Chapter Text
The doctor tried to warn Jisung that he might feel a little more disoriented than usual by the constant travel that goes along with touring. He’d prescribed him some extra strength scent neutralizers and calming sprays to spread on his clothing and luggage and for the different planes and cars they would have to occupy to get places.
“Your body craves stability above all else right now,” the doctor had explained. “As best as you can, try to keep a similar routine in your hotels.”
Chan attended that particular appointment with him, taking note of everything the doctor said and worked with management to make sure things would run as smoothly as possible.
So far, they had. In fact, touring was somehow better than things back at the dorms.
Everyone was so tired from jetlag and the logistics of touring that Jisung’s usual worries took a backseat, the doctor’s prescriptions pulling their weight in keeping him calm.
Felix helped too. He was perpetually claiming the seat next to him in their cars and planes. He was practically latched on to him in all of their airport photos. Their photos went so viral, their managers kept cooing at how cute the sunshine twins were. Everyone was supportive, especially the fans who drafted up all sorts of encouraging signs at their remaining stops.
Omega ace!!
If Han is Omega, then I’m Psi because I’ll Stay by his Side
Omega Han? Omega can!
Things were so good that Jisung momentarily forgot about the strange barrier that had formed between Minho and him. He selectively chose not to think about the fact that it was usually Minho who sat next to him on flights, adjusting himself so Jisung could sleep against his shoulder. How it was Minho who usually sat next to him in their SUV, silly videos queued up on his phone to distract him in case he got overwhelmed by the crowds.
After their next show, he was so buzzed from the energy of the night, that he gave little thought in the hallway backstage before turning to Minho and jumping into his arms.
“You were incredible out there, hyung,” Jisung praised.
Minho had been particularly graceful, his energy at a steady high through their songs and ments. All of the members shined in their own way but Minho was particularly bright.
Minho seemed to forget about their rift as well because he giggled and caught Jisung easily, spinning him around.
“Not as bright as our ace omega,” Minho teased.
Jisung stuck his tongue out, too pleased by the contact, even more pleased when Minho didn’t put him down. He carried him all the way back to their dressing room. Chan and Felix sent them a side eye as Jisung continued to cling to Minho, even as their stylist team came over to help take off their equipment and show wear.
Eventually they had to part to fully change out of their stage outfits. Minho let out a grumble about it but didn’t disobey the stylist noona that was giving him a stern look. He left the room at her insistence and part of Jisung wanted to run out after him.
But he stayed put, quickly stripping and changing into sweats and a tour t-shirt, not bothering to do more than dab his face with an oil sheet before getting back to Minho.
Minho caught him in the doorway, urgent look in his eyes, face still smeared with stage makeup. He was wearing a similar outfit as Jisung except his shirt was inside out. Jisung would have giggled if he wasn’t so focused on making physcical contact again.
“Hyung,” he whined until Minho’s hands came underneath him abruptly picking him up so Jisung could properly latch on to him again.
“Get a room,” Changbin ribbed, popping out of the other room with Hyunjin and Jeongin in tow.
Neither of them bothered with a response, only followed in step toward the exit where the car was waiting for them. For once, Felix didn’t attempt to take the seat next to him. The other omega seemed content to sit in Chan’s lap even as he sent curious looks in Jisung’s direction.
When they got back to the hotel, part of him wanted to ask Minho to come back to his room to cuddle but Minho’s excitement had dropped into post-show exhaustion almost as soon as the car started moving. He'd fallen asleep with his arms firmly around Jisung's middle. When they make it back to the hotel, Jisung decided not to push his luck and bade Minho a soft good night before retiring to his own room.
Jisung slept like a baby.
He woke the next morning with a giddy feeling in his chest. He was feeling optimistic enough to wander down the hall to Minho’s hotel room. They had the day off before they were set to be on the road again.
