Chapter Text
The world outside was waking up with the sun, birds chirping, mellowed out by the few cars driving down the road, heading to work. The sun was rising, the moon was setting and with them, the day was beginning, the peacefulness the night brought with it making way for the lives of the many.
And down unpaved roads, buildings that look like they'll blow over at the smallest winds and beat up, barely working vehicles, an alarm goes off. In an apartment that's barely holding on, with ten minutes of hot water and only one electrical socket, a man wakes with a groan. He pats around on the ground beside his mattress and finds his phone, the thing that had woken him up.
Felix, blond hair messy and eyes barely opening, blinks quickly, trying his best to get the fog of sleepiness out of his mind. He has work in an hour and he cannot afford to be late so with a tired huff, he rubs at his eyes and sits up, looking around his small studio apartment while ruffling his own hair.
"Fuck." His muscles are sore — have been for the last month — and he knows why but he pushes the thought out of his head. It's something for later Felix to worry about, but for now, he knows he has to get up, he knows he has to get ready, drink some water, get dressed and get to work.
He sits in bed for another ten minutes, blinking through the resting pain he's starting to get used to. And once he finally stands up, he spends another ten minutes holding onto the bathroom door just a step away from his mattress, trying to blink away the dizziness.
He spends fifteen minutes getting ready, and walks the twenty minute commute to work.
He's walking into the gas station at 5:51, nine minutes before his shift begins.
"Felix!" Mia, the sweet girl his age who had worked the night shift, greets him with a smile, despite looking so tired. "Good morning! How are you?" It's the same every morning, small talk, never awkward. They're not close but Felix thinks she's probably the most constant person in his life. He sees her nearly every day when he comes into work at the gas station and sometimes she comes to the bakery cafe he works the closing shift at.
"I'm good Mia, thanks for asking." He smiles back as he heads towards the back room to hang up his shoulder bag and his sweater. "How about you?" He asks as he walks over to the counter and looks at the clock. 5:55.
"I'm good. Sena told me to say hi. Says she's going to the bakery with Haneul for a date tonight." Mia speaks with a smile on her face as she thinks about her Eros. Felix grows slightly envious, wishing only for a moment that he could have people to cherish him, love him, help him into subspa-
"Ah, well I'll prepare something special for them. And try to make sure their favourite table is open for them." He cuts off his thoughts before they can escalate. Felix takes care of himself very well and he does not need an Eros to do anything for him. He looks at the time again. 5:57.
"I'll let them know." She hums with a faraway look on her face. "I'm sure they'll be very happy." She nods, a knowing smile prominent on her lips. "What about you?" She looks over at Felix, her smile turning into a smirk.
Felix feels caught off guard, turning from looking out at the store to instead look back at Mia. "Me? What about me?" He's confused and obviously it shows with the way Mia chuckles, glancing over at the clock, Felix does as well. 5:58.
"I mean, have you found anyone yet?" She clarifies and Felix huffs, feels a small grin pull at his lips.
"Mia." Felix chuckles softly. "You just asked me that yesterday. Do you expect the answer to change overnight?" His amusement only grows when Mia rolls her eyes and waves him off as she heads towards the back room to collect her stuff. Felix glances at the clock. 5:59. He walks over and clocks in right as the clock hits 6:00 and Mia clocks out.
"Bye Felix, have a good day!" And Felix smiles and waves as he watches Mia walk out and towards the bus stop.
It picks up only a little around 9:30 before practically going quiet again as most people go about their days. And when there's no one in the shop, after he's stocked everything he needed to for the day, Felix let's himself calm down enough to really feel the pain thrumming through his bones and his muscles and just under his skin.
Felix curses his biology and the world for how it is, for how it's evolved. Curses the god that decided submission and dominance needed to be biological. He curses his classification, not for the first time and definitely not for the last and can't help it as his mind trails off to the day that had sealed his fate. He curses his parents and the school system and everything in his life that fucked him up.
He decides he needs to distract himself before he trails off further in his thoughts and pulls out his phone, knowing from experience that his boss didn't care as long as he wasn't on it while there were customers. He opens up social media, sighing as he quickly glances at the clock. 10:30. Only thirty minutes until he gets to clock out and head to the cafe where he can take a two hour break before starting his shift at his second job.
