Chapter Text
Seungmin barely considers the optics -- all of the members are trapped between shock at Felix’s reaction, and concern for a very much bleeding Hyunjin -- and Seungmin just wants to figure out how to get out of here and go fine Felix. He’s known that Felix hasn’t been doing well, but he didn’t realize how fragile he was.
“Sit down, hyung,” Jeongin urges Hyunjin again. Hyunjin stands shakily, still wide eyed and the practice room door like he can will Felix into returning.
“Or at least use a towel instead of your hands,” Jisung adds, wincing at the blood pouring from Hyunjin’s nose.
“Ih e-lix o-ay?” Hyunjin asks frantically. Jisung presses a towel into his hands, and Hyunjin presses it against his nose then tilts his head forward. He pulls it away, and they all wince at the blood when Hyunjin repeats himself a bit more clearly. “Is Felix okay?”
Seungmin bounces on the balls of his feet, his eyes flickering from Hyunjin, whos is looking at them all anxiously, and the door. He catches Minho’s eyes by accident. His hyung looks at him with scrutiny.
“Don’t worry about Lix, okay? You’re kind of bleeding everywhere,” Chan says, but Seungmin doesn’t buy the I’m totally calm right now act.
“Someone needs to go after him,” Hyunjin insists.
“Hyung, he hit you,” Jeongin says in confusion. “Why are you worrying about him?”
And Hyunjin stares at the maknae like he has three heads. “Because exactly that. Felix hit me. Felix, who once cried because Minho wouldn’t let him rescue all the ladybugs that were trapped in the dorm because we were late to rehearsal. Felix, who cursed out two MCs for you.”
Jeongin winces at the reminder and hangs his head.
“I think Innie’s just upset that elbowed you in the nose,” Changbin says quietly, but not meanly.
“It was an accident,” Hyunjin says. Changmin nods, agreeing.
“It seemed like he was trying to get away and accidentally did, well, this ,” Chan agrees, nodding to Hyunjin’s face. “I don’t know what I expected, we basically cornered him. Maybe someone should check-”
“I’ll go,” Seungmin says, right as Minho says, “I can check.”
The two look at each other fiercely. Seungmin cannot let one of the other members find Felix -- if his back is getting worse, the last thing Felix needs is to be walked in on, feathers and all. “Hyung, please,” Seungmin says. Minho appraises him for a while but eventually sighs.
“Fine, but text me the second you’re with him. I have a meeting about an Ateez collaboration that I really shouldn’t miss, and I won’t be able to focus if I’m not sure if he’s okay.”
Seungmin tries to smile to show his gratefulness, but his worry warps it into a grimace. He looks at Hyunjin. “Go to the doctor, hyung. A broken nose really doesn’t match the concept for the new comeback.”
The others laugh, but Hyunjin just levels Seungmin with a serious glare. “Go find him, Minnie. Please.”
Chan nods at Seungmin once, and it’s all the cue he needs. He sprints all the way to the dorm.
Felix can’t cry. Every movement, every inhalation, is agony. The pain isn’t even localized to his shoulders anymore; no, it radiates like an electric shock.
“Fuck,” Felix groans. He can feel blood on his back, sticky and unpleasant and certainly staining his outfit and their bath mat. He’s going to die here, he’s sure of it. Wooyoung was right -- he should have left, should have run back to Australia, away from the prying eyes of paparazzi and staff members, and drained his bank account for a private surgeon--
The sound of a lock turning pulls Felix from his mental spiral. For a moment, he worries he imagined it, but then he hears the pounding of footsteps.
“Felix? Felix, please tell me you’re here-”
“Minnie!” Felix wails, but even speaking is painful, and what comes out of his mouth is more of a garbled groan.
“What’s wrong?” Seungmin calls from the hallway. Felix tries to answer, but all that comes out is a whimper. “I’m coming in.”
He rattles the door, and the silence after he realizes that the lock has been engaged -- a huge Chan no-no, is deafening. Felix bites his tongue to keep from crying, cursing the way his secrecy is down damning him.
“Felix,” Seungmin says lowly, “if you don’t open the door in five seconds, I’m going to break it down and call Channie-hyung. And Minho-hyung.”
Felix reaches a weak arm towards the door, but the flexing of his back muscles is agony, and the scream that tears out of him is like a nightmare.
“Shit, Chan is in a meeting. I … I’m calling the company.”
“No!” Felix whines despite the pain, because he doesn’t want the members to know what’s going on, but the company can’t know what’s going on. Because they don’t let supernatural creatures perform in K-Pop groups. It seems like ‘they’ don’t let supernatural creatures exist for very long at all. “C-call …”
He tries to say Wooyoung, but another spasm turns any works he may have said into a scream. He tries to stand, but the pain is so much worse, somehow, and his legs buckle beneath him. He hits the tile knees first with terrible twin cracks that echo around the room. He feels like he can barely see or hear, his other senses gone in favor of feeling, in favor pain and pain and pain-
The door slams open, the wood splintering at the hinges. Seungmin looks down with wide eyes and a hammer in his hand. Felix sees, through his pulsing vision, that the door is missing a solid chunk. Seungmin reaches through the hole he’s created, undoes the lock, and enters.
“Oh my god,” Seungmin whimpers. Felin feels the blood sticking hot and wet to his back, can feel it beeding up at every single bump-turned-open-wound. “What the fuck happened--”
“--don’t … call … them …” Felix pants.
“I have to, Lix,” Seungmin says. His voice sounds thick and wet. When Felix looks up, he sees tears pooling down Seungmin’s cheeks and something like guilt burning in his eyes. “Please don’t put this on me. I can’t do this alone.”
