They care so much. They’re so… His chest feels warm, and he ducks his head, his cheeks heating. “Okay.”
“You promise?”
He looks up again. “Yes.”
Chan squeezes him. “Good.” He leans back a little and presses a kiss to Felix’s forehead. “That was all I wanted to say. Now go get changed before Jinnie explodes or Minho sees you, and we’ll make you some tea.”
Felix smiles, relieved at the change of topic. “Minho-hyung would be mad at me.”
“Minho would be furious with you,” Chan grins, and nudges him to the door.
Felix laughs and scampers off, Hyunjin on his heels. Just before he reaches the doorway though, Chan says, “Oh, and Lixie?”
Felix turns.
Chan’s smile is wide. “Congratulations on your new job.”
Felix’s earlier excitement returns. “Thank you.”
Chan pauses for a second, glances at the others, and then says, “We’ll go out for dinner, yeah? To celebrate. Say this Saturday?”
Felix lights up. A celebratory dinner for him, just because he got a job. “Really?”
Beside him, Hyunjin starts vibrating, and Jeongin and Jisung are both watching Chan intently.
“Yes,” Chan says with a smile. “I think a night out is long overdue.”
Notes:
The pack: he’ll be okay, we’ll scent him thoroughly and that way people will know they can’t exploit him
Felix, nodding sagely to himself: I shall make myself look as exploitable as possibleit’s okay though, he’s learning! it’s just hard to realise something is harmful if it’s simply all you’ve known. but they’ve got his back, he’ll get there <3
This chapter comes with two little bonus scenes:
1) Chan’s talk with Seonghwa all the way back in March
2) The day Minho discovered a wasp nest in the garden shed (Felix’s POV) (because I wrote that line and then was like- alright yeah we need that now)Those will be posted over the next few weeks while I continue to write and edit (so many scenes to explore!! god I love this story).
Now as for the next chapter, will they make it to dinner, or will someone fuck up and cause a whole lot of unnecessary drama? I won’t answer that, but it will be 22k, so make of that what you will.
Hope you’ll have a great weekend!! <3
Chapter 24
Notes:
THE DAY HAS COME (for both the album release and this chapter lol, hope you’re having a good day!).
Little note to start: it’ll probably be a few months until the next chapter, because I need to rewrite everything that comes next in the story so I need some time to write at least a little bit ahead. But at least there’s this chapter to tide you over for the time being, and it’s a long one!!
It’s also a wild ride, so please get comfy before you start. Get a drink. Some snacks. A pillow to scream into, because you’ll need it. And well, have fun?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
On Thursday, Felix finishes his therapy intake with San. He spends part of the hour recounting the final details of his story that they didn’t get around to on Monday; his escape from Daegu, his following two and a half years in Seoul, and how he ended up living with the pack. This part of the story, at least, is less draining than the things they covered last Monday, and while Felix still feels tired when he finishes talking, he isn’t reduced to tears this time.
Just like Monday, San didn’t ask many questions while Felix talked. He just listened and took notes. It’s only after Felix finishes and after he’s thanked Felix for telling him so much that he smiles at him and asks, “So if I ask you again, after all of this, what you’d like to work on with me, what your goals are. Do you think you’d have an answer for me this time?”
Felix thinks about it. San told him again today, just like he did on Monday, that Felix could take as long as he wanted to be silent and think things through before he spoke. It still feels awkward to make him wait, but San doesn’t look impatient at all.
Can he answer this question today? He still has no idea how to put together a list of goals, but…
“I went out yesterday,” he starts slowly. “To get a job.”
San nods encouragingly.
“And every time I had to talk to an alpha I got… scared,” he says, curling his fingers into the t-shirt the pack had scented for him again before his session. “Like. Panicky. It was really hard to keep talking and not run away.” He remembers the tightness in his chest, the crawling sensation on his skin. “And it feels stupid, because I used to do it before when I lived alone, but I’m… different now? Like… more present? And now it’s really hard. And everyone keeps saying that it’s good that I’m more me now, but I don’t like it. I… I don’t want to be so scared all the time.”
He knows that partly, he’s always going to be scared. Because Kwang-ho is still out there, and the fear of ending back up in the alpha’s clutches is never going to go away. But that doesn’t mean he needs to be scared around other alphas, right? Jeongin isn’t. And Felix wasn’t either, before Kwang-ho took him. So he wants to work on that.
“So I want to work on that,” he tells San out loud. “If- if I can?”
San smiles. “We can certainly work on that. Interacting with alphas without getting overwhelmed? That sounds like a great goal, Felix.”
Felix relaxes slightly. Uncurls his fingers from the shirt, the pack’s scents still strong and soothing on the fabric. They’re on his skin too, equally thorough after the stunt he pulled yesterday, and it’s an incredible relief to smell them every time he breathes in. He still doesn’t know if that’s normal. If that’s healthy, being so dependent on them. Aera said it was fine, but… He hesitates and then admits to San, “I think I need the pack’s scents more than I should.”
San tilts his head. “What makes you say that?”
Felix hesitates. “Well, I… Yesterday, I smelled like them. And I can’t sign a normal job contract, with pack waivers, so I knew no one would hire me like that. Well.” He thinks back to Chan’s words. “I thought no one would hire me like that. I thought I had to remove their scents, and I tried, but I couldn’t.” He looks away. It still feels like something shameful.
“Could you tell me a little bit more?” San asks. “What do you mean by ‘I couldn’t’?”
Felix’s hands clench around the shirt in his lap. “I mean that I panicked the moment I really tried to do it. I didn’t realise it before, but I discovered yesterday how much I need their scents to function. And I don’t think the pack minds, but it still feels…”
“Feels…?”
“Weak,” Felix whispers.
San hums. “Why?”
Felix looks up. “Because- it’s not normal, right? I’ve healed from that drop. I shouldn’t need their scents anymore, and yet I do.”
San considers this for a moment and then says, “It’s actually a lot more common than you think. Like I told you on Monday, using scents for comfort or as a coping mechanism can be really useful. It’s even something I tend to actively encourage.”
Felix stares at him.
“Ask anyone who’s been in therapy, and they will tell you the same thing.” He looks at the shirt in Felix’s hands. “Has anyone in the Bang pack been to therapy before?”
“Um. Yeah. Jisung.”
“Then I bet this is something they used to do for him too.” He looks back at Felix’s face and smiles. “Scents are natural, Felix. They’re a biological relaxant. Using the tools at your disposal is smart, and certainly nothing you should condemn yourself for.”
Felix is silent for a moment, and then bites his lip. “But if I’m… dependent on their scents. Is that not bad? I’m not mated to them.”
San studies him for a while. “I’m going to ask you a very direct question, and you can take your time answering.” He waits for Felix to nod before he asks, “Do you want to be mated to them?”
Felix stiffens. “I- I didn’t mean- I—” His cheeks are bright red, and he cuts off his embarrassing stammering to stare down at the floor.
San waits patiently for him to answer, and it’s only when he seems to realise that Felix is truly stuck that he reminds him, “I’m not here to judge you, Felix. You can be honest.”
Felix swallows. “Yes,” he admits finally, the words barely audible. “I do.”
San nods. “Okay. Do you think they would like to be mated to you?”
Anxiety rises up in Felix’s chest.
“Not immediately,” San clarifies. “I suppose I should have asked, do you think they would like to court you?”
Felix’s hands feel clammy. “I don’t know.”
“Have they given you any signs that they do?”
Felix breathes out. “They scent me. And I…” He hesitates briefly, wondering if this is too personal, but then admits, “I sleep in their den.”
Unlike Aera, San doesn’t react to this at all, other than to say, “You smell like that is confusing for you.”
“It is,” Felix blurts. “I—hope, that it means something, and halmeoni says they want to, but…” He looks up at San, a little desperate. “Do you think they want to court me?”
San smiles apologetically. “What I think doesn’t matter, Felix. All I do think is that they’re blurring lines in a way that’s making things difficult for you, and that it might be good to talk to them to clear things up.”
Felix feels like someone wrenched the air out of his lungs. “But…”
San waits for a while, and when Felix doesn’t continue, he presses gently, “But?”
Felix’s lungs feel tight. “I… I can’t ask them that.”
“Does that idea scare you?”
It does. It scares him a lot. “I don’t want to lose them,” he whispers.
“Do you think you will? Even if they don’t want to court you?”
“No,” Felix manages eventually, because he knows they wouldn’t just let him go back to the streets. But… right now, he has hope. It feels like a door is cracked open, like he’s able to bask in the rays of sunlight that are falling through it, and the idea of asking them outright and potentially closing that door forever… He can’t do that. “I can’t ask them that,” he says again, looking imploringly at San. “I… I can’t.”
San watches him for a few seconds and then says, “Okay. In that case though, if you think you wouldn’t lose them regardless, my response to your earlier question remains the same: relying on their scents is not an issue. You might not be mated to them, but there are plenty of people who scent each other without a mating bond. Even people who are just friends, sometimes.”
“I used to do that,” Felix says, relaxing a little now that they’re moving on from the topic of courtship. “With Jake and Sunghoon.” His uncle hadn’t liked that, but even he had been able to tell how much it helped Felix, and after Jake and Sunghoon’s parents had talked to him about it, he’d reluctantly agreed to let them continue.
“And it helped you then, right?”
Felix nods.
“Exactly. It’s helping you now in a similar way. For now, don’t worry about being dependent on them in that way. It’s a healthy coping mechanism, and one I am going to encourage you to continue using.”
Felix feels the rest of his tension drain from his shoulders at that. He was really scared that San would frown and disapprove, that he would tell him it was unhealthy and that Felix was bad and stupid and weak for wanting their scents the way he does. San’s easy acceptance and non-judgemental attitude are such a relief.
“I think that’s a good place to end this session,” San says. “We’ll talk more about coping mechanisms next week, because while scents are great, I think it would be beneficial for you to have a few more if we’re going to work on your fear of alphas. Does that sound okay?”
Felix nods.
“If you think of any more goals or things you’d like to work on, please write them down. We can come back to them on Monday.” When Felix nods again, San lowers his pen and notebook and looks at him. “Do you have any questions for me before you go?”
Felix meets his eyes. He hesitates and then breathes out, “You really think I can change?” The words come out quiet, underscored by the faintest stirring of hope.
San smiles. “I think you already are, Felix.”
And at that, Felix sends San his first real smile in return, finally feeling a glimmer of excitement again at the idea of continuing therapy.
*
Felix doesn’t feel as wrenched apart by the session as he did on Monday, and so waves off the pack’s offers to all stay with him in the nest. He doesn’t want them to put their lives on hold for him, and also, he really doesn’t need it today. He’s still tired, but he doesn’t feel like he’ll come undone at the first kind word someone sends his way.
He’s still not alone though. Jisung and Hyunjin are with him, and when Felix said they didn’t have to stay, they both only scoffed and then dumped a load of hair products into his lap. They’ve been braiding Felix’s hair for the past hour and a half.
At some point, Hyunjin goes downstairs to get some drinks and snacks, and a quiet falls as Jisung concentrates on his braiding. Felix’s mind slowly drifts back to San’s words. “Sungie?”
Jisung’s mouth is full of hairpins. “Mm?”
“Did you… when you were in therapy.” Felix rolls a hair tie between his fingers and looks down at the blanket in his lap. “Did you use scents? As a coping mechanism? Like the shirt?”
“Oh yeah,” Jisung says, before frowning when hairpins come showering down. He doesn’t pick them back up though, his hands stilling in Felix’s hair. “For a long time I couldn’t go anywhere without having a panic or anxiety attack if I didn’t have their scents on me. I’m much better now, but it was pretty bad for a while. Therapy helped a lot.” He huffs. “Not at first though. My first therapist was an asshole who basically told me to stop whining and act like a proper alpha.”
Felix whips his head around in shock. “What?”
Jisung smiles wryly. “Oh, he didn’t say it in those words. But he was a lot more traditional and sexist than he seemed when Channie-hyung and I talked to him for my intake. During our sessions, he told me that I needed to stop relying on scents so much, that it wasn’t what my body needed. And I tried that, because the way he put it made it sound logical, but it only made everything worse until I had panic attacks multiple times a day. And then I had one in the middle of a session, and hyung snapped. He stormed in from the waiting room and pulled me out of therapy entirely.”
“Oh, Jisung,” Felix says, grabbing his hand. “I’m sorry.”
Jisung shakes his head. “It’s fine.” At Felix’s disbelieving gaze, he smiles, and it looks a little more real this time. “No, I mean it. He wasn’t my therapist for long, and in hindsight, the look on his face when hyung lashed out at him was at least a little bit funny. It took me a while to really believe that hyung and the others were right and he was wrong, but I’m good now.”
Felix still feels worried. “Are you sure?”
“Mm-hm.” Jisung flips his hand in Felix’s to intertwine their fingers. “My next therapist helped me a lot. She was super vocal about the importance of scents, and about me staying true to what felt right for me.” He nods at the t-shirt Felix brought with him to the nest after his session. “She’s the one who told me to start carrying around scented clothes, in day-to-day life but especially during sessions. And so… I don’t know. I knew someone from the Kim pack would probably never be like my first therapist, but I just… I didn’t want to risk it, you know? I just wanted to make sure you would have scents from the start.”
“Jisung…” Felix says, stunned. He didn’t know that. He didn’t know anything about Jisung’s first therapy experience, but he definitely didn’t know Jisung had put so much thought into Felix’s own sessions. That he had thought everything through before Felix even had his first intake.
“I mean,” Jisung says, shifting a little when Felix doesn’t say anything. “You don’t have to use it, of course. But Changbin-hyung said that he thought it was helping, so—”
“It is,” Felix blurts. “Sungie, of course it’s helping. I keep feeling really stupid about needing all of your scents like that, but it helps so much. I talked to San-hyung about it today and I thought he’d tell me to stop, but he said it was smart.”
“It is smart,” Jisung says, shoulders dropping in relief. “And I’m glad he agrees, and that it’s helping.” He nudges Felix and adds, “And you’re not allowed to call yourself stupid, because that would mean I’m stupid too.”
“You’re not,” Felix replies immediately, eyes wide. “That’s not what I meant, Jisung—”
“I know,” Jisung laughs. He doesn’t smell upset. “Just wanted to see how it would feel to pull that move. Yeonhee-noona did it to me all the time. It’s kinda fun, I can see why she likes it.”
Felix huffs and elbows him, and Jisung laughs again. He leans sideways, reaching over to pick up the shirt. He rubs the fabric between his fingers, almost fondly. “I used to carry this everywhere.”
“This shirt?” Felix asks, pointing.
“Yeah.”
This shirt.
Felix stares at him. Jisung gave him his own shirt. The one that got him through years of therapy. The one he used to need to even get him through the day, and he had just… handed it off to Felix without a single word.
When he keeps staring, Jisung’s cheeks colour slightly. “I could have given you a proper scenting blanket, or a scenting plushie. I probably should have. This is just a ratty old t-shirt, and you deserve better. But I just… wanted you to have m- have this. I just wanted you to know…” He trails off, and Felix’s mind nearly fractures with all the possible ways Jisung might finish that sentence.
