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“Channie-hyung is fucking around with Heeseungie from Enhypen.”
Hyunjin pauses his set to give Jisung a grossed-out look. “Ew.”
“How does Iyennie feel about that?” Felix asks.
He’s already done with his workout and draped over one of the benches, tummy down, hands dangling and trailing over the grey carpet.
“I don’t thing Iyen-ah knows.” He gives them a look. “And I don’t think we should tell Iyen-ah.”
Felix hums to himself. “Mm, but isn’t honestly always the best policy?”
Hyunjin snorts. “Fuck no.”
Jisung looks between them, stepping in before they can start a fight. Felix has that look on his face. He might have a good temper, but he still has spots that can be gotten if you bang on them the wrong way. Jisung has never pretended to understand them, the way that Hyunjin has of blundering into every single one and being forgiven every time. Frankly, it seems like a kind of foreplay for them, but Jisung doesn’t want to be a witness.
He tosses his towel at Felix and says, “Spot me? I want to try that chest press.”
Felix perks up.
* * *
“You jealous?” Hyunjin asks much later.
They’re in Hyunjin’s bed like two sardines, down to their underwear with skin pressing against skin. One of Felix’s skinny legs glides against Hyunjin’s as he rubs him affectionately.
“Jealous of what?”
“Chan-hyung. Chan-hyung fucking someone else.”
This makes Felix roll over, and Hyunjin briefly mourns the cold space next to him on the bed. Chin propped up on his elbow, Felix looks at him in the near dark. “No. Should I be?”
Hyunjin shrugs. “I like you better when you’re not jealous.” A thoughtful pause. “Unless you’re jealous of me.”
Felix laughs. It’s smothered into his hair against Hyunjin’s shoulder. Hyunjin can feel the soft puffs of his breath.
“Hyunjinnie-baby is so silly,” Felix teases.
“Not silly,” Hyunjin says. “Not a baby,” he pouts.
Felix opens his arms and rolls on top of Hyunjin, crushing him under his bony weight.
“Oof.”
“My baby,” Felix says, sleepy cat eyes glittering, face to face so that Hyunjin can trace all of his freckles with his eyes, even in the close dark.
His kiss tastes like warm peppermint. Hyunjin makes a sound and wraps his arms around Felix’s bare, warm back.
* * *
Felix does think about it. Later.
Is he jealous?
He knows he doesn’t exactly… get that kind of thing the way most other people get it. Other people mind if the person they like kisses and touches and fucks other people. It makes them feel sad, or hurt, or insecure, but Felix has never really gotten that?
Sure, he’ll sometimes be sad if Hyunjin is spending the night with Changbin, which means that Felix can’t come over. Or if Chan is working all night when Felix wishes he could hang out with him. But that’s more like… it’s just a bummer to not be able to see the person that you want to see, you know? Plus if Hyunjin or Chan is busy, Felix can always text the other one. And if they’re both busy, there are his dorm-mates to hang out with, or Changbin-hyung, or his friends from other groups, or their managers…
Felix is maybe not very good at being alone, but it doesn’t seem like that really matters? There are lots of people around. Lots of people to love, lots of people to spend time with, endless friends to make.
Chan would probably think the way Felix sees the world is weird.
Felix stretches out on his bed, reaching his arms to feel his fingers wiggle off the boundaries of the mattress.
His back hurts today.
The rain outside the window feels gloomy. Even he isn’t happy every day.
He stretches his arms up over his head and then lets them thump back against the mattress listlessly, then turns his head to stare out the window.
Even though it’s 11 a.m., it’s impossible to tell from the sky. The whole thing has taken on an overcast grey, fogging the windowpane from the cold. Maybe it’s because it’s raining. Maybe that’s why Felix feels like his bones hurt.
He lies in bed instead of getting up for a while longer, listening for the sound of movement down the hall. He hears the creak of pipes but nothing else. He stays in bed until the feeling of his blankets bunched up around his legs starts to make him feel restless.
When he finally gets out into the hallway, there’s no one home.