Felix drops his head, his own guilt pounding through him, another horrible need to help, because one of his members is in pain and it’s his fault. And maybe he’s selfish, because Wooyoung needs to be here, but he wants his members, wants--
I would burn down the world if it meant keeping you safe.
Whatever’s going on with you, I’ll be there to help you through it.
“Minho-hyung,” Felix finally says. “Call … Minho-hyung …”
Seungmin has his phone out before Felix can so much as blink, and then he hears ringing over the speaker. Felixs hangs his head.
“Minnie, are you okay?”
Felix’s breath catches at the mere sound of his hyung’s voice. For a moment, the twinging in his back lessens, but then flares even worse than before.
“Hyung,” Seungmin says, and Felix hears all of the emotion clogging his words.
“Minnie? What’s wrong-”
“It’s Felix,” Seungmin says. “I need to you to come here. Only you.”
Felix hears shifting over the phone line, like Minho is holding his own phone closer against his ear. “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there. I’m with Wooyoung so let me just tell him-”
“Bring Wooyoung-hyung,” Felix wails.
“Lix-ah?” Minho’s voice comes from the other end of the phone. “I don’t have to-”
“Please, hyung,” Felix sobs, even though the actions tear at his back. “Tell him … it’s about feathers.”
Seungmin looks at him, bewildered, and then the puzzle piece clicks.
“That’s who your friend is, isn’t it?”
Felix nods. “Please, just bring Wooyoung.”
Minho is silent for a moment, then says something unintelligible.
“Okay, Bbokie, we’re on our way. Um, Seungmin, Wooyoung says to move Bbokie to his bed, okay?”
“I don’t know if I can-”
“You can, Minnie, I know you can.”
The line disconnects, and Felix curls in on himself. The muscles in his back flex again, like they know what’s coming. A moment later, Seungmin’s face appears in front of him. “I’m sorry, Lix. We’ll try to make it as fast as possible.”
Felix whimpers and shakes his head, but he knows. And if Wooyoung said they should move him to a mattress…
“I’m going to lift you up by your arms and then you’re going to wrap your arms around my neck, okay? Like a piggy back. That way your back won’t get irritated.”
Felix shakes his head again, but he’s already lifting his arms.
Seungmin sighs, stealing himself. “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t count down from three, and he doesn’t give any warning. One second, Felix is hunched there, wondering how the pain could ever get worse, and the next second, Seungmin is dragging him to standing, and Felix is realising that the pain can absolutely get worse.
He screams, his throat torn apart to match the tearing of his shoulders.
“My neck, Felix, you have to hold on to my neck.”
Felix’s feet tremble atop the tile, but he obeys, because he always wants to do what the members ask of him. He barely has the strength to wrap his arms around Seungmin, even less so when he clasps his wrist with this hand, but Seungmin hikes him up at the thighs and practically runs to Felix’s room.
“I’m going to put you down on your stomach, okay?”
Felix tries to make his whisper resemble an assent. Seungmin sounds worried, I’m making him worried-
Another wave of pain cornorts his body.
“You’re okay, Lix, hyung is on his way-”
Felix doesn’t know much time passes; it feels like an eternity, where all he knows – all he is – is pain. Pain and images of his members, like a zeotrope of suffering. He should be worrying about his back, about his ability to dance, about what the fuck he’s going to do if he survives this, about whether or not the feeling will ever truly end, but he can’t focus on anything other than the agony and guilt.
Finally, Minho bursts through their apartment and sprints into Felix’s room. He goes white at the sight of Felix’s back.
“What happened?” He gasps. Seugnmin can only shake his head, his own cheeks lined with tears. “Seungmin, what happened? ”
“I found him in the bathroom.”
“H-hyung?” Felix whimpers. In an instant, Minho is at his side.
“Lix-ah, you’re okay,” he coos. “Aegi, what happened? What’s going on?”
“Hurts,” Felix says brokenly. Minho gently brushes his hair away from his sweaty face.
“What happened?”
Felix shakes his head. Speaking hurts, but he manages. “Wooyoung-hyung?”
Wooyoung stands in the doorway, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as he takes in the horror. Felix’s back is coated in blood, and his face is twisted in sweaty pain.
Minho can only continue to stare in horror. The shock of red -- so much of it, all over Felix’s body -- is slowly getting replaced by a determination to fix. He studies Felix’s back, looking for an injury but not finding one immediately.
“Hyung, move,” Wooyoung says sharply.
Minho is so shocked that he doesn’t question Wooyoung’s tone. He simply shifts to the side and lets Wooyoung crouch next to Felix. “Felix, I told you to tell me if things got worse.”
“I had it - under - control,” Felix pants.
“Clearly not,” Wooyoung says softly. He turns to the other two and Minho watches a steeliness harden the lines by Wooyoung’s mouth. “I need a first aid kit, an old t-shirt if you have any -- clean -- , and a bowl of water.”
“What?” Minho says. “No, we’re waiting for an ambulance. Minnie, you already called one, right?”
Seungmin doesn’t answer, he just hesitates and looks at Felix.
“Give me your phone,” Minho says coolly.
“I can’t, hyung,” Seungmin says tremulously. Minho’s eyes flash and he stands up, squaring his shoulders.
“I’m not asking permission here, Seungmin. Give me. Your phone.”
“Hyung-” Felix starts.
“Minho,” Wooyoung cuts him off. “We don’t have time to explain, but you cannot call anyone about this right now.”