Wanted you to know I’m always with you. Wanted you to know how much I care for you. How much I…
Felix swallows. “Jisung.”
Jisung looks at him. “Yeah,” he breathes.
The air feels heavy in Felix’s lungs. He shifts minutely.
Jisung’s gaze drops to his lips.
Felix can hear his heartbeat in his ears. He wants—
The door slams open. “You are going to be so happy with me,” Hyunjin crows as he dances back into the room, “because I made smoothies!”
Both Jisung and Felix jump, and Felix quickly pulls his hand back, not even sure when he started reaching out. His head spins. That was- that was… was that? He risks a tiny glance at Jisung, but Jisung is studiously looking away, and then climbs off the bed to help Hyunjin with the tray he’s carrying.
Felix closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Stop assuming, he tells himself.
But his eyes drift back to Jisung, because surely… surely that was…
Talk to them, San’s voice echoes in his mind. Felix exhales. He could. He could ask. Because of what just happened, and also because he sleeps in their den, and they keep touching him, and Chan called him honey yesterday. His mind hasn’t stopped replaying that since it happened, hasn’t stopped wanting to hear the word again. Felix could ask Hyunjin and Jisung where they stand. What’s going on between them. If he’s right to hope for more.
San told him he should, and Felix can see his point. It would probably be the healthy thing to do.
But he’s scared. He’s just as scared of the truth now as he was in San’s office earlier, because regardless of all the evidence he has, regardless of all Aera’s words and exasperated encouragement, he could be wrong.
He could be.
He knows he should ask, but if he is wrong…
“Try it!” Hyunjin beams, shoving a glass into his hands.
Felix exhales and gratefully accepts the smoothie. Soon. He’ll ask them soon. Just… not yet. He takes a sip, and it tastes like strawberries. “It’s good,” he tells Hyunjin, who smiles radiantly at him.
Hyunjin drops back into the nest next to him and lifts up the section of hair Jisung was working on. “I thought you’d be done with this braid by now,” he frowns. “What on earth were you doing, Sungie?”
“Talking,” Jisung mumbles from where he’s bent over the tray on the nightstand, examining his smoothie in great detail.
“Well, luckily for you I’m back now,” Hyunjin says brightly. “Let me fix this before I need to go pick up that memory card.”
“Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?” Felix asks, latching onto the distraction.
Hyunjin was telling them earlier that he might want to try his hand at a photography exhibition. He’s been using the camera he got for his birthday a lot, excited about exploring a new art form, and he told them he’s interested in broadening his field professionally. A gallery he’s worked with before said they’d be open to it, if Hyunjin has any work worth showing. He was brainstorming about it with Felix and Jisung before he went downstairs.
“Yes,” Hyunjin says brightly, fingers weaving effortlessly through Felix’s hair. “I’m gonna go with what Sungie said, I think Hongdae is a great idea.”
At that, Jisung turns back around, surprised. “Really?”
“Yeah! You were right, about there being a lot to see when it’s crowded. I’m going tomorrow.”
Jisung climbs back into the nest, shuffling closer to hook his chin over Hyunjin’s shoulder. “I thought the street performers could be cool.”
“They would be,” Hyunjin agrees, tipping his head against Jisung’s in affection. “But also just… people. I love watching people. When I paint I get to capture emotion, but if I succeed in taking the kind of photos I want to take tomorrow, I’ll get to capture emotion as well as the moment in which the emotion actually happens, you know? There’s so many moments in life we miss, so many moments we dismiss because we don’t think they’re important, and yet it’s often those that are the most impactful.” His fingers never stop moving in Felix’s hair. “I have so many ideas, I’m really excited to try this out.”
He sounds excited. He even smells excited, the cocoa more flowery than usual. Listening to him talk, Felix feels kind of excited too. For months, he’s loved watching Hyunjin paint. Partly because Hyunjin is pretty to look at no matter what he does, but also because art really brings something out in him that the alpha doesn’t display at any other time. He’s… quieter, when he paints. More intent. Fully focused.
Felix kind of wishes he could see how that will translate to photography. He hesitates, and then asks, “Could I come?”
Hyunjin pauses. “With me?”
“You don’t have to say yes, if I’d be a distraction,” Felix assures him quickly.
“No, are you kidding me? I’d love for you to come!”
Felix’s stomach flutters at Hyunjin’s immediate excitement, and his lips tug up. “Really?”
“Of course!” Hyunjin pats his cheek with the two fingers that are not holding on to strands of his hair. The flowery notes in his scent brighten further. “I wasn’t kidding though, it will be crowded. Don’t force yourself.”
“No, I want to,” Felix says honestly. It might be challenging, being in a crowded place like that. He might still freak out. But if he does, Hyunjin will be there, and if it gets really bad, he can just go back home. He doesn’t want to let his fear stop him from doing the things he wants to do, that’s the whole reason he even started therapy to begin with. And who knows, he might be fine. This time he won’t be trying to get rid of the pack’s scents on him, after all. “I want to go,” he repeats.
“Bring your shirt?” Jisung suggests, and Felix turns his head just enough to be able to catch his eye.
There’s something in Jisung’s gaze he can’t quite read. Or maybe… maybe he can. Soon, he thinks again, a little more at ease with the thought. He’ll ask them soon.
For now, he smiles softly back at Jisung. “Yes,” he says. “I will keep it close.”
***
And so the next day, Felix joins Hyunjin for a trip to Hongdae. As they get ready to leave, Chan tells Felix to call them if he would like to be picked up early, and Felix huffs.
“Hyung, you’ll be at HYBE. I’ll be fine, I can take a bus.”
“You can,” Chan agrees with a laugh, holding his hands up, “if taking a bus won’t make things worse.” He raises an eyebrow to remind Felix of his promise on Wednesday not to do anything harmful, and Felix sighs.
Changbin laughs too, stepping back from where he was kissing Hyunjin goodbye. “It really would be fine if you called us,” he tells Felix as he comes over to scent him. “Me or hyung can step out for an hour to pick you up, they don’t need all three of us.” He lifts a hand to Felix’s chin, and Felix obligingly bares his neck. “Just call us if you need us, okay?”
“Okay,” Felix mumbles, trying to prevent his cheeks from flushing as Changbin scents him more thoroughly than he would have before Wednesday. They really didn’t like what he’d tried to do. Felix didn’t even tell them about his attempt to remove their scents, but it appears they guessed anyway, because even if no more words were said about it when the others came home, they’ve all been more… well. More.
Soon, he tells himself again. Now is not the time. Instead, he gives Jisung a hug and then lets Hyunjin pull him out the door and into the car. Half an hour later, they step out onto the streets of Mapo-gu, and Felix listens as Hyunjin rambles excitedly about aperture and lenses and ISO. Half of the words go right over Felix’s head, but he enjoys the sound of Hyunjin’s voice and the bright spikes in his scent. As they walk, he looks around. He’s been to Hongdae before, of course. There’s a homeless shelter here that had a beta woman working on Tuesdays who used to give omegas extra portions. Felix went every week, until a few alphas started to get handsy and wait for him outside, and then he didn’t dare come back. But he used to like watching the people here, just like Hyunjin described. It had always been from a distance, always safely huddled in the shadows of a building or a market stall, but it was nice to watch people living their lives. Observing them always made him feel a little less alone.
Over the course of the morning, he ends up getting a lot of time to observe and reflect. Because once Hyunjin gets going, he loses himself to the vision in his head and stops talking entirely, vanishing behind his camera lens. Felix doesn’t mind; firstly because Hyunjin’s hyperfocus is exactly what he came to watch, and secondly because for all his concentration, Hyunjin doesn’t forget that Felix is with him. Every time his eye lands on something new he wants to capture, he grabs Felix’s wrist to drag him over, and once, when Felix is nearly bowled over by a group of tourists and contemplates just waiting for Hyunjin by the entrance of a shoe store so he won’t get in the way, Hyunjin changes the angle of his shot completely so he can position himself in between Felix and the bustling crowd. Felix is about to protest, but Hyunjin tugs him down into a crouch by his side and grins as he changes his camera settings. “Don’t worry. This is actually better. Just stay close, yeah?” He leans into Felix’s side, resting his elbow on Felix’s thigh for balance as he takes the shot.
Felix instinctively wraps an arm around his waist to steady him, and then blushes, focusing very hard on the pavement slabs in front of him. Thankfully, before he has time to work himself into a flustered mess over nothing, Hyunjin jumps back up again and drags him over to a wall of graffiti to take another photo.
To give himself something to focus on, Felix offers to hold Hyunjin’s bag so the alpha can move more freely, and is promptly turned into Hyunjin’s assistant. Over the next two hours, he hands over lenses and filters upon request, and is asked to remove trash from a shot or hold the camera for a minute so Hyunjin can stretch out his arms. Felix thinks Jeongin and Seungmin would probably have been annoyed by the way Hyunjin orders him around, but he’s surprised by how much fun he’s having. He’s not doing much—he really does mostly stand still, waiting for Hyunjin to capture whatever has caught his interest, but he doesn’t mind for a single second, because he was right.
Hyunjin is captivating. It’s a different kind of captivating from when he’s painting. Photography turns out to be more dynamic, causing Hyunjin to go from fluid movement to complete stillness before bursting into movement again after he’s taken the shot he wants. And aside from his movements, Felix could watch his expression for hours. Hyunjin’s face is bright with curiosity as he looks around for things that catch his interest, and once he finds something, it shifts to delight, then wonder, excitement, and finally concentration as he focuses on getting the perfect shot. The look in his eyes, focused and intense and almost hungry, is… well. It’s enough to make Felix’s mouth run dry, even when it’s not directed at him.
Sometimes, though, it is directed at him, such as when Hyunjin marches towards him to demand another lens, and those moments are very, very quickly unravelling Felix’s composure.
Maybe accompanying Hyunjin today was a bad idea.
In an attempt to give himself some time to cool down, he walks off to buy them hotteok from a street vendor. The few minutes to breathe allow him to pull himself back together, but his plan immediately backfires when he gets back and Hyunjin simply opens his mouth so Felix can feed him. When Hyunjin’s lips actually touch Felix’s fingers as he tries to eat the food Felix hands him without spilling anything, Felix feels like he’s going to combust. His only saving grace is that somehow, Hyunjin doesn’t notice Felix’s flustered state at all, too focused on his camera, and Felix makes it through lunch unscathed, aside from his fast-approaching cardiac arrest.
At some point after lunch, Hyunjin gets permission to photograph an elderly beta male who’s sitting on a bench and watching people pass by. Felix watches as he takes the shot, and then watches him nearly jump with joy afterwards. He thanks the man profusely, hands him a business card and then drags Felix off to a quieter side alley to show him the result, still buzzing with excitement. Felix hasn’t seen him this excited about a photo all day, even if he isn’t quite sure what caught Hyunjin’s attention. But Hyunjin slings an arm around his shoulder to draw him close and presses a few buttons on his camera to let him see. It wasn’t the man that delighted him, Felix realises. Or, not just the man. It was the light. The way the man was caught in the shadow of a building, blanketed in darkness, while the people around him hurried about in the bright sunshine. The resulting picture is an almost perfect split between light and dark that adds a layer of meaning to the photo Felix would never have thought possible without some heavy editing. The fact that Hyunjin was able to see it before even taking the photo amazes him, and when he praises him, his awe is genuine.
Hyunjin grins and shifts closer to show him the other pictures he took of the man, and it’s only when Hyunjin’s other arm presses into Felix’s waist that he notices how close they are. Somehow, Hyunjin is practically embracing him now, his head hooked over Felix’s shoulder and his arms encircling him as he holds the camera. Felix can feel the heat of him against his back, even if they’re not fully touching.
He exhales slowly, trying to keep himself together. Nothing is happening, he reminds himself. Hyunjin is showing him photos. They’re not even touching.
They could, though. He’d only have to lean back, ever so slightly, to have Hyunjin fully pressed against him. He could tilt his head, and Hyunjin would nuzzle his scent gland, slowly, rubbing his jaw against it until Felix was coated in that dark, rich cocoa scent. Felix could turn his head, and…
Behind him, Hyunjin stills.
There’s a breath.
Felix turns his head. Their eyes meet.
The air between them feels static, and he stops breathing.
He doesn’t know who moves first. One moment, they’re staring at each other, and the next, they’re kissing, hot and frantic, hands flying up to pull the other closer. There’s no hesitation—none of the uncertainty or nerves that Felix expected to feel. None of the slowness and gentleness either. There’s just a feeling of need, of rightness, of heat simmering low in his belly, and he melts into Hyunjin as the alpha turns him around in his arms and presses him against the wall. Yes, Felix thinks, as Hyunjin buries his hand in Felix’s hair to tilt his head and give him better access. His other hand is burning-hot against Felix’s skin, and when Hyunjin licks into his mouth, Felix moans helplessly, clutching at his shoulders to draw him closer still. Hyunjin’s scent is everywhere. He can smell him in the air and taste him right there on his tongue, and it’s so good and yet not enough, he wants to drink him in, he wants—
A child screeches with laughter on the street to their left, and it’s that sound that pierces the bubble between them, reminding them of where they are.
Hyunjin breaks the kiss, leaning his forehead against Felix’s and panting hot breaths against his open mouth. “Fuck,” he whispers.
Felix silently agrees, though he couldn’t speak right now if he tried. His head is spinning and he feels drunk on spicy cocoa.
But then Hyunjin pulls back and buries his face in his hands. “Oh fuck. The others are going to kill me.”
Felix’s blood freezes in his veins and he drops his hands from Hyunjin’s shoulders. No. No, surely he didn’t mean—
“I’m so sorry, Felix,” Hyunjin says, and Felix feels the ice splinter off from his bloodstream and straight through his heart. “I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have… can we just pretend this didn’t happen?”
He didn’t want this. They didn’t want this. They don’t want him. Felix was just fantasising and his scent spiked, and Hyunjin reacted. He didn’t mean it. Felix just made Hyunjin cheat on his packmates.
Oh god. Oh god, he… he…
“Just for—” Hyunjin stills. “Felix?”
Felix can’t breathe. The ice has spread all the way through his body and out into his scent.
“Oh god, what have I done. Felix, shit, I’m so sorry, I should never have—fuck. Breathe, baby. I mean. Fuck.” Hyunjin’s growl is filled with shame and yet, underneath that, there’s a strong layer of concern. For Felix.
He doesn’t deserve that. He’s fucked up everything, he’s going to be the reason their pack falls apart, he’s—
“Felix. Felix, please…”
He has to go. He has to go, he can’t stay another second, who knows what else he might fuck up in that time.
He rips himself away from Hyunjin’s hands on his arms and runs.
“Felix!” Hyunjin shouts, and it’s only two seconds before he takes after him.
