Chapter Text
Oh I thought about the army
When the towers tumbled down
I tried to be a husband
And I died in China Town
They say there's calm for everyone
I'm pretty sure there is
I'll find it while I'm doin'
All the things that God forbids
- "God forbids" Shayfer James
Lee Felix wasn’t one for shame.
It wasn’t written in his contract, but the moment he signed up to be a Stray Kids member it was shown to him in invisible ink: you can run, but you can’t hide. When he put all of himself in practice before debuting, he wasn’t precisely thinking about how in hell was he going to deal with his embarrassing emotions standing on the big stage, and once the pen, cold and smooth to the touch was in his hands, the realization knocked him out. He felt a big hand, rowdy knuckles, a chuckle piercing through him the second he was handed it, some kind of mock to the very young and very pretty figure Felix was at the time. He could cover up all of the disgusting intentions he guarded, he could wash his hands furiously before being shown to the public, he could try and ignore all the people that wanted him dead behind black screens, he could pretend he was a normal, queer man arriving from work when the schedule was over, but the truth penetrated him with too much force; the dirt will never leave him, no matter how quickly did the water wash away his sins.
And so, at the ripe age of twenty years old, he came to terms with a resolution. Wear your heart on your sleeve: no one believes the truth when is at arm’s length.
He didn’t try to hide his wandering eyes on Changbin’s muscles or extract himself from the situation when Jisung got too close. He let his hands run through Chan’s back and intertwine his legs with Seungmin while sleeping. Shame didn’t look good on him. He could allow it to ruin his insides like slow poison, feeling it necropsying his organs bit by bit and causing his cells to perish in silent agony, but he would never permit it to stop him. It was to be mentioned that, well, attraction? Romance? That was hard to find easily and painless in the k-pop industry, less for someone like him. He made it work, though: kissing at parties and messing around from time to time in a way that tipped over the line of danger, confidentiality contracts making it feel like a medical procedure instead of a natural, human activity. No matter how much he had wanted something more, and how he had tried (and oh, did he try) he found out love was not made for fame.
He gave a shot to a long-distance relationship when the dating ban was lifted with the boy next door in Australia; Daniel, he was called. He could recall the first kiss they shared while on vacation in his homeland. ‘Can I?’ and a breathless ‘Yeah’ as a response, their teeth knocking on accident and a low laugh that had him shivering. Soft lips opening, dripping honey on his and melting him slowly, turning his heart into butter ready to be spread. Plump candy being bitten with care, delicate hunger sipping inside his blood like alcohol to his head. It was done with parsimony, warming up his limbs like a fire deep in his lap, deep in his soul.
Maybe religion was right. Maybe humans did have a soul. It felt like they had all the time in the world to figure out what the poets had to say about love.
The next day, laying in his bed with the sun inking through the windows painting them a soft tone of copper and reflecting their own light in the white sheets, Felix focused on his own breathing. In that moment, he wasn’t an idol, nor a successful singer that rocked the world. His boyfriend wasn’t the luckiest boy in the country, like his fans would have said. In that moment, they were nothing but two flawed animals lapping at each other’s wounds.
They were making out softly, his tongue a wave through his lips and his hands gripping hard down on his waist, just the way he knew Felix liked it. He was groaning and grinding against the other boy’s body, getting his fingers to trace the veins that pumped life into him, and it should have felt dirty and wrong, an experience made to be hidden in a dark, empty room, but it didn’t. He couldn’t have been surer that God had given him the ability to sing just to express that unblemished lust his stomach was digesting. Their currents intertwining in a tremulous summer storm of their own, hot and cold rubbing against each other and causing them to part momentarily just to be pulled together like magnetized puzzle pieces. Serendipity running in the space between them both; they had found something anyone would want to keep close to their lungs.
‘Are you okay?’ he had asked Daniel, and the response had been a whiny groan ‘Fuck, Felix. Fuck off’ which had caused Felix to crack, the tension releasing in a spark of electricity. And nothing mattered. Nothing mattered when he failed, because the wrinkles around his eyes from laughing too hard were pretty enough to make Felix believe. In God? In love? In pain? Believing should be a feeling in itself.
For the first time, it wasn’t a surgery to be held. It felt holy. Angelic. Good. No one was ripping him open, no soul found taking and taking from him while he slept; it was right.
As much as they were learning about adoration and lust, about destiny and meeting one’s fate, there was something that it could never be changed: love will end in heartbreak or in death. And no matter the many promises they could have made or the number of psychology books they had throated, nothing would change how dreams keep us awake at night. Felix wasn’t about to quit his job, and Daniel, his now ex-boyfriend, didn’t consider giving up on himself and not finding happiness. Whatever they had realized about themselves when falling in love would find a place to sleep in the insides of their hearts.