“Have you all lost your minds?” Minho yells. “If you think I’m going to sit here and watch him bleed out then surely you must have-”
“If you call an ambulance, you’ll never see him again.”
Wooyoung’s voice is pure ice. Minho blinks rapidly and splutters. “Why?”
The raw pain in his voice sends another spasm racketing up Felix’s spine. He feels his shoulders flexing beneath his skin, feels the press of needle-edged feathers
“What is that,” Minho whispers when he sees the flash of white. Wooyoung walks over.
“It’s a feather,” Wooyoung says calmly.
Minho worries that his rage is going to peak into physical blows. “I don’t find your jokes humorous right now.”
“It’s not …. a joke,” Felix grits his teeth. Every word hurts, but he knows that he needs to prevent Minho from calling anyone. “Minho-hyung, please, I need you to listen to Wooyoung. It hurts too badly.”
“Of course, Bbokie,” Minho says. The tenderness in his voice only reminds Felix of his love for his hyung, then the love for the others, then the blood on Hyunjin’s face; the way he’s hurt his members for weeks.
If he’s going to die, he needs to try to make things right.
“I’m so sorry for everything, hyung,” Felix chokes. “I failed you. I overdid it.”
Seungmin turns his head to hide his tears then flees to find the items Wooyoung requested. He doesn’t want Felix to see him crying.
“No one’s mad at you,” Minho says. “Hyung’s not mad either. We’re all just worried about you.”
“My fault,” Felix chokes on a sob. Tears roll steadily down his cheeks. “Made you all … scared.”
“You really are an angel,” Minho says quietly. Then his eyes bulge. “Wait, you’re … you’re …”
The feather. The back pain. Felix blinks up at him with huge, pleading eyes, and a sudden ring of gold flashes around his pupils. Minho likes to think he’s a logical person, but the conclusion he’s hurtling too feels, at once, obvious and so, so right.
“... are you an angel?” Minho whispers.
“Well done, Minho-hyung,” Wooyoung says softly. “I thought it was going to take you a lot longer to catch on.”
Minho looks up at the Ateez member and gawks. “That’s not possible. Angels aren’t real.”
Seungmin rushes back into the room and thrusts a first aid kit and stack of clean t-shirts into Wooyoung’s hands. He’s delicately cradling a bowl of water against his chest. “Here you go. And, uh, Minho-hyung, I know it’s hard to believe, but Lix-ah is definitely an angel.”
Wooyoung nods, taking the items from Seungmin, and then facing Minho with urgency. “Felix doesn’t have time for me to explain everything. Yes, Angels are real. I was an angel but they caught it when I was young. Normally, the gene is caught before maturity, but for those you don’t get their wings removed, their fate is worse. I’ve known a few angels who neared maturation only to go missing right as they would have reached it or right after they got their wings. I told your sweet little Dongsaeng here that he could maybe possibly try to push his maturation by distancing himself from situations in which he needed to protect you all, but his heart seems a little too big for that, so now we need to free his wings before they tear his back apart.”
Felix whimpers.
“Wait, what?” Seungmin asks. “Free them?”
Wooyoung looks down at the boy on the bed. He should have seen Felix’s angelicness back during Kingdom -- the boy had a way of lighting up every room he walked into. He remembers how anxious Felix had been about potentially hurting Wooyoung during their stunt without a modicum of concern for his own safety.
He really doesn’t want to cause Felix any pain, but it’s the only option.
“I stopped by to see him a few days ago, and I could tell he was getting bad. I managed to visit my parents and got in contact with the doctor who helped remove my wings. He gave me advice about how to help Felix if his maturation spiked and his wings came. I had a feeling he wouldn’t tell me if things were getting worse, so I wanted to be prepared.”
Wooyoung looks up at Minho, knowing how protective he is over Felix. “I’m sorry, but his body isn’t strong enough to do this himself. We have to try to help the wings free themselves.”
Minho doesn’t seem to be breathing. He looks back down at Felix who is clearly choking back tears and pain alike. It’s insane. It has to be insane, but looking at Felix, covered in blood, undeniably sporting feathers …
He’ll do anything to protect his Bbokie, even if it means believing in what he once considered unbelievable.
“Painkillers,” Minho says suddenly. His gaze remains fixed on Felix, and he clasps his hands together to hide the trembling as he leans forward. “Lix-ah, where is your pain medication? That you had last year?”
Felix opens his mouth, but anything he may have said is warped into a scream. The others all gasp as the bones in his back seem to shift of their own accord.
“The medicine cabinet,” Seungmin answers for his roommate, dashing away and back in lightning speed with a small bottle in his hand.
“Fast acting?”
“Yes.”
Minho takes the bottle and shakes out one of the small tablets. “Open up, Bbokie.”
Felix doesn’t open his mouth, nor does he give any inclination that he’s heard Minho. He eyes are hazy, the pupils enormous pools of black, but Minho swears he sees another flash of gold in the thin ring of brown iris. Sweat sticks to his skin, and when Minho gently shifts Felix’s head, his cheek feels hot and sticky.
“Lix?” Minho pinches Felix’s cheek. “Yongbok, c’mon, come back to us.”
Felix blinks hazily. A low groan rumbles in the back of his throat. Minho takes advantage of the parting of his lips to slip a pill in his mouth, then pushes the straw of his waterbottle into his mouth. “Drink. It’ll help.”