Hyunjin has long legs and he is faster than Felix. And if this were a race in an open field, Felix would never win. But they’re in one of the busiest neighbourhoods in Seoul, and Felix knows this kind of running. He may not have his scent blockers like that first night he ran from them, but he knows how to hide in a crowd, how to reel in his scent and duck out of sight. How to dodge and weave through people and food stands and dash through side alleys until any chaser would have lost all trace of him. He did it countless times during his first months in Seoul, escaping alphas who would follow him after he picked up a meal at a homeless shelter, and back then he was weak and hungry. Doing it now, after months of good food and training with Changbin, it takes barely any effort at all.
He runs and runs and doesn’t know how much time passes before he slows, feeling like his lungs are about to burst. He collapses against a tree, slides down to the ground and buries his face in his knees, gasping for air. It would probably be easier to catch his breath if he weren’t crying so hard, hot tears soaking his jeans and leaking down his arms.
He screwed up. He’s screwed up everything.
He’d misread the situation completely. He’d let Aera’s words get to him, had twisted the pack’s kindness and friendship into something it wasn’t. Had let himself believe the interest was there, just because he wanted it so badly. And it had looked so real, with the way they treated him. He really thought… but clearly he was wrong.
And of course he was, because none of them have ever said it, have they?
The only thing they’ve said explicitly is… is that they wouldn’t, Felix realises with a wave of nausea. That day in the garden, during the soccer match. Just adrenaline, Chan had said. I wouldn’t. And so had Changbin. He didn’t mean it, you know. He would never.
God, they’d said it, both of them, straight to his face, and what, Felix had just… chosen to forget about it?
They’re his friends. They’ve all given him so much. They’ve given him a home, and safety, and let him into every part of their lives, even though he isn’t pack. And after everything they’ve done for him, this is how he repays them.
He cries, filled with shame and regret and heartbreak. He’s so stupid.
It’s a long time before his tears slow down, and then it takes another long while before he manages to find the strength to raise his head and face reality.
He’s in a small park. It’s not a place he recognises, but there are remarkably few people around, so at least there’s that. There’s a buzzing against his thigh that he realises is coming from his phone. It can only be them, and he winces. He can’t. He can’t face them right now. Without taking it out of his pocket, he presses the button on the side to turn it off. His hand brushes against a zipper and it’s only then that he realises he’s still wearing one of Hyunjin’s camera bags.
Fuck.
He hadn’t decided yet where he was going to go, but back to the house hadn’t been high on his list. The idea of facing them, their disappointment, their anger, makes him want to throw up and cry again. They must feel so betrayed, and he would rather bury himself beneath this tree than show his face again.
But he has Hyunjin’s bag, and he needs it for work. Felix can’t just keep it.
And…
And he owes them an apology. It’s not enough—it will never be enough. But he owes them that, at least. They won’t forgive him, and that’s… that’s okay. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness. But he owes it to them to tell them to their face how much he fucked up, and how sorry he is. He’ll leave after that.
He stands on shaky legs, wiping the tears from his face. Then he takes a deep breath, and starts to walk.
*
He walks all the way back. He can’t bring himself to take the subway. That would get him to the house faster, and he can’t—he can’t handle that. It’s not that he’s scared they’ll hurt him. He knows they won’t, no matter how angry they are. It’s just that the thought of seeing their pain, their betrayal, of facing the hurt he caused them, makes his heart clench so painfully that he could cry again. He wants to stretch the way home—the way back—out as long as possible. So even when his feet hurt and his legs start aching, he keeps walking.
It takes him a while to figure out where he is and where he needs to go, especially with his phone turned off. He walks the wrong way three times and has to stop and study a street map like some sort of tourist, but he manages. By the time he reaches the familiar street, it’s evening. The sun hasn’t completely set yet, because it’s June, but twilight has set in and the shadows have grown long. He stands at the end of the driveway for a while, staring at the house.
He stands there for a long time. The house looks so welcoming, lit by the rosy evening sun. It’s quiet out in this neighbourhood, the traffic a distant hum and drowned out by the sound of crickets. It’s still warm, and the air settles over him like a blanket. He should go in. He knows he should. But out here, it feels like a dream, what happened today. As long as he stays right here, he can pretend it didn’t happen. That he can just walk in and everything will be as it was. That he’s still in love with them and they’re in love with him too, and they’re all just waiting for the right time to say it. That they’ll welcome him back, greeting him with warm hugs and quick scentings the moment he walks through the door. Out here, he can almost make himself believe it’s true.
And then there’s the sound of an ambulance rushing by in a nearby street, and the fantasy bursts.
He steps onto the driveway.
He doesn’t ring the doorbell, even if a part of him feels like he’s lost the right to simply walk in. He ignores it and enters through the backdoor. The house is quiet. It’s never this quiet at this time of night, and it only strengthens the feeling of wrongness he’s felt since the moment Hyunjin pulled away this afternoon. He tightens his hand around the strap of Hyunjin’s camera bag, takes a deep breath, and enters the kitchen. It’s empty, but he can hear someone talking in the living room.
“—me to call Seungmin? If you’ve already looked there, they don’t need to—yes. Yes. Where are you headed now?”
It’s Minho. Felix can’t hear anyone else, so he must be on the phone. Slowly, drawn by Minho’s voice like a siren’s call, he steps forward until he can see him. He’s standing by the couch, his back to Felix, and his shoulders are stiff. He’s still wearing his dance clothes.
“I’ll call him. Changbin too, and I’ll let you know if—” Minho’s head snaps up and he spins around.
Felix didn’t make a sound. His scent must have given him away.
“Felix,” Minho breathes. For a second, they just stare at each other, and it’s like they’re transported back in time, to that first night in the living room all those weeks ago. Once again, Felix can’t for the life of him read the expression on his face. Then there’s the sound of someone’s voice rising on the other end of the line, and Minho starts speaking again, although his eyes remain fixed on Felix. “He’s here. He’s back. No, I don’t think so. Call the others, get back here.” And with that, he hangs up.
The tension in the room thickens immediately, and Felix shifts nervously. Minho doesn’t look angry. But then again, he doesn’t look anything, his face that carefully blank mask he only uses when he’s feeling a lot. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.
“I…” Felix’s voice breaks the quiet, and he hoped it would be better than that terrible silence, but the way it cracks through the air only makes him wince. His hands tighten involuntarily around the strap across his chest, and he notices the bag again. He takes it off and holds it out. “I’m sorry. I… I came to return this, I won’t stay.”
Minho’s jaw clenches. “Stay. We need to talk. All of us.”
Felix flinches. Yes. Yeah, he’s right. He didn’t come just to return the bag. He needs to get over his cowardice and apologise properly. To the whole pack.
“Are you hurt?”
Felix blinks, feeling wrong-footed. “I… No. I’m fine.”
“Have you eaten?”
Mutely, he shakes his head, and Minho walks past him into the kitchen. Felix’s heart sinks to his stomach. Minho doesn’t scent him. He actually goes out of his way to take a few extra paces to the left so there’s as much space as possible between Felix and himself as he steps through the archway.
Of course he didn’t scent you, Felix berates himself. He knew Minho wouldn’t. He just… didn’t expect it to hurt this much. The hurt and longing are so strong they spike out into his scent, and he quickly reels it back in.
Not quickly enough though, because Minho’s nostrils flare and he whirls around, staring at him.
Felix pales. “Sorry,” he whispers.
Minho’s face is still blank, but his gaze is so intense that Felix’s lungs grow tight. Minho takes a step towards him. Inhales. Seems to hesitate, and then, very slowly, holds out a hand.
Felix’s watches the hand as if in a daze.
“Felix,” Minho says hoarsely, and at that Felix’s eyes snap back up, because Minho sounds—
The mask is gone. In its place is worry, and nervousness, and the remnants of fear. The hand Minho is holding out is shaking ever so slightly. “Felix,” he says again. “Do you want me to scent you?”
More shame fills him. “You don’t have to,” he whispers. “I know I… I know that…”
But underneath the shame in his scent the longing is still clear, and Minho takes another step forward. “Do you want me to.”
Felix shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve scenting after what he’s just done. But Minho is offering, and he’s so close, and Felix is weak. His eyes fill with tears, and he manages the weakest of nods.
Minho is on him so fast Felix barely sees him move. But then his arms are around him, strong and solid and warm, and Felix shatters.
“I’m sorry,” he sobs as he buries his face in Minho’s shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Felix.” Minho clutches him to his chest, his scent wild and turbulent. “God. You’re okay.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Sssh,” Minho says, and picks him up. Felix instinctively wraps his legs around his waist and clings to him, and Minho tugs him closer. “You’re safe, it’s okay, I’ve got you.” His scent rolls over Felix with the force of a tidal wave, but Minho is holding him so tightly that Felix knows he won’t be washed away. The alpha’s grip is desperate, and even if Felix has no idea why Minho would want to hold him after this, he shudders into the touch.
“I’m sorry,” he cries again, hot tears dripping down Minho’s neck.
Minho only carries Felix to the couch. He doesn’t speak, but doesn’t let go either—he sits down with Felix in his lap, and he lets Felix bury his face in the crook of his neck and lets him cry, not releasing his grip for a second.
Felix cries for a long time. Partly because he feels horribly, horribly sad, but also because when he stops crying, Minho will pull away. This is the last time Felix will get to be close to him, and if he stops crying, it will end. He wishes he could cry forever. Wishes he were a river source, an endless stream of water, just so the tears would keep flowing and Minho would continue to hold him.
But he isn’t a river, and eventually his tears subside the way tears do. Minho must be able to tell, but he doesn’t pull away just yet. His arms are still around Felix, his head hooked over Felix’s shoulder. Felix breathes, not daring to move.
It’s only when the silence grows loud and thick and heavy that he caves and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
He shouldn’t have spoken. He knew it would be a mistake and he was right, because this time, Minho does pull back. It’s only a little bit, just enough for him to look Felix in the eye, but it still makes Felix want to cry out. No, he wants to beg, just a little bit longer, please—but he has no right. He has no right to Minho at all, and so he swallows the words down.
And then Minho says, incredulously, “What on earth are you sorry for?”
Felix stares at him. He thought Minho knew. Based on that phone call he overheard, they all definitely knew something had happened, but maybe… maybe Hyunjin hadn’t told them everything. His chest tightens. They don’t know. Minho doesn’t know about the kiss.
“I…” His voice cracks. He swallows. Tries again. The words stick in his throat.
“Felix.” Minho’s eyes are narrowing. “What are you sorry for?” His tone changes ever so slightly, shifting to that same tone he takes when he asks Felix to choose between beef or pork, or pick what kind of tea he wants. It’s a tone that brooks no argument, and the words roll over Felix’s lips on autopilot.
“I kissed Hyunjin.”
Minho blinks. Then again. Twice more, in rapid succession, the way he does when he’s trying to process something that’s not quite adding up. Felix waits for the moment it will click, the moment Minho will realise what Felix has done, the moment disgust will set in.
But Minho only asks, strangled, “You kissed him?”
“I’m sorry,” Felix whispers. “I didn’t…” Didn’t what? Didn’t mean to kiss him? Didn’t want him to kiss me back? Those are lies, and they don’t make it past his lips.
“You wanted to kiss him?” Minho asks, still in that odd tone of voice that Felix can’t read.
Felix drops his head and breathes, “Yes.”
Felix has never smelled Minho as confused as when the alpha says, “You ran.”
Despite himself, his eyes well up again. “Because I… Because he… Because I made him cheat on you, and I d-didn’t mean to, I swear, I thought- but I was wrong, and- and I’m so—”
There’s no longer anything blank about Minho’s face. It’s pure, utter bewilderment. “Felix. Hyunjin didn’t cheat on us.”
Of course Minho would have faith in Hyunjin. Felix feels more shame curdle in his stomach. “He kissed me back,” he whispers, and then hurries to add, “But he panicked immediately after, I swear, he thought of you and he pulled back, so maybe it was just- shock, or something, I- he didn’t mean to. He said he didn’t, so please- please don’t be angry with him, please. It was my fault.”
Minho stares at him like Felix started chanting in Latin, and then slowly, his face twists as reality begins to dawn on him. Felix readies himself for anger, prepares himself to plead on Hyunjin’s behalf again, but all Minho says is a slow, pained, “What, exactly, did Hyunjin say after you kissed?”
Felix wipes a hand over his eyes. “Um. That you were going to kill him.”
“I’m beginning to suspect that I am, yes. What else?”
Felix winces. “That- that he shouldn’t have done it. He…” He hesitates. “He asked if we could pretend it hadn’t happened, and he said sorry.”
Minho stares at Felix for five seconds in complete silence, and then casts his eyes up to the sky. “Oh yes,” he tells the ceiling. “I’m going to fucking murder him.”
“It was my fault,” Felix says again, “Please don’t be—”
“No,” Minho says, squeezing his eyes shut, “This was all him, and he deserves to die. Not a single goddamn braincell in his entire head, I swear to god. I don’t have enough appliances to stuff him into.” He looks like he wants to say more, but abruptly, he snaps his eyes back to Felix.
Felix stills.
At this point, he feels just as confused as Minho looked earlier, because for some reason, he is still straddling Minho’s lap, and Minho doesn’t smell angry. Exasperated, but underneath that… Felix breathes in again, not trusting himself, but it’s still there. Minho smells relieved. Minho is watching him with dark brown eyes that are fixed on Felix, regarding him with something Felix can’t name but that makes his breath grow shallow.
He feels just as trapped as that night in the mall, but this time there’s no fear. This time he’d do anything to keep Minho’s eyes on him, to keep feeling the weight of his gaze, to be pinned in place forever.
“Hyunjin did not cheat on us,” Minho says, and this time, Felix doesn’t try to protest.
This time, it looks like Minho isn’t done talking.
“This should not be me,” Minho continues. “Out of all of us, I should not be the one to say this. But Felix…” He holds Felix’s gaze, keeping him safely anchored in place.
“We want to court you. We- they- everyone has wanted to court you for months.”
Felix stops breathing.
It’s only when Minho’s hand lands on his chest and rubs a gentle circle that Felix’s lungs stutter back to life, and he inhales. Whatever Minho sees on his face, he must recognise that Felix couldn’t talk right now if his life depended on it, because he continues softly, “They fell for you before I even came back.”
The words set off a grenade in Felix’s mind. His head goes entirely blank, aside from Minho’s words, echoing through it on repeat. They fell for you before I even came back. They fell for you. They fell—
It takes a minute for his brain to reboot, and even then it only has space for one thought. And you? he wants to ask, his eyes still desperately locked onto Minho’s. Did you?
And as if he heard him, Minho murmurs, “How could they not?”
It’s only Minho’s hand on his ribs that keeps him breathing, and it’s also Minho’s hand on his ribs that makes his lungs want to give out, and Felix’s head spins.
“But,” he chokes out, “But Hyunjin—”
“Hyunjin,” Minho says, still rubbing his side, “has been told so many times what horrible death would be waiting for him if he told you before you were ready that I’m assuming that when he realised what he’d done, he panicked. And instead of talking about it, he chose the absolute stupidest next move and made everything a thousand times worse. I really, very much am going to kill him when he comes back.”
