#i tried so hard to think of an extremely clever and punny title but i failed

[felix-tee]

opportunist { car trouble au} | felix + ?

Ugh, God, he knew he shouldn’t have let his father convince him that self-driving to his hotel from the airport would be a ‘good learning experience and chance to embrace your independence in an exciting new city’. Fee could almost throw up a little in his mouth a little just thinking about it now, and he’s sure the expression on his face reflects the resentment and disgust. 

To his ears now, it sounded stupid and cheesy and so not the Felix-Tee way, but his Dad had been so insistent that Felix would have so much more fun making this trip different from the others. He’d said it’d be “unique” and “more memorable” and something about the way he’d up-sold the whole, independent, away-from-home-in-a-new-city vibes had just... worked, somehow. Miraculously. It’d taken a long time to wear Felix down, of course, but at some point, his father must have been able to get Felix in just the right position with his back against the wall, or caught him at just the right level of exhaustion to make it all sound like sort of a good idea. Like something Felix would actually want and be keen on. 

Which was bloody ludicrous to imagine now, because of course he’d prefer not to do something himself that he could just have someone else do for him, especially when it involved risk and learning new things and personal effort, like driving around in an unfamiliar city in the bloody winter, when it’d been snowing not two days ago. The roads were fine tonight, just as everyone had assured Felix they would be, but... it was cold and Felix hated the cold and the snow. He’d never been around snow before in his life, mind you, but he’d known just from the concept of it and the look of it on the telly that he’d hate it. And now, having experienced it up close and personal and seeping into the seems of his five hundred dollar designer boots, he was really quite bitterly smug that he'd been right. Not that he’d ever doubted his right-ness. But to all the doubters, and the people accusing him of being ‘dramatic’ and that he’d had to ‘just give it a chance’—Hah. Bloody proved them wrong, didn’t he? Because he did hate it, after all. It was cold and wet and unnecessary and inconvenient and now that his rental car was sitting in the middle of a dark, wooded and creepy winding road out in God Knows Where with a flat tire, well—snow was just officially the worst now. 

He wasn’t sure what had caused the flat, really, and though snow itself seemed like an unlikely culprit, he was choosing to blame it, anyway.  Because he’d nearly skidded off the road when the tire blew, it’d scared the living daylights out of him, and he was sure it was a miracle the whole bloody vehicle didn’t flip into a ditch and kill him right then and there. Surely articles would soon be writing about how The Felix Tee had narrowly escaped death this Christmas, and what a miracle it was he’d not been stolen from this earth so prematurely, in a fatal, tragic accident. 

And to think that back home right now, it was 43 degrees and the middle of bloody summer. Ughhhhhhhhhh. This guest role better be bloody worth all this trouble. He’d of course been thrilled when his agent had told him about the invitation to send in a tape for the minor ‘model bombshell with an accent’ bit part in one of the international streaming market’s current quickest grossing episodic series, ‘The Canopy Institute’. And when he’d actually booked the gig, to think his first major chance to get television exposure outside of commercials and talk show appearances would be this three week trip abroad? Over the Christmas holidays, no less? Yes, it did sound like something fabulous and cinematic, and maybe that’s why his father’s whole ‘independence and opportunity’ speech had actually worked. 

Whatever the reason, Felix was full of regrets now, and was currently formulating a told-you-so speech for his father in his head, as he stared at the flat tire in a blank, and immobilized (gay) panic. Pulling the coat tighter around his neck to protect against against the wind chill, Felix bit his lip hard enough to distract him from his desire to cry. Oh, this was just the absolute worst. 

He was just taking out his mobile to call his father so his father could tell him what to do (was he supposed to call a tow company? The rental car place? A cab? Were they even tow companies in this country? Did they work differently? Or did they have people you could just... order out to come change a tire? Ugh, he had no experience with any of this, and how the hell was he supposed to know what number to call? There were about a million different results that came up on Google... ugh, it was just all too overwhelming), when headlights came around the corner and slowed. Then pulled over. Felix turned and squinted into the blinding lights, clutching his phone (which was currently ringing) to his ear, and reaching into his coat pocket. The car door opened, and a figure who Felix couldn’t see properly because of the lights,  stepped out. 

Felix took a step or two back. He wanted to be relieved, if this person was here to help, but he’d heard plenty of ‘pretty boys stranded on the side of the road’ horror stories. “Oh my God, can you help me? But if you’re a rapist or a murderer, I have pepper spray, a very protective father and a distress button on my phone. One finger on me and the FBI will be all over your ass, I promise you that.” 

He was sort of a big deal, after all.