Chapter Text
It starts on a Monday morning. It dawns grey and dull, a January day that still doesn’t feel real, that still feels all strange to Felix when he wakes up at six o’clock. The light outside is barely there, and the city outside his window feels like it’s still asleep. Felix would very much like to join it. Unfortunately, his alarm is buzzing faintly and it’s the start of a new work week.
He lies back on his bed, staring at the slats of Innie’s bunk above him and rubs his eyes. God, he doesn’t want to go to work today. Sometimes, he wakes up feeling like he’s a space alien, crash landed in Korea and is thoroughly out of place in the country he’s chosen to call home. That’s probably a lack of food, though. He’s trying to keep his weight down for their next comeback and last night’s dinner was not enough for him. His second alarm - the one that says seriously, you’ll be late - goes off and above him, Innie sighs and rolls over. Felix has to get up now or he’ll miss the chance at the shower and that’s… that’s not cool.
The apartment is quiet when he pads out of his bedroom, with his shower things in hand. The floor is cool under his feet, the underfloor heating just kicking in and that’s when Felix knows he’s up too early. As he comes around the corner, he sees that the bathroom light is on. He pushes the door open, wondering if he’s going to have company for his shower.
He is. Han is in there, with a razor and shaving foam in his hands and his skincare laid out on the counter top. He doesn’t say anything but affectionately nuzzles Felix’s shoulder. Felix hooks an arm over Han’s shoulder, kisses his ear as he puts his own stuff on the counter, too.
There’s no such thing as distance between him and Hannie and he sheds his pyjamas as Han goes back to shaving. He feels the gaze on his back but it doesn’t bother him anymore. The water is hot and plentiful and soon, the bathroom smells like his favourite shower gel, a little sweet, a little floral. His hair care is quick - his shampoo is bright purple as it gets washed down the drain while Han cleans his teeth and does his skincare.
They don’t need to talk - it’s too early for long conversations, too ‘middle of the night’ for anything more than silence and sleepy noises. But it feels like home and Han turns on a podcast about nature and everything is as it should be for a Monday morning. Within a few minutes of Felix stepping into the shower, Han is finished with his skincare. He leaves his phone on the counter for Felix to finish listening to and lets himself out of the bathroom. He leaves Felix alone with a wave and an unspoken promise to join him in a moment for breakfast.
Felix doesn’t dress properly after his shower - breakfast first is more important and he just pulls on a dressing gown and a pair of underwear that he thinks may have been Minho’s at some point but now have drifted into the communal box of clothes that exists in the hallway. Nobody claims them but they’re kind of everybody’s and nobody’s at the same time.
In the kitchen, the sounds of early morning beckons him and he heads down the long corridor towards breakfast and food.
Minho is already in there, frying bacon because he’s on a protein kick and has dragged Felix on the train too. He’s got a plate already done for him, points at it with the spatula and tells him to sit down and eat up, okay? Because that’s what hyungs do in Minho’s world. They feed, they encourage, and they do keep everybody moving towards being ready on time. Felix is nothing if not obedient and he takes the plate over to Han who is already at the table, wearing his own dressing gown and slippers.
Felix doesn’t know how the day will end but it starts with breakfast - milk, bacon, and no eggs because Innie drops the last box with the last three in it on the floor and somehow, nobody knows how, stands on it. He is very discombobulated in the morning, his body not quite working together to make him actually move and Felix feels so bad for him when Minho turns around from the stove to find Innie standing in a pool of shells and crushed eggs.
Innie does not get breakfast. Minho provides a wet cloth, the trashcan, and a scolding about paying attention to what he’s doing. It’s not all bark, though, as Minho does help Jeongin to clean potential breakfast off the kitchen rug instead.
Over at the table, Felix is a little concerned about his breakfast. He doesn’t want to hassle Minho when he’s this stressed but also… where is the rest of it? He pokes his bacon - perfectly done, missing eggs - and wonders if it would be rude to interrupt Innie's scolding to add some toast to round out his lack of breakfast. In the end, Han splits his bowl of cereal with Felix as just bacon is not enough to keep him going through his first two dance classes. They share a spoon, passing it back and forth between bites, and Hannie doesn't object when Felix adds a little more sugar because while it's cereal, it's healthy cereal and that's... not the choice he would have made. He slides Han’s phone towards him, gets another shoulder nuzzle as a thank you.