He attempted a second time, anyways, because he had to. This one was an idol from another company. She was sickly sweet, always looking at him like she was ready for him to break down. When she asked if he was doing alright (every ten minutes, every second of everyday, all the time, all the time) and the answer was ‘yes’ she tried to push for it to be a ‘tired, not good, sad’. It almost felt like she wanted him to fall apart just to be able to tell him how good she had been to him, to compose him and gain something in return. ‘I love our love’, she whispered to him one afternoon before pulling him in with too much tongue. He hadn’t answered, pleading for Chan to call him and pretend he was mad at him so he could have an excuse to leave soon.
Felix had wanted to throw up in her mouth, shaking in the bathroom floor when he remembered how her saliva was sitting on top of his stomach waiting to be processed. Tears falling from his face, ‘What is wrong with me? Me, who can’t desire her like she deserves. Me, who wants to want so bad. Me, the pathetic kid that can’t stop crying after kissing the girl she’s supposed to like. Should I die now that no one is watching?’
He didn’t die. He drank, and drank, and drank. And he got sober, and he fucked her when she begged to be wanted. She sobbed on top of him ‘Don’t you love me? Can’t you demonstrate it? You owe me’.
Felix thought she must have been inside out, like a doll to be dried in suffocating heat. His tongue working to make her cum (please, tell me you came already, please, let me go home) and his fingers prepping what felt like uncooked meat to the touch. It came to his mind the method his grandmother had taught him for cutting steaks neatly, how the texture was too slippery and wet and dead. Her throat working up and down his dick, the tight lock of it choking him when she took it way too far. The same mouth that had been slurred with toxics and God knows what else, that had had half digested, munched food, was being wrapped around his cock, and he had never felt such a visceral hate. He stopped her ‘Let me make you feel good’, because if he had to keep watching her cough on him, spreading his own filth on top of him, he wouldn't have been able to keep going.
He wrapped his tiny fingers around her leg (too thin, dangerously so, a porcelain Barbie wanting to be broken), spreading her open in the soiled sheets. His dick stood way too proud between his legs, betraying his own disgust and entering putrid folds, being wrapped in expired flesh. They welcomed him with a sick, twisted joke ‘You are warm in here. Give me all of you’ and Felix had never asked anything from her, and yet she kept taking everything from him. Her screams made him flinch, a wounded animal imploring to be taken care of, a murder he was actively participating in. Stabbing through her repeatedly and caging her with his hands, thinking of dying pigs and a coyote’s mouth dripping with innocent blood.
(Cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, please, please, please, please, please, let me go home, I miss my mum, I miss my father, I miss my friends, I miss my ex-boyfriend, please, cum, I miss my bed.)
It was a blur. Felix assumed he came over her boobs, guilt and resentment dripping over her cunt, he thinks he probably went home after kissing her sweetly. He didn’t tell anyone about how sick he felt, putting on his very best smile whenever his friends told him how pretty she was and how lucky he must be. He recalls one specific time having a drink with Eric, with whom he had bonded over their mother language, where he sighed and looked wistfully at him.
“I’m so jealous of you, man. It’s so hard to maintain relationships in this sick-ass industry. She’s real good to you” he said, taking a sip of his beer and wiggling his eyebrows. “With how she dances too, I bet you two have lots of fun” to what Felix forced out a chuckle, because that is what guys their age did: talk about girls regarding how fuckable they were. Guys their age didn’t throw up after fucking them. “I dunno’, you two look like a match made in Heaven, two beautiful people sucking face. ‘M happy for you, really. And glad you got over Daniel, the guy was a fuckin’ asshole to you.” He looked so sure of himself.
Felix stood silent for a little while. Daniel hadn’t been an asshole; well, maybe, kind of, but Felix got it. He had been trying to go after what was good for him, and Felix wasn’t at that point. His behavior had gotten clingy and desperate, and Daniel was burnt-out from the hectic life Felix led, trying to deal with his own issues while the love and support that belonged to him lived in a different time. It could have been handled better; with that he could agree. He still didn’t have any resentment towards kind, gentle, avoidant Daniel, who had taught him all he knew about romance and heartbreak. He missed him sometimes, especially wrapped around his girlfriend’s arms, which were cold and sickly sweet to the touch, a stark contrast to the musky and hot scent Daniel sported. He hated wanting him back when he was supposed to be in a “much better place” and having healed and gotten over “that fucking asshole”. Felix was sick, sick and twisted and wrong. He didn’t even think it was about Daniel at this point, to be honest. It was more about the honesty, and how secure he had been, and the fuck-ups that felt right, and the endless kisses, and the sunshine dripping down his freckled skin. With her, he couldn’t help but think it was feigned, all for show, all for Eric to gush over how perfect they were for each other and not for Felix to bask in. He had been sure at the start of their relationship, he had been so, so sure he wanted her, and now? It felt fake. He was exhausted from acting.
