Chapter Text
Seungmin drops his backpack at the foot of his bed and collapses on top of the comforter without removing his hoodie. Today was long and exhausting, just like most other days have been since they debuted. He knew he was signing up for this and it helps in a way that he knows the others are just as tired as him, all for one and one for all, and so on…but he’s pretty sure he’s done moving for the day. Forget food, he can’t be bothered.
Everyone except Chan seemed to be home by the time he got back today, based on a quick scan of the living room and wayward glance into Hyunjin and Minho’s room. Living together with everyone has been both better and worse than expected really. It’s hard to be living with so many other boys because of conflicting ideas about cleanliness, conflicting routines, but mostly conflict over the fact that there’s only two bathrooms. They do make an effort to make it liveable despite the space and occasional arguments over picking up, doing the dishes, or generally annoying one another. Things are fun too though, Seungmin has taken to standing in the bathroom while one of the others is showering so that when they open their eyes he’s suddenly standing there. Good stuff. The first time he did it to Hyunjin, Hyunjin had startled so bad he knocked three shampoo bottles over and then started laughing so hard he had to squat down like a little egg.
In Seungmin’s opinion one of the best things about there being so many kids though is that it’s impossible for the managers to keep up with them all the time, so sometimes he sneaks out after curfew to go on a walk alone in the quiet dark and recharge. He likes being a part of a group but he doesn’t always want to be around the group
Right now he doesn’t even have the bones to sustain the thought of a walk. There was a break after the end of day dance practice before his voice lesson so he’d stayed in the practice room working on the choreo for that hour and a half and then proceeded to have a two hour vocal lesson and then he’d spent some extra time rehearsing his parts in the song they’re recording on Friday and now it’s 10 pm and he wants to sink into this bed and become one with the blankets, his body too heavy to even consider putting in the effort to make ramen.
A soft knock knock sounds not at the door but on the wood of the bunkbed followed by a gentle hand ruffling his hair. He opens his eyes to see his roommate, Felix, standing by the bed with a worried expression that quickly turns to a smile when he sees that Seungmin isn’t in fact dead.
“Do you want some of my food?” he asks in his accented but sweet sounding Korean, “I ordered some extra because I thought you’d be coming back around this time.”
Seungmin forces his body to move enough to roll over properly, “That’s really nice of you, thanks,” he mumbles.
Felix beams, “That’s okay.”
With so many members, none of them can be expected to keep track of each other’s schedules (except maybe Chan - Seungmin’s seen his calendar, color-coded with all their activities, and it’s overwhelming), so he’s kind of touched and feels a bit better about peeling his body off the mattress and trudging into the kitchen with Felix where he can see that two bowls have already been set out hopefully. Seungmin watches as Felix takes one of the bowls and fills it carefully with the kimchi jigae he must’ve ordered. Seungmin’s favorite.
When Felix passes it to him, their fingers brush.
Seungmin looks up into Felix’s warm, brown eyes, “...thanks.”
— 3 years later —
Stray Kids is celebrating. They’re having a little party at an izakaya-style bar, wanting the night to be more casual as they cheers their win in a private room amongst just the members. Seungmin is sitting in between Felix and Minho, who is currently occupied with staring directly at Han’s mouth (Seungmin eyerolls mentally) and across from him Jeongin is raising his glass and jovially giving another little speech, which mainly consists of “Let’s drink!” and the sounds of laughter as they all appreciate their maknae, obediently clinking their glasses once again and drinking. The more lightweight members are already red around the edges, which is to say that Felix has a modelesque dusting of pink across his nose and Han Jisung looks like a tomato with facial features. Not that it seems to detract anything for Lee Minho. Wow the power of romance.
“Hey, Seungmin!” Hyunjin calls across the table, “I dare you to eat that lemon.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Eat it!” Changbin shouts.
Chan joins in, “Eat the lemon, Seungmin!”
“No? I don’t want to eat a lemon!” he looks between his idiots incredulously. It’s not even one of their better bits.
Minho grabs the lemon and nearly shoves it into Seungmin’s mouth but he slaps it out of his hand. Luckily Minho’s pretty tipsy himself or that catlike paw would’ve been too fast to stop, and recompense may have followed instead of giddy laughter.