Changbin joins them as Jeongin is cleaning the last of the eggs up. He makes an obscene protein shake for himself and Chan while he wears only sweatpants and slippers because they’ve both been to the gym already. The blender is loud in the small kitchen and the protein shake is green and looks… unappetizing to say the least. Seungmin is ignoring everybody by eating toast and listening to headphones as he washes up the last of yesterday’s dinner plates.
Mornings in their dorm feel like a whirlwind and Felix is just carried along by it.
He and Han are slightly outside the worst of the brewing disasters in the kitchen, and they don’t intend to change that soon. Han leans into Felix and the warmth is appreciated. They don’t speak - they don’t need to - but they end up in sync, matching bite for bite. Han’s fuzzy headband is soft on Felix’s cheek as he rests his head on his shoulder. Han smells like something different this morning. Not his shampoo, which is minty and fresh. Today, he smells like something warm and a hint of something smoky, soft and smouldering under the surface. He smells like warm fires from camping and hot wood ash and a little sweet like roasting marshmallows.
For some reason, it reminds Felix of home and safety and he tucks into Han’s side, enjoying the closeness that he’s getting. The others know he thrives on touch, on skinship, and today is no different. Han kisses his cheek and carries on eating his cereal. Felix could make more of that, could turn that little kiss into something wonderful but he won't. Han and he fake kiss on camera because Felix is a null and nulls don’t hook up with pack members, even with kisses. Off camera, though, Han is fair game to Felix and the reverse is also true. But he does not linger on it this morning. Kissing in the kitchen is not going to get him ready for the day and a hyung might pop a blood vessel if they’re late for the third time this month.
Fifteen minutes after Innie’s egg disaster, Chan crash lands through the kitchen door in his shorts and not a lot else. His hair is wet from the shower, curls are already starting to form, and he stretches in the doorway, looking like he just finished modelling for a magazine. Felix ducks his head away, his cheeks colouring, and Chan doesn’t notice. He does run his hands through both he and Han’s hair, a little tender and sweet, pressing his face to each of them in turn.
Han nuzzles the side of Chan’s neck, breathing deep, and Chan laughs in that nice, rumbly way that makes parts of Felix’s brain just melt into goo. It’s a good morning nuzzle, a friendly hey, i missed you that Han is very good at. Chan responds with his own nuzzle, affectionate and sweet but then he does it to Felix, too, not letting him escape without good morning from his leader, too.
Felix likes that he isn’t singled out for not being in the pack - he gets the same affection as Han and something in him is happy about that. He doesn’t want to look too closely because that… that is asking questions.
Han is procrastinating on the last of his cereal and Minho appears, predictably, telling him that it’s important to finish his food. Han doesn’t want it but Minho is big on clean plates and making sure that nobody skips meals or part of them. In the midst of that not-quite-an-argument-but-Minho-and-Han-are-disagreeing-on-something, the chaos really comes home because Changbin answers a phone call from someone who apparently he does not appreciate calling him at six forty five am. It seems both he and the other person on the line are pissed about something. Han covers his ears and Felix wants to follow suit. Changbin is so loud in the mornings.
Felix makes the decision to evacuate the kitchen when Hyunjin - late, half dressed, extremely over this morning before it began - arrives and starts a war with Han over Changbin’s blender because he thinks that Han had something to do with it? Maybe? That fight isn’t serious but it will probably last for the entirety that they share a kitchen this morning and Felix is over the brewing argument before it begins.
He grabs the empty laundry bags from the top of the washing machine in the closet in the hall to redistribute them back to their owners. They could really use a second machine - one is not enough with eight people in the house - but this is what they’ve got.
Changbin breezes past him, still on the phone, still pissed off, but this time with a protein shake in his hand, and Felix tries to not get in his way.
Mornings in the apartment are generally chaotic and today is no different. They are desperate to move to a bigger apartment because this place is not quite big enough for them or their stuff. There are plans in the works but so far, they’ve failed to materialise. Something something about budgets and difficulty finding an appropriate apartment and lots of debate about how big it actually needs to be since finding one with enough space for eight bedrooms is basically not possible but nobody wants to go back to sharing four or five to a room like they did in trainee dorms.
