Chapter Text
Felix falls in love easy, it’s something he knows about himself, he’s always been that way. After moving to Korea, it was Hyunjin first, who let him down kindly, gently redirecting his feelings toward the label “friends”, then Changbin, who had the social grace never to mention it. It’s something someone else might feel foolish for, falling over themselves for every little crush, but Felix doesn’t really have crushes in the sense that other people mean the word. He has life-altering experiences. And not that he knows any different but it doesn’t seem to him like that’s something to feel stupid over, in fact he’s wondered before if people would be happier if they experienced love the way he does.
It’s not like he doesn’t feel pure attraction, of course. Even though his “thing” for Changbin faded a few years back, he certainly gets plenty of satisfaction out of touching his body, and Changbin seems to enjoy it for what it is - which is to say, raw physical appreciation. His type has always been someone that could toss him around like a beach ball (he remembers the cheerful powerlifter he’d been head over heels for in high school who was broader than she was curvy), and Changbin only fits it more with each passing year.
It’s been a while since Felix felt in love. He loves his friends, loves them, but it’s different. The warm glow of the sun through a pink umbrella versus the intensity of the heat that you feel sitting on the pavement by the pool on a summer’s day, the way it feels hotter with your legs in the cold water.
He likes the glow. Each friend’s warmth feels distinct from the others, but his favorite of them all is Kim Seungmin. He’d felt it at first in the way that Seungmin quietly noticed when he felt discomfort being a foreigner in Korea and repeated things for him in English, or filled in his blanks when he didn’t know how to say what he wanted to say, or told him what to do, took charge and called the waiter over to order for them both, or explained what made Korean food so good to him. It made Felix love Korean food too. Seungmin holds his hand when he touches it, and when he hugs him around the waist, Seungmin always hugs back.
Every time Felix had fallen in love it had engulfed him in an explosion of fireworks and flame until it eventually burned down to warm embers. Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice it at first when the warm glow of Kim Seungmin began to catch and spark subtly under the surface of his skin.
It starts like this: Seungmin comes home from his vocal lesson on a hot day and when he throws his body onto the couch next to Felix, he heaves a throaty sigh and yanks his sweaty shirt up to his chest to cool off. When Felix looks over, he notices that his chest isn’t actually that flat, despite them all teasing him since forever.
Felix grins, “Oho, look at that.”
Seungmin is still panting from the walk, “Look at what?”
“Your muscles,” he raises his eyebrows a couple times.
“Hm?” Seungmin looks down at his body and his hips roll upwards slightly, tensing his abs.
Felix looks too.
“What muscles?”
“Ah, never mind,” Felix rests his cheek on the back of the sofa and smiles at him.
Seungmin stares for a moment.
“What?”
“You’re cute,” Seungmin says matter-of-factly. He taps Felix’s cheek with the back of a finger and then heaves himself up, “I’m gonna take a shower. Have you eaten yet today?”
“No…not yet.”
Seungmin shoots him a disappointed glance.
“I was going to, I just forgot. I was in a meeting.”
“Take my phone and order food for us,” he tosses it onto the couch and walks away before Felix can say anything about it.
It goes like this: Hyunjin, Felix, and Seungmin go for ice cream, even though the autumn air is beginning to feel crisp against their skin when the breeze passes through.
“Hey Yongbok,” Hyunjin expertly kicks a rock down the road as though it’s a soccer ball, “Do you ever think you’ll get into cake decorating?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t made a lot of cakes.”
“You could decorate your brownies, you’re famous for them at this point,” Seungmin’s hands are in his pockets and his body appears to lean back further than the others as they start going downhill.
Felix crosses his arms against the cool air that sinks through his sweater as they walk a little faster with the momentum, “Ha. I think Hyunjin would be better at it than me.”
“It seems fun,” Hyunjin doesn’t agree outright, even though it’s true.
The steepness of the road levels out a bit and Felix sees Seungmin unzipping his jacket out of the corner of his eye.
“Maybe you should do a cake decorating class,” Felix offers.
“Maybe!” Hyunjin starts to get excited, “We could do it together, maybe even for Skz Code! Or I could get some things to try it out at home…oh, but no one at my house would eat cake. Ugh,” he rolls his eyes. “I’m surrounded by gym rats.”
Felix laughs, and then feels a warm weight settle onto his back. When he looks he sees that Seungmin’s draped his oversized jacket onto his shoulders.