Help us perform amateur surgery on you , Minho thinks in terror. He’s spent the last week watching Felix like a hawk. He knows Felix is sensitive, gentle -- seeing him yell and being on the receiving end of that anger was shocking, and his harshness towards Hyunjin was even more surprising, but Minho knows that his own defensiveness can result in icy, cruel words if he’s prodded. If Felix has been dealing with this kind of pain for weeks, it’s a testament to his goodness that he didn’t do more than yell at a couple cruel MCs and snap at his members.
“Okay, we need to do this now before his wings do it for him.” Wooyoung looks pale but determined.
His wings , Minho reels.
Wooyoung has upended the first aid kit onto Felix’s desk and collected an ominous selection from the mess -- medical scissors, gauze, disinfectant, and plastic gloves. All that’s missing is-
“Do you have a razor?”
Seungmin gasps. Minho turns to his other dongsaeng, split between wanting to protect him from this and needing his presence here just as much.
“I know it’s a deeply unsettling question,” Wooyoung apologizes. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Minnie?” Minho asks quietly. Seungmin jolts and shakes his head.
“I … yes. I think Lix has a set for shaving.”
When he returns from the bathroom, he hands the plastic package of straight edge razors to Wooyoung. Wooyoung snaps on the gloves and takes one of the razors.
“I can …” Minho swallows hard to calm his shaking voice, “I can do it.”
Wooyoung shakes his head. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You wouldn’t be asking,” Minho says. “I … I would do anything for him, including this.”
Wooyoung smiles sadly. “But you can’t risk him associating the pain with you. You matter too much to him. Besides, I, uh, know what I’m doing, more than you at least. I know where the … where the wings actually are. When this is over, he needs to see you not holding the knife.”
Minho hesitates, but eventually nods. “Okay, tell me what I’ll be doing. What you’ll be doing. I just … this seems really dangerous.”
Wooyoung takes a t-shirt, dips it into the bowl of water, and gently wipes away some of the blood. It’s a testament to how out of it Felix is that he barely whimpers.
“See the feathers?”
Minho swallows nausea and leans forward. Without the sheen of blood, he can see the symmetrical swatches of small, white pinpricks. The pattern of them is so obviously that of wings.
“If we don’t do this … what happens?”
Wooyoung gazes at the wall, his shoulders going taut. “The wings will free themselves one way or another. And if they don’t, for some reason, he’s at risk of an overload of power within his body. He would have to go to the hospital regardless, and even if he did survive-”
“They’d take him,” Minho finishes.
“Yes.” Wooyoung traces the air above Felix’s back. “Right now, his wings are underdeveloped, smaller than they’ll grow to, but still wider than his shoulders. Thankfully, the wings are right there beneath his skin; that’s why he's having back spasms. As his angel side gets stronger, the wings need to emerge. We -I - will have to cut the skin where they wings are pressing.”
“Oh God,” Seungmin murmurs and sinks to the floor, looking pale.
“His body is meant to do this, but he seems weak to me. Like he’s not taking care of himself?”
“The understatement of a century,” Minho can’t help himself from saying.
“Well that’s why we’re here to help him.”
“It’s going to hurt,” Seugnmin says quietly. He doesn’t need to phrase it as a question.
“Very much,” Wooyoung says sadly. “Hyung, I need you to help keep him still. He’s going to fight it, even with the exhaustion, and I can’t risk … well, I don’t need to tell you why this is dangerous.”
Minho nods, but he’s losing himself to panic more quickly than he expected; the gravity of the situation is hitting him like a truck. This isn’t a joke, this isn’t a prank, Seungmin has yet to burst into laughter and shout ‘we got you, hyung!’
Felix, his sweet, precious Felix, is in pain, and he’s bloody, and he’s an angel - which frankly Minho has yet to fully grasp - and Minho has to sit here and watch - no, help - cause him even more pain.
It’s either pain now, or you lose him forever.
“Okay,” Minho says. He turns to Seungmin. “Minnie, I need you to go make tea and figure out what food we should order.”
Seungmin sits up in shock. “What? No, hyung, I can help-”
“I need your help getting things ready for once he’s awake. And you need to take my phone so that if anyone calls, they don’t get worried and barge in here.”
And I can’t make you live with what we’re about to see.
Seungmin looks like he wants to protest, but he just sighs. “Thank you, hyung. I’ll be in the kitchen, yell if you need anything. Seriously.”
“We will,” Wooyoung says.
Seungmin leaves and takes Minho’s last hope that this is all a joke with him.
“Get some gloves, Minho.”
They end up moving Felix’s beg away from the corner so that Minho has more leverage in case Felix tries to squirm away. The last thing they need is him hurting himself even more by falling off the bed. They turn on the overhead light and position the bowl of water and t-shirts within close reach. Wooyoung pulls out his phone, scrolls through his photos, and pulls up an image of a young version of him, barebacked and turned away from the camera. Scars -- dark and fresh -- angle precisely in mirror images on the other side of his spine. Minho gulps.
Finally, Wooyoung grabs the razor and takes a deep breath. “Help me wipe away the blood so I can see, okay?”
“Okay,” Minho says.
“Sit on his legs.”
Minho straddles Felix’s, trying to put enough weight on them to keep him still without hurting him. The angle will allow him to hold down his arms and clear the blood.
“We’re going to do this fast. He’s probably going to scream,” Wooyoung warns. “I’m really sorry.”
“Let’s go.”
And boy does Felix scream. Minho gasps as the body beneath him bucks, like a horse threatening to unseat him. He leans forward and pressed down hard on Felix’s arms; he can’t tear his eyes away from the expression on his face: eyes wide and bulging, mouth torn open. He wants to scream at Wooyoung to stop.
“Good,” Wooyoung says, as much to himself as to Minho and Felix. “You’re doing great, Yongbok, you’re doing great.”