Despite the early hour, Minho opened the door, eyes puffy from sleep but otherwise alert like he’d been awake for a bit, maybe laying in bed scrolling on his phone. It was such a familiar look, the same one Jisung was used to waking up to back at the dorms when they had sleepovers. They’d laze in bed together, watching videos talking quietly until they roused themselves up to make or go for breakfast before getting on with the rest of their days. They were quiet mornings, gentle moments that Jisung had never given much thought to before.
He felt their absence now. How Minho smelled like fresh linen, like home, more calming than anything his doctor could prescribe. He missed Minho. He wanted his best friend back.
“Jisung?” Minho said when Jisung continued to stand there in silence without saying anything.
“Hyung,” Jisung started, swallowing around the emotion in his throat. “I just wanted to see if you wanted to hang out today.”
Minho blinked, Jisung’s words registering.
Jisung could see the moment he lost him.
Gone was the careless joy. That Minho had disappeared behind a blank mask. He gave Jisung a small forced smile.
“Ah, I’m a little tired today, Jisungie. I’m just going to stay in and rest today.”
“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Jisung rushed to clarify. “We can just stay in the hotel. I have my laptop. We can watch a movie or you can go back to sleep if you get tired, I won’t bother you.”
Minho’s gaze slipped to the ground, breaking eye contact entirely. “Ah, my eyes have been a little sensitive to screens lately, I think it might make it difficult to sleep.”
Jisung didn’t know what else to say. Minho wasn’t saying anything outright but his message was clear. Minho was always the type to do what he wanted, to say what he meant directly, and Jisung had always liked that best about him.
He didn’t know what to do with this version of his hyung.
Early in their trainee days it wasn’t uncommon that days would pass with Jisung somehow managing to piss off every single one of his members. He’d always assumed Minho was annoyed with him too, annoyed with the way Jisung would snap and nitpick and generally be unable to keep his mouth shut.
One bad day he’d made Felix cry with a particularly harsh comment. Chan scolded him on the spot and called for a break. Jisung had wanted to punch a hole in the wall and then in Chan’s overly sympathetic face and then in his own face.
He’d hardly expected it when Minho popped up in front of him, a pleasant expression on his face.
“Let’s grab food. Hyung will buy.”
“No thanks.”
Minho tilted his head to the side. “I wasn’t asking.”
Jisung hadn’t known Minho long at that point, but Minho was one of the few members he rarely butted heads with. Even when he thought Minho was upset with him, he looked unbothered.
Jisung had followed after him and they ate their food in silence. He waited for Minho to start scolding him or bring the incident up but he never did. Jisung finally broke in the middle of their meal.
“Aren’t you going to scold me?”
“Why would I do that?” Minho asked, face calm as ever. He was chewing slowly, savoring his food as if it was a gourmet dish rather than microwave rice and chicken breast.
“For snapping at Felix,” Jisung muttered. “For making him cry.”
Minho blinked in a way that Jisung was already beginning to understand as his usual manner of delay when thinking through his words.
“Did you mean to make him cry?”
“Of course not,” Jisung denied.
“Then I don’t see why you’d want me to scold you over it.”
"I didn't want you to scold me. I was just asking," he mumbled.
Minho hummed in acknowledgement but didn't offer anything else up.
"Why are we here?" he prodded on.
“Because it was lunch time, and I was hungry.”
“Why am I here?” Jisung huffed.
Again, Minho blinked. “Because I wanted to spend time with you.”
“Why?” Why after he’d been so awful, continued to be so awful in a way that his body and brain couldn’t prevent, acting out of synch with each other, sucking in emotions and then spitting them out at the worst times, always taking someone else down as collateral. He hated it. He couldn’t understand why Minho would want to be around him right now.
“Why not?” Minho said easily. “It’s lunch time. You were hungry too, no? Meals taste better when they’re shared.”
Jisung couldn’t say much to that.
Doing what he wanted, saying what he wanted, willing to explain why he did things up to a certain point but mainly letting his actions speak in place of words. That was how Minho was.
