Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

So. Quarantine.

Trix has only been in China for a few months when the news hits. He's got all his paperwork—with what he understands to be alarming speed and efficiency—and all his stuff that isn't in storage in his brother's loft, and a plan, and a social media manager, and a personal assistant. He's not totally sure he needed those last two, but when it's about his work, Zhang Yixing has this way of making things happen. He's not organised in and of himself—left to his own devices his hotel rooms tend to the lightly messy and he’d put off admin stuff to make music—but he makes sure organisation happens.

One thing they both forgot to organise is a house for Trix. It made sense at the time! Yixing has been mostly on tour, and Trix has been on the road with him: if he had a house, Trix isn't even sure when he'd be staying in it for long enough to make it worthwhile.

This does mean he has nowhere to quarantine. The announcement hasn't actually been made yet, but everyone knows it will be in the next day or two, or so the staff are saying. Trix’s mandarin isn’t up to watching the news, and in any case there are people who are paid to keep far more on top of current events than Trix would be if his mandarin was flawless.

“I think you should come to mine,” is Yixing’s proposed solution. It's his way: he'll tell you exactly what he thinks about a problem and what you should do about it, no messing around, if he feels like it’s remotely his business. Trix still isn't sure if it's a language thing—is he more diplomatic in Chinese? Does he speak more subtly, or does he still sound a little too awkward and a little too direct for the kind of polished politeness most idols perform? That's at least a third of Trix's motivation to keep learning.

Apart from anything else, Yixing is right. Nomatter how potentially awkward it will be to have an alpha and an omega stuck in the same house for an unknown amount of time, it's not as if there are better options. Besides, the house is probably quite big: Yixing is almost ludicrously rich, and though he doesn't buy a bunch of the weird shit rich guys usually buy—as far as Trix knows, which isn't very far—everything he does buy is casually expensive. He pays well, too, not incidentally.

Trix maybe feels a bit weird about that: he's getting an entire salary, not just money for his classes, and though he has to go where Yixing goes to teach him, he's ended up in an awkward spot where he's effectively being paid to be one of his staff, not just a freelancer dipping in and out, but he doesn't actually have anything he’s contractually obligated to do other than the classes. So they just sortof… hang out. Trix tries to be useful, makes sure he eats (important for developing new muscles), sleeps (same, if even more difficult), and speaks to him in Korean, which seems to help with something. With the general air of melancholy, with the way he rarely seems happy even if he often seems enthused. Sometimes, Yixing will talk to Trix when he won't talk to anyone else. Trix can't quite escape the feeling that he was flown in from Korea to be a friend.

“Sure, okay,” he says to Yixing, instead of any of that. “I'll pack.”

In response he gets one of those smiles that's like the first peek of sunlight and blue through a dark grey sky. It's startling, every time. Trix doesn't think he's ever going to get used to those.

Oh yeah, and that's the other problem with quarantining with Zhang Yixing. Not just that he's hot—Trix is a dance teacher, he's met hot people—but he just makes you feel like you can't look away, even if you're not standing close enough to smell him. Well, Trix is paid to look at him with a critic's eye, so he does that: every time his eyes wander to Yixing's hips he assesses his core strength and lower back posture; every time he finds himself looking at his collarbones he tries to remember if Yixing has eaten enough lately, and so on. It's working.

It'd be working a lot better if Yixing had any idea how to cohabit with people. Trix would swear Yixing has cohabited with people before, but he's being so goddamn careful with his scent, which makes no sense. It's Yixing's house! Everything is going to smell of him when they've been here a while! And also of Trix, temporarily, which there’s nothing he can do about so he’s not trying. The trick is to lean into that, tell your nose and brain in no uncertain terms that the omega you're living with is your college roommate or your cousin or something.

So Trix cooks weird-smelling food, leaves his smelly trainers out after he's been doing callisthenics in the garden, that sort of thing. He half-drags Yixing to shared meals, clasps his hand and goes for a one-shoulder bro hug when they're both a little gross and sweaty after another ridiculously long dance practise, and leaves his towel on the back of the bannister. You know: all the things people do to get used to each other's smell, including the grosser parts.

Yixing reciprocates by showering daily, twice if they practise twice, not leaving any of his used clothes or towels or shoes anywhere, keeping his scent in, and carefully applying deodorant. It's not how you do platonic pack-bonding even a little bit. It's maybe driving Trix a little insane? He knows what Yixing smells like, but because he can't smell him very strongly most of the time,  he just wants to lean in close, put his face against Yixing's neck and—

"Bro," Yixing says, squeezing his shoulder. "Your pan's boiling over."

"Right! Sorry. Thanks, I mean." Trix rubs his face, because giving himself a slap would invite more questions. At least he hadn't added the noodles yet.

Despite all of this, it’s…nice. Trix feels a bit guilty for having a nice time in a global pandemic, but he’s living in a fancy house, having fun with tiktok videos, running dance video classes—those are really popular right now since people want to exercise at home, and honestly he’s not sure why he wasn’t doing those before—and doing a ton of Krump with Yixing, who’s insanely, absurdly talented. Actually, phrasing it like ‘talented’ almost seems like an insult, even though it’s probably true, because the main reason he’s so good after so short a time is that he’s been working his goddamn tail off. Sometimes they dance for 6 whole hours a day; they’re eating about four people’s worth of food right now; and Trix would swear he’s actually gaining muscle. Between all of that, Yixing is writing music at all hours—Trix has earplugs and sleeps like the actual dead, so that’s fine—and having a ton of the sorts of planning meetings he’d apparently been putting off. Talking to his old friends more, seems like, if the amount of non-Trix-directed Korean he’s hearing is an indicator.

Trix manages to make his noodles, brings everything to the kitchen table where Yixing is peering at his macbook, and tells himself very firmly that he’s just helping a bro out. “I’m just doing my job” stopped feeling like a remotely serious rebuttal, oh, about when he moved in with his technically-employer. The deep satisfaction when Yixing begins shovelling pork slices into his mouth, and actually takes off his headphones, is definitely just being pleased his cooking is appreciated.

Anyway. 

It’s fine: this is a temporary situation. Even if he gets a bit Weird about it, the quarantine will end eventually, Trix will move out, and an accident of biology and bad timing will work itself out. Trix will date—especially if he works harder at his Chinese. Date women for a while, maybe, just so he can very definitively avoid pretty male omegas with great shoulders. He’s a goddamn adult and just because he’s an alpha doesn’t mean he walks around thinking with his knot. Not even if his friend is just his type, an amazing dancer, and in desperate need of care and feeding. Care and feeding like ‘cheerfully promising to wake Yixing up at a reasonable time, then equally cheerfully ignoring this and gently easing him out of bed at midday or so with the smells of bacon and coffee’. Yixing has had something like enough sleep every night this week, or at least been in bed for something like enough hours. This, Trix is aware, is a huge victory and he deserves to feel proud of it.

The next day doesn’t feel victorious, though, because Yixing is strangely off. Trix should have known something was wrong when Yixing got out of bed, ate breakfast, didn’t drink his coffee, and then curled up on the couch with his laptop for most of the afternoon while Trix did exercise and chores and taught two classes. He should really have known something was wrong when Yixing didn’t mention when they were going to dance, and instead asked softly if Trix would like to watch something, maybe. So Trix joined him on the couch and they put on some reality show. It’s playing softly in the background; Trix is half-following it, mostly by context cues.

For most of the day Trix has been relieved: for the first time in 2 weeks, Zhang Yixing is spending a significant portion of time relaxing! He's even relieved about the scent thing, because while Yixing has skipped a shower, he doesn't smell ungodly amazing or anything, he just smells like a person, and he's there, nearby and detectable but not too close, and Trix is finally in the right spot to do the platonic pack bonding thing.

He leans, very very carefully, so the back of his hand rests against the outside of Yixing's knee. “You're really warm,” he finds himself saying.

Yixing frowns, and replies in Chinese, “I feel cold.”

Trix frowns. Sniffs the air as surreptitiously as he can. There's something… off about it. Some strange, sour note to Yixing's smell. “Are you sick?” He tries Chinese, because the show is in Chinese and so seems to be Yixing's brain.

Yixing frowns at him. “I'm fine,” he says. If there's one phrase in Chinese Trix knows, it's that one. Yixing uses it all the goddamn time, but to be fair, so does everyone else. It means about five different things: I'm fine, it's fine, don't worry, nothing's wrong, it's not a big deal. About half the time, it's a lie. A useful lie, obviously, but of all the Chinese he's learned so far, it's his least favourite. Maybe it's his least favourite because Yixing says it so much, and because it's really the only lie he ever tells.

He's not fine now either: he's feverish, and shivering, and Trix is just about to say something when he bolts upright, runs to the downstairs bathroom, and throws up loudly.

Oh shit, he really is sick. Trix panics for about 30 seconds about coronavirus, but no, neither of them have seen another person in weeks, other than the food deliveries. Food poisoning? But they've eaten the same food, mostly, so if it was that Trix would be sick too.

Okay. Priorities. Trix heads over to the bathroom and listens to see if there's still throwing up happening. Apparently not. “Are you okay?” He calls through the door, pointlessly.

“I'm fine,” Yixing replies, equally pointless. “I'm just gonna stay here for a bit.”

So not only not fine, but also probably going to throw up again soon. There’s a small, feral corner of Trix's mind that strongly suggests forcing the door open so he can at least see Yixing and clean his face with a cool washcloth, that sort of thing, but he's not Yixing's goddamn mother, so he pilots his legs back to the sofa. Pauses the show. Watches a few bilibili videos, then there's the sound of throwing up again.

He walks back to the bathroom. There's no way at all he can relax like this. “I'm gonna call your manager, okay?” Trix says through the door.

The reply is too muffled to hear.

So he opens his phone for the contacts he's looking for. Most of Yixing's staff speak at least passable Korean, since he has so many connections there, which has been a relief for Trix multiple times. He doesn't think he could explain this via his broken Chinese and gestures.

“It's Trix,” he says as soon as the line connects. “Yixing's sick.”

His manager breathes audibly. “What with? Is he coughing? Have you boys been out anywhere? Are you sick too?”

Her Korean is good: fast and fluent, if heavily accented and grammatically a bit awkward. “It seems like food poisoning, no cough, we've not seen a soul, and I'm fine so far,” he answers as calmly as he can. “I'd pass you over to him but he's still in the bathroom.”

“Okay,” she replies, sounding much less like she's about to put the whole team on high alert. “I'm going to put you through to his doctor, okay? She'll sort out anything else that needs doing.”

Trix nods, then makes an affirmative noise when he remembers that doesn't work on the phone. Half of his brain is still listening out for Yixing making sounds in the bathroom.

The doctor sounds younger than Yixing's manager, and much more tired. They talk about tests—apparently those are in short supply, so unless anyone starts coughing it's probably best not to. That makes sense. Then she asks about symptoms.

“Fever, throwing up, and like… general tiredness. I've seen him tired before, but I've never seen him just flake out all day like this,” Trix reports, wandering a bit away from the bathroom. Something here feels strange, like an invasion of privacy. Should he be doing this? But Yixing isn't going to, clearly, and that would be worse.

The doctor sighs a deep, long-suffering sigh. “Well, that sounds like a stress and exhaustion rebound reaction,” she says. “It can happen, after extended periods of overwork, and honestly he's overdue. The only thing that surprises me is how long it's taken for this to happen. I thought he'd get sick years ago.”

