baby, you're my angel | chan/felix; stray kids

Chapter 3 [e!]

"Tell me I look good," Felix demands, twisting in front of his mirror.

"You're ugly," Hyunjin replies immediately without even looking up.

Felix ignores him. "I'm not sure about the jeans."

"Yeah, I'm not either," Jisung supplies, actually helpful for once. "Skinny jeans aren't really in style anymore. What about those black cargo pants you have?"

"They don't make my ass look as good," Felix says.

"You'll look cool, though," Jisung says. "And you'll be more comfortable."

"That's true." Felix unbuttons his jeans and peels them off his legs. "I'm glad I have an excuse to wear makeup, at least." They'll be filming a quick video with their song preview playing over it as their teaser.

"Thought you said you weren't gonna fuck him," Hyunjin comments.

"Well," Felix says, zipping up the cargo pants and stepping back to look at his outfit. "I dunno. I'm thinking about it." He's only partially joking, and his friends can tell.

"Okay, but what if he says no, and then you've ruined a good friendship and one of the best professional relationships you have?" Seungmin points out. Unfortunately, he makes a very good point.

"Don't think about it at all," Jeongin advises. "It's better if it's not premeditated."

"That applies to getting a lighter sentence for murder, not to fucking a guy who was graduating high school when you were about to go into kindergarten," Hyunjin says.

"If you do it, and it goes poorly, will you regret it?" Jisung asks.

Felix hesitates. When this first started in August, it had been a joke. Yeah, Chan is hot, but Felix wasn't going to fuck him. It would be ridiculous. He's fourteen years older than Felix, and Felix assumed that he was going to start feeling more like a big brother to him than an internet crush, and it would remain a joke.

But that's not how it went. Felix's internet crush had turned into a real life crush, which is much more dangerous. He thinks about Chan all the time now—his hands, his voice, his body—so much that it's hard for him to focus on his day-to-day. He doesn't see it fizzling out anytime soon now; it's something he'll carry with him, that wanting, tinging the time he spends with Chan a shade more melancholy than it needs to be. Sometimes, he wonders if confessing would be for the best, even if it meant he and Chan would never talk again. Just so he could be done with it.

"I don't know," Felix answers honestly, patting bb cream into his skin.

"If you guys weren't in the public eye, I wouldn't be so concerned," Seungmin says softly. As much as they tease him, Felix knows his friends are just looking out for him. "But you know that your fallout would be witnessed by thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people. And the internet is a scary place. People would find old videos, comb over footage, jump to tell your story for you before you even had the chance to open your mouth. You know how TikTok makes headlines so fast. How would you feel if your parents found out because they saw your pictures on the news?"

It's sobering. "Yeah," Felix says hollowly. "You're probably right." He blends out his eyeshadow, then reaches for eyeliner. "I just like him a lot, you know?"

"Well, sure," Hyunjin says. "We all have inappropriate crushes all the time. Remember sophomore year when I was obsessed with my history professor?" Soft laughter scatters across the room. "But I never did anything about it."

"Yeah," Felix repeats. But it's different with him and Chan. Chan isn't in charge of him the way a professor would be. He's a friend—just a friend who happens to be older. And they're close. You can be buddy-buddy with a professor, but it's not the same.