Minho’s voice remains soft throughout, and he’s still fully focused on Felix. Felix tries to focus on breathing, but his attention is scattered. To the feeling of Minho’s hand on his ribs, the warmth of his thighs underneath him. To the look in Minho’s eyes, and the words he’s saying. Because- because…
“You really want to court me?” His voice is barely audible.
“Do you want us to?”
Felix squirms.
One corner of Minho’s mouth curves up. “Come on, we’ve been over this. It’s your choice. You can say no, and you won’t lose us.”
A ghost of a smile fleets over Felix’s lips, before it vanishes in a sea of nerves. “I do,” he breathes. “I do. But only if- if you’re sure.”
“Felix,” Minho murmurs. He brings his other hand up to cup his cheek, and the touch lights Felix’s skin up like starlight. “What do you think tomorrow’s dinner was for? We were going to ask you then.”
Felix exhales.
“You have been pack for months. Of course we want you.”
We want you. Not just ‘we want to’. You. They want him.
He didn’t misread the situation. The scentings, and the touches, and the den. They did mean what he thought they meant.
They want him.
He’s not going to lose them. This won’t be the last time he sees them. They want him.
Joy and relief swoop through him so strongly that it gives him a headrush, and if it wasn’t for Minho’s hands holding him up, he’d have sagged forward. His scent bursts open in sweet, elated citrus, so strong it outdoes even Minho’s heavy ocean scent.
Minho’s lips part and he inhales, closing his eyes for the barest of moments before opening them again to watch Felix, as if he knows exactly how much his gaze is keeping Felix steady right now.
Felix watches back. He has no idea what Minho sees; he must look like a mess, tear-streaked and puffy-eyed and red-faced from crying, but when Minho looks at him, he suddenly doesn’t feel like a mess. He feels… feels… “Hyung,” he whispers.
Minho doesn’t respond other than to bring a hand to the back of his head and tug him forward, pressing their foreheads together. “Do not ever run away again.”
Felix breathes out the smallest of laughs, finally closing his eyes. “I won’t.” Relief is still coursing through him, dizzyingly strong. “I won’t.”
“Can I scent you?” Minho asks, and Felix nods, their foreheads still touching.
Minho cups his cheek and pushes him back ever so lightly, just to give himself space to move and take Felix’s left wrist. But instead of lowering his own wrist on top of it, he brings Felix’s wrist up to his face. There he pauses, his eyes fixed on Felix’s. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Felix breathes, before Minho can even finish the word.
Minho still moves slowly, giving Felix ample time to pull away. But pulling away is the last thing Felix wants to do, and he only watches in breathless anticipation as Minho brings his wrist to his lips and kisses his scent gland.
Tingles dance all the way down Felix’s spine. This is the most intimate type of scenting, the type he purposely avoided all those weeks ago in the dining room when he scented Minho. But it’s the way Minho scents him now, his tongue darting out to lap across the ridge in his skin. Felix shivers as fresh, clean ocean enters his system, so familiar and yet so different from any time before. Minho pulls back, and briefly flicks his eyes up to check Felix’s expression again.
This time, Felix knows he must look stupid as well as a mess. He knows his mouth is hanging open slightly and his cheeks are hot, and he’s still braced by Minho’s hand on his chest.
Minho’s face is composed, and the only sign that this is affecting him is in his eyes, which are dark as he moves his hand to Felix’s other wrist and repeats the process. More ocean floods through him, washing him clean of all of the guilt and panic and shame that have been circling around inside of him.
When Minho is done, he lowers Felix’s wrist and they watch each other for a moment. The silence between them is heavy, and yet this time it doesn’t feel like Felix is harshly breaking it when he speaks. “Can I... can I scent you too?”
“Yes,” Minho tells him. “However you’d like.” Only what you’re comfortable with, is what he’s saying, and Felix feels fondness spread through him.
He takes a breath in and then brings his wrists to the sides of Minho’s neck, just like he did that one time before. He purposely releases pheromones, in a way that he’s been dying to do with all of them for ages. He slowly rubs his wrists over Minho’s scent glands until he smells like lemon—until he smells like him.
Minho’s expression doesn’t change, but the tension drains from his shoulders, and something inside Felix preens.
Suddenly he needs more, and he drags his wrists from Minho’s neck glands down his arms to Minho’s own wrists. Minho keeps his posture open, not moving, letting Felix do what he wants, although he does flip his palms so that Felix will have easier access. Felix coats him in lemon, sticky-sweet with joy, and then, only once Minho is thoroughly drenched in his pheromones, he pulls his hands back.
Minho smells equally relaxed as amused when he asks, “You done?”
Felix contemplates it. He is. Because Minho smells like him now, couldn’t possibly smell more like him unless he took his clothes off and exposed more skin, and Felix doesn’t want that. But he does want…
He hesitates for the briefest of seconds and then brings Minho’s left wrist up to his mouth. He meets Minho’s eyes, just to check, but when Minho doesn’t say anything to stop him, he presses his lips to Minho’s scent gland in turn. Minho doesn’t respond until Felix carefully licks over his scent gland, and then he exhales roughly.
It’s the first audible reaction any of Felix’s actions have gotten, and it’s enough to make him dizzy. He repeats the move with Minho’s right wrist, and Minho’s other hand tightens slightly on his waist. Felix meets his eyes, his lips still pressed to Minho’s skin. Spurred on by giddy relief, he dares to give Minho one more tiny lick before he breaks eye contact and lowers the alpha’s wrist, blushing bright red but feeling incredibly satisfied. “Now I’m done,” he tells him, and Minho huffs out a laugh through his nose.
“Are you sure? I think there might still be some two percent of my blood that doesn’t have your pheromones coursing through it, if you look hard enough.” His tone is dry, but underneath Felix’s scent claim his scent is pleased, and he’s too relaxed to sound anything but fond.
Felix doesn’t answer, too focused on the way Minho smells now. He breathes in deeply and revels in the way his own scent clings to Minho’s skin. This is right, his mind whispers. This is how it should be.
And then, traitorously, his stomach growls, and Minho laughs. Felix grimaces in embarrassment. “Sorry.”
Minho squeezes his waist, and then says, “I should make you food.”
“I’m fine,” Felix says, because he would happily forego food forever if it meant he got to stay in Minho’s lap. But Minho is already shifting, and so Felix begrudgingly moves out of his lap and rises.
To his relief, Minho doesn’t let him go completely. He merely offers Felix his hand, and Felix takes it, letting Minho lead him to the kitchen and to one of the bar stools. When he’s sat down, Minho presses a kiss to his temple before turning to the fridge. A casual kiss like that isn’t new, but the way Minho watches him afterwards feels revolutionary, and Felix’s skin tingles.
“I can help,” he tells Minho when the alpha starts taking out ingredients for a quick homemade ramen, but Minho shakes his head.
“Let me,” he says, and that, too, suddenly carries meaning.
“Okay,” Felix manages, ducking his head to hide a bashful smile.
Minho passes him a bottle of water that he accepts gratefully, only now realising how thirsty he is. For the next little while, he sips his water and watches Minho cut vegetables, and he feels so warm in their little bubble that he completely forgets about the drama of the rest of the day until the kitchen door opens and Jeongin and Seungmin appear.
Both of their expressions break open in sheer relief when they spot him at the kitchen island. “Felix,” Jeongin says, taking three rushed steps forward before slowing, as if not entirely sure of his welcome.
It’s the same careful hesitation with which Minho treated him earlier, and Felix glances at him, a little confused. The alpha is already watching him, and he gives Felix a little nod and a raised eyebrow, as if to say, See? Because despite the hesitation, Jeongin really doesn’t seem angry at all. Neither does Seungmin, standing behind him.
They both look tense and worried, and Jeongin’s right hand lifts slightly towards him before dropping again.
“Hey,” Felix says, shifting on his seat. Nervously, he holds his hand out, and Jeongin rushes forward to wrap him up in a hug. Felix meets Seungmin’s eyes over Jeongin’s shoulder, and Seungmin steps forward too.
Before either Jeongin or Seungmin can say anything though, the door opens again, and the others file in. “Oh thank god,” Chan breathes when his eyes land on Felix. His hair is standing up like he’s raked his hand through it a thousand times.
Next to him Jisung looks worried and pale, taking a hesitant step towards Felix, and beside him Changbin is scanning Felix carefully, but it’s not either of them who catch Felix’s attention.
It’s Hyunjin, who hovers beside Changbin just inside the doorway.
Hyunjin looks awful. He’s pale and hunched in on himself in a way that makes him look smaller than Felix ever thought possible. His eyes are red and swollen and it’s clear he’s been crying for hours. “Felix,” Hyunjin breathes, his voice quivering.
Felix opens his mouth, but Jeongin is quicker, and Felix nearly falls out of his chair when the omega whirls around and hisses at Hyunjin. It’s a full-blown animalistic hiss, loud and aggressive and furious. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Innie.” Hyunjin is crying again.
“No. Not one fucking step, Hyunjin.” One of Jeongin’s hands is still holding on to Felix and he has positioned himself deliberately in front of him. He’s… protecting Felix. He’s protecting Felix from Hyunjin.
What.
“I.N-ah,” Chan says quietly.
“No,” Jeongin spits, not even looking at him. “He has no right to do anything right now, after he- after he fucking—” He doesn’t finish, instead fixing Hyunjin with another furious glare, nearly shaking with anger.
But the anger really isn’t directed at him, Felix realises slowly. None of them are angry with him. And if they aren’t angry with him and yet they are all this tense, then…
You kissed him? Minho had asked him earlier, sounding astonished. Like he’d been convinced Felix hadn’t. Like he thought…
And abruptly, Felix pales as the terrible reality of the situation dawns on him. They think Hyunjin kissed him without consent. Clearly even Hyunjin thinks he kissed Felix without consent.
“Let him speak,” Changbin tells Jeongin, although his eyes are fixed on Felix. He is not crying, and doesn’t look quite as tense as the others.
“Like hell I—”
“Let him speak, Jeongin-ah,” Chan repeats, his voice indisputable, and Jeongin snaps his mouth shut.
“I’m sorry,” Hyunjin chokes out. “Felix.” Jeongin tenses, but doesn’t interrupt, perhaps because Hyunjin makes no move to step closer. In fact, the alpha almost seems to be trying to fuse into the wall, radiating shame and guilt. “Felix, I’m so, so sorry.” Hyunjin’s voice is wet and fresh tears drip down his cheeks. He doesn’t bother wiping them away. His next words are interrupted by small hitching sobs that he can’t quite hold back. “I’m… you don’t have to forgive me. I won’t touch you again, I promise. Ever. I’m- I’m so sorry. I thought—but that doesn’t matter. I have no excuse. Please, please don’t run away again. I know I fucked everything up, but you are safe here. I swear.”
Felix feels his heart break at the look on Hyunjin’s face, and yet he can’t move, can’t speak, too horrified by the agony in Hyunjin’s scent that’s washing out into the kitchen in strong, bitter waves.
When Hyunjin does move, all he does is sink to his knees and lower himself into a prostrate bow on the floor, his forehead pressed against the kitchen tiles. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out. His shoulders shake as he cries. “I’m so sorry.”
The kitchen is frozen. Nobody makes a move to interfere. They’re all watching Hyunjin break down, their expressions pained but grim. Nobody tells Hyunjin to stop, because- because they all think this is something Hyunjin owes Felix. They all believe Hyunjin actually hurt Felix like that, because clearly Hyunjin did tell them about the kiss, and this is the story he told them. And so nobody moves.
Nobody, except for Minho.
“Oh, for the love of—” The alpha pinches the bridge of his nose and then steps forward. He sounds exasperated, but Felix can see the tightness on his face at seeing Hyunjin like this. Despite his earlier promises of murder, he clearly can’t bear to watch this any more than Felix can. “Hyunjin-ah, get up.”
Jeongin glares at Minho. “That is not up to you.”
“No, it’s not,” Minho agrees, and pulls Felix out of his chair. He taps Felix’s cheek until Felix manages to drag his eyes away from Hyunjin and looks at him. Minho’s thumb brushes gently over his skin. “Please go save him from himself before he cries a hole in my floor.”
Felix nods, but Jeongin holds him tighter. “What the fuck, no, he doesn’t need to do anything at all, he—”
“Let me go, Innie,” Felix says quietly, his eyes already back on Hyunjin. The alpha doesn’t even seem to register their interaction, his forehead still pressed to the floor as sobs rack his shoulders. Felix feels his stomach fill with guilt. He did this.
“You do not have to forgive him,” Jeongin insists.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Felix says, and pulls loose from Jeongin’s grip when the confusion of his words makes the omega’s hands slacken slightly.
Felix walks over to where Hyunjin is still folded over himself, and lowers himself to the ground in front of him. He takes a breath and then bends forward to cup Hyunjin’s cheeks. They’re warm and wet. “Jinnie.”
Hyunjin shudders.
Felix tries to pull him up. “Jinnie, come on. Up.”
“No,” Hyunjin mumbles, shaking his head. “I- I made you—”
“I kissed you,” Felix says, and the room freezes again. Behind him, someone gasps. Felix still feels nervous at making this proclamation in front of everyone, but he can also still feel the phantom touch of Minho’s lips against his skin, the memory just tangible enough for him to add, “I wanted to.”
There’s more shifting and shocked breaths from the pack around them at that, but Felix doesn’t look up. His focus is on Hyunjin, who has stilled completely.
“You did nothing wrong,” Felix tells him, pulling him up again.
This time, Hyunjin doesn’t fight him and lets himself be drawn to his knees, looking Felix in the eye. He looks terribly lost and confused, tears clinging to his eyelashes. His mouth opens and closes a few times, but no sound comes out.
“You did nothing wrong,” Felix repeats.
“But you smelled so scared,” Hyunjin breathes, his voice shaky.
Felix grimaces. “I- yes, because you said- because I thought you didn’t want me.”
Hyunjin stares at him, eyes still big and shiny.
“Can you tell us again,” Minho breaks in, his voice dry, “exactly what Hyunjin told you after the two of you kissed?”
Felix keeps his eyes firmly focused on Hyunjin, because it feels like an almost impossible task to say it again in front of all of them, where anyone could speak up and agree that Hyunjin was right. His lungs feel tight when he says, “You said the others would be angry that we kissed, and that you should never have done it. You- you asked if we could pretend it never happened.”
“You what?” Seungmin explodes from behind him.
“Oh, Hyunjin,” Chan murmurs from the other side of the room.
Felix’s lungs ease a fraction. They’re not agreeing with the words. He can breathe a little more freely when he continues, “I’m sorry for running. But I thought I’d made you cheat on everyone, and that you didn’t want me.”
Hyunjin’s eyes grow impossibly wider as the situation dawns on him. “I- Oh. No, I didn’t mean—”
“Why the hell would you tell him that?” Seungmin asks, incredulous.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Hyunjin mumbles. He’s talking to Seungmin, but his eyes are locked onto Felix’s like a lifeline. “I just… we had a plan. Our dinner was tomorrow, and I’d just kissed him and ruined everything, and- and I thought that maybe if Lixie could help me hide that I’d done it, just for one more day, then you all wouldn’t be mad at me—”
“Oh my god,” Chan sighs, and Jisung lets out a slightly hysterical giggle.