There’s a chorus of “Aww” and “Come on, Seungmin!” as Felix laughs next to him, a wheezing thing. Seungmin looks over, he’s got tears in his eyes and the sight is enough to make Seungmin laugh too despite still thinking it’s a stupid joke.
The door slides open as food arrives and everyone else is distracted again easily enough as they all scramble politely to make space on the table, but there are enough hands without the two of theirs. Felix sees Seungmin’s gaze and grins impossibly bigger, his eyes squinting into thin crescents with chubby aegyo sal underneath each which Seungmin kind of wants to poke. Gently.
“Come on, Seungmin,” he teases, his voice too cute for anyone to be mad at him, making little grabby hands on Seungmin’s shoulder which tickle him through the fabric of his T-shirt.
“Okay, you’ve convinced me. But I’ll do it when you look away.”
Felix laughs again, easily made happy by Seungmin’s light joke, and hugs his arm, resting his head on Seungmin’s shoulder. Seungmin pats the top of his head, making sure not to press into his wavy hairband too hard.
“Can I try your beer?” Felix asks after a moment.
He passes it over as he answers, “Sure, you won’t like it.”
Felix lifts his head enough to take a ginger sip and his face contorts. He passes it back. Seungmin laughs.
“Bleghhh.”
“I told you,” Seungmin passes him some water to wash down the taste.
After clearing his mouth of the bitter taste, Felix looks up with bright eyes, “Do you want to try mine?”
“Okay.”
He passes it to Seungmin and then waits expectantly, still clinging onto his arm as he looks up at him. Seungmin swallows.
“It’s…fine. I don’t love tequila.”
“Aahh, you don’t get it.”
“It’s true, I don’t.”
Felix settles back onto his shoulder and Seungmin watches the members of 3RACHA and Hyunjin start playing rock-paper-scissors over a bet he missed. Something to do with their dorm when they get back he thinks. Han is reaching his max capacity foolishness so he’s sure to zonk out soon. Between him and Changbin right now it’s a miracle they haven’t all popped an eardrum. Chan’s having a great time laughing at the two of them though, and Seungmin ends up grinning too as he watches Han pantomime falling down a set of stairs while Changbin performs foley.
He almost doesn’t notice Felix shifting against him. There’s a light tickle on his neck and the soft sound of breath.
A low voice speaks, too close to his ear, “You smell nice.”
“...thanks.”
He feels the tip of Felix’s nose trace the line of muscle along his neck as he noses back and forth, head turned sideways. Seungmin focuses on breathing normally. In. Out. In.
“Really nice,” comes Felix’s voice again, resonant in the curve of his shoulder.
Seungmin’s too focused on breathing to respond. He nods.
A small hand touches Seungmin’s chest, too tactile, too sensitive through the thin, worn, fabric. It begins to slide lower, towards his solar plexus.
Seungmin catches Felix’s wrist.
“You haven’t had any of the food, there’s kimchi pajeon.”
“Mm.”
It takes him a moment, but Felix sits up without complaint and Seungmin lets go of his wrist.
Felix laughs, looking across the table at Chan and Changbin, who have just said something, “No, because you two are gonna have to carry him home!”
Seungmin picks up his water glass and avoids the smudge of Felix’s lip balm when he drinks.
— 3 more years later —
“No!!!” Felix yells as he loses yet another match to Seungmin, though the smile never leaves his face, it only twists in bitter defeat.
“Just accept it,” Seungmin gloats with an evil cackle, “I am the Mario Kart champion.”
Felix can’t accept the truth, it seems, “One more, one more.”
“Okay, you pick the Cup,” Seungmin shifts his body closer to Felix’s and then away again as he removes a pillow from behind his back and stashes it on his lap to rest his controller. He flaps his hands absently as his eyes wander around the room, giving them a break from the screen.
Jeongin’s voice sounds from behind them, “I thought you guys said you were gonna be done like an hour and a half ago.”
Felix looks up as the countdown begins, “Oh, you’re back! I didn’t even hear the door.”
“Can you really afford to be looking away, Felix?” Seungmin taunts.
“Oh, fuck,” his head whips back around.
“Channie-hyung says hi, by the way.”
“Hi Chan.”
“Hi Chan.”
“He also says he thinks one of you left your water bottle in the practice room.”