Trix pauses. He knows Yixing's schedule. He'd thought that was—a promotional period, or something. When was the last time he took a holiday? “Okay,” he says. “So just, food and rest? Once he can keep food down?”

“If you can get him to rest, yeah,” she says. “Please get him to take his temperature when you can and send me the results, and let me know if there are any new symptoms.”

Well. That seems to be that. Mechanically, Trix wanders into the kitchen and starts throwing together some jook and some chicken broth. He's been sorting out dinners, so far—nothing complicated, just whatever there is, because it's not as if they can order in. But if Yixing is sick then he needs comfort food, not just jazzed-up ramen and bacon sandwiches and tomato and egg stir fry. Trix is going to have to call his brother, but only once Yixing’s out of the bathroom. That’s a bit of a weird thing to wait for, but it just—he doesn’t want to be on the phone anymore until Yixing has stopped throwing up. He doesn’t even have his headphones in or music playing as he washes up the dishes.  

With the food situation vaguely sorted, he knocks on the bathroom door again. “You gonna stay in there all evening?”

Yixing makes a disconsolate noise. “I'm gross,” he says. “Might throw up again.”

Trix considers this. There's a bucket under the kitchen sink, and Yixing can’t possibly be comfortable on the bathroom floor, and the doctor said he needs rest. “Can I come in?”

“Why?”

Oh my god. Trix improvises: “I've lost my toothbrush, I think it's in there.”

The door unlocks a moment later. Trix cautiously opens it. Yixing is curled up in a shivering ball next to the toilet. His hair is damp and his face is unnaturally flushed.

Trix grabs a washcloth and wets it with cool water, then kneels down next to Yixing to press against his face. Yixing tries to wave him off. “What if I'm contagious?”

“If you're contagious,” Trix points out reasonably, “then either I've already got it, or it's one if the ones you can only get via, like, kissing or whatever, and that's definitely not happening while you're throwing up.”

There's an awkward pause. Trix decides to pretend there was nothing weird whatsoever about what he just said. He refocuses his attention on cleaning warm sweat off Yixing's face, then rinses out the washcloth and presses it to his fever-hot forehead.

“I'm gross,” Yixing repeats.

“Everyone's gross when they're sick,” Trix says. “Come back to the couch, that can't be good for your back.”

Yixing's expression is one Trix would call a pout if he saw it on a kid. “I'll throw up again,” he says, as if this is a threat.

Trix shrugs. “I'll fetch a bucket. Come on, get up, the doctor said I gotta take your temperature anyway.”

There's some more grousing, but Trix does manage to lever Yixing upwards, plonk him on the couch under the blanket—being cold probably isn't good for a fever either—and go and fetch some warm water and the thermometer and bucket. Trix doesn't exactly want to deal with vomit, but hey, at least dealing with sick Yixing who smells distinctly unwell and faintly of sweat and stomach acid is the first bone Yixing has thrown Trix's attempts to pull them into the bro zone. He'd rather Yixing weren't sick, but he'll find the silver linings where he can. Maybe now Yixing has been gross in front of Trix he'll start leaving his socks lying around, or wandering about for a while in the morning before he's showered and brushed his teeth, and Trix can properly relax about everything.

When he gets back, Yixing has burrowed into a ball in the blanket that was hanging over the back of the couch, and found another, bigger blanket from somewhere. Trix hands him the thermos of warm water, takes his temperature—38.1—and sits down next to the pile of blankets and limbs that is Yixing. Two large eyes peer up at him over the top of a blanket. It's stupidly adorable: Trix wonders if he learned that from his cats. He does not give into his impulse to reach over and pet Yixing's unruly hair. Even though he looks as if he might like to be petted, which is a thought Trix has had more than zero times before.

One of the cats will wander in, probably. Trix will pet the cat, like a normal person. “Should I put it back on?” Trix tries, waving the remote.

A very small nod.

“Okay,” Trix says to no one in particular, and presses play.

Over the next half hour, Trix discovers that sick Yixing more or less is a cat. Having realised that Trix isn't deeply repulsed by the sight of his friend looking a bit sweaty and sick, Yixing very slowly edges his way into Trix's personal space, and then onto his person. He seems to doze against Trix's shoulder, and makes displeased noises when Trix gets up to examine the jook and broth. It's not done, obviously, so he sorts out more hot water with a spoon of honey and a teeeny pinch of salt for Yixing, necks a cereal bar, dumps hot water onto cup noodles and brings it with him into the living room.

Where Yixing is actually asleep—properly asleep, fully passed out on the couch. Loath to wake him, Trix sits on the other couch and eats his cup noodles, then decides that there's definitely a reason why he ought to resume his previous spot on the couch next to Yixing. An important reason, or why else would it feel so essential? Oh, he should probably check Yixing's fever at least.

That makes at least some sense, so he very carefully nudges Yixing just far enough out of the way that he can climb back onto the sofa. A sleepy flop deposits Yixing's head in Trix's lap. Trix unscientifically checks his temperature with the back of his hand; Yixing nuzzles into it. He's still very warm.

However comfortable it is to have a warm person on him, the warm part is concerning, not soothing. Definitely. Well, maybe it can be both—certainly it would be soothing if he weren't also concerned. Which he is. Very concerned, and also sortof tired out now that Yixing seems more or less okay and is finally getting some rest which his body needs even more desperately than Trix had realised. He doesn't feel like putting the random reality show back on without Yixing's reactions and occasional commentary. He's just gonna… rest his eyes for a bit, then get up and do something. Laundry, maybe. Yeah.

Trix wakes a disorientingly indeterminate amount of time later to find two things: one, he's slumped over onto the sofa arm with Yixing spooning his side, and two, Yixing is shivering.

Okay. He blinks sleep and confusion out of his eyes. Fever probably higher, so he should take it again and text Dr Li. He can do that. He finds a suitable place on Yixing's upper arm and nudges it, saying, "Hey, Yixing-ah, wake up."

There's a pause in the shivering, and then Yixing's arms clamp tight around Trix's waist. It's, um—a bit hard to breathe. The arm swings have been doing their job, seems like! And Trix has woken Yixing up before—the staff do not enjoy this job and keep asking Trix to do it for some reason—so he knows that Yixing clutches tight to the covers when someone tries to get him out of bed. He's just… currently taking the place of the covers. Okay.

“You don't have to get up,” Trix says, in case this is a concern. “I just need to take your temperature.”

It takes a bit of wrangling—Yixing is still shivering and seems to be having trouble letting go of Trix enough to move—but they manage. 38.5. Trix is just putting away his phone after texting the doctor when Yixing half-falls out of bed in a staggering jog to the bathroom, where he doesn't bother closing the door before folding over the toilet to throw up in it again. Trix follows, brushing the hair back off his face and smoothing a hand over his back.

It's all liquid, because he hasn't eaten anything since the last round. Trix should clearly feed him, if it's a choice between throwing up stomach acid and throwing up something solid. Maybe he'll eat the world's blandest congee? Trix really has to call his brother for some actual recipes.

Yixing pants over the toilet. He's still shivering. Trix wonders if he could possibly keep down paracetamol.

The rest of the evening follows this same basic pattern. Trix rubs Yixing's back while he mournfully throws up everything he tries to put into his stomach, cleans him up a little, and half-carries him back to the couch where Yixing flops on him like he's a body pillow, seeming increasingly exhausted and out of it. Occasionally, Trix tries to stand up to fetch some congee or broth, and Yixing makes a sortof bereft little noise more commonly associated with cats, and goes right back to the body pillow thing when Trix returns. Trix presses buttons until something watchable shows up on TV, and taps out some lesson plans and choreography thoughts on his phone. Writes a message to his PA about his unavailability tomorrow, can she please cancel his classes. Absent-mindedly strokes down Yixing's back whenever he has a hand free.

He was definitely intending to actually go to bed, but that doesn't quite happen either: Yixing fights him every time he tries to get up, and it's lowkey gone from 'strange but cute' to 'a bit distressing'. Trix doesn't enjoy fighting Yixing off; it seems cruel, somehow, to deny him something so easy as a soft warm thing to hug while he's sick. It's a good sofa, large, and firm enough to not fuck up either of their spines too much. There's blankets and cushions. Trix has slept on people's couches before, sometimes out of necessity, and this is honestly the lap of luxury RE couches, or it would be if it didn't smell slightly of vomit.

The next morning opens to mixed reviews: on the plus side, there are cats sleeping on them, although they wander off when Trix stirs. Yixing is no longer throwing up every two hours, and he manages to brush his teeth and drink some warm water and then, very cautiously, eat a few bites of plain congee—which gives him the energy to collapse into the bath Trix runs.

On the minus side, Yixing is now clean-ish, and no longer smells of vomit, but he's still treating Trix like a personal hot water bottle. And Yixing is a reasonably tactile person anyway, Trix had thought: not one for long or close hugs, but definitely lots of hugs. Quick arm taps, no shyness about personal space, just touching other people he's close to incidentally and in passing. But Trix has never once felt like he was being hit on, or anyone else was for that matter. He's never been bothered that they're alpha and omega, that Yixing is objectively very attractive: he had expected the same to be true in quarantine, with a few more smelly socks and morning breath conversations over the coffee machine.

But apparently, Sick Yixing is a different creature. Sick Yixing wants to be held. He crawls into Trix's lap constantly. He pulls Trix's arm around him on the sofa. And Trix just really, really wishes his attempts at establishing platonic pack bonds had taken a little better. His dumb animal alpha brain is having all sorts of thoughts, and although most of them are in a care-and-feeding direction, it's not really a bro care-and-feeding vibe. Trix would look after a bunch of his friends in this way, but, uh. Only maybe his oldest and most platonic single omega friends, especially if they happened to be really hot and smell amazing—which Yixing is beginning to, now he's stopped throwing up and has bathed. That's a thought Trix could have really done without, thanks.

So there's only so much of Yixing on top of him in a fluffy bathrobe, hair still damp, that Trix can take without his thoughts going in entirely the wrong direction. "I'm gonna go make some food," He says, trying to nudge Yixing's shoulder for attention and not just stroke it.

“Okay,” Yixing says, but he in no way moves himself off Trix's lap in a way that would make this possible.

It occurs to him that maybe Yixing is nesting a bit: is that normal for sick omegas? Trix has dated an omega but she was one of the terrifyingly well-managed ones, two planned heats a year in a big nest with some friends and an entire box of toys. Trix had shrugged and waved her off, wishing her a good time. “It's nothing personal” she'd said. “I just don't want to risk a bond, you know?”

In retrospect, it makes sense that they broke up, if she couldn't trust him to keep his teeth to himself when he knew she didn't want them.

And that's his closest contact with an omega, though he's heard plenty of his friends complain. He's fairly sure nesting while sick is a thing. This gives him an idea: he strips off his hoodie, balls it up, and places it between Yixing's arms.

Yixing buries his face in it happily. Huh. Well, if Trix's smell is homey and comforting to Yixing, then maybe he hasn't messed up horribly! He eases himself off the sofa from underneath Yixing, a process which involves no fighting at all, thank all the gods.

Yixing makes a sleepy noise. He's been dozing most of the morning, which is honestly good as far as Trix can tell. Trix pads quietly into the kitchen, then props up his phone to video call his brother.

“Taehyun-hyung,” his brother greets him cheerfully.