“You idiot,” Seungmin says. “Of course he ran away after that, what the fuck was he supposed to think—”
But Hyunjin is clearly not listening. His eyes search Felix’s, a little desperate. “You really- I really didn’t- didn’t force you to- to—”
Felix shakes his head. “Of course not.” He cups Hyunjin’s cheeks again. “Jinnie, you would never.”
Hyunjin watches him for one more desperate second, and then he bursts into tears. He doesn’t smell like shame this time though—his scent breaks open in pure, all-encompassing relief, and Felix catches him as he falls forward to bury his face in Felix’s stomach. He knows this feeling. This is pretty much exactly how he felt with Minho earlier, and offering Hyunjin the same comfort is the least he owes him after running away and letting him think the worst all afternoon.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, stroking Hyunjin’s hair.
“You did nothing wrong,” Minho says, crouching beside them. He places a hand on the back of Hyunjin’s neck and squeezes. In other circumstances it could have been a reprimand, but Felix suspects that this time it’s solely intended to soothe.
“Minho is right,” Chan says, kneeling on their other side. “Any fault lies with me. I should have made us talk ages ago.”
“Oh, shut up,” Changbin tells him, punching him on the arm. He and Jisung lower themselves down too. “Don’t you fucking start.”
Chan shakes his head. “No, but it’s true. I’m the one who—”
“We all messed up,” Seungmin interrupts, tugging Jeongin over. “All of us except for Felix. We should have talked to him ages ago.”
They all come together in a group hug on the floor, and Felix huffs quietly. Yes. Clearly he should have done the same. “That’s what San-hyung told me yesterday. That I should talk to you about it.”
“You talked to San about us?” Chan asks, rubbing soft circles into Hyunjin’s back.
“Yeah.” Felix keeps his eyes on his fingers in Hyunjin’s hair. “I didn’t mean to, but he sort of looked right through me. I think he could tell I was confused. I didn’t know if I was imagining things.”
“Oh, Lixie.” Jisung hugs him, and Felix leans into him.
“We’re sorry,” Jeongin says, squeezing his hand.
Changbin ducks slightly to catch Felix’s gaze. “Do you know now? That you weren’t imagining anything?”
Felix feels his cheeks colour and he feels shyer than ever. “I…” He looks at Minho, who nods at him. His shoulders loosen a little. When he next speaks the words still come out hesitant, but he gets them out. “Yeah. Minho-hyung said you, um. Like me?”
“We do,” Chan confirms immediately, and there’s a chorus of fierce agreements all around. “We really do, Felix. A lot. We’d love to court you.” And even though Felix can hardly meet their eyes, warmth spreads through him, like a soft, wonderful echo of that earlier relief. They like him. They want to court him. Minho said it, of course, but- they really do. He breathes out, happiness bubbling up inside of him.
And then Changbin stills. “Hang on.”
“Oh, hell,” Minho mutters.
Changbin whips around, his lips stretching into a wide, delighted grin. “You mean to say Minho-hyung gave you your speech? Minho-hyung?”
“I didn’t give him any speech,” Minho grumbles.
“Where?” Changbin whirls back to Felix. “Where were you, where did this happen?”
“Um.” Felix gestures, a little taken aback. “In the living room?”
“Damn it,” Changbin whines. “There’s no cameras inside the house. You couldn’t have dragged him out to the driveway for this?”
Seungmin is snickering at the look on Minho’s face, and Jisung lets out a soft giggle into Felix’s ear. Even Jeongin has cracked a smile now. Minho looks ready to strangle Changbin, and it’s Chan who interferes. “Alright,” he says placatingly, “I’m sure Minho did a great job.”
“I didn’t give him any speech,” Minho insists, surly. “I just told him the truth.”
“Sounds like a speech to me,” Seungmin says, eyes glittering, and Minho glowers at him.
“You did do a good job,” Felix says quietly, looking at Minho. Everyone falls silent. “You… It was…” You have been pack for months. Of course we want you. The words are still pulsing through his veins. “It was really nice,” he finishes in a whisper.
Minho doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with that, and to everyone’s delight, his cheeks colour a faint pink. “You still deserve hyung’s speech,” he says eventually, once the giggling has died down. “I’ve read it. That’s the one you should have gotten.”
“It’s really okay,” Felix tries, but Changbin cuts him off.
“It’s not. You’ll want to hear it, Lix-ah. It’s a good one.”
“Yeah,” Seungmin grumbles, “because you didn’t write it.”
Changbin laughs. “I give fantastic speeches, Seungminnie.”
Seungmin pulls a face, but before he can say anything, Jisung bounces in place. “Give him his speech, hyung!”
Chan blinks at the order. “Oh. Now?”
Changbin huffs. “No, in a month after we’ve created another thousand misunderstandings. Yes, hyung, now. I think it’s about time we finally tell Felix what he means to us.”
What he means to us. It was said so casually, but Felix’s heart skips a beat.
Chan looks at Felix and then nods. “He’s right. You’ve waited long enough.” For a split second, Felix thinks Chan will launch straight into whatever speech he has prepared (and god if that thought isn’t enough to break his brain), and he is suddenly incredibly relieved when Chan doesn’t. Instead, the alpha leans forward to stroke a hand through Hyunjin’s hair. “You good for us to do this now, Hyunjinnie?”
Hyunjin sniffs and slowly sits back up. His eyes are puffy, but he’s no longer crying. “Uh-huh.”
“Yeah?” Chan wipes a lingering tear from Hyunjin’s cheekbone. “We can take a minute.”
Hyunjin shakes his head. “It’s okay.” He looks at Chan, eyes still red-rimmed but expectant.
“No, wait,” Felix blurts before Chan can turn to him. “Um, wait, I…” He takes a deep breath. He has no idea why he’s suddenly so nervous. This can’t possibly be something bad, not after everything they’ve already said and implied. But still, he just… he just… he wants a moment. He desperately wants a moment. He looks helplessly to his side, and Jeongin comes to his aid.
“At least give Jinnie-hyung some water, hyung. He looks pathetic.”
Felix exhales gratefully, both for himself and for Hyunjin, who, admittedly, does look rather pitiful.
“I don’t need water,” Hyunjin sniffs.
“You don’t?” Changbin asks, faux-shocked. “I thought you said your skin would dry out if you’re dehydrated, and then you’d shrivel up and we wouldn’t want to touch you anymore.”
“You’d still wanna touch me,” Hyunjin mumbles, blinking. “But I’d be all wrinkly, and I only want wrinkles when I’m old. And weathered.” He sniffs again. “From experience. And wisdom. And all the hardships I’ve gone through in life.”
Felix feels his shoulders relax, incredibly relieved at the way Changbin is slowly coaxing Hyunjin back to life.
“That’s right,” Changbin nods solemnly. “Can’t have you wrinkly and weathered before your time. So let’s get you a glass of water, huh? Or hyung will take it as a sign and he’ll start thinking it’s okay to go without water again.”
“No,” Hyunjin protests with another sniffle. He sends Chan a look of betrayal. “I got you a really pretty bottle.”
“You did get me a really pretty bottle,” Chan agrees seriously. “And I’ve been using it every day.”
That makes Hyunjin brighten a little. “You have?”
“Of course I have.”
“He’s been cursing at it every day too,” Jisung tells Hyunjin. To Felix, he explains, “There’s marks on the outside that tell hyung when he’s allowed to drink coffee again. He hates it.”
“He can’t hate it,” Hyunjin pouts. “It’s pretty.”
Felix bites back a giggle, and Chan’s lips twitch. “It’s very pretty, Hyunjinnie. I love it.”
Minho appears and presses a bottle of water into Hyunjin’s hands, the cap already twisted open. “Drink.”
Hyunjin shakes his head. “No.”
Minho narrows his eyes. “Hyunjin-ah.”
“No, I need my punishment first.”
The room freezes, and Chan frowns, concerned. “Jinnie. I’m not going to punish you, what are you—”
“Not you,” Hyunjin sighs. “Halmeoni.”
Before Felix can do anything more than blink in confusion, Changbin lets out a laugh. “That wasn’t a punishment, baby.”
“It was.” Hyunjin looks very grave and repentant. “And I will eat it.”
Chan stares at him. “Eat… your punishment?” He looks at Changbin.
“We were at Kang Aera’s bakery and Jinnie broke down,” Changbin says. “She gave him a pastry.” To Hyunjin, he adds, “She just felt bad for you, babe. You were crying really hard.”
“No, it was punishment.” Hyunjin gives a sage little nod. “Like the brownie.”
Felix’s mind lights up in understanding, and this time he does giggle. Wednesday’s brownie. The one Aera told him to give to Hyunjin, which Hyunjin had crammed into his mouth whole, eyes lit up with delight, only for him to stick his tongue out two seconds later and let the half-chewed mess drop back to his plate with a look of such betrayed disappointment that Felix and Jisung had laughed for a full twenty minutes.
And yes, sure, Aera likes messing with people. But if she gave Hyunjin something because he was crying…
“Where is it?” Felix asks, looking around. When Changbin nods at a familiar brown pastry box on the cabinet near the door, he rises to get it. Sure enough, inside is a slice of chocolate cake, rich and layered, topped with ganache and pecans. He smiles. Definitely Aera’s best bake of the day, and if they really stopped by after the shop closed, then he bets this is something Aera was saving for herself for after dinner. He takes it out and kneels back down, holding it out to Hyunjin. “Try it, Jinnie.”
Hyunjin’s face shifts into determination, looking for all the world like he’s going to the gallows as he leans forward and takes a bite. He chews, and then freezes. Felix laughs. “It’s good,” Hyunjin mumbles, blinking.
“I know.”
Hyunjin takes the slice of cake with both hands and takes another bite, looking utterly bewildered.
“Can I have a bite?” Changbin asks, staring at it eagerly.
“No,” Hyunjin says quickly, guarding the slice with his hands. “It’s my punishment.”
“Shut up, it’s not punishment!”
“It is,” Hyunjin declares solemnly. “And I shall bear it.”
Felix smiles, and then grins in relief when Changbin launches himself at Hyunjin and manages to get an actual laugh out of him. The sound echoes off the walls, and that’s better. That’s so much better. He doesn’t have words for how wrong it felt to see Hyunjin that distraught.
“I hate him so much,” Jeongin says, as he tugs Felix back down to the floor in between himself and Seungmin. “He’s so stupid, I hate him.” But his voice is filled with relief and affection, and Felix laughs quietly.
“I can’t believe you hissed at him.”
Jeongin snorts. “Oh, he’s lucky it was a misunderstanding. I would have punched him in the face.”
“Yes,” Chan says dryly. “That’s why we kept you far away from him until we knew the full story.”
Seungmin laughs at that, and Jeongin smacks his shoulder.
“You knew?” Felix asks, turning to look at Chan. “That Jinnie didn’t really- that he would never—”
Chan exchanges a quick look with Jisung and then presses his lips together, looking pained. “No. We did not know. I hoped there would be more to it, because the idea of losing you was too awful to even consider, but the way Hyunjin told the story didn’t leave a lot of room for doubt. We knew he didn’t mean to, but yes, we all thought he did it.”
“He really didn’t,” Felix says, just in case any of them are somehow still doubting that. “I just… misunderstood.”
“Of course you misunderstood,” Seungmin and Minho say at the same time. They briefly frown at each other before looking back at Felix. Seungmin shakes his head. “Anyone would have gotten the wrong idea from that.”
Suddenly, Chan scoots over until he’s behind Felix and can hug him close, wrapping him up in a cloud of coffee. “I am so glad you came back,” he mutters in Felix’s ear. “Christ, Lix, you scared the life out of me.”
“Sorry,” Felix mumbles, but Chan only shakes his head and holds him tighter, and after a second Felix relaxes back into his chest. Chan’s scent is something else he thought he’d never have again, and yet here it is, enveloping him like the warmest of blankets. He watches as Hyunjin and Changbin sit back up (judging by Hyunjin’s pout and the way Changbin is chewing, his punishment has been successfully halved), and smiles when Jisung scoots closer too so he can interlace his fingers with Felix’s. They’re all together and none of them are angry and they all want him here. It’s clear from all of their scents, from the way they’re leaning into him and covering him in as much of their pheromones as they can, as if to reassure themselves he’s still with them. He lets out a long breath as he melts fully into Chan. The nerves are gone now. Whatever Chan is going to tell him, he’s no longer scared. He’s ready to hear it.
As if reading his mind, Chan squeezes him. “Do you need a little longer?”
Felix smiles. “No.”
“None of us would mind. I also don’t have to do this out loud, if you’d rather I didn’t. I can just let you read it.”
Felix’s chest warms. Chan is so sweet. “No,” he says, turning his head to look at him. “I’m ready.”
Chan smiles back, and he’s warm and solid and so close that his breath hits Felix’s cheek, and Felix’s stomach flutters when he realises he could lean in and kiss him. He would be allowed to now, right? He thinks Chan would let him. Would kiss him back. He stares. Surely he—
And then Chan leans in first, and kisses the tip of his nose.
Felix blinks, and Chan pulls back with a laugh. “Speech first,” he says, and Felix does not pout, because he is better than that.
“Is it time?” Jisung whispers from right next to them, so loudly that he might as well just have spoken. Felix jumps, and then laughs at the sparkles in Jisung’s eyes.
“Yes, Sungie,” Chan chuckles. “It’s time.”
“Yessss,” Jisung whispers, eyes growing even brighter.
“I think Hannie might actually be more excited for this than Felix is,” Changbin comments, and Minho snorts.
“Oh, definitely.”
Chan rises and then holds out a hand to Felix.
Felix takes a deep breath and then takes it, letting Chan pull him to his feet.
There’s a quick shuffle on the floor as the others shift and turn so they’ll be able to watch them properly. Watch as Chan gives Felix his courting speech.
Despite his lack of fear, Felix feels his mouth go dry.
“Lee Felix,” Chan starts softly, holding his gaze. The room is silent—but it’s a full silence, warm and so loaded with promise that Felix can feel it buzzing against his skin. “For a long time, we were seven, and I thought we were complete. And then we met you. You saved one of ours the very first night you met us, and then you somehow never stopped doing so. You could have shut us out of your life forever, and yet you chose not to. You opened yourself up to us and granted us trust, and allowed us to help you when you were at your most vulnerable. That trust is an honour, and one each and every one of us will swear never to break.” He pauses briefly, just long enough for the others to voice soft agreements. Felix’s breathing has already gone shallow, but Chan is nowhere near finished.