But, hey, maybe that was how it was supposed to be, right? Maybe it will get better with time. Feelings changed depending on the person and, now, there was a possibility Felix was asking for too much and he just had to calm down and wait. Right. This relationship was dreamy. It was fine. Perhaps it was the alcohol that made Felix speak again instead of letting Eric’s words convince him.
“Daniel was a good boyfriend” he muttered, almost sulking.
“Dude, he left you over nothing. You were having needs and he just bitched about it, what was he expecting?” Eric looked mad at him. He didn’t have any reason to be. He should keep his mouth closed.
“He was good” his tone was firm. “He was having a rough time. I get it.” Felix shook his head, diverting his gaze.
“That is no motive to make you feel like shit, though. You know that one reaction image of like, a wolf thinkin’ that says, ‘I don’t care about your mental illness, you will treat me with respect’?” Felix just stared at him, his lips in a tight line, trying not to laugh at his tipsy friend. The anger subsided; Eric meant well. “Alright, whatever, same vibes! Don’t laugh at me, man, ‘m trying to support your ass here!” to which he exploded in a giggle.
“A thinking wolf, you say. Like, could you describe said animal in explicit detail? Is he perhaps deep in self-reflection?”
“Oh, fuck off!” he said, hitting him. Once the laughter died off, Felix spoke again in a daze.
“I dunno’. Sometimes I wish she were more like him.” Felix slapped a hand against his mouth, the words having slipped right through him.
Eric turned his face with wide, disgusted eyes. “What”, he dead panned. “Bro, that’s so fucked up! What do you even mean by that! What! The! Fuck! Are you kidding?”
Felix recoiled in shame. He was being judged for a good reason. He knew that. “No, like, like, let me explain. Let me explain. Like, it…” he tried to think how to turn this around, because he surely couldn’t have meant that, it was a mistake. A lightbulb turned in his head. “Like, it feels tranquil. With Daniel it felt all really… frenetic. It’s hard to adjust.” That was a lie. He was glad Daniel wasn’t there to listen.
Eric sighed in relief. “Damn, you have to learn to think before you speak, you nearly killed me” and, for dramatic effect, he clutched his shirt. Felix slapped him lightly. “I know. It feels boring, doesn’t it? That’s how you know it’s a good relationship! Trust me. She likes you a lot.”
Maybe too much, Felix thought.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’m just getting in my head.”
“Yeah. Don’t say that ever again though. If you ever feel like that do consider that you may be the problem, dude.”
Felix was, indeed, the problem. Though he figured out quite quickly that there were many others unrelated to him. But he thought of Eric, and of Daniel, and breathed, and kept on fucking her after she was done crying because she begged and begged, and making time and gifts to convince himself that he loved her as much as she loved him.
When one of his members had gotten involved in a scandal big enough to have them questioning if they would ever get up from the blow, their company had gone to extreme measures, limiting their interactions and access to contact. They hadn’t said anything explicitly about Felix and her girlfriend, but she didn’t need to know that. He had a wonderful, terrible excuse to break up without bringing up the passing away of a farm animal.
He hadn’t had sex since then. His desire lived inside a slaughtered bunny, bones caging the death of his innocence for good. It was a beating heart jailed in a cold enclosure; he was fine with the humiliation rotting him forever if it didn’t cut him in half. He was going to keep looking for intimacy, of any kind, that didn’t make him want to throw up and a heat that didn’t suffocate him. Daniel existed, so there must be others for him to want.
He wasn’t broken. He wasn’t broken. He wasn’t broken.
(Faint sunlight getting a hold on his skin, ass in display, shiny smile. His own fingers traced the curves of his waist, the soft of his stomach, making his way up and down his happy trail. He took his time to examine his own reflection, a pair of kind, almond eyes piercing through him. He looked strong, he looked undefeatable, painfully human. He ran his hand through his hair, making the blond strands fall to his face, getting in his view and, accidentally, ending up with a few in his mouth. He fought to spit them out, making eye-contact with a funny-faced Felix in the mirror for a second. He snorted at the stupidity of it and fell to his sheets again, a giggle bubbling out his throat in pure contentment because, oh, how wonderful was to be your own home.
Felix loved himself so much. What had he ever done for his body to deserve tough love? Why did he take up the task of punishing the boy that spent years learning and growing to form who he was today? The violence of taking care of oneself electrocuted him, because he was a beautiful thing; he was alive. He breathed. He had so much to give and to keep. He knew better than to look for a faint, ghostly touch, for empty apologies and unsolicited hands. He deserved plenty of sleep and good food nursing the body that had supported him, that kept him alive. He knew this.
Loving oneself was satisfying the hunger others left in him.)