Felix just screams again. He’s like a rabid animal. Minho can only pray that he doesn’t remember this tomorrow or ever again. Minho will spend every single day for the rest of his life fighting to make sure that Felix can forget this.
How they’ll handle a potentially winged member in the group? He’ll figure that out later.
Wooyoung taps at his phone screen to keep it lit up. It’s awful work for everyone involved, and Minho is swallowing vomit the whole time.
Suddenly Felix goes still.
“Yongbok? Yongbok, stay awake!” Minho pinches Felix’s arm.
“I think he passed out from the pain.”
“Just … hurry, please.”
“I don’t know if I can do anymore on this side?” Wooyoung says, his voice flipping higher at the end.
“Why are you asking me?” Minho pants. “Haven’t you done this before?” He nods at the photo. Wooyoung taps the image again and snorts humorlessly.
“That’s me . So I have experience being, well, Felix. I was younger than him, though.”
Minho doesn’t really know what to say to that, only knows that the ball of fear sitting heavy in his chest seems to have tripled in size. If Wooyoung was forced to get his wings removed, and if he’s telling the truth about angels being taken from society …
Well, he meant it about burning the world for Felix.
Wooyoung works quickly and with steady hands; it does seem as though Felix’s body is trying to take his brain out of the equation. He whimpers, but his eyes remain closed, and Minho doesn’t have to fight nearly as hard to keep him still.
It’s ten more minutes; When Wooyoung starts on the other side of Felix’s body, the struggling begins again. Minho didn’t know Felix’s screams could get any louder, any more agonizing, but suddenly, they stop entirely.
Minho misses the screams. He never thought he would miss the sounds of Felix in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Minho asks. Wooyoung shakes for the first time, his steady hands trembling when Felix completely stills.
“No, no, no,” Wooyoung murmurs. “Come one, Felix. Don’t do this to us.”
“We need to - we have to-” Minho is panicking now. A still Felix is a bad Felix.
Wooyoung opens his mouth to say something when music begins to play; muffled, but familiar. Get Cool, the chorus. A young-Chan’s voice, tinny through the speakers, but recognizable.
Immediately, Felix breathes. It’s a shuddering breath, rattling and wet in his throat, but a breath all the same.
Minho’s heart thuds, and a warmth of love brings feeling back to his limbs. “Of course,” he whispers. He carefully but quickly climbs off of Felix and rushes to his dance bag, which Seungmin must have brought from the studio, and takes out the phone inside. Chan is calling, apparently. Minho swipes the call away, navigates to Spotify, and types ‘Stray Kids’ into the search bar with fumbling hands.
Cover Me plays again, and the second Hyunjin starts singing the verse, Felix breathes again. “The music. The members. It’s helping him.”
“Sunshine,” Wooyoung whispers. Minho looks at him, and Wooyoung wipes a tear from his eye. “I get why you call him that now.”
“It’s a lot of pressure for him,” Minho says. “But even at his saddest, he still manages to be so sweet.”
“Then get the pain over with as soon as possible,” Wooyoung says. Minho continues whispering meaningless comforts that Felix surely isn’t hearing. It is ten more minutes that Minho doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget about.
And then Wooyoung steps back and places the razor on the nightstand; the second the razor is out of his hands, his whole body shudders and trembles.
“What are you doing?” Minho asks. “The wings are still …”
Not out? Minho isn’t sure how to phrase it.
“He has to do this part himself. It’s important for the wing development -- if they’re not strong enough to emerge, he won’t release his first wave of magic correctly, and he could become stunted.”
“Stunted?” Minho asks.
Wooyoung swallows. “He could die from an overload of magic in his body.”
Minho doesn’t even pretend to understand. Instead, they watch, silently, as Felix’s whimpers turn to low, agonized groans. It’s two minutes, maybe, but it feels like years.
Felix stops breathing.
No , Minho thinks.
“It’s okay,” Wooyoung says. “Give it a second.”
“I’m calling an ambulance,” Minho scrambles for his phone on the nightstand. His hands are shaking badly.
“You can’t, Minho-”
“I can’t just watch him die!” Minho yells. Tears finally pour over onto his cheeks. “I can’t -- you can’t ask me to sit here and watch that!”
Wooyoung is crying too. The music isn’t helping anymore, not even the heavenly belt Seungmin is singing over the speakers.
Minho gets an idea. It’s a bit wild, but it’s something.
“Hand me the phone.”
It takes Minho a minute to understand the contact names in Felix’s phone, but only one person would be named Prince.
“Lix?” Hyunjin answers before the first ring even ends. “Oh my God, are you-”
“Jinnie?” Minho tries to speak calmly, but his voice is shaking. He can hear Hyunjin’s intake of breath even across the phone.
“What happened.”
Minho swallows and tilts his head towards the ceiling to try to stop the tears from dripping. “Can you do something for me and not ask questions?”
Hyunjin must hear the desperation in Minho’s voice. “I - yeah. I can do that.”
“Will you talk to Felix? He, uh, can’t answer right now, but he needs to hear your voice.”
“Minho-hyung, what?”
“Please, Jinnie,” Minho begs. “For him.”
“He’s okay, right?”
“He will be,” Minho lies. “If you talk to him.”
“Of course,” Hyunjin says after a long silence. He clears his throat. “Lix-ah, angel, you’ve got a pretty hard elbow.”
Wooyoung looks perplexed, and Minho can only laugh.