Social media consists mostly of videos and pictures of famous people he follows and some random videos from accounts he doesn't. He continues scrolling until coming upon a post from Stray Kids.
Stray kids is a 7 person group of, for lack of a better word, camboys. They were an Eros, mostly made up of doms, with the exception of two switches. They posted videos online, most of which were non-sexual, guiding people with loving voices and cutting words. They helped subs and doms respectively, guiding them to headspace with nonsexual dominance and — from the switches— occasional submission.
They were the most popular account online, having a wide following. Felix assumed it was because of their unique situation. Not many Eros would allow their members to participate in such a vulnerable project as they did. Dominance and submission could be such an intimate practice, despite it being biological. This meant that Eros were typically possessive over their members and their headspaces, only allowing one another to see each other in such states. Which is why Stray Kids, as a whole, as an Eros, were considered unique.
Felix had been using their videos and nothing else, to enter subspace since he'd turned 20. He was too scared to trust any dom or switch to help him through his most vulnerable times after what had happened in the past. And Felix knew it wasn't healthy, knew his body hated him for it (hence the constant ache and dizzy spells) but he'd survived 3 years with no scene so he didn't understand the problem, truly.
He would stick to watching Stray kids' videos, and he'd make do. He enjoyed watching them, no matter who was in the video. It didn't matter if J.one or Hyun were in their submissive headspaces or if the video was intended for a sub or a dom. He just enjoyed laying in his bed and hearing them talk, could probably drop just by hearing them speak. It didn't matter if there was only one member or all 7 of them in the videos, he still enjoyed them.
Felix's eyes widened a little as he read the post Stray Kids had made not but 15 minutes ago.
Live stream tonight at 7:00 PM KST! Please tune in if you can! We'll be spending the evening with you all as we relax after long a long week of work and responsibilities! We hope to see you there! SFW!
By 7 pm he should be home and relaxing in bed. He won't let himself miss this one, having missed the last full group live. So he sets himself an alarm and greets his coworker (who arrives just as the clock strikes 11) with a small smile and a wave, wishing them a good day as he walks out. He's feeling happy, giddy, as he makes his way to the bakery, earbuds in as he does.
The rest of his day continues on as it normally does. There's nothing exciting or interesting. He bakes some cookies and some brownies, greets Sena and Haneul and mostly stays in the back where he's more familiar, knowing that if anyone needs anything from him, that they'd come talk to him in the back.
He's tired as he walks into his apartment around 6:30, making himself his first meal of the day (some simple ramen, his cupboards mostly empty and he knows he'll need to go grocery shopping tomorrow) before settling into bed with his phone open and waiting.
The live starts fifteen minutes after he's all settled and only five minutes after he finishes eating, and Felix places his bowl on the ground beside his mattress to pick up the next time he gets out of bed.
"Hello lovelies!" It's CB97 that speaks, the Eros' head dom, and immediately, Felix's eyes are drawn by the table they're sitting around, all the food carefully organized and placed on it makes Felix's stomach grumble despite having just eaten. "I hope you've all had a wonderful week! We've all been pretty busy with our lives this week, with our jobs and such." He hums, glancing at his partners with a fond smile on his face. "So tonight we decided that we're just going to relax with you guys. As you guys can see, we have some food here that Lee Know and I have cooked, and we're just going to eat and hang out for a bit!" He's excited at the prospect, they all are, it's not hard to see, with the easy going smiles and wide eyes.
"Can we start eating now?" I.N, their youngest member whines and a couple of the others chuckle fondly at him.
"Yes, yes, go ahead, you brat." Lee know huffs but there's no heat in his voice, only a small yet loving smile on his lips.
They begin to eat and Felix watches the screen carefully, watching their cute interactions and small touches that clearly show they love each other. They talk about random things, almost as though they forget the camera is on and they're streaming their lives for everyone to watch. And you could easily think they do actually forget about the camera, if not for the way they refer to each other, using aliases instead of actual names.
"Someone just asked how we have time to work jobs while doing this." Hyun chuckled.
"Well," spearB smiled as he began to speak, "we typically make our own schedules therefore it's not the end of the world, usually, if we take a day or two or a couple hours or however long we need off." Felix thinks that's insanely not fair, wishes he could make and decide his own hours, wishes he could take a day off, wishes he didn't constantly need to wonder if he'd have enough money to keep his apartment or go grocery shopping.