“Hi, Taeminnie,” he says. Taemin is, apparently, doing great: big smile, bright eyes, small laundry horse with his fiancée's underwear drying on it in the background. Trix supposes being quarantined in your big new house with your gorgeous fiance is probably not the worst quarantine experience. “I need mom's doenjang-jjigae recipe.”

Taemin snorts. “Aren't you quarantined in China? Who're you trying to impress, bro, and why haven't I heard anything about them?”

Trix stops short. “It's not like that,” he says. “My dongsaeng is sick—some stomach flu thing maybe, he was throwing up a lot, and I dunno what else to make.”

Taemin's eyebrows lift even higher. “You just happen to have doenjang paste and proper korean soy sauce in the cupboard of your hotel, or whatever?”

Trix fidgets with his hat. It's not weird, he's always fidgeting with his hat, keeping in practice. “Well, he likes Korean food because he lived in Korea for like a decade, so it just made sense,” he says. And then, because Taemin isn't stupid and in a moment he's gonna notice that Trix isn't in a hotel, “We're quarantining in his house.”

Taemin gives him the most disbelieving look in his arsenal. “Uh huh,” he says. “Sure, and you call me up for mom's recipes all the time for your friends—oh wait, no, the last time was for Hyejin, when you were living together.”

Trix shifts awkwardly. “Look, it's not that he's not hot, but uh, technically he's both a student and my boss, so—”

“Wait, wait, you're quarantining with Lay? In his actual house? And you want to make him doenjang-jjigae?” Taemin's face has gone from teasing to incredulous.

“He's sick,” Trix repeats, as if this makes it sound any better.

Taemin rubs his face. “Hyung. Is he an omega?”

Taemin will just google it if Trix doesn't tell him. “Yeah,” he says. “But look, I really am not—doing anything. I like my job, actually? I like being friends? He's funny, and he's super talented and hardworking, and it's literally gonna take him like 2 years to be as good as me, and I'm not gonna screw that all up just because he's hot and we're stuck in the same house.”

Taemin's face conveys his entire reply without any actual words being necessary. Trix—could maybe have done without mentioning that he thinks Yixing is hot, although surely that’s just a basic fact of the universe. Taemin answers anyway, though. “I think you might be fucked, honestly. Good luck getting over that.” He rubs his hair. “I'll text you the recipe, so try to hang onto it this time?”

Trix makes the damn stew. He maybe has a bit of a cry at the sink because he misses mom, but that's old news now. He's just—he moved countries, he's a little homesick even if he has no regrets at all. Sometimes having no regrets involves having a bit of a cry in your kitchen.

Also, he's starving. Anyway, he wakes Yixing—making sure the stew is on the coffee table and not his lap—and waits for the bleary groaning to resolve into actual awakeness.

“Come on, sit up,” he says, trying to help. “You think you could try some stew?”

“Huh?” Yixing blinks at him in confusion. That was a mandarin-flavoured ‘huh?’; it’s gonna take him a minute. He focuses first on Trix’s face, then sniffs carefully, then sits further up. “Oh! Doenjang-jjigae! Kyungsoo used to make—” He clamps his lips together around the rest of that sentence, but it’s not as if it’s terribly ambiguous. Is Kyungsoo…an ex, maybe?

Trix attempts to communicate his confusion at both the sentence and why it couldn’t just be said via just looking at Yixing confusedly. “Who’s Kyungsoo?”

“D.O.” Yixing says, and that name rings a bit of a bell. “From—my band. I’m not supposed to talk about them.” This last is mournful, like a sad child, and Trix realises, oh yeah, despite the coherent conversation Yixing is still really sick. A quick forehead check reveals he’s still feverish.

“There’s no cameras,” Trix says. “You can talk about EXO here, this is your house.”

Yixing’s face does a soft, hopeful thing that probably shouldn’t be heartbreaking? But it is. Sometimes, he’s just so sad. Fucking comes out with stuff in this totally normal tone of voice where Trix just has to sit there and try not to scream and maybe, maybe carefully suggest that whatever-it-is-this-week wasn’t just like a run of the mill life experience but a horrible thing that should never have happened to him. Everyone gets some of those, but Yixing has so many, and half the time he has no idea that it’d be reasonable to be upset about them. Somehow, that’s the worst part. “Kyungsoo used to cook for us all sometimes, when he had time and could get the ingredients. He’s really good—if he hadn’t been in EXO, he might have been a chef,” Yixing says, fondly.

Well. That’s a lot to live up to. He picks up the stew. “You think your stomach would let you have some?”

Yixing holds out his hands. “It smells good,” he says. Then he tries a spoonful, and the noise he makes is—

Look. Trix is gonna take a shower after this. He really wishes life would throw him a bone, here; even though it’s nice to be appreciated, he was having a hard enough time directing the alpha brainrot in a care-and-feeding-of-sick-friend direction. Having a fun preview of what Yixing might sound like during sex is—because of Trix’s cooking!!! He’s doing a good job of taking care of—not helping.

He’s possibly prepared to admit he’s up shit creek and has a bit of a crush on his temporary housemate, but this is hardly an unprecedented situation: they can just talk about it when Yixing is feeling better and deal with it like adults. Slightly awkward adults, probably, but this isn't a friendship ruiner. Biology makes fools of everyone a time or two. Trix thinks this very firmly all the way to the shower, which he arrives at without complication because the effort of sitting up to eat seems to have taken all Yixing’s energy and now he’s asleep again.

In the shower, he jerks off, carefully thinking about an ex he’s cool with. Soaps up and washes all the evidence down the drain, finishes with a cool blast for his skin—among other things—and emerges feeling like a normal human person capable of acting rationally. This feeling sticks around until he sits back down on the couch, and a half-awake Yixing sniffs him, gives him a half-lidded but expressive betrayed expression, and shoves his face into Trix’s armpit.

Trix pinches the bridge of his nose like he has a goddamn nosebleed, and takes a series of calming breaths. Okay. He’s going to take a lot of showers with no soap, he supposes, and in the meantime he’s going to let his smell and warmth and presence comfort the sick omega who’s mostly on top of him, and also maybe give in and just hold him a lot, and this is absolutely going to make his attraction problem several thousand per cent worse but he will deal with that later.

He hands Yixing the remote. “Put something on?”

While Yixing sits up enough to complete this assignment, Trix lifts his arm over the back of the sofa; when Yixing has settled on something and is curling back against his side, Trix just loosely wraps both arms around him. Yixing shudders, squirms a little as if he’s trying to get even closer somehow, and relaxes onto Trix’s lap. It’s a good thing he just jerked off. He'd swear Yixing used to smell just good. Nice. A little note of something that bothered Trix: stress, he'd thought, maybe correctly. Maybe Yixing just smells this good because he's comfortable and happy and well fed, not trying to overwork himself, or maybe it’s because their smells are beginning to mingle in a way that makes Trix’s animal brain roll over and whine. Maybe it’s even just that Yixing doesn’t normally let himself get this sweaty; after sweating buckets at dance practice he lopes off and the next time Trix sees him he’s freshly showered. This was, with hindsight, a blessing. Despite the note of strain that still speaks of fever and discomfort, Trix would swear he’s smelling better all the time.

Trix doesn’t know enough Chinese to properly understand the show; it’s some drama about a gamer who’s kindof an asshole? The game is obviously supposed to be League of Legends, and there’s a fair bit of English, though, so he’s not totally lost. Occasionally Yixing explains a joke. Trix holds him some more, and runs fingers through his hair, and tries not to think about how gross and awful it’s going to feel when he has to get this out of his system somehow, how much his instincts are going to yell at him, or about how it might be when Yixing is better. If anything will have changed, if he’ll be better or worse at establishing a platonic pack thing, how long quarantine will last, if Trix is just going to have to white-knuckle it for the next two months or three months or even longer, maybe.

He tries really hard not to think about how much Yixing must have needed this, if he’s just gonna curl up all over Trix just because he’s sick and Trix was a normal person amount of nice to him. That's just depressing: people should be nicer to Yixing. They're not, often: they're trying to get something out of him, or get him to do something, or they think he's a thing, a resource, a product. If it's not one of those, then they give him strange looks and act like he's weird, which in fairness he is a little, but. Half the time the weirdness is just because he's so used to other people being weird, or because he's far more honest than people are used to anyone being, or because he says things totally sincerely that other people don't know what to make of because they're a bit worrying. And then he thinks it's his fault.

And look, if this line of thinking makes him curl more tightly around Yixing as they both fall asleep on the sofa again, then no one is around to judge him.

—

“Ge. Ge, I can’t move. Ge, get up.” Trix blinks. “Huh?”  A few seconds later, he manages to parse that that was Chinese. Another few blinks tells him that Yixing is curled up against him, and he’s sortof half on top of him in such a way that he’s a bit stuck—oh, right, that’s what he was saying. But. Ge?

He looks down. Yixing looks up, equally sleepy and confused. Their faces are really very close. “Good morning,” Yixing says, in Korean this time. Trix belatedly moves his limbs so he isn’t holding Yixing in place. Yixing doesn’t actually move. He ducks his head into Trix’s shoulder, then peeks up from under his lashes as if embarrassed. “Good morning,” Trix says. It seems like the sofa thing is becoming a habit. Well. That won’t last, so he might as well enjoy it while he can. It’s not as if he’s likely to have someone in his bed for a good long while after this, what with the news and the virus and whatnot, and while it’s not like he’s getting laid anytime soon, he can appreciate this.  

A sense of morning relaxation descends, until it occurs to him that he has sortof a morning wood situation. Which is a normal biological function, obviously, and even if it is more likely when you’re an alpha with his nose pressed into the hair of an omega who smells amazing and really compatible, warmth and salt-sweat and person and a hint of spicy-sweet. People don’t actually smell like desserts or flowers, romance dramas notwithstanding—though omega in heat is sometimes like those odd, heavy-smelling rainforest flowers—but Yixing’s smell makes him think of taking a sip of something warm, a little sweet in the way that whiskey can be sweet, with a kick to it.

The point is, it makes sense, so Trix gathers whatever dignity he can and eases himself upright. “I’m going for a shower,” he says, carefully arranges his sweatpants, and stands up. He comes terrifyingly close to leaning down to press a kiss to Yixing’s forehead.

It's the following day that Trix begins to worry a bit, because Yixing is restless. Which would be fine—expected maybe, given his completely insane schedule which Trix is only just beginning to talk him down from—but he's also still feverish. If possible, more feverish? And weirdly irritable: Trix tried to get up to do some laundry and Yixing dug his nails in so hard they broke the skin.

Yixing flinched really hard when Trix yelped from the sudden unexpected pain, though, so Trix hasn’t told him about that. Yixing doesn't know his own strength, whatever, a few scrapes aren’t even anything. Trix’s a dancer: he knows what kinds of injuries and pain are actually concerning, and he takes the appropriate steps to mitigate or prevent those, and then leaves the rest up to fate and doesn’t worry about it. Fortunately, after the success of the doenjang-jjigae Yixing seems to trust Trix’s cooking, and he’s not nauseous anymore, so Trix fetches his laptop and headphones so he can do something with his restless hands and mind while his body is still healing, and lopes off to the kitchen to make black bean noodles. Then, while the sauce is cooking, he wanders around the house with a laundry bag.