“I’m sorry I was harsh to you the other night. You just can’t understand how frustrating it is to see someone so kind and perfect obviously struggling, but not be able to help them. I feel like I don’t remember the last time I saw you smile -- properly smile, not the smile you use on Hyungs to get them to take us to ice cream or to make Stay go weak at the knees. Maybe, um, when you’re feeling better, we can go to that one ice cream place in Australia again? Do you remember? We snuck away, just the two of us, and you were so convinced that you could finish a triple scoop waffle cone. We had to lie and say you got food poisoning the next day because you were too nauseous to dance…”
It’s objectively intimate and tender. Minho feels like he should leave, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Felix’s still body. Hyunjin continues to speak, alternating between stories of the past and hopes for the future. Minho never realized how much Hyunjin called him Angel and Baby, a myriad of pet names.
And yet, Felix remains still. He doesn’t squirm or whimper. It doesn’t even look like he’s sweating anymore.
He leans over and mutes the phone. “I’m calling an ambulance-”
“You can’t,” Wooyoung hisses. He unmutes the call. “Just a bit longer-”
“Was that Wooyoung?” Hyunjin asks.
Minho is very prepared to say that, actually, he very much can and will, and that he likes Wooyoung very much but he will happily knock Wooyoung out to get his Yongbok the help he needs-
But then Felix gasps; a rattling, desperate gasp that makes Minho both infinitely relieved and terribly scared.
Felix’s eyes snap open in a flash of gold light as bright and shimmering as the sun, and then his mouth follows suit to unleash a horrible, banshee-like scream. The light from his eyes seems to flare and strengthen until Minho and Wooyoung are blinded.
Just as Felix’s scream gets louder than Minho knew a voice could get, there’s a snapping sound, a flurry of rustling, and a wind that actually forces Minho and Wooyoung to take a step back.
And then it’s gone. The light, the wind, the screams: it’s just Minho and Wooyoung with their hearts in their throats, and Lix, eyes closed, brows only slightly pinched.
“What the fuck was that?” Hyunjin is yelling through the phone. “Felix? Minho, is Lixie okay?”
Minho just opens and closes his mouth.
Because where the blood was only seconds ago are a pair of brilliant, white wings.
Felix feels so comfortable. He is warm and heavy and not in pain and he wants to sink into the mattress forever.
“I’m making a list, okay?” A voice says. “He’ll need a lot of care when he wakes up. According to the doctor I spoke with, at least.”
“We’ll be by his side twenty-four seven,” Minho says. Felix smiles into the pillow. It’s a good dream if Minho-hyung is here.
“I’m sorry I have to leave like this, but I don’t want to rouse suspicion. I ran out of a rehearsal for this.”
And that’s … Wooyoung. Why would Wooyoung be in his dream? Don’t get Felix wrong, he’s very fond of the Ateez member, but normally only his members take residency in his dreams.
“Wow, look at his feathers…”
Feathers. Feathers.
Felix’s eyes open like rusted doors being pried apart. Orange light is streaming through his window blinds. There’s a red shirt directly in his line of vision. No, not a red shirt -- a white t-shirt stained with blood.
His blood.
He tries to sit up, but immediately, two different hands stop him. He lets them press his weak, exhausted body back against the mattress. One of the hands trails gently up from his shoulder to the back of his head and starts tenderly petting his hair.
“Oh Bbokie,” Minho coos. “What are we going to do with you?”
Felix opens his mouth to say something sassy, but he’s asleep before he can think of the words.
When he opens his eyes again, the sun seems to be rising. The bloody t-shirt is gone, and his gentle fairy lights are on. Someone opened the window, and a cool breeze has washed away what Felix remembers was the smell of sweat and metal. He blinks and turns his head. Seumgin is curled up on the floor, the blankets from his own bed wrapped around him. Felix smiles -- he feels so cozy, so light, despite the weighted blanket on his back.
Minho is right next to Felix’s bed. He’s hunched over in Felix’s desk chair with his neck bent at an awkward angle
He could get hurt like that, Felix thinks.
And when he does, the weighted blanket flutters, a painful tug in Felix’s back.
The blanket settles higher up on his back, and Felix sees a flash of white from the corner of his eye.
“Oh my God,” he whispers.
Feathers, Hyunjin in the studio, his back bleeding--
Felix sits up so fast that he nearly knocks over his nightstand, which in turns wakes up Minho and Seungmin.
“Wha?” Seungmin says blearily.
“Lix-ah!” Minho gasps.
They both watch as Felix pushes himself to an upright position, only to slump back against his elbows.
“Give me a sec,” he says deeply. Minho and Seungmin glance at each other but remain quiet.
Felix closes his eyes and breathes. He knows that the last things he remembers combined with the weight of white on his back equal a very logical conclusion, but he can’t bring himself to believe it.
“Can you get the mirror from my closet door?”
Seungmin stands and lifts the full length mirror from the hooks it hangs on. He keeps the reflective side facing him, waiting for Felix to cue him.
“Minho-hyung, can you help me sit up?”
“Wooyoung said you shouldn’t,” Minho says quietly. Felix bites his lip.
“I just need to see. Just once.”
Minho smiles softly and helps guide Felix back into a seated position, so he can half-turn where he sits on the bed. “Okay, Minnie.”
Seugnmin smiles -- there’s something excited in the glimmer of his eyes -- and turns the mirror.
“What the fuck,” Felix swears.
The wings -- his wings -- seem to sprout from the juncture of his shoulder blades. They’re not enormous, but not small by any means. The left wing, which hangs over the bed, arches and trails, its longest feather tucked just at the top of his hip.