He’s at the company sipping honey-sweetened green tea by the time he actually manages to talk to anyone. Lee Know is around and comes to join him in the practice room.
“Hey, hyung. What’re you doing here?”
“Same as you,” Lee Know says.
Minho is already drenched with sweat. It’s harder to see against the black of his t-shirt that clings in the right places and shows off his boxer-trained arms, but his hair is damp and speckled with sweat, and his eyes are just a little bleary and salt-stained. He must’ve been practicing in another room.
He stays to watch Yongbokkie for a bit, and Felix just shrugs and goes to restart the track again. The air conditioning in the room is cold when he stops dancing.
The sound of the backing track is muffled and a little distorted as it comes through his laptop speakers. Felix goes right into the dance, his muscles still warm from every other run-through he’s done. He doesn’t like the way his face looks in the mirror without makeup. He looks sallow and wan, washed out. He refuses to meet his own reflection’s eyes in the mirror.
It takes his brain a second to catch up to his body when the music clicks abruptly off. Minho’s finger is on the key.
“Your back is bothering you,” Minho says, his round eyes narrowing slightly.
A handful of protests die on his tongue at the look on Minho’s face.
“Hyung, it’s not that bad.”
Minho crosses the floor and pulls up the back of Yongbokkie’s shirt without warning. Felix makes a soft squeak, and then goes as limp as a kitten in a cat’s jaws, relaxing with a soft exhale as Minho examines the crenelated links of his spine.
There’s nothing to read here. What’s wrong with Yongbokkie isn’t visible from the outside, where his back is smooth and warm, flecked by chocolate milk-colored freckles here and there. His skin is still a naturally warm color, even when it hasn’t seen the sun in years.
Minho puts his hand on Yongbok’s back, starting from the top of his spine and slowly dragging his hand down, running his thumb along the bumps. Felix’s eyes flutter before falling shut, his mouth making a soft sound that turns into a hiss as Minho gets to his lower back and pushes a little.
“That shouldn’t hurt, Yongbokkie,” Minho murmurs.
His voice is cold, but it isn’t unkind. It’s cold like frozen wildflowers in winter, like the icecap on top of something sweet that’s been left to chill in the freezer for just a little too long.
Minho presses a little lower, experimentally pushing his thumb into the lean, exposed muscle of Yongbok’s internal obliques. This spot isn’t as painful, but it’s wired to a spot that makes Yongbok’s back arch involuntarily, a spasm like a shiver passing through him and he makes a muffled sound.
Felix pants a little, white teeth in red gums, embarrassed because his body is reacting this way.
Minho either doesn’t notice, or—more likely—has chosen to pretend not to.
“The wall or the couch?” Minho asks him after testing one more spot on Felix’s back. This one radiated nothing but the clean ache of tired muscles, no pain, no weird marionette-like effects like a string pulled.
Felix has to sort his way through the light daze in order to understand and then answer the question—
“Couch,” he says.
He is perfectly capable of walking there on his own, but Minho still has him in his jaws, that kitten dragged along by its mother, so he strides over to the couch and pulls Felix by his hand.
Felix lies down on the black leather couch first, settling in and pillowing his head on his arms with a soft sigh. He has his eyes closed as he feels Minho get onto the couch behind him, the soft depression of the cushions.
Minho has to nudge Yongbok’s legs apart to find room to kneel, and the furthest one sticks out, dangling from the couch lazily. Yongbok is always so trusting. It is actually a terrifying amount of trust, like having something delicate and fragile in his jaws, sweet like sugar, and Minho has always been someone with an instinct to bite down.
“Tell me if something hurts,” Minho says shortly, and Felix murmurs something unintelligible beneath him.
Felix better tell him if something hurts.
But what Minho wants and what he can get are usually two different things. He can’t reach inside Yongbok’s brain and make him do what he wants, the things that are good for him, can’t lean in and prune away all the parts that get it wrong—that think Yongbok isn’t lovable and beautiful and also very good at his job; as good as any of them. So the most he can do is this: lean onto his hands that are starting to knead rhythmic patterns into Felix’s back, and hope that Felix actually speaks up if Minho hurts him.