Thank god Yixing is eating more, or he wouldn’t have had anything spare over the few days of light meals: Trix has been trying to persuade him that not only is the Krump aesthetic more muscular than he currently is—although that's optional, obviously, it’s just another point to support Trix’s argument—he's going to need more muscle to pull off some of it, and so he's going to need to eat more.

There’s been some pushback on that, far more than on any of the actual dancing. It's an idol thing, though. Trix has met idols before, and it’s a bit grim: in person, literally all of them look too thin, exhausted often, covered in makeup to paper over the cracks. They’d all be twice as good at singing and dancing with more food and more sleep, but apparently that’s not a consideration.

It's not even hot? Like, call him crazy, but Trix has always been into people who can match him. He sees alpha friends thirsting after tiny little omega women with bafflement. No one can help what they like, and small people can be tough, but Trix could seriously do without the vague worry that his partner will break easily. It’s not the only reason his dating history is mostly betas—and the odd alpha before he worked out that that was not a recipe for an easy, peaceful life—but it’s a contributing factor. Lots of omegas, especially in Korea, buy in really hard to the social pressure to be small and thin. Not in the growing Krump scene, fortunately, and Trix is proud as hell of how popular the style is with omegas. Trix’s brain provides him with a fucking montage of Yixing on the floor of the practise room, shirtless as he always is at the end of a session, showing the results of his determined efforts to build the core strength that will keep his back healthy. He's not got the long-skinny-legs-tiny-wrists bone structure of many omegas, and plenty of idols who aren't but know what sells; he's built like a swimmer, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, built for a slightly stockier solidity, built to pick up and shove against a wall and hold himself up while Trix—

Groans aloud, and hits himself in the face with a balled-up pair of jeans that moments ago were lying on the bathroom floor from Yixing’s successful attempt at a morning shower, which Trix carefully isn’t thinking about because he wandered out in a bath towel smelling like Trix’s body wash.

The jeans smell of—hang on. Very carefully not thinking about what he's doing, Trix sniffs the crotch. It's faint, but that’s heat smell, surely. Should he call the doctor? No, Yixing is probably well enough to actually talk to about this like a normal fucking person who isn’t freaking out about average everyday things like heat cycles. Heat cycles aren't embarrassing—well, people are embarrassed, but they don't need to be embarrassing.

Trix lifts the jeans carefully away from his face and puts them at the bottom of the laundry bag. His brain feels like it's slowly turning to sludge and coherent thoughts are a serious struggle. Okay. Normal person behaviour. Trix is going to act like a responsible adult alpha and ask about Yixing's heat cycle before they both get into (more) trouble; if Yixing really is in pre-heat, what with being sick he might not have realised yet.

It's faint, so maybe they have a little time? Trix wishes fervently he had an omega family member to ask, but he’s flying on whatever omega friends have mentioned to him in passing before now, plus his one experience dating an omega.  

Thinking about it, this was bound to happen at some point. But this is a big house, right: he'd figured Yixing would maybe just lock himself in his room, or choose to take heat suppressants for however many months the lockdown lasts, like the PSAs have been advising. It’s not ideal for it to happen while Yixing is still sick, but Trix is going to just continue looking after him. Do a lot of deep breathing. Hang out in the garden a lot! Lock himself in the small upstairs bathroom next to his own bedroom, maybe, if it gets bad. He’s going to be hormonally, sexually and emotionally a bit of a mess after this, but it’s not as if Yixing can help any of that.

He’s sick, after all. And if Trix is any judge, not enough people have looked after Yixing in his life; Trix is determined to turn this trend on its head.

—

Yixing knows he’s not just sick when the pain starts.

He tries to tell himself: it’s my back, I shouldn’t have slept on the sofa or skipped my physio. Yixing doesn’t actually think he can cheat reality like that; he just really, really doesn’t want this to be the breakthrough heat his doctor has been warning him about for three of the last four years of inadvisably continuous heat suppressants. By the time he’s accepted that’s what it is, though, he really can’t move. The pain seems worse than he remembers; maybe because he’s forgotten, or maybe because it was inevitable that it would hurt this much after this long without one.

Sick, throwing up, and not taking his suppressants. He should have swallowed down his humiliation and asked Trix to bring them, but it seemed like too much to even talk about heats. It always seems too much to talk about heats. He can’t do this. The last one was—he can’t do this again, oh fuck, he can’t do this again, it’s going to be worse than last time, isn’t it? Last time he scraped the paint off half the walls of his room, before they let him out. Yixing shivers, and tries to move. One limb at a time, that’s the way. You can get yourself to do anything, moving deliberately, one limb at a time. His ankle buckles when it hits the cold floor. Nothing in him wants to leave this—it isn’t a nest. It isn’t a nest. But it’s comfortable, it’s got blankets even, it smells warm and of him and of alpha, and better yet an alpha that Yixing knows and likes, who’s taken care of him for the last however many days, who fucking stroked his back and brushed his hair off his face when he threw up, so maybe he won’t be freaked out that Yixing has heats like he’s ill. A part of him is yelling that there’s been food and warmth and sleep and closeness, the same alpha close close close, skin and sweat and smelling calm and happy so much that it overshadowed the hint of lust, that he’s safe here, he can rest, it’d be a good time to curl up and nest with his alpha and let the heat come on—

A wave of pain and nausea rolls over him, and he gasps through it. Sits back on the sofa and presses his face into the blanket that smells the most like both of them, even though that’s not what Trix was doing, he was staying because Yixing wouldn’t let him get up.

He knows what he's like during heat. He knows what it did to him last time to be alone, but he's going to have to tell Trix to leave him and try and bar the door somehow. It's only a few days. They'll be hell, but they'll end eventually. It went like this:

There were three omegas in EXO, once Zitao had to leave: him and Sehun and Jongin. Their management put them on heat regulators as soon as they presented, obviously, four well-managed heats per year, now that full suppression is illegal without extenuating circumstances before age 21. There was a scandal with a kpop star who was forced onto them and became infertile.

The thing was: everyone was so fucking tired, all the time. Sehunnie in heat is grouchy, but soft: he holed up with one of them for a few days—Junmyeon originally, but often Chanyeol later—and came back tired and starving and complaining about his aching everything, and all was well. Jongin in heat was sweetly needy, getting his scent everywhere and turning everyone's heads, tugging alphas into his room between stumbling around the house in search of snacks.

Yixing is—different. Yixing hurts, his hips and lower back and stomach complaining at him like he's sick somehow, pain creeping down to his knees and up to his shoulders. He's demanding, even angry: though there was always someone to help him, they usually came in pairs, alpha and beta, alpha and omega, one to try to soothe him with their scent and the other to give him what he needed.

It didn't really work, after Zitao and Lu Han left. They were his and he was theirs: they understood when he slurred in Chinese, Han-ge was a sweet and steady alpha, and Taozi was bitchy and demanding, if lazier about it, in heat: they understood each other. He curled around Taozi, too—they'd soothe each other with their fingers inside and neck kisses and bites when Lu Han had to switch out with Minseok, or needed to go and get drinks. Without them, he's an even more difficult omega: he’s harder to please in heat rather than easier, he yanks alphas awake if they fall asleep, pulls them around and snarls at them to do what he wants, and he's watching all of it happen from inside his own head but he's so fucking—it feels like he's wrapped in barbed wire, and the only thing that'll help is. The only thing that helps. Touch, sex, alpha smell.

He growls at them when they get up to go to the bathroom, to get food or water, anything, closes his teeth around their wrist, digs his nails in. Everyone comes out of his bedroom tired, stressed, overwhelmed.

The whole pack—the ones he’s had sex with outside of heat—they all tell him he's easier like that, more fun like that. That it's better when he's sweet. It’s not even as if he can blame them: who wants to be savaged by someone you’re trying to help? What alpha wants to be tugged and scratched and bitten and ridden to exhaustion and then snarled at? Well. Some, obviously. There’s some very niche porn of that sort of thing, but it’s a very specific fetish thing, and half the time the point is to ‘tame’ the omega in question, but even when it isn’t…it makes him shiver, somehow. Maybe because the supposedly-feral omegas in porn are acting—which is better, because it’s not even good, it doesn’t feel good, he doesn’t want to be like that, it’s just that it feels as if he’s screaming inside, right down to the bones, and he can’t get enough. He needs touch and closeness and a knot more than he needs to breathe, he needs them to lean into his hold, to hold on to him in turn, to not leave, to sink their teeth into his neck and—

He knows why that is, too. The first heat after both Taozi and Lu Han had left hit him like a hurricane, and he’d never had it that bad, and his scent roiled through the house and put everyone edge and dragged Junmyeon into rut a month earlier than he was supposed to go, and he came into help and. Yixing doesn’t think about this, it stays locked in a box inside his head and doesn’t come out except in heat when he can’t stop thinking about it, about the way Junmyeon snarled back, flushed and violent with his own rut. He left bruises all over Yixing’s skin, and when Yixing bit and scratched it only seemed to drive him on. Yixing had been so sure that—no. His stupid hormones had been so sure that that was it, that Junmyeon was his and he was Junmyeon’s, and there’d been teeth on his neck, in his neck, not quite in the right place and then in the right place and then they’d had to be yanked apart. No bonding without prior authorisation was in their contracts.

In retrospect, that time was almost worse than the time he had to be left alone because he forgot his stupid pills in the depths of exhaustion, two or three in a row he supposes, that crazy year where they were overscheduled for everything and everyone was suffering. No one had the time to help him, nevermind the energy, and they had to lock him in—Yixing thinks they think he doesn’t remember the yelling matches they’d had. The way he’d tried and tried to quiet himself so they wouldn’t have to yell, so they could just rest as much as they could and leave him, biting his own lips until blood ran down his chin and tearing his own fingernails apart, clawing at his skin and the walls and the door and anything he could reach. It had barely helped.

Two days of that, he was told, until everyone came to an agreement and brought him out into the main room, sofa cushions on the floor and whatever spare blankets there were, and all of them held him then. They must have traded him around in shifts, he supposes, for the remaining three days—he remembers some of them not being there for a while, reaching for Sehun only to be told he was asleep, he’d be back, but they were all there and all taking care of him. Well. All of them except Junmyeon. Yixing’s already-sensitive hearing is worse during heat: Junmyeon locked himself in the bathroom and cried for hours, and then fought with management, and attended a few events for them all. The least he could do, he’d said afterwards. Their manager had been mostly out of yelling by the time Yixing had been lucid enough to hear it. Yixing would have rather been yelled at and slapped than not have Junmyeon there, but it’s not as if that was his choice. He knows what happens when he grasps onto things too tightly. He hurts himself and them, and he doesn't even get to keep them. So then he went on the long-term heat suppressants—it hadn’t been difficult to convince the doctor after he described his last heat—designed to be paused once yearly for a managed heat, and then hadn’t paused. Four years. He did this to himself, not wanting to endure a heat a year. So he'll deal with this and then it'll be over and then there's probably nothing for it, his body thinks Trix's smell is his, thinks that hanging out close on the couch means they're each other's, so at best he's going to have an embarrassing crush for however long lockdown lasts.

