stigma (n.) // Hyunlix

Interlude #2

2018 - H Y U N J I N

No one ever brings up the fight between Felix and Hyunjin that happened in the first year after their debut. They talk about all the others constantly, tease each other, laughing about how stupid and immature they'd been, but never this one. No one ever dares to speak of it.

Hyunjin had missed all the signs when it started. That's what he feels guilty about the most. How careless he had been. How he didn't even pay enough attention to Felix to notice how much he was hurting him. That guilt keeps gnawing at him even now, in those quiet moments, when he remembers. And when he remembers the moment it all blew up. Felix's tears and that silent anger that harbored so much pain.

He'd been so careless then. Careless and selfish, so focused on himself and his own fears, that he didn't see much outside himself, and didn't notice how much Felix was trying to be his friend.

Hyunjin knows better now. That it hadn't just been carelessness, but fear as well. A fear that was planted as the smallest seed that night in the company cafeteria, and that he only noticed was growing when it was already far too late.

~o~

Hyunjin realizes his mistake the moment the doorbell rings. Or not then exactly, but when he comes back into the kitchen with the hot pizza balanced on one hand. He catches Felix's eyes, sees his expression fall, and then he realizes.

"I said I was going to cook for us," Felix says, voice breaking on the last word.

Hyunjin hadn't thought about that when he ordered, had forgotten all about Felix talking of little else the last two days about where to get the right things because he wanted to cook a recipe from his grandma, Australian food, and those ingredients were harder to come by.

Hyunjin freezes in the hallway until the heat of the carton burns his hand. "Sorry, I forgot," he says and immediately knows it's the wrong thing to say when Felix looks away from him and continues cutting the vegetables in front of him.

Hyunjin feels awful. But his stomach growls against his will, the smell of the pizza too enticing to ignore. He braves the way to the kitchen and walks past Minho who has an eye on Felix's cooking, ready to help if needed, and he earns an accusing glare from his hyung. Hyunjin didn't even notice him coming in.

He places the pizza on the kitchen counter and contemplates tiptoeing back out because the heavy silence makes him nauseous and any wrong move could cause an explosion.

"No, please eat it, you paid for it," Felix says without looking over when Hyunjin is almost out the door.

"No, I can eat it tomorrow too."

Felix huffs. "No, really, you don't have to wait for me to be done here. Please, eat."

It comes out tense and put off and annoyance floods Hyunjin, he can't help it, at how delicate Felix's feelings are and how guilty it makes Hyunjin feel and he's already turning away, fleeing the situation rather than facing it, but then he sees it. And it makes his stomach drop.

Tears are shimmering in Felix's eyes.

"Yongbokkie," Hyunjin whispers, and suddenly he feels so small and so, so guilty.

Felix is still leaning over the table but he stopped cutting. A tear runs down his cheek, catching on his chin.

"Felix," Hyunjin tries again, taking a tentative step forward. Minho is still there, by Felix's side, hovering, but not interfering.

"Go away." Two soft, barely there words. And they cut Hyunjin like a knife.

"Felix," he says again, stepping closer.

"Go away!" Felix shouts, head snapping up, and this is not like a cut, this is like a bullet hitting Hyunjin's chest. "You really don't care about me at all do you?"

"What?"

Next to them, Minho stands, ready to interfere but waiting it out still. Too many months in too close quarters has taught him enough, and they're still so new to each other, still forming against the shapes of everyone else.

"I don't know what else to do," Felix says, angrily wiping away the tears that are spilling.

Hyunjin is stunned, not sure what to say to make this any better, to stop Felix's tears. He can see Changbin and Chan approaching slowly, Jeongin next to them. Alerted by the shouting they're still keeping their distance, watching the scene unfold.

Felix is not done. "I keep trying to get closer to you, but you're not letting me!" More tears. More angry wiping. "You just don't give a shit, do you? There's nothing I can do to make you like me."

Distantly, Hyunjin notices how Felix's voice breaks when he's crying like that, how it gets higher and higher, and then breaks as if he's still a little boy and his voice is just coming in.

It's that moment, that very moment when Felix is looking at him with so much pain in his eyes that Hyunjin realizes he does care. He cares so much about the boy he doesn't even know how to talk to half the time, the kid who looks so out of place in a place like this and who wants nothing more than to fit in. The one that tries to make everyone a little happier just by existing.

"Hyunjin-ah, I think you better go," someone says, Chan - he realizes, from behind them, and there's a part of Hyunjin that bristles at that, wants to talk back, but in front of him Minho pulls a crying Felix into a hug and he feels like the worst person alive.

~o~

Hyunjin doesn't try talking to him that day. At two in the morning, he breaks down crying, and it's Changbin who comes to scold him, holding him until his crying subsides.

"He's been trying so hard for you to like him," Changbin says, and he's more gentle than Hyunjin thinks he deserves.

"But I do like him," he shoots back and feels like a six-year-old.

"Then you have to start showing him. Yongbokkie is different than you and me. He's sensitive."

And Hyunjin cries a little more at that because it feels unfair when his own skin is also made of rice paper, only it doesn't look like it, and no one ever makes sure to tell the others to be careful around Hyunjin, because he's sensitive.

~o~

He goes to find Felix the next night when Chan, Changbin, and Jisung are still at the studio and most of the others are still out.

"You don't have to pretend to like me," Felix mumbles, pain dripping from his voice, and every syllable is another cut to Hyunjin's heart. He's never felt shame like this.

Felix is sitting on his bed, two Korean language learning books opened around him, and a notebook half-filled with scribblings, letters, and short sentences.

"I'm not pretending," Hyunjin pushes out, in English. He waits for a beat, not sure if Felix will make him leave again, but then he crawls onto the bed, settling down next to him. Their bodies don't touch, but it's warm from Felix's heat and it smells like him, comforting and familiar, and Hyunjin takes a deep breath.

"I can help you if you like," he says, pointing at the books.

It makes Felix finally look at him. It's a cautious look, guarded, and Hyunjin tries for a smile but it comes out weak. "Yeah?" he asks, because he has no words to explain to Felix why he kept his distance, why Felix has been running up against a wall Hyunjin doesn't remember building, because he's on the other side of that wall, barely able to see himself.

"Yeah, okay." Felix nods. "Thanks."

It doesn't fix their relationship right away. Doesn't magically heal what's broken between them. But that night, they work on Felix's Korean for the next two hours, and when the others come home, they're still on Felix's bed. They've shifted throughout the night, and when Minho opens the door to their room, he finds Felix sleeping, tucked into Hyunjin's lap. And he finds Hyunjin, holding the sleeping boy, with a look on his face he will tell Hyunjin about, years later. "You looked so confused, Hyunjin-ah. Like you were a little scared of him."