“What the fuck,” Felix says again. He raises a shaking hand to the wing, holds his breath, and touches the feather.
A full-body shiver racks up his spine, and goosebumps break out across his arms, but it’s pleasant, like when Chan shows them all a completed song for the first time. The feathers are so soft and almost warm to the touch. The feathers are the purest white he’s ever seen. Felix swears they’re glowing.
“What the fuck,” he says one final time before he has to lean back down on the bed. Seungmin puts the mirror back and moves to sit on the edge of the mattress.
“That about sums it up,” he grins.
“Hey, at least you knew about the angel business,” Minho chides jokingly. “I had to come to terms with Angel-Lix in the span of three minutes.”
“I didn’t die,” Felix whispers. Immediately, Minho and Seungmin move closer to him.
“You’re very, very alive, Bbokie,” Minho coos. He brushes a hand through Felix’s hair. “You scared the shit out of us-”
“Understatement,” Seungmin interrupts.
“-but we got you through it.”
“Technically, it wasn’t just-”
“Minnie,” Minho cuts Seungminn off. Felix starts to ask what’s going on when his back flexes, and the wings snap to either side.
“Whoa!” Felix gasps. Minho and Seungmin laugh.
“They keep doing that,” Seungmin explains. “Wooyoung says it’s totally normal, just your wings stretching.”
Felix’s stomach flips, and the wings twitch again.
“He wanted to stay, but he was worried that his absence would attract attention,” Minho says. “He did leave us a very thorough list. The Care and Keeping of Angel Lix.”
Felix grins at the piece of paper Minho brandishes. Sure enough, the title is just that.
“God, it’s good to see you smile again,” Minho whispers, eyes glassy.
“I feel so different,” Felix muses. He closes his eyes. The caffeinated exhaustion is long gone, as is the princkling pain that he’d grown so accustomed to. Even better, the sense of dread that had accompanied him for weeks feels distant. “I feel okay.”
“You look miles better than you did this morning,” Seungmin says. Then, because he can’t help himself, he adds: “Still look like an idiot, though.”
“Just you wait till I can move my wings,” Felix threatens. “I will not hesitate to bitch slap you, Minnie.”
Seungmin just grins. “I missed you.”
Felix smiles, and his vision blurs. The tears this time, though, feel good; they feel happy. Minho leans across the bed and wraps his arm across Felix’s back.
“Once you’re healed up, I’ll properly cuddle you,” Minho promises. “I bet Minnie will too.”
“Come here, Minnie,” Felix murmurs. A moment later, he feels a weight on the other side of the mattress, and then Seungmin’s arms wrapping beneath Felix’s wings with such tenderness that the feathers seem to shiver.
He doesn’t know how long they lay there while the sunrise bleeds into morning.
“What happened, you guys?” Felix finally asks. Minho tenses.
“Do you remember anything?”
Felix closes his eyes. He remembers the bathroom and the fear, remembers the pain and Seungmin carrying him to his bed; remembers Minho anxiously at his bedside while Wooyoung explains what’s happening. And then-
The memories end abruptly, like Felix’s mind is shutting things off for him
“Not right now,” Felix admits, “but I’m a little scared to try.”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Seungmin says. “I don’t know if you want to remember.”
“Help me sit up again?” Felix asks.
“Just a little,” Minho tsks. The settle on pushing several pillows beneath Felix’s chest so that he can look at them more easily while still keeping the pressure off of his wings and back.
“Tell me,” Felix says. “I need to know.”
Seungmin shrugs at Minho, who sighs. “Okay, Lix-ah.”
Felix listens with increasing horror as Seungmin recounts finding him in the bathroom and calling Minho. Felix vaguely recalls that, though the memories are hazy amidst the more cloying memory of pain. His horror only grows when Minho stiffly explains Wooyoung’s arrival and the bloody process of freeing his wings. Worse than the story, though, is the expressions that slowly but surely erase Minho and Seungmin’s soft smiles, the way that Seungmin curls in on himself a bit and Minho’s knuckles go white where he’s clasping them in his lap.
When Minho tells him that he went unresponsive not just once, but twice, he can’t help but reach a hand to his hyung, who takes it eagerly.
“It’s my fault,” Felix says. “Wooyoung stopped by a few days ago and told me that I was too far into my maturation. He wanted me to get out of Seoul, but I couldn't stand the thought of being away from you. He … he told me I could die, I guess I just didn’t believe him?”
Felix doesn’t think it would be smart to tell them that the idea of dying was preferable to the idea of being apart from his members.
Seungmin shifts to face Felix and squeezes his cheeks between his hands, smile soft
“You,” he says, “are a fucking idiot.”
“Aish!” Minho swats him on the back of the head. “Be nice to him!”
“I’ll be nice to him when he starts to get it through that thick, thick skull that we’ll all be very, very upset if he continues getting himself into physical danger!”
Minho shrugs and Felix fake pouts.
“I didn’t die, though,” Felix says.
“You almost died twice,” Minho says. “I … I thought you were dead the second time.”
Felix opens his mouth to ask how they saved him when his wings twitch and cramp. Seungmin raises a brow “I thought you getting your wings would help with the guilt-induced pain.”
“It’s definitely not nearly as bad as before,” Felix says. “At least I didn’t imagine you all dying this time.”
Minho whips towards him. “What?”
“Nevermind, forget I said anything-”
“Yongbok, you and I are going to have a long conversation about honesty-”
“Speaking of honesty,” Felix cuts his hyung off, “what did you tell the others?”
Seungmin and Minho look at each other with wide eyes. Felix can tell they’re having some unspoken conversation and sighs loudly, his nerves spiking. “Just tell me, please. I know they … they must all think I’m a monster.”