Chan’s fighting that war but it seems, for the moment at least, to be at a stalemate. For the foreseeable future, they are stuck in their tiny little apartment, sharing everything, living in close quarters, and nothing quite… fitting right anymore. They’ve outgrown the space and it’s clear to see that they’re ready for the next step up. TWICE did it a few years ago, graduating from their first dorm to a condo, and GOT7 had been quite infamous for demanding a move from their tiny first dorm to a larger one a year or two before that. It should be their turn soon.
Felix doesn’t hate their current apartment that much.
He’s happy with the closeness, the bond, the fact that they have to share rooms. He would like more bathrooms though - the fact there are only two full bathrooms in the whole apartment is… difficult in the morning with eight of them to cycle through for all their needs. It would be nice to have a little more living space, some more storage for their clothes and shoes, and it would be so nice to have a proper balcony. Their view here is fine - a little park, a sweet row of stores, and the back of a school - but it's getting boring and he longs to be high above all the noise of street traffic and pedestrians.
Felix's wishes are, at least for now, not going to be fulfilled. Management have made their decrees and he's not big enough or important enough to push back. They’re stuck with their relatively speaking tiny four bedroom apartment, with laundry in the hall closet and a balcony full of artwork and abandoned furniture, with everybody a little too close, their privacy being the first thing to take the hit. At least they're not in a one bedroom apartment, he supposes. Plenty of groups got shoved in apartments and were sharing eight to a room.
That's... not a pleasant thought.
As he walks down the corridor, Felix deposits everybody’s laundry bin back outside their door. Chan’s, his and Innie’s, a shared room between Seungmin, Hyunjin and Changbin, and then Han and Minho in the back room. His chore is laundry, shared with Han, but he decides to not make Han pitch in this time. He’s still arguing with Minho over the cereal and Felix would like to get to work at some point before lunchtime.
In the living room, Seungmin has finished his chore of the dishes and has taken up residence on the sofa. He’s playing a video game and still listening to his headphones. As Felix comes by, he reaches out a hand, pets Felix on the behind, pulling his attention away from the laundry basket in his hands. It’s such a Seungmin thing to do - not look at him, not say a word, but he still says good morning in his own way. Felix ruffles his hair as a thank you but he doesn’t allow himself to be drawn into the video game.
Seungmin offers, willing to let Felix join him on the Switch (who is Felix kidding, he’ll just end up under Seungmin’s arm, watching him play whatever it is on the console) and the offer is tempting. Seungmin smells warm and rich and deep this morning, so lovely that he might start to drown in it. God, his laundry detergent must be working overtime to try to drag Felix in, to make him want to spend time on the couch being comfortable and cosy but he can’t.
He really can’t.
Minho will scold him and tap his cheek and tell him be good for hyung now, and then drag him to the bedroom to get dressed in some of Minho’s own clothes because that’s what he’s resorted to doing for Felix when he’s a little too slow in the mornings.
If you will not dress yourself, hyung will do it for you. And if you do not like what hyung picked, well, that is the price you pay for making hyung do all the work.
Going to the office in borrowed clothes is nothing new for him but going to the office in yellow sweats from their pre-trainee days, an oversized pink sweater that a fan knitted for them when they debuted, and Minho’s favourite bright red sneakers… is a look he’s not excited to repeat. Especially not with the oversized orange fluffy beanie that Minho forced onto him to cover his bedhead.
Instead, Felix decides to be good and not the cause of Chan’s grey hair this morning. He heads back to his and Innie’s shared bedroom to get dressed. Innie is being hassled by Minho shouting from the hallway to hurry up or he will also be dressed by Minho. Chan, still shirtless but now with a protein shake in one hand, is pushing Innie to the bathroom and yelling for Changbin to hurry up. This is the peril of being the youngest - privacy and self control over one's morning are not possible.
Rush rush rush, that’s how mornings go in their world and Felix needs a little space before he dives back into that for the rest of the twelve to fourteen hours he’ll be out the house.
