stigma (n.) // Hyunlix

Nine

F E L I X

When Felix returns it's approaching midnight but the air is still sticky and warm, the discomfort adding to the hours spent on the plane, and his clothes cling to him in an uneasy way. It's quiet when he enters the dorm, the silence of his members if not asleep, at least already in their rooms.

Felix toes off his shoes and stays in the entryway for a little bit longer, soaking it all in. He's been gone for not even four full days but the journey sits in his bones as if he left for months and there's a small voice inside him fearing that things will have changed once he's back.

It does feel different. Something is, and Felix tries pushing that away, the pull in his heart, the emptiness built on text messages that are weeks old now. His hands tingle as if he just had to flex them correctly to make it disappear, but he flexes and stretches and nothing helps.

"Yongbokkie," Minho says when he emerges from his room and spots him, still frozen in the entryway. He's about to continue to wherever he was going to, is already halfway out of sight when he stops and takes a few steps back. "Yongbokkie?" he repeats, a question this time, and Felix is sure he must look horrible.

Felix doesn't break right away, not there. Minho doesn't pry, but he makes him sit in the kitchen and wait until the kimchi fried rice from the day before is heated up, which is the same thing. He places the food in front of him and sits as well, hawk eyes on Felix taking small bites. It's Minho's love language just as much as his interrogation method. Felix remembers a little more than a year ago even Chan breaking under Minho's care, sobbing at the dining table. It had been a huge mess when Felix, Seungmin, and Jeongin walked into the scene.

Felix asks after the others, after Seungmin, and Jeongin, and Minho updates him with short answers and they both know that something is off, the last name hanging between them, weightless and heavy.

Under Minho's watchful gaze, he finishes his food and stands up and he doesn't ask about Hyunjin. He wants to, wants to know more than just the generic 'it went well, I think' he got from Jeongin. But he can't ask, tries not to think about him at all because something started in that room where Hyunjin told them all about the flower in his chest, and it's festering the same way, growing and growing, and Felix isn't sure how Hanahaki feels but he's sure it can't be much different from this. Suffocating.

Minho lets him walk away and it feels worse even, the eyes following him, surely disappointed.

He gets half an hour. Felix unpacks quickly, has it down to an art form now, and then he washes up and is quick about that too.

When he comes back into his room, Minho is waiting. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor by his bed, playing with his phone.

"Hyung?"

"Are you going to tell hyung what's going on?" he asks, his voice gentle. His face is showing more confusion than concern, which Felix counts as a good thing.

"What do you mean?" Felix asks, but it's a moment too late to be believable.

"You didn't ask about Hyunjin-ah."

There. Plain, direct. The name is piercing through Felix's heart and he wants to laugh at how little he's able to protect it.

"How is he doing?" Felix blushes under Minho's gaze. Minho's not nosy. He's observant, sure, but he doesn't meddle in other people's things unless he feels that he needs to, which means he knows somehow that Felix and Hyunjin have not exactly been speaking.

Minho shrugs. "The appointment went well, and he's been okay, I think, but Sungie is being cagey about something and you know how bad he is at lying."

His heart drops. "But they can operate on him, right?"