“I know you felt weak, back then. I know you still do. But truly—all I see when I look at you is strength. You are so strong.” Chan’s voice is just as full as the air around them. “The things you’ve been through, the things you’ve fought your way out of, and the optimism and light you carry with you despite all that… It’s unbelievable, and awe-inspiring. You may have had to lock part of yourself away to survive, but you never lost it. You never lost any of the things that make you you. Whatever life put you through, it never changed your heart, or your capacity for love. You’re kind, and compassionate, and generous, and we are becoming better people just by being around you.” He smiles softly. “Our bond is stronger now than it was before we met you, did you know that? We can all feel it. I meant it when I said you’re still saving us. You help us grow, and you complete us in ways we didn’t even know we needed.” He watches him, gratitude in his eyes. “We know that you’re strong enough not to need us, but we want to be there for you anyway. We want to cherish you, and help you shine, and we want to love you in all the ways you deserve and more.”
Chan’s eyes are very, very soft. “Felix, we adore you. We were seven, but we would no longer be complete unless we are eight. As head alpha of this pack, I ask you: would you do us the honour of letting us court you?”
Felix feels a tear drip onto his collarbone. He didn’t even realise he was crying. “Yes,” he manages. “Yes, please.” He can’t get the traditional ‘Yes, alpha’ out of his mouth. He knows he’s supposed to, but it feels dirty. It reminds him of him, and he doesn’t want to taint this moment.
Thankfully, Chan seems to understand that, and simply squeezes his hands. “Thank you,” he says, eyes shiny. He’s smiling widely though, and Felix smiles back through his tears. Chan draws him in for a hug, and Felix folds himself against his chest. He can hear Chan’s heartbeat, its slightly increased pace the only sign Chan was nervous about this speech at all. “Thank you,” Chan murmurs into his ear, in English this time.
Felix wraps his arms around him, overcome with feelings. Minho’s words earlier were already enough to knock all the air from his lungs, but this… He has no words for this. He won’t ever have the words to express how this made him feel. He inhales coffee, and then vanilla and woodsmoke and cinnamon as the others plaster themselves against him one by one until the pack scent is complete. Until- until their pack scent is complete. Felix feels more tears drip down, and someone presses a kiss to his hair.
He doesn’t pull back, wouldn’t ever have pulled back if it weren’t for Jisung, who vibrates his way out of the hug to whisper, “Does this mean we can give him the thing?” He bounces on his toes. “Please, please, we can, right?”
Minho huffs. “Yes, alright, go get it before you explode,” he says, and Jisung rushes out of the room. And Minho’s tone may have been dry, but he’s not fooling anyone. His eyes, when Felix pulls back from Chan’s chest to meet them, are soft and fond, and there’s a smile on his face.
“I told you you’d want to hear this,” Changbin mutters in his ear.
He did. He really, really did.
Chan’s hand tips his chin up, and Felix flickers his eyes back up to meet Chan’s. “Any doubts left?” Chan checks.
Felix lets out an incredulous breath of laughter. “No,” he says, wiping his eyes. “I mean.” He bites his lip. “I can’t believe that you want me. But I believe that you do? If that makes sense.”
“I wish it didn’t,” Chan says with a soft, wry smile, “but it does. It’s okay. We’ll tell you as often as you need to hear it.”
“You’ll get so sick of them,” Seungmin says. “They’re so sappy, Felix, they’re gonna drive you insane.”
Jeongin nods vehemently, but Felix only sighs happily at the prospect. “I like sappy,” he says, and Changbin laughs in delight. He wipes his eyes a final time and takes a deep breath. He does have one doubt. “You really don’t mind that I can’t… that it won’t be official?” It’s far, far too early to talk about mating. And they don’t seem to mind. But he needs to ask anyway.
“We don’t care about paperwork, Felix,” Minho says. “We care about you.”
And Felix slumps in relief, sending Minho a grateful look. That is exactly what Aera told him, but hearing it from them is different.
“Damn,” Changbin says slowly. He’s staring at Minho like he’s never seen him before. “I think I’m actually starting to be able to picture how you told him earlier.”
“Hyung is good at talking,” Jeongin mutters. When Changbin sends him a baffled look, he insists, “He is. He hates every second of it, but he’s good at it when it matters.”
“He is,” Seungmin agrees easily, and Hyunjin nods too. Even Changbin’s expression changes to one of understanding.
“He’s thorough,” Chan says, smiling at Minho. “Very good at getting things out in the open.”
Once again, Minho looks like he has absolutely no idea what to do with this praise, and settles for a red-faced glower. Seungmin grins and opens his mouth, but thankfully for Minho, that’s the moment Jisung bursts back into the kitchen.
“I’ve got it!” he yells, clutching something to his chest. “Damn, Minnie, you hid that well.”
Seungmin looks over and shrugs. “I’m the one who hides your birthday presents. I’ve got practice.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to find a new spot now,” Jisung says triumphantly.
“Oh, don’t worry. This wasn’t one of my good hiding places.”
Jisung stares at him, looking like he doesn’t quite know whether to feel awed or betrayed.
“You’ve got Lix’s gift?” Chan prompts him gently.
Jisung perks up. “Oh! Yes!” He bounces over towards Felix, before looking back at Chan. “Is this… Is this something you should do?”
Chan waves a hand. “I gave the speech. You’ve got this.”
Jisung beams at him, and then turns back to Felix. “Hi, Lixie.”
“Hi,” Felix says, grinning helplessly in the face of Jisung’s excitement.
They grin at each other for a moment, and then Jisung holds out the black box he’s holding. “This is for you. It’s your first courting gift, from all of us.”
Felix looks at the box, wrapped in a silky white ribbon.
“Before you open it,” Jisung continues, “We weren’t sure what you’d be comfortable with, so we came up with this. Jinnie designed it and Innie helped, and we thought this was a safe option, but if you’re not comfortable with this either, you need to tell us, okay?”
Felix’s eyes widen. They designed him something? “Okay.”
“Good.” With that, Jisung shakes the box in his direction, and Felix takes it. He feels his cheeks flush with the weight of everyone’s stares as he unties the ribbon and opens the box, suddenly too aware of the slight trembling of his hands. He peers in and stares.
It’s a necklace. Two thin white gold chains, one slightly longer than the other, that come together at the back. In the middle of the longer chain is a charm of two hands clasped together. The way the fingers are folded almost makes the hands look like wings. Above that, attached to the first chain, there’s a shiny rectangular plate with two horizontal stripes and the Bang Pack name engraved on it.
Felix can only stare. This…
“The charm is to show you that we’ll always be there for you,” Hyunjin begins nervously. He meets Felix’s eyes, a hesitant look on his face. “To hold your hand, whether that is to help you up or comfort you or just enjoy life together. To let you hold our hands in support too, the way you’ve been doing for months. It’s mutual, a thank you and a promise. Because we…” He swallows. “Because we care about you, so much, and we want you to stay with us forever.”
Felix feels like he could cry again. He stares at the charm, and then back at Hyunjin. “You made this?” His voice is hoarse.
Hyunjin shrugs. “I just made a sketch. Innie helped.”
Jeongin huffs. “No, I didn’t. This was all him. He drew like fifty sketches before we picked this one, and then he spent days going back and forth with the jeweller to make sure everything would look the way we wanted it to. He made this. Don’t let him downplay it.”
Hyunjin looks at Jeongin in shock, and Jeongin sends him an apologetic little smile.
Felix is still staring at Hyunjin, and it takes him another moment before he steps forward and hugs him hard. Hyunjin hugs him back immediately, so tightly Felix almost can’t breathe. “I’m sorry,” Hyunjin whispers. “I really am so sorry, Lixie.”
“No, it’s okay,” Felix tells him. “I’m sorry too. I should have talked to you instead of running.” He hesitates for a split second and then presses his wrist against Hyunjin’s neck gland, letting his scent speak for him.
Hyunjin shudders as Felix’s scent enters his system, and then melts as the final traces of guilt and regret wash out of him with Felix’s forgiveness. “Thank you,” Felix whispers. “I love the gift.” I love you.
He doesn’t say that last part, because it’s probably too soon for that, but he thinks that perhaps with his scent, Hyunjin will feel it anyway.
Hyunjin holds him tightly for a little bit longer, and then pulls back. He looks and smells settled now, like himself and like Felix. “Innie really did help with the necklace though,” he says. “Because we wanted you to be able to customise it so you’ll be comfortable, and Innie’s input was invaluable.”
Felix looks at the gift again.
Jeongin steps forward and indicates a little clasp at the back. “If you don’t want the pack claim, you can detach the first chain,” he explains. “It’s your choice whether you want to wear it or not.”
A pack claim. He stares down at it.
“I also tried to make sure it would be loose enough that it wouldn’t look or feel like a collar,” Jeongin continues. “We considered bracelets instead, but you’ve worn necklaces before so we thought this was safe.”
“You won’t get me a collar?” Felix asks slowly.
“We didn’t think you’d want a collar,” Minho says. “Do you?”
Felix hesitates. A part of him wants to say yes. Because a collar is the strongest kind of claim, and he wants that, wants to belong to them in every possible way. And yet the idea of clasping a collar around his neck again, tight and stiff and confining, is enough to make his stomach turn. He knows he’s supposed to. Even Jeongin wears a collar when he’s out. And he knows they’re not Kwang-ho, he knows it would be different, and yet… he can’t. He can’t do it.
“No,” he whispers.
“Oh good,” Jisung says brightly, “We were hoping we’d guessed right. That’s why we got you this instead!”
Felix looks at the necklace again. At the place where the first chain can be detached, at the two horizontal stripes on the pack plate that would normally be on the leather of a courting collar instead. A flicker of shame curls inside him. They went to so much effort to design this for him just so he wouldn’t panic.
“You don’t have to accept this either,” Chan says, misinterpreting his silence. “If you’re not comfortable with anything around your neck, then please tell us. We can get you a bracelet too, or a ring, or nothing at all, if you don’t want a courting claim. We won’t be offended, we will not care. This is not about claiming. We just want you.”
Those words don’t help ease Felix’s shame, but they still send him reeling. They’d give him a courting bracelet. They’d give him a courting ring. Omegas don’t wear courting bracelets or rings, not here in South Korea. When it comes to mating jewellery, bracelets are for betas, and rings are for alphas. Omegas wear collars, and that is that.
And yet, they got him a necklace. A beautiful necklace, as close to courting jewellery as they could make it. He tries to swallow down his shame about rejecting a proper collar. This is a good moment, and now is not the time for it. They gave him this necklace, and he wants it.
“I want this,” he says out loud. He looks up and lets his eyes slide across everyone in the room. “It’s beautiful, thank you. I don’t want to change it.” He looks over at Jisung. “Please put it on for me?”
Jisung’s eyes widen in shock. “Me?”
Felix nods, and Jisung’s scent goes sticky-sweet with joy. He steps closer, and Felix fights the urge to shiver in anticipation. It’s like wearing this gift, this claim, will make it real. Chan said this gift wasn’t about claiming, but he wants it to be. He wants their claim, wants to be theirs more than anything. He holds the box out to Jisung. “Please?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Jisung takes the necklace from the box and Felix turns around. Softly, Jisung sweeps his hair over his shoulder and gently fastens the necklace around his throat. Jeongin was right—it is a loose chain, and the charm falls just below his collarbones, the pack plate resting in the hollow of his throat. Jisung’s hand is right next to his scent gland, just brushing the edge of it. Felix shivers and tilts his head into Jisung’s hand. Slowly, Jisung uses his other hand to turn him back around, and Felix lets him. Jisung’s eyes dart to his lips once, and then back up. “Can I… Can I kiss you?”
Felix’s breath hitches, and for a moment, he waits. But when nobody protests, he nods, a smile tugging at his lips. And then Jisung leans in, pausing the barest of seconds before closing the distance. The moment their lips touch, the alpha lets out the softest sigh of satisfaction, and tingles dance down Felix’s spine. This kiss is not like the one he shared with Hyunjin. It’s tentative, barely any pressure at first, and then softness as their heads tilt and the angle improves, their lips slotting together. Jisung’s hand is still on the side of Felix’s neck, and the slight pressure against his scent gland makes him dizzy.
Jisung breaks the kiss and lets out a breathy, incredulous laugh against Felix’s lips, smelling awed and overjoyed. Felix thinks he must smell exactly the same. He kissed Jisung. Jisung kissed him. He could kiss him again whenever he wants. He feels like he could explode. He laughs too, and then can’t help it as he loses control of his scent and it floods out of him, the citrus sweet and syrupy and so incredibly happy.
Before he can apologise or try to reel it back in, Changbin sighs, closing his eyes. “Oh, Lix-ah.”
“Remember when his scent first changed?” Jeongin asks, inhaling deeply. “He smelled so good. We had to practically tie Jinnie-hyung to a chair to keep him from approaching Felix straight away.”
“I always knew he’d be the one to fuck up the plan,” Minho grumbles, but his nostrils are flared as he breathes Felix in.
Felix is blushing now, but doesn’t rein in his scent. They’re all breathing him in. They’re all savouring him, and he wants to shiver in pleasure.
“Actually,” Jisung says after a moment, “If it hadn’t been for Jinnie, I would have fucked up the plan yesterday.” He’s still looking at Felix. “I would have kissed you if he hadn’t walked in. Please tell me you know that.”
Hyunjin gasps. “You what? That’s what you were doing instead of braiding?”
Felix just laughs, giddy. So he did read that right.
Jisung grins over his shoulder at Hyunjin. “You saved me when you walked in, because I’m actually not entirely sure I wouldn’t have fucked it up afterwards either. So I don’t blame you for today, Jinnie.”
At that, Hyunjin’s face softens again into something grateful. “Thank you.” Then his lips quirk up and he looks back at Felix. “It might have been better if it had been Sungie though, because that’s the kind of kiss I should have given you. Sorry about that, Lixie. I lost myself a little this afternoon.”
Felix laughs and shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry.” It was what came after the kiss that sucked—the kiss itself he very much did not mind.
“Do I want to know how the two of you kissed this afternoon, if this was new?” Minho asks.
Hyunjin grins. “Little more heat.” He pauses, considering. “Lot more heat. I had no idea you could kiss like that, Felixie.”
“Neither did I, to be honest,” Felix admits.
Hyunjin blanches. “Tell me that wasn’t your first kiss. Lixie, tell me—”
Felix laughs. “No, Jinnie, that was not my first kiss.” He kissed a few of his classmates back in Australia, during a game of spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven at someone’s birthday party. And here in Korea he kissed Jake and Sunghoon once, just to try it because they were always together, only for all three of them to immediately burst into giggles and decide they should never do that again. But he’d never kissed anyone like that. He’d never even felt the desire to kiss anyone like that. Not until he met the pack.
Hyunjin slumps in relief, steadying himself against a bar stool. “Oh, thank god.”
Changbin snickers, poking his waist. “Now I really want to know how you kissed him, if just the thought freaked you out.”
Hyunjin is immediately revived. He turns, waggling his eyebrows. “Lixie and I could show you.”
“Yah!” Chan calls out, and both Seungmin and Jeongin smack Hyunjin’s arms.
“Ow, alright, I’m sorry,” Hyunjin whines. “Stop hitting me, I’ll behave.”
Felix laughs at the pout on Hyunjin’s face, and Changbin sighs. “God, he smells good.”
“So good,” Chan agrees, looking amused when Felix goes red again.