It does hurt. Oh, it hurts pretty much immediately, but it hurts in a way that makes Felix want to hiss, that makes him want to sink further into the couch like a completely boneless thing. He stifles the hiss, in case it makes Minho stop. He breathes very slowly, in and out through his nose, and he enjoys the deep, thorough massage for all it’s worth.
Minho starts in the area around Yongbok’s spine, pressing his thumbs in to work out the knots of tension that he can feel. He presses, presses, gliding his fingers down, moving back up to the top, and then down again.
He can feel it, is the thing, every place that Felix is sore. Every place where he’s holding tension, where his muscles are stiff and knotted. He works too hard, he doesn’t eat enough.
He presses somewhere else, and he can feel Yongbok’s body below him, contracting around a spasm that’s quickly and ruthlessly suppressed.
“Why are you hiding from me, hm, Yongbokkie?” The pitch and cadence of Minho’s voice makes Felix shiver. It’s a shudder that wracks him from his head down to his toes, real prey animal-like. It’s the way Minho talks to his cats. It’s the way bloodthirsty little things talk to things they want to swallow whole. “If you want hyung to hurt you, you can just say so. You know I don’t mind. The only thing I don’t like is when you damage yourself.”
Ahh, but Felix knows Minho, doesn’t he?
Why would Minho stop, even if he knew? After all, his hyung is so good to him, from the time he used to drill Felix on hangul to now.
And true to Minho’s words, he keeps the pressure on Felix’s back deep and heavy. When he presses this one spot—safely away from Felix’s spine, thank you very much—with his body weight leaning on his elbow, the sharp and sleek point really digging in, Felix’s mouth drops open in a silent cry.
His bleached, delicate eyebrows knit together, his whole face knitting in pain.
God, Minho is so good to him.
Minho hums softly, drinking in the expression on Felix’s face, using his strong, delicate hands to put Felix back together again.
By the time he’s finished, the dull droning of the air conditioner in the room has faded into the background, nothing more than a quiet, meaningless buzz. Felix’s brain is finally quiet. The ache in his back has quit, between the NSAIDs and Minho’s tender care.
Felix is almost but not quite asleep. He doesn’t want to move, in case moving breaks this feeling, and then he’d have to start all over again.
“D’ya wanna do me, Lee Know-hyung?” Yongbok asks him, thoroughly boneless and half-asleep. He can barely put forth the effort to crack open a single eye, but he does it, for his good hyung. Because Lee Know is so good.
Felix would be mostly asleep for it, but that sounds kind of nice, too. Minho could just pull down his sweats, spread his cheeks apart, and fuck him nice and slow while Felix takes a nap.
He yawns with a curl of pink tongue showing, small and cute and just like one of Minho’s cats, and god, he really is just too—
“You’re so vulgar,” Minho chides without an ounce of heat in it.
“Mm, but you kinda like that,” Yongbok says.
Cheeky. He’s not wrong.
“If I fuck you, it’s going to make Bang Chan cry, and I don’t want to deal with the headache. Plus, it would make Jisung sad.”
Felix hums and doesn’t try to argue.
It would definitely make Jisung sad. It might make him kind of horny, too. But the thing about Chan—that’s also very real, and Minho doesn’t want to deal with any of that.
When Minho gets up from the couch, Felix rolls over off his stomach, putting his back to the empty studio in order to curl up toward the seat back. He’s a little hard in his sweats. Minho says absolutely nothing about it.
“I’ll make sure the room stays reserved for another couple of hours if you want to get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Felix sighs. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
He pushes his hand through Yongbok’s straw-colored hair, smoothing it back away from the warm, clean heat of his smooth forehead. Felix pushes lightly into the touch.
He hears the light sounds of Felix’s snores start up before he’s even left the room. His hands pause over the light switches, hovering on the edge of flipping them off so Felix can have somewhere dark to sleep.
He reconsiders and leaves them on. Felix likes the light, after all.