“It’s Felix’s, tell him I’ll grab it when I come in to record.”
“Tell him yourself, I’m not your messenger.”
“You just told us his message.”
“I’m not your messenger.”
“Aahh!!!” Felix screams as Seungmin flies by him, depositing a blue shell in his path.
Seungmin continues to press, “Seems like a double standard, you’ve got your phone in your hand right now, don’t you? You’re probably texting Chan about something else.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Jeongin says, texting as he sits on the armrest.
Felix’s entire body tilts as he steers with an unintelligible noise and then laughs raucously when ink splotches Seungmin’s screen.
“Get wrecked, boy!”
“You know only people at the back pick up ink, right?”
Felix bonks his full body into Seungmin’s in retaliation and then swears loudly as he swerves off path. Seungmin snickers.
Jeongin flips his phone face down on his lap and reaches for the honey-chili Doritos on the table, a forbidden snack which Minho bought and proceeded to only encourage the others to eat, “He said it’s in his studio, so that’s fine.”
Seungmin nods, laser-focused on the screen as they near the end of the race, “Mm.” he swoops through the finish line, and quietly pumps a fist, “Yesss.”
Felix follows through a moment later, “Ahhh,” he slumps in defeat. A moment later he pops up brightly again, ever their sunshine, “I was close though!”
“Don’t miss your call time,” Jeongin takes a Dorito for the road and then walks off to isolate himself in his room for the foreseeable future.
The new choreo was completely doable to learn, but it’s hard to perfect. Seungmin watches Minho again, trying to grasp the ways in which his body moves to make it look as good as it does.
“Bum, buh dum, bum bum buhh,” Minho emphasizes the articulations as he breaks them down for the class. “Toss. Sharp, fluid, sharp. Arm. Head.”
Behind him Hyunjin inputs-outputs, even putting some of his own sauce on it, and to his side, Felix nails the footwork with ease but does infinite repetitions in the mirror to bring his upper body up to speed.
“Okay. I’ll watch this time,” Minho steps to the back of the room to press play on the music and keep an eye in the mirror.
Their synchronization is a little off as they run through it, some of the smaller movements throwing them off, but no one makes any glaring errors. At least from what Seungmin sees. After it’s over, Minho moves to the front, compliments them, and then gives each of them something to work on, having seen several things Seungmin didn’t notice. He’s right about them all though. The members who spend most of their independent time working on dance grasp what Minho gave them quickly and he can see exactly what he meant.
It’s a little less natural for him, being vocalracha and all he spends a lot of his time and energy on singing, but dancing - while important - is a secondary priority. He moves through the steps, but with the speed it’s like his feet are mumbling. He sighs and looks off to the side, shaking his head a little. Next to him, Hyunjin is wiping his sweat off the floor with paper towels.
Felix taps him, “If you lift your toes inside your shoe whilst snapping your heel down it’ll be easier to make it sharp even though you can’t see your toes.”
He looks at Felix’s feet to watch him lift and lower his heel, assessing the difference he’s demonstrating, and then tries it himself.
“That is better,” he says through pursed lips of concentration.
Felix rests his hands on Seungmin’s shoulders for a brief moment and he realises they’d picked up tensely as he stared at his feet. He drops them and receives a few squeezes as a reward, though he suspects he would’ve gotten those anyway.
“Chin up, bro,” Felix says.
Seungmin obeys, taking a still tense breath and then forcing himself to breathe properly. He tries it again.
“Yeah, that’s it!”
“Looks good,” Minho adds, glancing over from where he’s helping Jeongin. “That’s much cleaner.”
He exhales and tries it again. There it is, “Feels good,” he says under his breath.
Felix gives him a friendly tap on the arm with the back of his hand and then returns to his own practice, listening carefully to Hyunjin’s suggestions as he provides some extra feedback.
Seungmin looks over, watching him. He makes it look fun. Even with his little worried-looking concentration face, it looks fun the way he dances. He catches Felix’s eye in the mirror and his eyes squint as a smile blooms on his face. Sunshine.
Seungmin winks with his mouth open and Felix laughs, swiping a pretend-bashful hand through the air. When Seungmin looks in the mirror he sees the smile on his own face and presses his lips together. He continues to practice, patient about his progress. Patient as always.