Hyunjin most of all.
“We haven’t really spoken with them a ton,” Seungmin murmurs, fiddling with his bracelet. He looks guilty.
“They may or may not think we caught Mono from you and are all quarantining together,” Minho says lightly.
“And they may or may not think that, uh, you had a bad reaction to some antibiotics,” Seungmin adds. Minho hisses at him; clearly they were going to keep that from Felix.
“What?” Felix gasps. Minho rolls his eyes at Seungmin.
“Told you he wouldn’t like that.”
“It’s a good lie!” Seungmin says.
“They’re mad at me because all I’ve done is lie to them for a month!” Felix says. He wants to sit up, finding that speaking while laying down makes it difficult to emphasize things properly.
“You really need to figure out the difference between ‘mad at you’ and ‘worried to death about you’,” Seungmin huffs. Felix narrows his eyes, and Minho cuts him off before Felix can snap back.
“Bbokie, Minnie and I needed an excuse to stay with you while you recover. You already told the members you were sick, so a round of antibiotics makes sense. I looked it up, people can have crazy reactions to antibiotics! It would explain, well…”
“My craziness?” Felix supplies, unamused. They both nod. “Guys, I’ve been acting ‘crazy’ for weeks. My supposed antibiotics wouldn’t have started until a week ago!”
“We had to come up with something!” Seungmin groans. “Hyunjin was literally about to break down the door.”
Felix’s wings flutter again the second Seungmin says Hyunjin’s name. Felix cranes his neck and watches the appendages like they’re living things. Seungmin and Minho also stare at the wings, but cheshire grins melt across their faces.
“Oh my God,” Seungmin laughs. “Do your wings have a crush on Hyunjin too?”
“Stop!” Felix moans and shoves his face into the pillow. Maybe he can suffocate himself.
“Aw, Bbokie!” Minho coos mockingly, pinching his cheek. Seungmin, meanwhile, leans towards Felix’s back.
“Hyunjin!” he says. The wings flutter gain. “Hyunjin! Hyunjin!”
“Oh my God you’re annoying!” Felix screams against the pillow as his wings betray, fluttering again and again at the sound of Hyunjin’s name. His back twinges -- not the same burning pain he’d never quite grown accustomed too, but a familiar ache, like new muscles being formed.
“You’re going to hurt him,” Minho shoves Seungmin.
“Hyung, you’re laughing,” Felix accuses.
“I mean, it’s pretty funny. You’ve spent years denying your crush and now you’ve got a bunch of feathers giving you away.”
“My wings are not just a bunch of feathers!” Felix scoffs in mock insult. Minho smiles indulgently.
“Of course they’re not. There the prettiest wings I’ve ever seen.”
And when the feathers bristle with joy to match Felix’s blush, both Minho and Seungmin coo.
They spend the rest of the day watching movies and eating takeout, and though the angle of both tasks is made difficult by Felix’s prone position, they manage. Felix’s nausea is long gone now that he’s matured, and he nearly chokes stuffing his face with tteokbokki. Minho and Seungmin do their best to squeeze onto the bed on either of him, his wings draped across their bodies.
Seungmin nods off somewhere during their How To Train Your Dragon marathon. Felix feels his eyes getting heavy too, but he turns his head to lean it against Minho’s chest.
“Do you think they’ll all forgive me?” he whispers.
Minho doesn’t need to ask who the ‘they’ in question is. He just wraps an arm around Felix as best he can.
“I was upset with you, yeah? Worried that you weren’t taking of yourself, worried that you were obviously hiding something.”
Felix presses his face against Minho’s shirt, but his wings twitch with guilt.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell you; I could barely believe it myself.”
“I get that now,” Minho promises. “I’m not angry anymore. I was never angry, just upset and frustrated. But now? Bbokie, I don’t know if there’s a lot of right or wrong in an impossible situation.”
“I can’t tell them though,” Felix says. “I mean, I’m so grateful that you and Minnie were here for me. I literally would have died without you. But I can’t stop thinking -- what if someone suspects me and they try to get to me through you because you know something?”
“Let them try,” Minho chuckles. “You think there’s anything I wouldn’t do for you?”
“Swim.”
“Brat.”
Their quiet giggles meld with the distant sound of the city outside.
“You think I should tell them?”
“Honestly?” Minho ponders. “Yes. I think you’re really bad at keeping secrets. I think you don’t like it when people question you with their worry. The others, they’re going to know something’s up if you have to hide a literal, physical part of yourself from them.”
“What if,” Felix swallows, “they think I’m a freak.”
Minho snorts and Felix shoots him a hurt look. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I just think you have no idea what any of those boys would do to make you smile.”
Felix isn’t entirely convinced. It’s dangerous to invovle the others; he hasn’t entirely begun conceptualizing the risks that now exist due to him being a full fledged angel, let alone how a pair of wings fit into the idol lifestyle. He doesn’t know how to go about apologizng to the others, doesn’t know how he managed to survive the past twenty-four hours at all.
“Stop thinking so hard,” Minho flicks him gently on the forehead. “You should sleep. Rest up while you can. Tomorrow we get to start tackling Wooyoung’s list of agnel chores. We can add worrying to the list too.”
“Okay, Hyung,” Felix murmurs, snuggling into the bed. Minho gently pets one of the feathers, nervous at first, but when Felix practically start purring, he keeps going.
“Miss you so much, hyung,” Felix says quietly. “All of you.”
“We missed you too, Bbokie. You have no idea.”