Inside the bedroom he and Innie share, it’s suddenly much more peaceful when he closes the door. Felix is keen to avoid being the next person on the list to be targeted. Everybody is so ridiculously loud. But inside their little room, he gets the peace and quiet he craves. He and Innie finished redecorating a few weeks ago, a final end to a project that’s taken weeks of shopping carefully online, comparing paint swatches, and debate between them over the smallest thing. He kind of gets why his mother likes this - interior decorating is her job and it’s actually really fun. Felix and Innie have stamped their personalities into the room, on the plain black metal bunk bed and terrible fake wood floor.
On the walls, the paint is soft green, with a lemon yellow rug and pink curtains. It’s supposed to be colourful; Felix and Innie both enjoy bright things, joy brought from hues that are not just cream and black (Chan would disagree). Felix has bought some cute lights to hang on the wall; they stack into interesting shapes and he can control the colour on his phone. He likes purple when it’s nighttime - it feels like a spaceship, leaving the solar system. Innie agrees but he likes to wake up to warm yellow light.
On their beds, there’s fresh linen (blue for Innie, orange for Felix) and the wardrobe is covered with pictures of their favourite people, like their families, and dozens more from their recent tours that they printed together at the store (it took over an hour to get them all printed and they bought milkshakes and sat together on one chair to print them all out). When they came home, high from the sugar and tired from all the talking, they’d finished the job. They'd stuck the pictures onto cork boards from a thrift store with fruit and candy shaped pins, arranged them into aesthetically pleasing groups and stuck them up with sticky strips.
It’s mad and eclectic and weird but it feels like their place, with their things on every surface and in every corner, and Felix loves it so much.
It feels like home.
It feels like his home.
On the dresser beside the door, he puts his phone on the pineapple slice wireless charger that he and Innie bought together, hoping to get a little bit more juice on it. He probably should replace his phone since the battery is starting to die but it can wait a little longer.
The room smells like Innie, his bedding releasing something spicy and fresh into the air, energising and fun that makes Felix feel less like crawling into bed and more like getting up and being productive. Innie’s always had that effect on him. His natural scent is a zing of energy, a burst of something exciting and invigorating, citrusy and bright in the air and Felix finds himself grooving to his phone’s wake up playlist as he makes Innie’s bed, adjusts the pillow just so as he stands on the bottom bunk to get access to the top.
Once he’s all hyped up, he’s ready to start the day properly. He picks out what he wants to wear today from the wardrobe. He’s going for a comfy clothes kind of day. Grey sweats, an oversized t-shirt he thinks it’s probably Chan’s that he stole and will not return, a beanie because he’s waiting to have his hair dyed yet again, a black hoodie that might be Changbin’s, might be Hyunjin’s, is probably Chan’s again - and it feels normal. As he folds several changes of dance wear into his bag, he feels excited to get to work and to work his body hard, and he knows he’ll come back tonight so tired he can barely think, can hardly use chopsticks to eat but it’ll be the good kind of tired, the best kind. He needs to feel like he’s given everything possible every day to feel like he’s doing it right and that’s the energy he feels today.
It’s nothing special, he knows that. Today is just a regular day. It feels like any other day since he debuted.
There’s a lot to do today, though, a fully packed out schedule for him already in motion. A lot of places to be, people to see, and idol things to film. There is training to be done; he has two dance classes today in the morning (classical modern and hiphop), and there’s a group rehearsal this afternoon. The new album is brewing and they have some time in the booth with 3racha at some point around lunch time to just lay some tracks and get a vibe going because they’re trying something new. Somewhere between lunch and leaving, he has a meeting with a hair and make up team to test out some new styles and to sign a bunch of albums and other things for a give away.
At some point today, he, Han, and Minho have to film a TikTok challenge so they might do that after lunch in the company cafeteria. He also has a meeting with the company dietician before he comes home - he will not be following the instructions but it’s mandatory - and he’d like to stop by the gym in the apartment block this evening. Changbin has been helping him to build an exercise plan and so far, he’s not sure if it’s working, but it’s nice to spend time with him, going over the exercises and working out together.
And this is a light day for him.
He laughs when he thinks of how he used to be exhausted after seven hours of school.
In the mirror, he brushes his hair, trying to comb down the white blonde strands. The stylists want to make him a fun colour for their next comeback (they’re currently tossing up between blue and pink) but he kind of wishes they’d let him go black for a change.