“Jeongin’s getting there too,” Seungmin says.
If the jacket is oversized on tall (to Felix) Seungmin, it’s huge on him. A little kaleidoscope of butterflies bursts in his stomach. That was…gentlemanly of him. He looks up at Seungmin.
Seungmin rubs his back with his lips pressed together firmly. He strides ahead, “It’s down here,” he says, leading the way to the ice cream shop. “I bet Felix is gonna get blue flavor no matter what it is.”
Felix laughs, “No! You don’t know!” He pretends to be indignant.
Hyunjin laughs too, “Of course he is, that’s so Yongbok.”
Felix hangs onto the jacket with sweater paws so it doesn’t fall off as they follow after Seungmin. At the ice cream shop, Felix gets cotton candy flavored ice cream and Seungmin and Hyunjin tease him for it.
It goes like this: Felix is in his room reading manhwa. The kind of manhwa that doesn’t come up much for public discussion. Sure on certain late nights or drunken occasions it’s been discussed, but these comics are probably never going to be made into anime that he sits and watches with his friends if you catch his drift.
Anyway. He’s reading manhwa when Kim Seungmin knocks on the door and without waiting for an answer bursts it open, beaming.
“Bro!” Felix jumps and instinctually half closes his laptop.
“Brooo!” Seungmin echoes, clearly in one of his drunk moods where he hasn’t actually had any alcohol but something’s flipped a switch in his body and suddenly he needs to let a little deranged energy out. “Look!” He shows Felix his phone screen and laughs maniacally.
Felix squints to look at the small screen and then breaks out in a scream-laugh, leaning forward to get a really good look at the image. On the screen is Yang Jeongin, photo clearly caught from the crack in the doorway to his bedroom, wearing fox ears and holding a phone as if he was taking pouty-lipped selfies. Seungmin swipes over to show Felix a now shocked looking I.N fox, throwing his head back with laughter. Felix has tears in his eyes. It's even funnier because it’s Jeongin.
“You showed Lix-hyung??” a betrayed voice comes from down the hall.
“I didn’t know you owned your own pair of ears!” Felix barely manages to get out before he makes eye contact with Seungmin again and they both descend into laughter once more.
Seungmin stumbles back out into the hall, “Who was the selfie for? So cute, Jeongin!”
“No one!” Jeongin stutters over a caught sound in his throat, “STAY!”
“Which is it?” Seungmin’s glee can be heard vividly throughout the house. He ducks back into Felix’s room briefly, grins, huge, at him, and then pulls the door closed again.
Felix giggles to himself as he reopens his laptop. When he looks back at the comic, it gives him pause.
The handsome love interest that had initially made him click on this particular BL looks…strikingly like one Kim Seungmin, down to the shoulders, down to the shape of his mouth when he smiles. He stares at the panel for a good full minute and contemplates showing someone. Even with the potential embarrassment over sharing what exactly he’s reading, it’s a funny enough coincidence that it’s worth sending in the groupchat.
He doesn’t send it.
He finishes the manhwa that night.
It goes like this: Chan asks Felix and Seungmin to record a guide for him, and on the way home they stop at a convenience store for drinks.
“You sounded good,” Seungmin says into a fridge full of Gatorades.
Felix gazes wistfully at the full-sugar cokes, “Ah thanks, I’ve been working on my vocal tone.”
“I can tell.”
Seungmin squeezes behind him in the tiny aisle full of crates waiting to be restocked. His hands rest briefly on Felix’s sides and for a moment Felix anticipates a hug so palpably it’s like vertigo when Seungmin moves past him.
He sways barely and blinks twice. He reaches down to grab a diet soda and when he straightens up, Seungmin takes it from him and swaps it out with a regular one.
“Oh, Lee Know said we needed baking soda for the fridge, right? Do you think they’d have that here?”
Felix looks down at the drink in his hand and then back over to where Seungmin headed off.
It’s like this: They’re all having dinner together at a steakhouse and when Felix looks across the table at Seungmin in his regular old T-shirt and his baseball cap there’s a thrumming inside his body that he suddenly realises is his heart.
Seungmin sees him staring and raises his eyebrows with wide eyes as he chews. His mouth looks like a puppy’s. Felix smiles at him before he realises he’s doing it.
He feels breathless.