Except this wasn’t Minho. Not the one he knew and loved. Not the Minho who swung him around last night and burrowed into his neck without having to think twice before whispering, “You did well, Hannie.”
Jisung wanted to beg to be let in. He wanted to beg Minho to tell him what he did to have lost the privilege in the first place. Except he knew what he did. His shoulders slumped and he stepped back from Minho’s door, grabbing his elbows to give his trembling hands something to do.
“Ok,” he mumbled, resigned. “I’ll go see if Felix is free. Sleep well, hyung.”
Minho didn’t even look at him before he began shutting the door.
“Thanks, Hannie, you too.”
He went to Felix’s room. He only knocked once before the door swung open, Felix pulling Jisung into the room.
He hardly has to say anything before Felix was dragging him into the bed, ushering him into Chan’s open arms.
“Hey Sungie, not going sightseeing with the others?” Chan asked in greeting, holding up his phone with the band group chat open.
“Staying in,” he mumbled, slumping on top of Chan. Chan accepted it easily, adjusting his position on the bed to better support Jisung’s deadweight. Jisung sighed when he felt Chan’s blunt nails running down his back in a soothing pattern.
“That’s fine, me too,” Felix said eagerly from somewhere behind him.
Jisung turned his head enough to see that Felix was gathering the complimentary snacks from the bar, carrying them over to the bed. He stopped short of the foot of the bed and then dumped them on top of Jisung.
Felix grinned widely. “I’m putting on Survivor.”
Their interaction outside of Minho’s hotel room marked the mood for the rest of the tour. It turned out that the show was an anomaly. Minho remained polite but distant during their remaining performances.
Jisung tried not to let it affect his own mood but the others seemed to pick up on it, putting in extra effort to be playful with him on stage and sweet backstage. Felix remained steadfast in trying to merge their bodies into one. No one batted an eye for the most part except for Chan who had to pull a whining Felix off Jisung after one of their shows for trying to pour water into Jisung’s mouth. Directly from his own mouth like a mom feeding a baby bird.
“Felix,” Chan said sternly as Felix nipped at the alpha’s biceps trying to squirm free.
“He’s dehydrated,” Felix whined.
“So give him a water bottle,” Chan laughed, shaking his head and then yelping when Felix sank his teeth into his muscle.
His Alpha scent surged and then suddenly he was tossing Felix over his shoulder.
“Alright you menace, that's enough,” he said and then murmured something too quiet for Jisung to hear before striding out of the room, a shrieking and giggling Felix echoing all the way down the hall.
Jisung giggled himself, focusing back on his looking for his things before he could follow them out.
A hand cut into his line of vision. A hand holding a water bottle.
Jisung looked up.
It was one of the staff. A new guy Jisung had only interacted with a few times. Handsome and tall enough that Jisung had to crane his head up to meet his eye. An alpha. Hajoon, Jisung remembered.
“Thirsty?” Hajoon asked.
Jisung grinned, accepting the bottle. He liked Hajoon. He was younger and had a band outside of the company that he talked about with Jisung sometimes.
“Thanks, Hajoon.”
“No problem, hyung.”
The sound of a loud growl startled them both. Jisung jumped and Hajoon’s easy smile fell away, something more alert taking its place.
Suddenly, Minho was there, crowding into his space, the smell of linen thick in the air. Minho's scent patch must have slipped during the concert. Jisung couldn't help but take a few greedy gulps of air, letting the scent flood his system.
“Hyung?” Jisung managed to ask, his voice coming out more dreamy than confused.
Minho glared at him. No. He glared at the water bottle in his hands.
“Don’t drink that,” he muttered.
Jisung’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Take this,” Minho grunted. He shoved a bottle in his hands. An electrolyte drink.
“Oh,” Jisung said, a little dumbfounded. It was his favorite. The part of him that was startled by Minho’s abrupt appearance was washed away by a burst of warmth. Hope.
“Thank you, alpha,” he said happily.