It would be nice to go back to his roots.
They are letting him grow it out, though, which he does like. It’s currently somewhere in the mullet realm but they’ve promised him extensions and more, which he does think would be interesting. Long hair isn’t something they give many idols - it’s pretty much been only Hyunjin at this point - and he’s eager to try something new. Felix is not usually a person who ‘hates’ much of anything but he really does hate how much his appearance is controlled by the company. It’s one of the main reasons he sometimes dreams of not being an idol anymore.
His sisters laugh but they don’t really get it - they don’t know what it’s like to not just be told to keep their hair ‘neat’ or in a ‘natural colour’. School rules gave some flexibility within their strict guidelines and it was easy to have some control in that - their parents were very relaxed about those kinds of rules and as long as nobody went too far, nobody said shit about their hair.
The stylist noonas will just tell him that he’s going to have it cut short, or it’s going to be blue or it’s going to be permed and that’s it. He gets to shut up and let them do whatever. There have been days when he’s arrived at the company one colour, left another, and nobody asked his permission. One day, he hopes that he’ll be big enough to be able to tell the stylists to take their bright orange hairdye and shove it.
But that’s a long time away and for now, he’s happy enough with long hair. It’s a small win but he’ll take it.
Felix is content with his hair when it curls prettily around his ears and frames his earrings in wintery white. In the mirror, he looks like a comfy, cosy Felix, one that will be right at home in any winter sponsorship video.
He drops a handful of selfies on Bubble, partly because he wants to show the comfy fit vibes (the fans will instantly be shopping the look, trying to figure out who’s shirt he’s stolen because that’s a thing he does now and they find it hilarious, and telling him he looks cute) but also because the managers had another meeting with them the other day, demanding that they start treating Bubble like their main social media platform.
Chan doesn’t like it and Felix agrees. None of them do, because Bubble is stupid and trying to upload on it is slow and the security on it is ridiculous (yes, Felix is the same Felix he was two days ago, and he needs to reset his password every five minutes because apparently, Bubble cannot remember an artist’s details for longer than it takes to order take out) but also because like…Instagram is free. Paywalls in their industry suck ass and Felix sighs as Bubble tells him that his password is incorrect with yet another stupid pop up. .
But five selfies later, he’s done, and he drops the last one in the group chat because fit check is a thing.
Minho answers with one of his own and Felix laughs at the picture of Minho and his ever present jagiya. Minho has gone all white, looking sharp and dangerous with a tight tank top, a baseball cap, and sweats to train in, but Han is Felix’s twin, down to the beanie, oversized hoodie, and the Nike sneakers. Felix is at least forty percent sure that Han has also stolen one of Chan’s shirts. Minho rates Felix’s outfit a solid ‘100’ emoji, and Felix answers with an angel of his own and a pair of twins for Han.
Minho hearts his response, and that makes something in Felix’s chest warm and fuzzy. Han follows up with his own twin emoji for Felix and that just makes his morning. Part of Felix likes the idea of matching, of blending in with the rest of the pack, of knowing that he and they look indistinguishable from each other.
He knows he is not part of the pack - that’s been made abundantly clear by a lot of different people. His parents, management, Woojin, they’ve all told him that because he is null, because he is not the same as everybody else, he's different from the rest of them, lacking the gender dynamics that they have. His heart wants so much to be just a little like them but he can’t. He’s not.
He’s null.
From the day he was born, he was null, the human neutral, zeroed out on every stat like scent and heats versus ruts. He doesn’t need to worry about rankings, he doesn’t need to worry about having alphas and seconds and the difference between a Prime Alpha and a regular old alpha in his day to day life. In Australia, they barely even cover it beyond a few lessons in biology and one single mortifying civic society lecture that he would pay money to forget. There’s a lot of things that society tells him he has on the positive side - he benefits from not needing heat leave or rut time, he doesn’t need the others to sustain him or keep him level but…
Sometimes, he wishes he did.
He wants in so much that his heart hurts but he can’t. He just isn’t the same and pretending otherwise is a recipe for pain. He remembers the warning he’d been given when Chan fought for him, when the others demanded he be let into the group. It was from Ise-noona, someone who has long since left the company, but she managed their debut team for a while.