At worst…well. Junmyeon barely touched him after that near miss. It’s been like a half-healed wound since then, and he’s not sure if the same thing with Trix will open it deeper, or cut a new one. That’s too dramatic, probably: Trix’s teeth haven’t been anywhere near his neck. Only his hands, which are surprisingly soft. There’s something about the way Trix touches him that makes him feel almost okay, even when he’s sick. Just for an instant he allows himself to imagine what it would be like, to have a heat with him, if he’d run his hands through Yixing’s hair and idly stroke his neck and shoulders between rounds, and it hurts to imagine, but what hurts more to imagine is him horrified, exhausted, leaving. During, probably, but if not during then after. This is going to be a bad one, of course. The worst kind again. He’s going to have barely a shred of control, and Trix doesn’t know, doesn’t have any help or anyone to hold Yixing steady so he doesn’t. Doesn’t. He can’t think the word without screaming. So. He’ll tell Trix. He’s endured it before and can do it again, even if he feels more fragile this time around, less strong, which isn’t the way it’s supposed to go. He’ll ignore the instinct to wrench open the door and drag Trix inside, sink his teeth into Trix's wrist, prise open Trix's jaw by force and press it against his neck, make him bite, bite him back, make him stay—

It's too much to ignore. So he listens to it screaming and does nothing. If he just clenches every muscle in his body then he won't do anything; his body must know, because that's what it's doing. He's not even trying. It hurts. Of course it hurts. Good: if it hurts enough, he can't think.

—

Somehow, Trix remembers to put the laundry on before wandering back through to the living room—where the scent of heat is just making its way out through the door, still a bit green and uncooked, but definitely there.

Yixing is curled up in a miserable ball on the sofa, face on his knees, hands fisted in his hair. He's shivering; the back of his t-shirt is damp with sweat.

It looks as if they truly don't have a day before it hits. That was goddamn fast; maybe Yixing’s are usually like this, and he normally uses one of the tracker apps to predict it, and just forgot with being so out of it.

Trix breathes through his mouth. Now he’s actually in the living room he can detect something painful and a little wrong about the heat smell, as if Yixing is still sick, and Trix's instincts aren't yelling at him about sex so much as about going over there to hug his omega and smell him closely and try to figure out what's wrong. He’s already moving to do just that—his brain was apparently not needed for this decision to be made—when Yixing lifts his head. The taut, white-lipped expression on his face makes Trix freeze on the spot.  

"Go away," Yixing says, as hoarse as if he's been screaming. Trix sways a little, body and brain yanking him in two opposite directions.

"Are—what's wrong?" He fumbles the simplest fucking question he knows in Chinese, too rattled for better sense.  

"Get out!"  Yixing snarls, and Trix bolts out of the door because it's either that or bolt towards him, and he can see that’s a bad idea. Instead, he strides into the bathroom, locks the door behind him, and sits with his back against it, trying to breathe. Trying to figure out what the fuck to do.

Maybe...he should call Yixing’s manager?

That seems horribly intrusive, though. She knows some very personal things about Yixing, but Trix has no idea if he’s ever discussed heat preparations or similar with her, and he gets the feeling Yixing doesn’t like discussing that sort of thing. So, no.

The doctor? If this were just a regular heat it'd be incredibly weird of him to call Yixing's doctor for him, but the entire situation is weird, and at least half of Trix’s instincts are yelling at him that something is deeply wrong. He’s ignoring the other half right now. Yixing could still be sick, and Trix has no idea what the smell of wrongness is, or whether it’s the sickness or the heat or both, or whether Yixing could become seriously unwell without any help.

Which he won't accept from Trix, apparently. He’s within his rights, obviously. They haven't known each other that long. Maybe it'd be different if they'd handled this kind of thing before—if Trix had filed the paperwork for holiday time for his yearly rut, if he'd seen Yixing in the days leading up to a regular heat and acted like a normal person. If he’d—a traitorous section of his mind pipes up—actually dared to have a forthright conversation about the alpha/omega thing, about the chemistry between them and how or whether to handle it, he probably wouldn’t be in this mess. For all the good that thought does him now. He’d wanted to leave it up to Yixing, let him make his own decisions in his own time, because people don’t do that. Yixing never gets given time or space, and he doesn’t take any—not for himself, or for his own comfort. It had been a shattering relief, to see him take something he wanted from Trix, even if that was just food and closeness. If Trix is really honest, he’s been done for since then, and he fucking did it to himself. But he imagined leaving Yixing to himself, brushing him off, setting a firmer boundary, and the thought made him feel sick. He doesn’t want a firmer boundary: he wants to take care of Yixing. Even through this. Even though it’s going to feel terrible on the other side, because someone fucking should—someone should say, this is hard, and it’s going to suck, but you’re important to me and I’m going to help you anyway. Only now he can’t. Because Yixing doesn’t want him to.

A part of Trix that he doesn't usually let have a say outside of dance competitions is howling

An uncounted amount of time later, Trix uncoils from the bathroom floor, washes his damp, blotchy face with cold water, and calls the doctor again.

"Something's wrong with Yixing," he says, the moment they get connected. "He's going into heat, but it's—I don't know, there’s something wrong, he smells wrong, and I’m worried he’s still sick."

The doctor sighs a long, tired sigh. “Is that you, Laoshi?”

Trix makes an affirmative noise.

"You understand I can't give out private medical information except on a need-to-know basis," she says, cautiously.

Trix's stomach lurches. "No, yeah, of course. I don't need to know about his—I just wanna make sure he's okay, or let someone know what’s going on in case something happens."

There's a long pause. "How is he right now? Is he not able to call himself?"

He gives her a slightly disjointed summary: The fever never went down, he was really out of it, he seemed to be getting better but then there was the smell of preheat, then him looking miserable and maybe in pain and smelling horribly distressed and telling Trix to get out.

Trix hopes the pauses are just for the doctor to sort out the Korean in her head.

“I take it he stopped taking his suppressants while he was sick,” she says.

...Oh. Right. That's a sensible explanation for all of this.

Not the pain—but maybe he gets preheat syndrome? That can be miserable, as far as Trix knows, which isn’t that far. He's friends with a dancer who gets it, and they take suppressants eleven months a year to manage the timing around competitions and performances, and get it over with on holiday time. Fucking amazing dancer, too.  

“I didn't know he took them,” Trix says, sheepishly. He hadn’t considered the same might be true of Yixing; it’ll be embarrassing if he’s just panicked for no reason because Yixing does something similar to manage his own heats. “He was too out of it to ask for them. I don't know if he'd have been able to keep them down, anyway.”

“Laoshi,” she says seriously. “I've got a list of things I'm going to need you to do, but I'm aware of your status, so you need to tell me immediately if you think there's any chance you're going to have difficulties, all right? Given the restrictions it'd be much safer and easier if you can help, but rather than have anything go wrong I will come over myself if necessary.”

Trix is going to scratch his skin off if he can't help, honestly, so it’s a bit of a relief that he’s got doctor’s orders to do so. “I'll do everything I can,” he says. “I can, uh, control myself. You know.” He takes a breath. “But he told me to get out. He sounded really sure; I don't want to go back in if it's just gonna make things worse.”

“Unfortunately, I don't think he's going to be lucid enough for that for much longer.” She says, grimly. “And it's really important that he gets plenty of fluids, ideally electrolyte drinks, some food, and some painkillers. All you have to do is put them near him and check back to make sure he's eating and drinking, okay?”

“Okay,” Trix agrees, miserably. He lets his head thud back against the door. “Is something bad happening? I don’t really get it.”

She sniffs. “Zhang-laoban has been taking heat suppressants continuously for several years. That isn’t medically advisable, and so this is going to be somewhat difficult, and painful.” A long breath. He realises she sounds exhausted, and wonders what she's doing when she's not on the phone to Yixing's employees. “But it isn’t your fault, laoshi. A breakthrough heat was going to happen sooner or later. The timing, at least, could be worse.”

Then there's a long list of instructions that Trix taps into his phone. What to look for, what bad signs he should be aware of, when to call her, what an emergency could look like—though apparently this is very unlikely. What painkillers he can have and how often.

Trix knocks on the living room door. “Can I come in?”

“No,” Yixing says. He sounds like he's crying. Trix's nails dig into his palms.

“All right,” Trix says. "I called the doctor. She says we have to throw away your suppressants."

A silence. “Fuck,” Yixing says. “Can I not—what'll happen if I just take them?”

Trix is not gonna tear the door down. For one thing, it isn't locked. “It’ll come back pretty soon afterwards, but it’ll be worse, and last longer, she said.” He isn't especially clear on the technicalities. She didn't really explain.Trix doesn't say that along with the list of instructions, she'd muttered something in Chinese about how he'd have to have a year of normal heats at least before—well, he didn't catch the next part, but presumably it was 'before he can go back on suppressants' or similar.

There's a longer silence. A wet laugh. “I hope she's fucking happy.”

She wasn't, in the slightest, but Yixing is slurring his words. Still lucid, but barely. He doesn't really mean that.

“I'm gonna get you some food and electrolyte drink and painkillers. She said to take painkillers,” Trix says to the door, censoring at the last minute ‘she said you could have painkillers’ which would leave open the disturbingly plausible option of Yixing not taking them. “I won't come in, I'll just shove them through the door and leave.”

There's a silence. Trix decides he doesn't want to fucking hear the reply. He gets up and drags himself to the kitchen, awkwardly hard in his sweatpants, but it barely registers as anything except uncomfortable: he's rarely felt less like having sex, despite the chemical pull.

He mechanically pulls a bottle out of the fridge, shoves a random assortment of snacks on a plate, and grabs ibuprofen.

The smell is stronger with the door open. Slick—already? Apparently so: Trix will come back with towels. Heat, definitely, and not so unripe. It’s a strange, sick heat-smell, too feverish-hot, cut through with such overwhelming smells of pain and fear that Trix has to swallow down a sudden urge to vomit. Yixing rarely smells like pain too much, even when he’s in pain.

He shoves the bottle and plate through the door, shuts it behind him, and goes in search of towels. His feet take him to his own bedroom, because he has no idea where Yixing keeps his towels, and anyway he isn't keen on the idea of further invasions of privacy, like rifling around in Yixing’s bedroom.

He grabs several. And also his own duvet; he’ll get a blanket from somewhere. If Yixing really is gonna hole up in the living room, then at least it should be comfortable—or, well, less uncomfortable.

Trix hopes to god he's taken the painkillers. Sometimes he doesn't; he says it's to ‘check he's not masking pain and exacerbating his injury’. Trix didn't think Ibuprofen could do that, but he's not a doctor

He braces himself. Knocks. “I'm just gonna throw you in some towels and stuff. I'm gonna open the door, okay?”

There's a sortof frustrated noise from the other side. At least it's not a ‘no’.

He looks up briefly, because there's still the food and sports drink there, and if he tosses he's just gonna make a mess—but this is a mistake. Yixing is curled up in a tight ball on the couch. He's wrapped both arms around their sofa blanket, and on top of that he’s put Trix's sweater, which he’s burying his face into.

“The doctor says you gotta drink something at least, okay?” he says, dully. Takes one step forward to throw them on the floor.

Yixing presses his face harder against the sweater, as if this hurt him. “Go,” he says. He doesn't sound anything but exhausted and in pain, and Trix has to fucking manually pilot every limb separately to turn around and leave.

It's late. Trix tries to go to bed—pulls out a spare blanket and everything—but he's just staring at the ceiling feeling sick and wrong, because he can still smell Yixing’s distress and every muscle in his body wants to yank him closer to it so he can help. Eventually he lets it happen, halfway: he goes back downstairs and curls up outside the living room door with a pillow and blanket and yoga mat to cushion the hardwood floor. It's not better, precisely, to be able to smell Yixing more clearly. But his mind eases enough to manage a fitful doze.