"We work in the entertainment industry." J.one speaks and then huffs out a laugh before speaking again. "Outside of doing this, I mean." His words make everyone laugh in amusement.
"So, how is everyone doing? I figure we should do a check in, yeah?" It's CB that speaks up after a few minutes, obviously talking to the audience and not his Eros. With his words they all went into the comments to be able to actively talk to their watchers.
Felix pulls up the chat and types out a response, not expecting anyone to actually read or see it.
Pixie.Lix: Sore muscles and bones and dizzy spells for a while but I'm doing good!
It's quickly drowned out by other comments of people saying much happier things, stuff they did or want to do. Felix huffs and for a second wonders if he's the only one who's not really doing well but quickly berates himself when he realizes that not everyone's gonna be spilling their worries. And then he thinks that he's an idiot and that people are going to read his comment and think that all he wants is attention. He can't help the sudden tears that spring to his eyes but quickly wipes them away with his sleeve and pays attention to his screen again.
They're speaking about someone's comment, talking about how amazing it is that the commenter was able to take a certain trip. Felix isn't quite sure, had tuned back in at such a bad time for him to understand what was going on.
"Oh, I just saw a comment, hold on." J.One speaks up once the current conversation drifts off and scrolls the comments on his phone for no more than a second before frowning.
"Pixie says their body feels sore and they've been having dizzy spells for the last week. It almost sounds like-" J cuts himself off and Felix's brain takes a moment to refocus on the fact that the switch is talking about his comment, talking to him. Felix suddenly feels faint for reasons unrelated to his usual dizziness.
The group are all frowning, looking displeased and worried and Felix can't help the whine he lets out at having bothered them even the slightest. "It sounds like neglect of your classification. I would suggest reaching out to a medical specialist that's trained for this specifically if you can. We have links in our bio and in a couple of our videos." CB speaks up suddenly and Felix is sent reeling at his response.
It isn't that bad. Felix hadn't been able to enter sub space in at least a month or so, but it'll be fine. He's gone longer than this so he's not worried, used to the feelings it brings when he doesn't go under for a while. Still, the men on Felix's phone screen keep speaking.
"Obviously we don't know what you're going through but we don't need any of our lovelies to be hurt or struggling so much so we would feel much better if you reached out to someone." Hyun continued and suddenly Felix felt almost lost.
"We need you to take care of yourselves. Could you do that, Pixie, for us?" Suddenly it was Min that was speaking, he hummed, raising an eyebrow at the screen and Felix sighed. He couldn't promise that, not to himself and not to this incredibly nice Eros that Felix hadn't even ever met but had felt very attached to since he'd started watching their videos.
And it continued on for a while, just the group talking and messing around until Felix noticed that a couple of them (CB, SpearB and I.N) had started being distracted, looking at their phones and scrolling through what he assumed to be texts. And then suddenly he sees the chat noticing as well, commenting on their unusual behaviour.
"Sorry everyone. We're just a little distracted. We know Pixie is still here but we haven't gotten any confirmation that he's going to listen to us." CB speaks after a round of texts seem to go around the table.
Felix, not for the first time since this live has started, is wide eyed and unsure of what to do. So he types out a response, then deletes it, types out another only to once again erase it.
And just as he's about to start typing out his third attempt at a reply to the Eros, something that wouldn't be considered a lie, there's a knock at his door. Felix is confused because no one he knows knows where he lives and the building isn't the best, even for these parts of town, but he locks his phone and pockets it anyways. He's hesitant to open the door but does so when the person on the other side only knocks again, more forceful this time around.
"Felix, good. I could hear people talking so I knew someone was home. Here. This is the amount you owe me for rent this month, utilities included, as always." His landlord, although rough and looking as though he genuinely belongs here, greets him with a smile either way. "Usually you're always on time with rent but just let me know if you can't pay in full and we'll figure something out." He's nice enough when he's in a good mood and Felix counts his blessings when he realizes the older man must be having a good day to act so familiar and warm with him today.
"Thanks." Felix bows and closes the door once the man had handed him the envelope and turned to begin walking away.
"Have a good evening, Felix."