Minho jumped back, a startled noise leaving his mouth. Not quite a growl and not quite a shout. He looked, Jisung though, as if he’d been shot. He mumbled something nonsensical and abruptly stomped out of the room.
The hope was a stupid restless thing.
Despite the water bottle incident, Minho was just as reserved the next day and the following. A fluke. He didn’t even look over when Jisung whined about being thirsty after rehearsal.
The whiplash was driving him crazy. He wanted to respect whatever boundary Minho had put up but the hot and cold of it was driving his omega wild. Despite the doctor’s prescriptions, the balance and routine that Jisung sought kept getting waylaid by his bubbling instincts. The instinct to steal Minho’s post-show clothes for his nest; the urge to wait outside of Minho’s hotel room like a lost puppy; the urge to open his throat and chirp and chirp and chirp until his alpha came running.
The end of the tour brought no reprieve but at least back at home he had access to his studio again. Performing was great but Jisung needed the creative outlet, felt a little insane going both without it and Minho while on the road.
He practically turned into Chan when they got back. He stayed at the studio late into the night until the sun came up and then he did it all over again. If he was tired, he supplemented his weak brain with coffee or energy drinks. Sometimes he napped on the studio couch but he certainly didn’t crawl back home to his nest.
He made it nearly a week like that before his body abruptly quit on him.
It was late at the studio and he’d been laboring on a track that just sounded like pitiful begging. But Jisung couldn’t seem to write anything else. He felt heartsick, like an actual virus was infecting his blood, leaving him delirious and bereft. He didn’t know this would be a part of presenting. The heightened intensity of his emotions and physical symptoms felt like a whole other round of puberty.
Except the physical symptoms were only getting worse. The rush of heat under his skin. The ache in his joints and low in his stomach.
He’d really overdone it.
He put his head on his desk and closed his eyes, even the warm studio lights were suddenly too harsh on his sensitive eyes. He stayed there for a while, just breathing through it.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the sound of the door opening startled him from his slump. For a moment, in his delirium, he thought it might be Minho, but then the familiar omega scent washed over him.
“Felix,” he said, in a moment of weakness, letting the chirps spill out of him.
It was safe here, in the studio, alone with his pack omega. He’d been trying to pretend things were fine but it seemed redundant now.
“It hurts,” he said pitifully.
“What hurts?” Felix asked sharply.
“It hurts,” he whined again. He didn’t want to explain. He patted at his chest with a trembling hand. Felix seemed to understand or at least appreciate Jisung’s weak attempt at an explanation.
“Shhhh,” the other omega soothed, leading him over to the couch, bundling him the collection of blankets and hoodies Jisung had accumulated during his extended stay at the company.
“We’ll get you right,” Felix murmured, wiping at the tears that had begun to gather in Jisung's eyes. “Don’t worry about the pain right now. Just focus on resting.”
Jisung made another weak noise but couldn’t resist the calming pheromones Felix was pumping out, quickly pulling him under a deep fog of calm until he drifted off to sleep.
When he woke, Felix was gone.
Chan was sitting next to him, petting his head gently.
Jisung sat up.
“Where’s Lix?” he asked groggily, unsure how much time had passed. He was still in the studio so it was hard to tell the time of day outside.
Chan smiled but it was a little strained.
“He went into preheat so I sent him home. He said he might text you later. Something about last night?” he said the last part like a question, giving room for Jisung to explain but Jisung just frowned.
Ah, so an entire night had passed. He tried to remember the details of what happened but the memory was hazy at best. He remembered the regret and loneliness setting in, remembered Felix there but the rest was distant, just out of his reach. He couldn't remember what he'd said. What he might have confessed to.
"You should rest back at home," Chan said quietly when Jisung remained silent. "This isn't healthy." He sounded a little rueful about it like he knew it was hypocritical for him to say, but Jisung couldn't find it in him to make the obvious jab.
He was too tired. Maybe Chan was right. Maybe a nap back in his nest would be enough to bring him back to normal.