It's still dark when he wakes, shifts in a confused way to figure out where he is, then immediately hits his head on the doorframe and swears quietly.

There's a wet, rough sound on the other side of the door. Close.

“I know you're there,” Trix says.

A silence. The rough breathing continues.

“Why are you there?” A mulish voice, almost petulant.

“Couldn't sleep,” Trix says truthfully. “Got used to the sofa, I guess.”

It takes him a moment to process that they're speaking Korean, reflexively on both their parts maybe. Yixing always sounds softer in Korean, younger somehow. Even though his staff can speak Korean, Yixing rarely uses it with them; Trix is the only one who regularly hears him this way.

“You really have to go, you know,” Yixing says. There's a movement whose vibration Trix can feel through the door; Yixing is right there, on the other side, pressed against the same place he is. “And you need to lock the doors. There isn't a key in here, I don't think.”

Trix's mind goes blank. He truly—occasionally Yixing says shit like this. A 'funny story', or just a thing he thinks is uncomplicatedly true, and Trix has to stop and breathe  through the urge to ask him what the fuck is wrong with him. Well. It seems as if he's starting to get some of the answers

“Why the hell would I do that?” he says. "I'm not locking you in your own fucking living room, what?” Then—maybe it's mild hysteria, maybe because it's clearly ass o'clock in the morning—he adds, “This door doesn't lock anyway.”

Yixing takes a hiss of a breath. "Will you at least leave if I explain?"

Trix's teeth clench. “I won't go if you don't,” he says, which is absolutely true. He's also unlikely to go no matter what the explanation is. Even if he's just going to camp out here for three days, listening to Yixing's sounds, checking for pain and to make sure he eats and so on.

Yixing makes a frustrated groan, and there's another thunk, as if he's hit part of his body against the door.

"I get—weird. In heat. This one's gonna be bad, obviously." Every word he says sounds heavy, laboured, as if it’s a struggle to make his throat work at all.

Trix has only horrified silence. He's truly not seen many omegas in heat; many alphas haven’t, if they don’t have close omega family members or an omega partner. You're supposed to get the fuck out of dodge unless you're needed.

"I get like. They said." A horrible pause. "I'd—cling. Really hard, not just—not just hold on, I bruise people. Say shit I didn't—want to. And. It takes a lot to wear me out and if you come in I won't let you leave, like, when they tried to leave I’d get. Violent. Like a fucking—so. You should go."

Trix’s head is full of static. He breathes, and tries to think of anything at all that he could say in response to hearing that Yixing's heats have been awful enough to include being abandoned by heat partners.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, emphatically.

Trix grabs the biggest laundry bag he can find, though it’s sadly lacking in laundry, so his first stop is his own bedroom. The bathroom’s next door. He grabs: toothbrush, toothpaste—then feels a bit ridiculous. Will he have the time or energy to use those? Maybe not, but he’ll bring them anyway. More likely: antiseptic wipes, cleansing wipes. Face ones, but they’ll do. Laundry from his hamper, fishing out the socks. Pillows. A hopeful change of clean underwear—two sets for both of them—and his dressing gown.

Next stop: kitchen. He dumps cat food in a massive bowl on the kitchen floor, and leaves the tap running a trickle so there's fresh water. That's about all he can do for them, for now: at least cats are reasonably self sufficient. Trix glares at the fridge which isn't full of meals, but whatever. There’s leftover black bean noodles which neither of them got to eat yesterday, so he eats a portion cold, standing up at the fridge. At least it's got some stuff he'll need. Bottles of protein shake, cans of energy drink. Smoothie, sweetened green tea.

He empties the snack cupboard into the bag, and adds every bottle of sports drink they have, plus bottles of plain water. Paper towels and a bowl, in case. Then, feeling very stupid, he remembers: condoms and lube. Yixing smells of slick, but if his heat is weird with hormonal imbalance that isn't a guarantee, and anyway it's impolite to just assume: lube makes everything more comfortable, some people's natural lubricant is sortof watery, and friction burns are the last thing Yixing needs.

The tone of his thoughts is a bit hysterical, maybe.

In front of the door to the living room, Trix stands still for a moment, holding the world's weirdest weekend getaway bag. He knocks.

“You came back,” Yixing says.

“Yeah,” Trix says. Of course he fucking came back. What else would he do? Abandoned by a heat partner plays in Trix’s head again, but he can’t imagine a world where leaving Yixing like this would feel like a bearable option. “I brought more stuff,” he says, and then he needs to make sure Yixing knows he’s willing to come in, wants to come in even, in a way that has nothing at all to do with his dick even though it’s been half-hard continuously for hours, probably. That’s just biology. Wanting to take care of Yixing is bigger and heavier than biology. He’ll fucking fight biology if he has to. “I still want to come in.”

There’s a loud, defeated exhale, and a sound like a slap on bare skin. “No you don’t.”

Trix feels his face scrunch into a frown. “I heard what you said. I still want to help.”

A wordless noise of frustration, then the sound of something hitting the far wall. “You don’t get it,” Yixing says. “You have to lock the doors—the back one locks, and this one opens out so just barricade it with something heavy, and then if we’re lucky I’ll be too tired to break it down and you can get some sleep.” Yixing’s voice is flat now instead of laboured, with an undercurrent of mania. “You really, really don’t want to see me like this. I don’t want you to see me like this. But. It’s bad. Trust me, okay? It’s bad.”

Trix’s fists clench. He’s beginning to see. “Wouldn’t you calm down at all If I came in and helped? You, uh, liked my sweater. You can have all my clothes if you want them, and I’ve got my duvet here too,” he says.

Yixing lets out a horrible bark of laughter shot through with a sob. “That’s not the problem. I—I wear people out. I wear them out so badly they never want to help again, so.”

A long pause. Trix is increasingly aware of a ringing sound in his ears, and increasingly unaware of any sensations from his body. It takes several tries to speak. “So you’re saying my choices are to listen to you in pain and thrashing around for three days while I stay out here and sit on my hands, or I come in and you wear me out and scratch me up and I drink a lot of caffeine for a few days?”

Thunk. A silence. “I’m sorry,” Yixing says, wretchedly.

“That’s not what I meant,” Trix says, urgently, because he can’t stop there, because he’s finally got Yixing to listen to something even if he still hasn’t processed that Trix means it, that he doesn’t give a fuck about how bad it is if he gets to be in there doing something useful. “I meant: the second option sounds way better, to me. I don’t—I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to make you. Like if you seriously actually want to, you can stick this out, and I'll shove this bag of food and stuff through the door and check on you later. It'll suck, but I'll do it."

God help him if Yixing wants that. It’d be better if he could believe for a second that Yixing’s refusals are because he truly doesn’t want Trix’s help, because he would feel better sticking it out alone. But that’s so clearly not why Yixing is telling him to go away.

"I don't want—" Yixing says. "You need to." His breaths are panting, on the other side of the door. “You won’t wan’t anything to do with me, after.” It’s strangely soft, after all the sharp words in a raised voice.

Trix’s jaw clicks with the sudden tension. “Not possible,” he bites out. “Try me.”

A ragged gasp. That’s what Yixing said on the phone to Trix, asking him to up sticks and move his entire life to China to teach one random idol he didn’t know to dance Krump. Trix had been uncertain, for obvious reasons.

“If you’re sure.” It’s almost a whisper.

He’s sure. Trix yanks the door open and stamps through it, slinging the bag down and kicking the door closed behind him—needing its solid surface behind him as Yixing shoves both of them against the wall.

Even though Yixing still smells of pain and fear and dehydration, even though he's still miserable and sick, Trix's body suddenly remembers what omega-in-heat scent is supposed to do to you. 'Feral omega slams alpha against wall' is a slightly more out-there genre of porn, but Trix has no complaints about it in theory. He has actually a whole host of complaints—concerns, even—but they blur and scatter in the overwhelming wall of smell and touch and pressure, as Yixing leans his entire weight on Trix, shoving his face into Trix’s neck and shoulder, then sinking his teeth into the front of the deltoid over the sleeve of his hoodie, where the firm pressure doesn’t actually hurt very much.

After a few moments of panting breaths, Yixing manages to unlatch his teeth. When he lifts his head, he looks awful: eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, skin a pallid grey under fever-flush, the neck and chest of his t-shirt soaked through with patches of sweat. His face has a sunken, dehydrated appearance. He stares at Trix. “Why?”

Trix tries to remember how to think. “Why what?”

Two fists grab the fabric at his collar, slam him harder against the wall. “Why did you come in? Why wouldn’t you lock me in and leave me?”

He can’t fucking breathe. There’s no pressure on his ribs, but the question knocks the breath out of him. What’s he supposed to say to that? The truth, probably, if he can get it out. “I couldn’t bear to,” he says. “I like you too much.”

Whatever Trix expected, it wasn’t for Yixing to let out a growl that increases in volume and pitch until it’s a horrible, broken scream. He hits his head on Trix’s chest—not to hurt Trix, but to hurt himself. Better Trix than the wall. He’s so full of tension that Trix doesn’t think he should even try to stop him.

“No,” Yixing says. “No, no, no!” He yanks at Trix’s shirt, tears it. Doesn’t do anything but hit his head on the skin of Trix’s sternum. “They had to lock me in,” he says after a moment, as if he’s confessing a secret. “They didn’t want to either, but they had to.”

If Trix ever finds out who they are he’s going to reevaluate his lifetime of being a law-abiding citizen who pays all his taxes and politely avoids all the people who think the tattoos mean he’s some kind of fellow criminal. Then there will be the option of tearing them apart.

With that thought running through him, it seems less dangerous to lift his arms and wrap them gently around Yixing’s torso.  Yixing lets out a shocked puff of breath, and then—relaxes would be a strong word. But at least half of the awful screaming tension falls out of his body, and the forehead thumps become more like taps, the rhythm like a heartbeat. Trix squeezes Yixing gently in his hold, once, in case the pressure helps.

Yixing’s hands unclench from Trix’s shredded t-shirt, and he wraps his arms around Trix’s neck. “You can’t leave,” he says into Trix’s neck. It’s almost a whisper. “I won’t let you.”

"All right," Trix says. "I won't leave. You can keep me."

Another growl, but this one doesn't become a scream; it peters out into a soft whine. "It hurts," Yixing says, miserably. “It hurts, it hurts.”.

"I know,'' Trix says, braces, lifts Yixing with arms around his hips, and staggers a bit until they topple onto the pile of duvet and towels right by the door. The sofa would have been better, but this will do.

They land in an inelegant sprawl on the floor, and Trix is just trying to keep thinking while his body runs the show. He needs to get gatorade and food and painkillers down Yixing sometime soon. It's not easy; the smell of misery is dissipating a little as Yixing's scent turns hungry and desperate, but that only makes the pain seem more prominent. Trix almost has to fight Yixing to get his own shirt off, but once it is off Yixing wraps both of his firm arms around Trix's ribcage and presses his face against Trix's collarbone, where sweat is beginning to gather in the dip at the base of his neck.  

Despite conflicting signals from his body, Trix would almost rather hold Yixing right now than have sex: it feels half-wrong to have sex when Yixing is so vulnerable and in pain, even if some of that is because of the heat. Trix has never had sex with an omega in heat. He's never wondered if the chemical pull on him is to try and counteract the part of him that would prefer to hold Yixing on the couch some more, but he’s wondering now.