“I’d beg you on my knees to finally scent me,” Changbin tells him. “I need to find out what you feel like now that you’re healthy.”
Chan hums, and then, eyes still shining with amusement, comments lightly, “I think you could just ask Minho. He’s the one who smells like a lemonade stand.”
Changbin lets out a bark of laughter, and Chan grins. “I wasn’t gonna point it out,” Changbin snickers, “but god, I can barely smell him underneath it.”
Felix’s face is even brighter red now, grimacing as he stares down at the floor, but Minho only steps forward to tip his chin back up before looking over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow. “Jealous?”
“So fucking jealous,” Changbin admits freely, without a hint of shame. “Please scent me too tonight, Lix-ah. I’ve been going insane holding myself back from asking you.”
That eases the embarrassment inside of him. “Really?”
“Oh yeah.” Changbin gestures. “We all have. Having you in our den and not being scented by you? Torture.”
“It kind of was,” Jisung says. “You were like- you felt like ours? I mean- not like a possession, obviously, but you felt like, you know, part of us, and it was really hard to hold back.”
“Why did you?” Felix asks, because that’s the thing he genuinely doesn’t understand. Surely they could see that he wanted to be with them, he was so obvious, but if they wanted to be with him too, why would they have held back?
“Me and Jinnie and Changbin-hyung didn’t want to,” Jisung says. “But the others were adamant we had to wait.”
“And we were right,” Jeongin says. “At first.”
“We were,” Seungmin agrees. He looks at Felix and explains, “Because you were still recovering, and your well-being depended on us. You were not free to make any choice of your own because you physically needed us, so it would have been wrong to force you into making a decision, especially about something on that scale.”
Oh. That’s actually really thoughtful. Except… “But I got better,” Felix says, still confused.
“You did,” Chan sighs, leaning against the sink. “And that’s why I said all of this was my fault, because after that it really was mostly me who was holding back. Not because I don’t want you,” he hastily clarifies before Felix can come to any wrong conclusions, “but just because…” He trails off for a second. “I’ve put a lot of thought into this this week, trying to figure out what was stopping me. But it was… When we started courting Innie, we were so careful about being respectful, about making sure we were all equals. Because the fact that you two are omegas changes nothing for us, but it does change things in the eyes of the law, and that meant I had to pay more attention during that courtship. I had to keep a close eye to make sure Innie would have the same things any of the others did, because if I just left it up to the law, he wouldn’t have his own money, or access to his government or medical files. It was up to me to make sure he would. And that’s fine, it wasn’t a problem and I did it gladly, but with you things were even more imbalanced. You depend on us in so many ways that go far beyond subgender discrimination, and that scared me. It felt like we weren’t on equal ground, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around starting something when our dynamic was so skewed, even when all the others could.”
He smiles wryly. “That’s what I meant on Wednesday, when I told you I’d been too overprotective. Because the others were right, we’d already started crossing so many lines we shouldn’t have before talking to you. The continued scenting, inviting you into our den… I don’t regret any of them, because not doing it would have felt like rejection and that’s the last impression we wanted to give you, but it really was not fair to you.” He huffs. “Of course, making you feel like we were rejecting you is what ended up happening today anyway, and that’s on me. I should have seen sooner that I was being an asshole in keeping that choice from you when you were more than capable of making it. I deeply apologise for that, Felix.”
Felix stares at him, eyes wide. “It’s… okay,” he says slowly.
“It’s not,” Chan says simply. “And like I told you on Wednesday, I promise I’ll do better.” He smiles. “But thank you.”
“We’ll all do better,” Minho says, walking past them to the counter. “Starting with feeding you, because you still haven’t eaten.” He points at the kitchen island. “Sit.”
Felix breathes out a laugh, but he does sit back down in his seat, grateful for a little moment to process. He really didn’t misread any of the signs then. Back in the garden during that soccer match, and all of the touches and compliments. They really did want him, even then, and they’d just been holding back until they thought he was ready. Minho had said that too, earlier. And maybe Felix should be offended about them holding back, but he can’t find it in him, too overwhelmed with relief at the fact that they actually want him. Besides… he knows Chan. He can see how Chan meant it, can understand why Chan would struggle with something like this, and he knows Chan would never knowingly do anything to hurt him. None of them would. They all look guilty and apologetic, but he truly isn’t angry about anything that happened. Just relieved, and overjoyed at the fact that he’s courting now.
“You too,” Minho tells the others. “Sit down, you’ve all been scouring the city since two.”
Felix blinks. “You have?”
Chan looks at him. “Felix, you were gone. We were scared you would disappear forever. Of course we were out looking for you.”
Jisung nods. “We would have looked for you all night if we had to.”
Oh. Wow.
“We even called the Kim pack,” Seungmin says, “because we thought you might have asked for their help.” He looks at Chan. “They weren’t very happy with us, by the way.”
Chan grimaces. “No, I didn’t think they would be. I already texted them he was back, but I’ll give Hongjoong a call later to explain.”
“The Kim pack has been keeping an eye on you,” Changbin informs him. “After Seonghwa-hyung came here the first time and saw the way we acted towards you, he had a talk with Channie-hyung to discuss our intentions.”
Felix gapes. “He what?”
Chan hurries to explain. “Not in a possessive way, of course, he barely knew you. He just wanted to make sure that we knew what we were doing, that we wouldn’t go and screw things up for you further when you were still so sick. Like Changbin said, just looking out for you. It was sweet, really. I mean, intimidating as hell. He was dead serious, and if he genuinely thought we were gonna hurt you, I’m sure he’d have found a way to get you out of here. He cares a lot, I think, about the people he helps.”
Felix stares at him. That had been all the way back in March, on Hyunjin’s birthday. They’d barely known him for three weeks, and he’d been unconscious for most of that time. They had felt something, even then? His mind flashes back to Chan, standing protectively in the archway to the living room as he questioned Seonghwa to make sure it was safe to let him near Felix. Oh. Felix had thought that it was just because Felix was nervous and Chan was being kind to a friend, but maybe…
They all fell for you before I even came back, Minho whispers in his mind, and Felix ducks his head to hide the wonder in his eyes.
And Seonghwa had talked to Chan about it? Had practically challenged a pack alpha for Felix, even though he barely knew him? That blows his mind, and it must show on his face, because Jeongin laughs.
“I don’t think you realise how many people you have in your corner, Lixie. They really were very mad at us when Seungmin called them.”
“That’s honestly the reaction I thought we’d get from your halmeoni too when we visited,” Changbin says.
Felix laughs at the idea. “She wouldn’t be mad at you,” he says dismissively.
“Lix-ah,” Changbin says, “the last time I was there she threatened me with a knife.”
Felix’s eyes go wide. “What?”
“Oh yeah. She gave me a fucking shovel talk.”
Felix stares at him in horror. Aera had given Changbin a shovel talk? “But- but she promised she wouldn’t say anything.”
Minho snorts, briefly turning away from the chicken he’s frying. “She didn’t. All she did was talk about blueberries, and Binnie freaked out like she’d tortured him.”
“She had a knife,” Changbin hisses, even as Jeongin, Hyunjin and Jisung burst into giggles.
“She did,” Minho nods. “And you said she used it to cut a pie. I’m sure it was very scary.” His voice is dripping sarcasm, and Changbin narrows his eyes.
“You weren’t there. Besides, you haven’t met her yet. I’d like to be there when you do.”
He looks so grumpy that Seungmin chuckles. “Whatever she told him certainly stuck, because he actually told us in our last pack meeting on Tuesday that we had to be a healthy fruit bowl.”
“It was a metaphor,” Changbin grumbles when everyone bursts into laughter. Clearly this is something they’ve been teasing him about ever since he said it. Changbin tolerates the laughter for a minute before he adds, “And you can laugh all you want, but today proved that I was right and we weren’t a healthy fruit bowl. I thought I was a goner when I entered that shop this afternoon.” He looks at Felix. “But all she did was sigh and look exasperated and give Jinnie that cake, and then, well. I think she knew a lot more than we did, because she heavily implied that things would work out if we talked to you.”
Hyunjin stares at him. “She did?”
Changbin’s lips twitch, and he pats Hyunjin’s arm. “You were crying a bit too hard to notice, I think.” He looks back at Felix. “Although she also told me she wouldn’t be this lenient again if we fucked up a second time, so please for the love of god tell me you believe us now and won’t run away again, or she will gut me the next time I visit that bakery.”
Felix laughs and promises, “I won’t run away again.”
They all smile, and from the chair next to him, Jeongin drags Felix’s chair closer and wraps his arms around him. Felix leans back into his chest, and they all settle into a comfortable silence as they watch Minho cook. Everyone looks and smells just as happy as Felix feels. He tries to process the turns this day has taken and can barely wrap his head around it. The entire way here, he was so sure that this was going to be the last time he saw them. That he’d ruined their friendship forever. And now… His hand comes up to touch the pack tag on his necklace. He still feels guilty for his inability to wear a collar. But not enough to dim the pleasure he feels when he touches his courting necklace. The one they designed especially for him. Because they want him to be theirs.
He can feel his scent bloom out again, but doesn’t bother holding it back.
Jeongin hooks his chin over Felix’s shoulder and inhales deeply. Felix almost pulls away in an attempt not to give himself away, before remembering that he no longer has to. And so instead, he tilts his head to give Jeongin better access. Jeongin rubs his cheek over Felix’s neck and then takes Felix’s hands to rub their wrists together. “Scent me back,” he murmurs into Felix’s ear, before exhaling in surprise when Felix accidentally sends a tidal wave of pheromones into his system before wrestling the flow back under control. “Whoa.”
“Sorry,” Felix laughs quietly.
“Mmm.” Jeongin closes his eyes. “Lemon cakes. Missed this.”
From the other side of the island, Hyunjin chuckles. “Did you just scent daze Innie?”
“No,” Jeongin says. “Just feels nice.” His voice is clear, and yet Felix can feel he is leaning into him a little more heavily than before, his scent just the tiniest bit hazier where it’s flowing into Felix. Felix smiles. That can stay between them.
They remain like that, quietly exchanging scents, until Minho slides two bowls of ramen in front of them. It’s the kind of food Minho would call ‘lazy’ but that has everyone else drooling, because aside from the noodles, everything else is freshly cooked. Minho waits until Felix has taken a first bite and only then turns back to the stove to make up bowls for the others. Chan steps over to help, which Minho allows in a gracious display of generosity.
They hand out bowls to everyone else and sit down to eat. They don’t talk much over dinner, but the mood is warm and relaxed and slightly giddy. They all keep exchanging smiles and glances, and Felix seems not to be the only one who can’t quite believe this is real. They stay in the kitchen until they’ve finished eating and until Hyunjin and Seungmin have cleared away the dishes, and then they all move to the living room as if by unspoken agreement.
They all curl up on the massive couch, Felix squashed in between Jeongin and Hyunjin, and Chan clears his throat. “Okay. We need to talk about some things, so I think—”
“Yeah, absolutely not,” Changbin interrupts, dropping to his knees in front of Felix.
“Bin—”
“You’ve postponed this talk for months, you can wait a bit longer.” Changbin looks up at Felix with pleading eyes. “I need my scenting, Lix-ah, please, please—”
Felix giggles, more giddiness coursing through him. Giddy is just going to be his permanent state of being from now on, he can already tell. But Changbin looks so ridiculous like this that he can’t help it, and his shoulders shake with laughter.
“Please,” Changbin begs again, unable to hold back a grin of his own at Felix’s laughter. “You’re killing me, Lixie, please—”
Felix obligingly leans forward to press his wrists to the sides of Changbin’s neck, rubbing gently. Changbin sighs and lets his forehead drop to Felix’s knees. Once Felix pulls back, Changbin raises his head again and smiles up at him. “Thank you,” he says emphatically. “God, I’ve been craving that for ages. You smell incredible.” He then cocks his head and studies him. “Can I kiss you too?”
Felix’s heart skips a beat, and he gives a quick nod.
Changbin’s grin widens, and then he sits up and leans in, sliding his hand into Felix’s hair to angle his head and slot their lips together.
It’s Felix’s time to sigh, and Changbin smiles into the kiss. It’s warm, and Changbin’s lips are soft against his, and when Changbin deepens the kiss, he tastes like smoky ramen. Felix feels like his insides are melting, all of his thoughts falling out of his head. When Changbin pulls back, Felix moves with him in a daze, trying to kiss him again, and Changbin obligingly gives him another, softer kiss before nuzzling their noses together and sitting back on his heels. Felix stares at him, liquefied.
Next to him, Hyunjin laughs quietly. “Hyung is a good kisser, right?”
Yeah. Felix blinks. Yeah, he is.
Changbin’s eyes glitter with amusement. “I am. I also give lessons, Lixie, I’m a master of my craft. If you liked Hannie’s kiss earlier, you should know I’m the one who taught him everything there is to—” He yelps when a pillow hits the side of his face.
“You did not,” Jisung grumbles, face red. “Shut up.”
“He kinda did,” Chan says, biting back a laugh. “I was there.”
“It was once!” Jisung complains. “When I was fifteen! I only asked you once.”
“And once was enough,” Changbin agrees loftily, nodding at Felix. “Because I really am that good.”
Two more pillows fly across the room, and they all laugh as a flustered Jisung tries to regain his dignity. Changbin’s cackles are accompanied by a cloud of citrusy woodsmoke, and Felix feels something inside him vibrate with pleasure at having Changbin smell like him.
The beta made it sound like he’s the one who needed it, but suddenly, Felix realises he needs it far, far more than Changbin ever could. He wants them all to smell like him. He’s had to hold himself back for months, but now he needs it. The others are still yelling, but Felix’s eyes find Seungmin, sitting on Hyunjin’s other side, and he blurts, “Please let me scent you.”
If Seungmin is surprised by the abrupt request, he doesn’t show it, and merely holds his wrists out with a smile. “I’d like that.”
Felix takes them gratefully, before hesitating. “Can I come closer?”
Seungmin’s cheeks colour ever so slightly, but he nods. Felix stands, and before he can decide how to position himself, a grinning Hyunjin tugs him back down until he lands hard in Seungmin’s lap. “Oof,” Seungmin groans, and Felix scrambles to get his knees out of his stomach. “Sorry- sorry—”
Seungmin snatches his arm to keep him from moving away. “Not your fault,” he huffs, glowering at Hyunjin. “Stay here, you’re fine.”
Carefully, Felix lowers himself back down until he’s straddling Seungmin’s lap, just like he did with Minho earlier. They’re even in the same spot, and Felix sends Seungmin a giddy little smile. “Hi,” he says, and Seungmin laughs.
“Hi,” he replies, voice filled with affection.
“Can I scent you?”
Seungmin bares his neck. “Go ahead.”
Felix repeats what he did with Changbin, slowly rubbing his wrists over Seungmin’s neck glands until the beta smells like him. “Oh,” Hyunjin mumbles, inhaling. “Lixie smells so good on you, Minnie.”