Don’t get too close to them. You’ll only burn yourself on their fire.
It’s not mean. She wasn’t trying to hurt him - it was her trying so hard as a fellow null to protect him and his heart.
But he doesn’t feel like that.
His heart doesn’t want to be protected. It wants to be loved and adored and cherished like the others are. He feels close to them and the others have always treated him just the same, kissing his forehead, hugging him, letting him do the same to them. He’s never been treated as less than (apart from by a certain someone he will not name). On the other hand, opening that door to question his status and why they treat him that way despite him not wearing a collar, a tag, or even having papers is not something he can do without also opening the door that asks why are you still here when they won’t let you into the pack officially? and he is quite happy with that door firmly closed.
He does not need to open his heart to know that the answer to that question is because Chan can’t let me in and that’s the end of the discussion.
Instead, he tidies up his hair things - neatness in the dorm is important, Minho is always insisting on tidying up after themselves - and making sure Innie’s dirty laundry is in the bin in the corner. Innie is not their tidiest member (not by a long shot) but Felix is just about capable of covering for him and saving him from another scolding from a hyung. He opens the curtains, lets sunlight in properly, and adjusts both his and Innie’s collection of stuffies. (It’s mostly his but that’s by the by).
It takes about ten minutes but the room is looking much better, much neater, and Felix is quietly proud of himself. Minho would be pleased with the cleaning he’s just done - Innie less so because he probably wanted to rewear those sweats tonight but too bad, so sad - and Felix is ready for the day. He picks up his phone, slides it into his duffle with his dance kit.
Time to go.
Hyunjin is brushing his blonde hair in the hallway mirror, a scrunchie between his teeth when Felix appears but it doesn’t matter. Their gazes snap together and Felix feels all warm and cosy inside again. It’s been getting stronger, those feelings and the way his heart skips a beat or three every time he gets a smile out of Hyunjin. He thinks maybe his crush is becoming more than that but he cannot even begin to open that can of worms because Hyunjin is very much taken - by the pack, by Chan, by Minho. And Felix is not fighting Minho for Hyunjin’s hand.
He won’t win that fight, not even if he trained for ten years.
In the here and now, Hyunjin reaches out to him, petting his hair and combing through the downy fluff at the nape of his neck. It’s so very him, so intimate and sweet, that Felix immediately feels his love for Hyunjin grow three sizes again. At this rate, he’ll be ready to propose marriage by eleven o’clock.
“No make up, Lix?”
“Don’t feel like it.” He doesn’t. When it’s just them and a regular day at the office, he’s not required to wear it. Hyunjin gently brushes a finger over his face, over the freckles on his cheeks. “They’re not really showing up.” It’s been too cold, too wintery for them to really come out but Hyunjin loves them just the same.
“Angel dust,” he says, softly, and even though they’re in the middle of the hallway, in the direct line of Minho’s shouting at Innie to now get out of the bathroom, and Changbin’s top of his voice phone call, and Chan and Seungmin's discussion… it feels like it’s just them. Hyunjin smells so nice this morning, like a warm garden on a summer’s day, floral and herbaceous and just… something so… familiar. He smells like long walks and gentle nights and it’s glorious. Felix could drown in it.
He can’t figure the scent out, doesn’t know why it feels like that but he makes a mental note to ask for Hyunjin’s aftershave brand after this. It doesn’t smell like anything he’s ever given him before.
But he enjoys the not quite embrace, the closeness and tenderness in Hyunjin’s eyes. Hyunjin smiles at him so big and sweet and Felix feels himself tumbling over and over down a hill even though he’s not moved. Yeah, his crush is so bad.
Minho moves them out of the hall, blowing past them to bang on the door to the bathroom in a haze of warm musk and oak trees, like a forest that’s old and hiding secrets in the deep fog, as if he’s bathed in rainwater and nature this morning and Felix can’t find it himself to disagree. Interesting. Perhaps Minho has changed his shower gel - for a while he was stealing Felix’s because Han kept hiding his as revenge for finishing the last of Han’s imported Malaysian candy.