That wouldn’t actually help with the pain, and Yixing is rutting against him in a mindless sort of way, as if he doesn't really know what he's doing, maybe doesn’t even know that he’s doing it. Trix pushes his knee between Yixing's thighs, grabs his hips in both hands, and tries to sync with his broken, urgent rhythm. It probably doesn’t even matter: Yixing shakes and comes with a pained moan only a few moments later.

Trix takes some deep fucking breaths. Yixing is shivering in the circle of his arms, clammy and sweat-damp and heat-sick and in some miserable place in his head that Trix is beginning to realise is nothing to do with biology. Trix’s entire purpose here is to give Yixing what he needs, so he really has to get with the program, but his instincts—and other places—are all yelling at him, burying him in a pile of contradictory things he needs/wants to do, and really all he can discern is just: Yixing, Yixing, Yixing. There's a sensory-image in his head of Yixing exhausted and sweaty, lying in a pile of pillows and looking up at Trix. His eyelids are heavy with sleep, and he’s smiling with his mouth open, jaw loose. Trix has never seen Yixing look like that. He'd like to.

(It's not entirely unlike how Yixing looks after a really good dance practise.)

It’s that image that moves him. Trix might not be able to make Yixing look that happy, but he can try with every scrap of breath and energy he has.

“Hurts,” Yixing says again, shaking Trix's shoulder.  “It's not enough—come on, you gotta, come on.” His nails dig painfully into Trix's skin, but Trix is a dancer. He understands the different kinds of pain, and this isn't the kind that's really going to hurt him.

As much as Yixing is digging his nails in, he isn't really helping; he frustrates Trix's attempts to get his pants and boxers off, and though they manage eventually, Trix gives up on his shirt and figures it can come off later. He smooths a hand down Yixing’s back and over his ass, between his legs, and presses carefully against his hole, giving him warning.

Yixing bites into his pec. Trix hisses, manages to bite back an 'ow!' because this truly does hurt, but he gets the message, compensates for pushing two fingers right in to the knuckle by taking it slower than Yixing would clearly like. They're going to be at this for a while; Yixing will appreciate the lack of friction burns later. He’s not going to be exactly lucid, for however many days this lasts, and Trix is going to have to ride that line between giving him what he wants and needs, and giving him what’s good for him. It’s a hell of a responsibility. Usually he tries to do what’s good for Yixing, or persuade him to take care of himself, but Yixing is an adult and he has control issues already and he gets enough, frankly, of people trying to tell him what to do. So Trix offers his advice, gives instructions when asked, and otherwise is just present, a walking demonstration of the value of enough sleep and listening to your body and taking breaks and just treating yourself like a human instead of a machine. He tries—mostly succeeds, even—to let go of any expectations about what Yixing will do, to not invest too heavily in him taking any of Trix’s advice.

It took a lot of goddamn effort to learn not to try to change other people, to just give them what you can and let them sort it out themselves. The teacher’s curse, Trix  guesses. But now he’s gotta make some decisions for Yixing, because Yixing is too out of it to make them himself, and he’s certain he’s making different ones than Yixing would make for himself because he fucking cares about Yixing being hurt and being unhappy in a way that Yixing himself barely thinks about.

Under his boxers Yixing is wet everywhere, but almost more like sweat-damp than slick-wet. That’s not unexpected with the hormonal upheaval, so Trix reaches one hand behind himself and feels around for the bag's handle to fish out the lube.

"What," Yixing says, shoving back onto Trix's fingers, "are you—"

"Lube," Trix says, grabbing the bag and dragging it closer.

A frustrated growl. "Don't need that, or what the fuck is all this for," Yixing says, irritably, and fumbles with the ties of Trix's sweatpants with one hand—the other is still digging into Trix’s hip, nails scraping—and curses, and yanks them until they break. "Come on, stop it, help me."

Trix has run out of hands, but has found the lube, and past Trix sensibly bought a pump bottle. He tries to remove his fingers but Yixing grabs his wrist, so Trix puts the bottle on Yixing’s stomach, shoves his sweats and boxers halfway down his thighs, and says, faintly embarrassed, "Lube up my cock for me." It occurs to him that this is sortof awkward and ungainly, definitely not his best effort, but. This Yixing, pushy stubborn Yixing, is the Yixing he loves best anyway. The one that won't fucking let anything go—that solved every single problem with his visa and pay and job in China and all the political shit Trix didn't really understand by sheer force of will.

Trix would have to be dead to not respond to Yixing's tight fist around his cock. He forgets himself for a few seconds, letting his head tip back, but then the hand is gone and Yixing has moved, is pulling him over, or maybe down? Trix had thought he was going to be shoved onto his back—which he’d have had no complaints about—but apparently not.

Yixing tries to turn over, not letting go of Trix's wrist, but while Trix has no problems with Yixing under him, he has to see his face. Yixing is sick still—from this strange unmanaged heat, if not from whatever the other thing was—he hasn't had any painkillers yet, and he's not going to say he's in pain, so Trix has to face him, has to look at his face and keep his eyes open for pain or fear or some other nameless distress.

So Trix allows himself to be pulled, but pushes Yixing's hip at just the right place to move him onto his back. He gets half an irritated "what the—" before he manages to show Yixing what he wants by moving his thighs apart and kneeling between them.

He'd been expecting need or irritation, but is stopped for a second by a flicker of confusion. "I'll bite if you do it like this," Yixing warns, though his grip on Trix's wrist is vicelike.

"All right," Trix says. He usually likes being bitten, although Yixing doesn't know his own strength right now, so it’ll hurt. That’s all right. He said before, and meant it, that it’d hurt less to be bitten than to sit outside the door, stomach full of dread and horror and secondhand pain.

The look of confusion doesn’t fade, but Trix is in position now and he tugs gently at the wrist Yixing is hanging onto, fingers still inside, to try to get him to release them. Slowly, he’s allowed to withdraw, with Yixing staring at him as if he’s watching for something. Trix would like to take his time, but that isn’t a good idea. He’d like to take his time, or maybe he’d even like to get it over with. The contradiction of his cock, hard enough to cut steel, and his stomach, full of uneasy sadness and fear, is unsettling.

Yixing isn’t even remotely relaxed when Trix begins to push inside, but he’s stretched enough at least to avoid injury if Trix is careful, which he will be. Inside Yixing it’s so tight it’s almost painful, but his face screws up with a kind of ecstatic agony that’s at least a little comforting. Trix can make him feel better, can maybe even make him feel good for a portion of this. Yixing deserves to feel good, as much as the heat allows. More, really; he deserves to feel good most of the time, but Trix isn’t in the business of unreasonable expectations. He’ll take what Yixing wants to and can give him: the unreal faces he makes, as if it feels so good and so painful at the same time. The way he does relax a little, enough that his legs unclench and wrap around Trix’s waist to pull him in. The sounds he makes, wounded-animal hoarse gasps and whines, that Trix is never going to be able to forget. Trix can't really talk, though he'd like to. He'd like to say something reassuring; he'd like to say how good Yixing looks, how good he feels. More things Trix can’t even phrase properly in his head: that he’s something like grateful Yixing let him in despite all his fear in pain, that he hopes Yixing doesn’t regret that choice, that he’s going to everything he physically can to make it suck less. Nothing like that makes it out of his mouth: he's busy staring at Yixing's face as if he’s trying to memorise how he looks now—which he is, a little.  

Slow as treacle, Trix has a thought: he hasn't kissed Yixing yet. So he leans closer—close enough to count the beads of sweat on Yixing's face—twines a hand in his hair, and closes the rest of the distance.

Two things happen simultaneously: a knot of tension in Trix's stomach that's been there for days finally releases, and Yixing shakes hard and comes with a surprised gasp. Trix's arm muscles tremble as he fucks him through the long, long seconds of it—much better than the last, that’ll help settle him a little—and then he stops, holding himself still with his own nails digging into his palms as he leans on his forearms.

It's only lightly agonising to hold himself still. Trix gets to watch relief cross Yixing's face, to lean down and press quick kisses to his mouth and cheekbones and forehead, and then pull back just far enough to see Yixing’s disoriented blinking. He thinks hard about how he'll be glad, later, that he held off. This is going to be something of an endurance event, and he's healthy and strong but he's not nineteen anymore, or anywhere near his rut season

Yixing's post-orgasm shifting becomes a little more restless. He peers up at Trix, a confused frown on his face. "You didn't come," he says, tension gathering more strongly in his face again, where the orgasm had wiped some of it away.

"Not yet," Trix agrees. "You did, though, and I wasn't sure if it'd hurt if I kept going."

Yixing's nose scrunches up. The restlessness is getting worse, and his muscles are beginning to flutter around Trix's cock; he won't be completely with it for much longer, probably. "Not much," he says, absently. "I need it anyway."

Trix wants to steal a few not-heat-addled kisses, though, so he does. It's going to get worse before it gets better from here, although Yixing doesn't smell so strongly miserable or sick or afraid anymore. Pain, still. Trix buries his face in Yixing's neck to breathe him in. Yixing permits this for a minute or two, but begins to kick his heels a little. One catches Trix painfully in the hamstring, and he bites down on a surprised 'ouch!'

"Trix," Yixing says, on a bit of a whine; his eyes, when Trix looks up, are nearly entirely black. "Don't you want..."

He'll try to get food and fluid and painkillers into Yixing after he’s come again. Trix has blown his self control budget for the entire year, probably; he has to move, has to come, has to make Yixing come again and fill him up and tire him out enough to rest for a while. It'd take some sort of actual emergency for him to do anything except what he does, which is hike Yixing's legs up higher around his waist and move his hips again.

"I want," Trix manages. He doesn't have the brain power to finish that sentence. He wants a list of things, and they don't even show up as words or images, just a flipbook of sensations he's chasing. Yixing like this, near-unbearably hot and tight around him; Yixing pliant on his chest; Yixing's teeth in his shoulder, his neck, everywhere. His knot in Yixing, so he’ll really settle, so he’ll know Trix can’t go anywhere.

No, not this time—not yet. It's going to take days for this heat to end; he can't knot Yixing right now, or it'll hurt too much at the heat's peak. He hates the thought of not knotting Yixing, but he's gotta grit his teeth and bear it. His hands are clenching, digging his fingertips into Yixing's firm thighs, but it makes Yixing moan, so that's fine. Yixing can just wear Trix's fingermarks for a while.

All Yixing's restlessness has turned into grabbing and holding. It's a good thing Trix has the strength in his back and waist and hips to match Yixing's or the clench of his thighs would hurt. Trix has to pull out a little, stop fucking into Yixing as deep as he can because he's close, his knot will swell and they'll be stuck and they can do that later, once Yixing has had some painkillers at least. Trix manages to ease out a little, to thrust more shallowly, biting down on his own lip.

He doesn't realise his eyes are closed until nails rake down his back and drag him back in, and he’s startled into opening them. "What are you一"

Yixing doesn't bother to wait for the end of that sentence: he just growls, teeth bared, and Trix tries to let him dig his nails in but also control his damn knot, but he’s fighting both of them and it’s difficult. Trix is strong, but so is Yixing, and Yixing is too heat-drugged to worry about hurting either of them.

