stigma (n.) // Hyunlix

Ten

P A R T_F O U RH Y U N J I N

Changbin finds him on a Friday night in the rehearsal room. It's one of the smaller ones he booked this time, and he's been dancing for almost three hours, his limbs loose and his mind empty. It took longer to get into the right headspace this time. To have the beats sink into his bones and let his body follow, instead of the other way around.

It's different when he dances with the others. With Minho and Felix, or with all eight of them. That's when dancing is fun and hard and complicated and exhausting, and when afterward he feels like they've accomplished something bigger than himself.

He's not sure where Minho is, but he thinks he remembers something about taking singing lessons with a teacher outside of the company, the same one Seungmin is seeing. Felix is at a physical therapy appointment, a regular check up. Everyone else is in the building, and it's almost as if Hyunjin can feel them, familiar heartbeats around him, spread out, yes, but not too far away. Hyunjin never told anyone but for him it's a sort of powerful feeling, the way the members are occupying rooms in the company, staking claim to the spaces they used to be so afraid to be in. Now they're moving as if they're owning them, as if the company is not what made them, but a vessel for them to use to grow even bigger. Hyunjin's not sure he will ever tell anyone that thought, but he thinks that Seungmin more than anyone might understand what he means.

He spots Changbin just closing the door behind himself when one song ends and another is about to begin. He doesn't look grim exactly, but he looks serious enough that Hyunjin's next step falters. He rushes over to where his phone is plugged into the sound system and turns the music off.

"Hyung?" he asks, breathing heavily.

"Sorry, Hyunjinnie." Changbin looks a little apologetic. "I didn't want to disturb your practice." He's cracking a small smile, and that makes Hyunjin feel a little more at ease.

He's in his hoodie, glasses on and his hair curling at the sides. Hyunjin has seen him like this enough to be able to tell that it means he's spent hours in the studio, working on a detail that wouldn't turn out quite right. He also knows that this is just a break, that after dinner and the gym the pulsing heart of their group will come together again in Chan's studio upstairs and continue working. Changbin puts his backpack down and then sits against the wall, loosely folding his arms around his knees.

"No, I—," Hyunjin sucks in a breath, trying to regulate his breathing down to somewhere normal. "I should probably get going anyway."

"Is it—," Changbin gestures vaguely to his chest. "Is it bothering you?"

Hyunjin stops to think about it, because he gets caught up in dancing, and they're all so used to putting their pain into little boxes and cast them aside. And no one has asked him directly before. He shakes his head. "I can feel it, but it's— I think I just got used to it." He wonders when it will start to hurt, when it'll compete with his breathing and make it hard to dance. Impossible to sing. He shudders thinking about it, putting that worry back in the box.

Changbin nods. His face doesn't lose its seriousness and Hyunjin grows nervous.

"Is everything okay?" he asks, grabbing the front of his shirt to fan some air towards his skin. He's still dripping sweat but now that he's stopped moving it's starting to itch.

Changbin doesn't reply immediately.

He opens his mouth as if to speak but then closes it again. He's nervous too, Hyunjin realizes.

"Is it me?" Changbin flinches at his own words, but he keeps his gaze up and steady, bracing himself for an answer.

Hyunjin doesn't understand. He opens his mouth to ask before it clicks. Are you in love with me? That is what he's asking. Relief floods him, shame as well, somehow. He shakes his head.