He and Hyunjin end up on the couch, waiting for the others to finish their morning chores and activities - Innie is finally dressed and sulking on the couch because Minho booted him from the bathroom before his hair was just so - and Changbin is now wearing more clothes but still has the protein shake in one hand and his phone in the other as he checks his emails. He sits on the other side of Felix, offering a grumbled but affectionate morning, Lixie.
This is normal. This is how mornings go in their little world.
Changbin smells like warm spice, comforting and safe, with an undertone of woody and deep notes from somewhere, heating Felix up from the inside out and it’s so unusual. He’s never smelled this perfume before - everybody go out and get new bottles of it without him? He’ll have to ask later but Changbin is busy with emails and production things so he doesn’t want to interrupt. Changbin is able to multitask though, and he wraps an arm around Felix without even asking to press them both together, nuzzles in his hair so he can whisper in Felix’s ear got plans for you in the booth, Lix-yah, so you have to do well for me, okay? He nods, lets himself collapse into the warm embrace and knows he’ll have to be extra, extra good in the booth to make Changbin proud. He likes to make Changbin proud, wants to get that well done praise he craves.
Felix contents himself with his phone, happily cuddled by two of his favourite people, and he revels in the warmth he gets, the way it fills his heart and soul up in a way he can’t explain but he knows so well.
Twenty minutes later, Chan gets the notification that the company minibus has arrived, ready to take them to their first schedule at the company, and they all grab bags and water bottles to head out. It’s a noisy affair, eight people all leaving at the same time but Han takes his hand, pulls him to join him and Minho at the back, and let the others run ahead with their chaos. Minho takes Felix’s water bottle that’s dangling by his fingertips, says, let hyung help you in that way that he does, and Han immediately hands over his own water bottle as well.
Minho looks miffed and then he laughs and Han squishes Felix because he’s happy even if he’s not okay with what he calls a ‘middle of the night’ call. Sometimes, the management forget that 3racha tends to live nocturnally and it’s approximately 3am Han’s time. He’ll cope. Just. Minho has bought a pillow and blankets and Felix has no doubt that Han will end up having a nap on Chan’s sofa later this afternoon.
Behind his scarf, Felix smiles so big and he’s so very happy.
In the basement parking lot, the minivan is waiting with Soobin and Hyein, two of their favourite managers, the ones who get assigned to them most of all. They both greet everybody - fist bumps, high fives, a hug for Chan - but he and Han get cheek pats from Hyein and twinkly smiles and scritches under their chins from Soobin. They both squirm in the same way because it’s so very warm and fuzzy. Han bats the hand away, says, hey hey hey as if he’s offended but he absolutely isn’t.
SKZ has known these managers for a long time and the familiarity makes them all very touchy feely with each other.
He gets into the company van, buckles himself in beside Hyunjin and Chan, feels something inside of him happy when Hyunjin scoops up his hand to immediately compare couple rings as is their tradition (they’re always the same but it makes them feel so good to know that they’re matching). Chan rests just one hand on Felix’s knee, asks him if he’s happy to be back to work after the weekend? And laughs when Felix pulls a face. It’s work. Nobody is happy to be at work this early.
They roll out of the parking garage, head towards the office. Soobin has his ever present clipboard, his dark hair immovable and his glasses glinting in the overhead light as he reads off the list of today’s schedules for them. Since they have some company schedules as well as their own personal ones, they’re hooked up with management for the day to make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be, no matter what. Time is a tricky concept in the halls of the JYPE office and Felix has had to be retrieved from some hall or studio by a manager to make him attend lessons or meetings or important photoshoots (or just to go home), and he's become used to having a minder. Seungmin tells him that the managers are really babysitters for Felix and that's not cool. Seungmin always makes it sound so bad when he teases him.
Felix prefers free range days, where he just has a time and a place to be and how he gets there is entirely his own choice but he accepts the compromise. Having a manager means at least he has a built in time keeper for the day. He settles in to hear the news, letting Soobin tell them how the day is going to unfold.
Hyunjin is first in the stylist’s chair, followed by Han. Chan and Changbin will not be going today and been rescheduled for tomorrow since the stylists have a thing this afternoon - some meeting that doesn’t involve Felix so he doesn’t need to know - and 3racha’s time in the booth has been extended by an hour so they can really get some things going for JYP and the production team.