"Fuck you, give me," Yixing snarls, and digs his teeth into the meat of Trix's deltoid.

There’s something about the insistence of that order that vanishes all of Trix’s doubts and fears, so he lets his growing knot slip inside and grinds them together as it swells, drinks in the long, relieved groan that tears its way out of Yixing's throat, and holds Yixing tightly through what feels like the longest orgasm of his entire life.

After, he has just enough energy left in his rubbery muscles to work a hand between them, where Yixing is panting and squirming on his knot. It takes nearly nothing, just the barest touch一Yixing's teeth unlatch, in anticipation?一before the squeeze around his cock redoubles and Yixing is coming everywhere, shaking and shaking and shaking and not stopping completely even when he’s done.  Trix takes advantage of his slack mouth to kiss him, slow and loose and purposeless. He's just gonna need a minute, then he swears he'll be useful.

If this were a regular heat, they'd have maybe 30 minutes or even an hour before the next wave would hit, enough time to eat and drink and relax and clean up a bit, and then once or twice more and they'd be able to catch a nap. Trix smells Yixing and listens to his breath and thinks: maybe 15 minutes. Maybe.

A tongue laps at his shoulder. It stings a little—oh, right. "Huh," he says, and lifts up onto his forearms.

Yixing lets his head fall, looking a bit sheepish. "Um, you're bleeding," he says.

Trix blinks firmly a few times. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I'm gonna一food."

Yixing's face curls into a bit more of a frown. His legs, which had relaxed, curl more tightly around Trix's hips. Trix feels like he's operating in dense fog, or on heavy painkillers, because all his dopey brain can come up with is: cute.

He drops a kiss onto Yixing's mouth. "I literally cannot go anywhere. The bag is right here." He grins tiredly, but this doesn't seem to make the frown go away, even though Yixing lets him reach for the bag. Then he realises this is a horrible position to eat anything, and curls his arms under Yixing's ass, says, "hold on," and lifts them both so he's kneeling in front of the sofa and Yixing is in his lap, back pressed against the sofa's edge. Hopefully they’ll manage to fuck on the sofa next time; it’ll be better for Yixing’s spine and Trix’s knees.

Trix shoves gatorade at Yixing, and roots around for his favourite biscuits, then places one carefully between his open lips. "Come on babe, you gotta eat. I brought painkillers."

Yixing makes a small, surprised 'mmphf!' sound, but chews obediently, though he doesn't lose the light frown. It's a considering sort of expression, uncertain, and it persists as Trix keeps handing him snacks.

Fortunately his body seems to have noticed that he's ravenously hungry, so he is eating. No one needs to look too closely at the way Trix grabbed all of Yixing's favourite snacks, including the ones that were hidden at the back of the cupboard behind the rarely-used spices, because it's not that important一snacks were required and so snacks he has. Obviously. It's only sensible: it's normal for omegas during heat to have appetite loss! You gotta have their favourites to make sure they eat!

When Yixing has eaten three of his favourite cookies, a pack of a Korean brand of seaweed snacks, and a chocolate protein bar, Trix shoves sports drink and painkillers at him. Yixing downs both—peering at the painkillers before seeming to decide he's in enough pain to justify them—but his frown is still there when he's finished.

Trix, feeling at least a bit less addled after his own protein bar and drink of something neon green, remembers how Yixing had been before the heat and instincts had overtaken him, and suddenly isn't sure about anything. What is he doing? Should he have been kissing Yixing, after? They aren't there—or they weren’t. And however much of the pain and fear and awful, black distress had been heat-intensified, it hadn't been heat-induced. Trix is trying, for his sanity, not to think or wonder too much about what's happened to Yixing, because clearly stuff has happened to him, and it's both rude to pry and unhelpful to speculate.

"What's up?" he says, trying for casual. Maybe if it seems as if it isn't a big deal for something to be up, Yixing will just tell him. People do that, sometimes, because he seems like someone who'll be chill if they tell him things. They're right, in fairness. They're usually right. He hasn't felt anything remotely resembling chill about Yixing in some time.

"Why didn't you want to knot me?" Yixing says.

Trix chokes on his packet of mysterious-flavour crisps. Yixing is still looking at him mulishly from behind tendrils of hair when Trix has finished inhaling crisps.

"Of course I wanted to!" Trix says. Yixing's face doesn't shift. "We're gonna be here a while, I figured, and it might hurt later."

Yixing makes a noncommittal noise, and his eyes flick downwards, to Trix's chest height. "I bit you," he says.

Trix is having a hard time following this conversation. He hasn't knotted anyone in a long-ass time, and had forgotten it makes him dopey. "Yeah?" he says, uncertain what sort of reply this calls for. "You did, like, warn me about that."

"What if I bite you again," Yixing says. "And you bleed?"

"I'll get some antiseptic wipes out," Trix says, feeling like gesturing at the nonexistent camera for assistance. Wait, he actually should do that, to be prepared. Fortunately the bag is in easy reach and he can find the first aid kit by feel. "Babe, I don't get it: what do you actually want?" This is the kind of question that's got him into trouble before, and it feels like it's gonna get him into trouble again.

Yixing shifts his hips. Trix wheezes a little. It's been something like five minutes, and his knot won’t even begin to go down for another ten at least. But Yixing's abs are tense, and there's a flush on his face. That fifteen minute break Trix predicted was apparently optimistic.

Actually, that might even be a good thing: Trix knots for, uh, quite a while一he's had the odd bit of commentary about that一so it’ll be sensitive enough to make his eyes water, but maybe he can grind his knot into Yixing and jerk him off into another break. Although this one, so far, is less restful than he was hoping.

Still. Food, water, electrolytes, painkillers. He's got all the basics covered. It's not news to him that he's not always got more than that, that he doesn't know what to say to people when they're sad or angry or hormonal, how to make them feel heard and loved. He's your cheerleading friend, the guy you hang out with on a Saturday night in a bar, a badass dance teacher, great at being part of a dance crew, a good casual friend. Other stuff...well. Anyway.

Yixing makes a frustrated expression and curls his whole spine into a c shape so he can reach another spot on Trix's shoulder to bite there. Trix is lost as fuck, but it feels一right. Balanced. All dancers are masochists, everyone knows that, though in his professional life Trix avoids pain. He lets out a moan when Yixing's teeth press deeper, right into a knot of tension, and it feels so good he finds himself grinding his hips into Yixing's.

The sudden mood shift is more than a bit confusing, but Yixing is clenching around his knot and whining open-mouthed against Trix's shoulder, and it's easy easy easy to wrap one hand around the back of Yixing's neck and the other around his cock and stroke him to another swift orgasm.

After he's come, Yixing flops back down against Trix’s chest, panting. Trix lets go of his cock but not of his neck, which fits so well in Trix’s cupped hand. Pressure there seems to help, and he can’t stop making small circles with his thumb just behind Yixing’s ear, where the tiny muscles of the head and neck and jaw attach and often tense.

Trix's knot begins to go down while Yixing is still glassy-eyed, and he quickly shoves an already dirtied towel under his hips. At least Yixing seems a bit more relaxed. Not...relaxed, but less tense. Trix, lightheaded but a little clearer in the brain than he was ten minutes ago, manages to grope around for a towel and some wipes to clean them both up. It's a bit of a futile effort, really, but it'll be at least slightly less uncomfortable to not be sticky all down their fronts.

A few minutes later, Trix lets his cock slip out, and finishes cleanup: Yixing twitches, but allows it, gaze watchful. He's out of it enough that Trix thinks he’d be able to nap now, if this were a regular heat. It's not, so Trix figures they've maybe got that half hour to lie in a tired heap.

So he tries to ease Yixing off his lap一maybe they could make it onto the actual sofa, and save their knees if not the sofa upholstery一when Yixing makes a sudden guttural noise and grabs Trix's arm in both hands. He still doesn't seem entirely with it, but his eyes are wild when Trix meets them.

"No," Yixing says.

Trix is so out of his depth. It's becoming slowly obvious how out of his depth. It's not as if he doesn't know how much worse this would be if he were stuck outside listening to Yixing make miserable noises—not just miserable, he's now realising. Probably furious and yelling and screaming and—begging, maybe. Crying, definitely. Trix has no idea how Yixing expected him to endure four minutes of that, never mind four days: looking at him now clinging to Trix's arm, that prospect is easier to imagine than it was before, and the vision makes Trix himself want to scream. If anyone kept him from Yixing in that state he'd body slam them out of the way then tear the door off its goddamn hinges.

He tries for calm, lets Yixing hold his arm even though he’s gripping hard enough to cut off circulation. Trix is  going to have to be more careful about this. Someone gave Yixing the idea that there's a possibility he could be removed from his alpha and locked into a room alone; of course he's gone a bit feral. "You don't wanna be on the sofa?" Trix asks, gently.

Yixing's eyes narrow, and his nails dig in. "You can't leave," he says.

"I know," Trix says. "I'm not leaving." The worst part of it is Yixing staring at him, not letting go his painfully tight grip, as if he just doesn't believe Trix at all.

That's a fucking awful thought: not just because Trix wants to be trusted, but because it means Yixing was lied to. He wouldn't be like this unless—Trix fills in, unwillingly, a gap or two—someone promised it'd be okay, promised he'd be held and safe and they'd be there, and then they weren't. Never mind Yixing not wanting Trix to leave: Trix doesn't want Yixing out of his sight for a second, doesn't want him out of arm's reach. Deep, animal instinct is yelling at him that something might come and try to part them. Yixing is so afraid of that he's gone out of the other side of fear into aggression, like a cornered animal, and that kind of fear seems to be catching. His omega is hurt, hurt and terrified, but still fighting. Still baring his teeth.

Trix has never wanted to hold someone so much in his life, so he follows the pull back to Yixing, his arm oddly slick and wet. Oh, he's bleeding there too. He just needs to not be at arm's length. Yixing is right, that's too far away. Yixing was right to dig his nails in, so Trix could feel him. He wraps Yixing up in his free arm, presses his face into Yixing's neck and breathes him in, nosing against his skin.

Slowly, hesitantly, Yixing's hands unclench and move to wrap around Trix. Trix blinks his blurry eyes. There's no time for that. He has to get them somewhere more comfortable. Has to stay calm somehow一his ex said that was the one thing he really was good at, staying so fucking calm. God. Is it calm if you can't get your emotions out properly until you move? Is it calm if you sit and breathe and your face goes flat because everything is stuck inside you, exhausting you, until you can do something?

When horrible shit happens he dances some really fucking angry dances, or puts on fuckoff loud music and cleans the grossest room in his house, and then maybe when he's worked his way through that he'll curl up and cry. He can't do any of those things now.

He can hold onto Yixing, though. He can move them together. Yixing hasn't loosened his grip, but he isn't fighting Trix at all anymore.

"Hang on to me," Trix says, somewhat redundantly. "I'm gonna lift us onto the sofa." It's a lot of effort. He's tired. He does it anyway, getting his shaky legs underneath them both to lift with his hips. He drags the duvet with their bag and lube and bottles on it closer with his foot, and sits them both back down on the sofa. Grabs the blanket from under a sofa cushion, and spreads it over them, feeling Yixing's gaze on him the whole time.

Then, he shuffles until he's on his side behind Yixing, and curls his arms around him. There probably isn't a lot of time to nap, but that doesn't seem to matter: Trix buries his face in Yixing's neck, and is out like a light.