Felix blushes, but a part of him preens. He does. And he expected that, because Seungmin’s scent has always smelled great on him too, but the notes are different when he’s the one scenting Seungmin. With some people, Felix’s scent would clash, but it hasn’t with any of the pack members. With them, their scents simply blend together, naturally mixing just the right tones and undertones to ensure that the scent is pleasant rather than overwhelming. Felix does smell good on Seungmin, the citrus effortlessly brightening the beta’s sage.
When he pulls back his wrists, he watches Seungmin. Seungmin watches back. Felix’s stomach flutters, and he can’t help but lean in, just a little bit. He keeps his eyes on Seungmin’s, who doesn’t protest, just tugs Felix’s ever so slightly closer with the hand he has on his waist, and Felix caves, closing both his eyes and the distance between them.
Seungmin hums, and Felix can feel the vibrations through his own lips. The kiss is very, very soft, and it’s perfect, especially when Seungmin’s hands trace gently down his arms, sending goosebumps all over his skin. When he breaks the kiss, they’re both blushing, and they keep looking at each other until Jisung sighs from where he’s lying against Minho. “So pretty.”
Felix’s cheeks colour further. He hadn’t even noticed the others had stopped fighting. “Jisung.”
“You are,” Jisung insists. “Both of you.”
“You are,” Hyunjin and Changbin say at the same time.
“Please scent me too?” Jisung asks. “I wanna smell like you.”
At that, Felix perks up again. Yes. Yes, he wants that too. Seungmin laughs at the expression on his face and helps him out of his lap so he can crawl over to Jisung, who makes grabby hands at him, not moving away from Minho’s chest. “C’mere.”
Felix’s eyes flicker to Minho, who just beckons him over. At that, Felix scoots closer, but when he again tries to figure out what would be the easiest position, Jisung just yanks him forward, over his own body and into Minho’s lap. Felix yelps, and Minho’s arm comes up just in time to steady him before he can pitch right over the edge of the couch. “Careful,” he scolds Jisung, who merely grins.
“Scent me,” he demands, and Felix lets out a laugh.
He does scent Jisung though, sending a bright, happy, strong burst of syrupy citrus into the alpha’s scent glands. Jisung shivers and hums, his eyes drifting closed. Felix rubs his wrists over Jisung’s skin, adding more pheromones, smiling at Jisung’s reaction.
“You with us, jagi?” Minho checks, brushing a thumb over Jisung’s cheek.
“Mhmm,” Jisung says, tipping his head against Felix’s forearm. “’S r’lly good.”
Felix’s eyes widen. Oh. He pulls back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry,” Jeongin says from behind them. “You’ll probably daze him the first few times you scent him. It happened with me too.”
Minho wraps his left arm a little more securely around Jisung as the alpha cuddles into him, smelling happy and a little hazy. Clearly Jisung really wasn’t kidding when he told Felix he was sensitive to scents. Felix smiles, endeared. “You okay, Sungie?”
Jisung hums, smiling dopily up at him. “Yessss. Th’nk you.”
Felix’s smile widens and he leans in to press a kiss to Jisung’s cheek. When he leans back, he finds he’s still being supported by Minho’s other hand, and he’s still in the alpha’s lap. He pauses, briefly looking up at him. Minho’s face is really close. Minho’s lips are really close, and the alpha still smells like lemonade, and Felix wants- Felix wants-
There’s an amused uptick to Minho’s mouth. “Everything alright, Lix-ah?”
“Yes,” Felix squeaks, feeling like he’s going to burst into flames. “Fine. Very- fine.”
Changbin chuckles from behind them. “Just kiss him, hyung, don’t be mean.”
Minho doesn’t look away from Felix, but pointedly raises his eyebrow again. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes,” Felix blurts, so quickly that several people laugh. “Please.”
Minho’s eyes gleam with amusement, and he leans closer. Just when Felix begins to sway towards him, Minho stops him, resting a finger on Felix’s chin to hold him back. “When you want something,” he murmurs, breath fanning out over Felix’s lips, “you’re going to have to ask. The others might take it easy on you…” His mouth curves up. “…but I will not. Ask, Felix.”
Felix’s exhale stutters out of him, and it’s only then that he can feel his lungs again. “I-I want you to kiss me,” he breathes desperately. “Please?”
And Minho smiles. “There we go,” he says, and leans in.
Felix sighs into the kiss, and if it weren’t for Minho’s arm around him, he really would have tipped off the couch this time. But Minho’s hold is as secure as it always is, and Felix is safe to melt into it as the alpha deepens the kiss. It’s warm and slick and Minho tastes amazing, and Felix feels just as dazed from this kiss as he did with Changbin earlier. He could kiss Minho for hours, he thinks dizzily, but just when he does, Minho pulls back, and Felix makes a small sound of protest.
“No need to rush anything,” Minho chuckles. “We have time.”
That sends warmth through Felix’s veins, because- they do. They do have time. Felix gets to do this again, and again, and there really is no need to rush through anything. A wide smile breaks out on his face, and Minho laughs. “Go on,” he says, squeezing Felix’s waist. “Move on to hyung, before he explodes.”
He helps Felix slide off his lap, and Felix presses one more kiss into Jisung’s hair before he goes. Jisung’s eyes are open again, although he’s still cuddled sleepily into Minho’s side. He smiles at Felix, and Felix smiles back before turning to Chan.
Chan is sitting in the armchair that diagonally faces the U-shaped couch. When he’s not on the couch to cuddle one of them, this is his favourite spot, because from here he can watch all of them. Felix comes to a halt in front of the chair, flashing him a slightly nervous smile. “Hey, Chris.”
Chan grins. “Hi, Felix.” He holds out a hand, and Felix lets himself be pulled onto Chan’s lap. He’s facing away from Chan, who pulls him into his chest before hooking his chin over his shoulder. “How’re you doing?” The words are in English.
“Really good,” Felix answers in the same language.
“Yeah?”
Felix laughs. “Can you not smell it?”
“I can.” Chan turns his nose into Felix’s neck and inhales deeply. “You smell amazing. But I’ve made more than enough assumptions already, so prepare for check-ins.”
Felix happily tips his head back onto Chan’s shoulder. “Okay.”
He might have felt awkward if everyone else were observing them, but they’re not. They glance at Felix often, but otherwise they’re talking and laughing with each other, and Felix relaxes further into Chan.
“I considered giving your speech in English,” Chan murmurs after a while. “Because it hits differently in your mother tongue, at least it always does for me. In the end I decided not to, but I would just like to say now: we want you. You’ve been part of this pack since you got here, part of us, and we’ve all been so excited about this courtship for months. I’m really, really happy you said yes, Lix.”
If Chan wasn’t able to smell his happiness before, Felix knows he’ll certainly smell it now, because Chan’s words send pure joy pumping through his veins. Chan is right; it does hit differently in English. Not better, not more impactful, just—different. I love you, Felix thinks. I love you, I love you… “I’m really happy too,” he whispers, and Chan squeezes him close.
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Can I scent you?” Felix asks him, and Chan presents his wrists. Felix takes them. Takes his time in rubbing his scent into Chan’s skin, into Chan’s system, until the earthy notes in the coffee scent take on a citrusy undertone that perfectly supports everything that is Chan. Chan’s shoulders relax completely. “Oh shit,” he sighs. “That’s really good.”
It is. It is really good, and while Chan does smell like him now, Felix wants more than wrist scenting. His instincts have been clamouring at him for months, and he needs Chan to be his. And so he cranes his head, just enough to make their neck glands rub together, and releases more pheromones.
Chan exhales roughly, and then scents him back. “Ah, Lix.”
Felix melts further into him. He’ll never get enough of this. And then Chan turns his head to brush a kiss to his cheek, and he stills. Chan has done that before. He has, countless times, and yet right now, Felix shivers.
Chan turns his head further, watching him, watching his lips. “Can I?” he asks. “You don’t have to say yes. We don’t—”
“No,” Felix blurts, “I mean yes. Please. Please?”
Chan chuckles even as his eyes darken, and then he doesn’t say anything else and leans in to catch Felix’s lips. The angle is awkward until Chan lifts him up to turn him sideways on his lap, and Felix feels a flash of heat at the effortless way Chan did it. It melts back into comfortable warmth, because Chan keeps his kiss soft, exploring—learning, Felix realises when Chan lets his teeth catch on Felix’s bottom lip a second time, after the first time made him shiver. Chan’s hands are large and warm around his waist, and Felix melts into his hold. He completely forgets to do anything with his own hands, his brain empty except for the sensation of Chan’s lips on his and the taste and feel of Chan’s tongue as he licks into his mouth. He has never felt like this. These aren’t his first kisses, but they might as well be. He is woefully inexperienced compared to them, and he dizzily thinks he might need those kissing lessons after all.
The thought makes him giggle, and Chan breaks the kiss to lean their foreheads together, his breath hot on Felix’s lips. Chan grins in response to Felix’s amusement. “Okay?” he checks.
“So okay,” Felix laughs. “Sorry, I think I’m a really bad kisser. I’ll learn.”
Chan blinks in surprise. “You’re not?”
Felix huffs, shaking his head. “You don’t have to sugarcoat it, I can handle the truth.”
“You’re not,” Seungmin says, surprising Felix, because the words were spoken in English. He looks over. Seungmin is smiling. “You’re not a bad kisser.”
“Bad—” The words seem to sink in for Changbin too, and he whirls around from where he was cuddling Hyunjin. “Bad kisser?” he repeats in English. “No.”
“No,” Jisung agrees from Minho’s chest. He looks a little more composed now. “You’re good, Lixie.”
Felix flushes at all the attention, and is relieved when Minho interrupts to complain about the use of English.
“See?” Chan murmurs into his ear as the others attempt to translate and fall into an argument. “You’re fine, love.”
Felix whips around, eyes widening.
Chan grimaces slightly, biting his lip. “Too much? I can—”
“Again,” Felix says, heart racing. “Say it again. Please?”
“Love,” Chan says, grinning when Felix’s scent spikes. “I’ve been holding that one back for months.”
“You called me honey,” Felix says a little breathlessly. “On Wednesday.”
Chan blinks. “Did I?”
Yes. Yes, he did. Felix has replayed the memory in his head so many times since it happened that it’s burned into his brain forever.
“Well, I meant that one too.” Chan smiles. “And again, you’re not a bad kisser at all. I loved every second of that kiss.”
Felix smiles back, relief blooming open in his chest.
“Will you kiss me too?” Jeongin calls out from the couch, in Korean. When Felix looks over, the omega is grinning. “I think I need a proper demonstration to weigh in on this argument.”
Felix laughs and slips off Chan’s lap to walk over. “Only if you promise not to laugh at me if I end up being bad.” He kneels next to Jeongin on the couch.
Jeongin shifts up onto his own knees and slides a hand into Felix’s hair. “No promises,” he murmurs cheekily, and closes the distance between them.
Jeongin does not kiss him softly. Jeongin goes all in from the start, leaving Felix scrambling to catch up. Jeongin laughs when Felix’s hands land clumsily on his shoulders, then his arms, and he breathes, “Slow me down if it’s too much.”
But Felix shakes his head, and leans back in. If this is a test, he’s determined to give it his all. And somehow, he doesn’t feel clumsy for long, because Jeongin leaves pauses after everything he does in which Felix can copy and reciprocate. He’s hesitant at first, but Jeongin’s responses are encouraging, soft squeezes of his hands and gentle sighs, and Felix slowly grows a little more confident. He feels less overwhelmed than with the others he shared a deep kiss with. Maybe because this is the seventh kiss he’s received today, but maybe also because this is Jeongin, and Jeongin has always understood him well.
It’s a long kiss, longer than he kissed any of the others, and everything around him disappears until there’s only Jeongin, whose hands are stroking his back and his hair, whose scent still contains sweet lemon every time it spikes, whose lips are bruising and demanding one second and infinitely soft the next. They kiss until Felix grows breathless, and yet it’s only when someone whispers “Jesus Christ” that they break apart, gasping for air.
Jeongin’s pupils are dilated and his lips are red and swollen, and he’s laughing as he presses them back against Felix’s for a quick peck.
Felix grins back, his head spinning. “What’s the verdict?” he manages, panting.
“The court finds that there is no factual evidence for the charge,” Jeongin says, just as out of breath. He kisses him again. “Case dismissed.” Another kiss. “God, you taste amazing. I could kiss you for hours.”
Felix giggles and collapses into him, so happy he feels like he could float away. Jeongin’s arms wrap around him and they lie back down on the couch, Jeongin’s heart beating erratically under Felix’s ear.
Changbin lets out a long, slow whistle. “Well then.”
“That was—” Chan starts, wide-eyed, before simply giving up. Jisung is staring at them, and Hyunjin’s mouth hangs open.
Seungmin laughs. “God, you’re all weak.”
Felix laughs through his embarrassment and buries his burning face into Jeongin’s shoulder.
“Oh shut up,” Jeongin says, hugging Felix closer and rolling his eyes. “If this is just because we’re omegas—”
Chan laughs. “It’s not, love. It’s because you’re you, and the two of you look really pretty doing that.”
“So fucking pretty,” Hyunjin breathes. “God, I wanna paint you.” After a second, he sighs. “I also want another kiss.”
“You had your kiss,” Seungmin mutters.
“But I want a re-do,” Hyunjin pouts. “Without the running.”
Felix laughs and turns his head, mumbling, “C’mere then.” He’s too giddy to be self-conscious.
Hyunjin beams and launches himself towards them, sprawling on his stomach to get close to Felix’s face without making him sit up again. And so Felix doesn’t—he just remains lying on Jeongin’s chest and lets Hyunjin kiss him, very, very softly.
It’s nothing like their kiss this afternoon, or even his kiss with Jeongin just now. It’s soft, and sweet, and so filled with love and affection that it almost makes Felix want to cry. He hears his own words back in that kiss, the ones he didn’t say out loud earlier. I love you. He lets Hyunjin paint the words into his lips until he swallows them and they sink down into his heart.
When Hyunjin pulls back, Felix closes his eyes, overwhelmed with happiness. The entire room smells happy, warm and content and affectionate, all of them glad to just be with him. Felix has no idea what he did to deserve this. To deserve all seven of them. And yet somehow he has them anyway. They want him.
His hand falls to his courting necklace, warmth spreading through him. He’s theirs. They’re his. He has no idea how he ever got this lucky, but he swears he’ll do everything in his power to get to keep this.
Notes:
THEY’RE COURTING!!! Are you still alive? I think I screamed about sixty times while writing this lmao- I’m fine I’m fine we’re good.
As usual, this chapter comes with bonus scenes that will be posted later:
1) The pack’s POV of what happened this afternoon, starting with Hyunjin calling Chan in tears (just, you know, in case any of you would like your hearts ripped out)
2) A little aftermath scene between Hyunjin, Chan and Jeongin (to glue your hearts back together)In the next chapter: Felix’s first day of courtship, and their (now official!) courtship dinner.
Also, I made a twitter page for anyone who’s interested. I’ve never been too active on social media but I thought this might be a nice way to share occasional preview snippets!
I hope you enjoyed the chapter and that you’ll have the best weekend! <3
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