However, it’s not all good news. Soobin tells Felix that his dietician appointment has been moved to be first thing when they arrive at the office - which sucks and he tries to not roll his eyes in front of management because that’s being rude - and he just nods. He doesn’t get why the company pays a truly obscene amount of money for a woman to sit in her office, surrounded by poster sized pictures of delicious food, only to tell him to eat nothing but broccoli and rice for a week straight to cut weight so he’ll look good for photos. On the other hand, at least she’ll be out of his hair by lunch and he’ll be free to take a slice of cake from the cafeteria without being made to ‘atone’ for it in her office later.
Chan rolls his eyes when Felix looks at him as well, hidden behind his baseball cap. Chan has already had words for the way she treats Minho and Han but Felix has to fight his own battles. He’s not part of Chan’s pack and he can’t lean him for alpha support.
But that’s not something that will change and at least he’s prepared.
Hyunjin strokes the back of his neck absently, his fingers making neat little circles on the nape of Felix’s neck. It’s a tick most of the alphas in the pack use with him even if it does nothing for him on paper. It’s supposed to soothe omegas and even junior alphas, a gesture from infanthood that never quite goes away. Chan explained it once as an evolutionary gesture to calm and soothe when they’re tense by drawing on scent glands and touch points. Chan also pointed out that Felix shouldn’t respond to it. Felix doesn’t have any of those because he’s a beta but everybody in the pack seemed to skip that particular lesson. Even Seungmin and Innie, both younger than him, use it on Felix as almost a self soothing thing. When they are stressed, they rub his neck, when he is stressed, they rub his neck, and when everybody just wants some love, it’s still an option.
Felix has no issue with it. It feels so nice.
But the van moves on and Soobin moves down his clipboard list as Hyein navigates the morning traffic of Seoul. It’s a regular, normal day in Felix’s world, pre-tour, pre-album, that strange in-between time in the cycles of music making and shows. Felix tucks his head onto Chan’s shoulder and feels Hyunjin stroke his thigh in silent commiseration for the day ahead. He can get another forty five minutes of sleep in and Chan whispers into his hair that he’ll wake him up at the office.
Felix slips under the waves of sleep that pull him down deep, breathing in the scent of Chan’s aftershave that’s uniquely him - rich, deep, and pervasive like leather and wood and smoky warm. It smells like home, like safety and comfort in a deep and primal way, and he knows that Chan has him, has him safe and secure and won’t let him go. It’s a very strong reaction to some aftershave but after reacting the same way to everybody else, it’s probably just him being stupid. Felix doesn’t know why he can scent everybody this morning - perhaps everybody’s just gone slightly overboard with the aftershave. He shrugs, inhales a little deeper. He’ll enjoy it while he can. He drifts under as the van sways, the sound of morning traffic familiar to him after so long. Chan’s hand on his knee, Hyunjin moving from rubbing his neck to his wrist, a repetitive rhythm that just pulls Felix along like a little toy on a string into the depths of sleep.
The last thing he remembers is Chan telling him to rest up, baby, hyung will be here when you wake up.
Felix cannot know the future but if he could, just once, have seen beyond the present, he might have not slept. His future self in ten, twenty, thirty years time might have wanted to try to roll the dice again, see what came up if he had run the day differently.
He might have stayed awake.
He might have talked to Chan, to Hyunjin, to anybody to see if they knew what he would come to understand about himself, his body, his very soul itself.
He might have tried to prepare for the incoming storm.
But he cannot and he does not.
Felix has no idea of the events that this morning will set into motion, biology and science crash landing into his life with ritual and religion following close behind. When he left the apartment that morning, crossed the threshold from home to the big wide world, the gods carved a line into him with a scalpel so deftly wielded that he can split the before and after of his life into minutes, not hours or days. Felix doesn’t know it yet but the day will end in tears and misery. It will be unofficially the ‘last morning’ before everything changes, the way that everything will be different and he will never be the same Felix that woke up in the grey early light, before the dawn, before the beginning of the day, before the world itself awoke for a new start.
How could he know? It feels normal. It feels like any other day and Felix thinks it will be. But there are schemes afoot that he cannot even begin to guess at, plans made by gods and nature that will not be denied nor delayed any longer.
Life is strange. Fate has plans.
And the truth cannot be denied forever.