Archive of Our Own

Hyunlix = fan service

Of fucking course.

Of course it was an open secret.

Of course they’re HYUNLIX, with ship tags and edits and a language of glances that people slowed into Tiktok reels and laced hands zoom in pictures.

Of course someone had decided long ago that the two of them looked good together. Dramatic height difference, honeyed gazes and a surplus of dimples.

Of course, when the camera was on, Hyunjin knew where to stand and which angle to offer his smile from so the frame caught them both. How their limbs intertwined with each other without much thought. Hyunjin had always been good at learning choreography.

Of fucking course.

He told himself the moves were harmless. Tilt his head closer when Felix laughed. Graze knuckles when they reached for the same bottle of water. Always include Felix in all his interviews and random conversations. Let his eyes linger a second longer than a normal friend would do, like a secret threaded through the day.

If the fans saw it, that was good business. If Felix saw it… if Felix ever saw it… then it must have looked like another step in a well rehearsed routine.

He hadn’t confessed. He had never even named it to himself in ways that didn’t make his chest feel too tight.

Hyunjin uploaded their photos on his public Instagram disguised as business, for the sake of the ship. But in his private? He posted Felix more than his own face.

In interviews he labeled it brotherhood, family, the kind of attachment that grew in the dark backstage corners while everyone else went home. He repeated it often enough that most days he almost believed it.

He was just overprotective. He was just careful.

He was just… genuine.

He liked Felix. Or loved. Definitely loved. More than friends. Less than a disaster. Something that lived in that narrow space where he could still breathe.

He told himself he wasn’t alone in the shape of his life. He had dated before. Two girls before debut, a boy after. That last one lasted eleven months, measured in toothbrushes left in the wrong place and arguments about schedules that leaked into sleep.

It was fine, and then it was over, the way fine things sometimes were. It should have meant he was practiced at being gentle with endings. It should have meant he knew the difference between ache and love.

Then nothing followed. He was busy to entertain people. (Or so he said to stop his mom from asking why he was single)

However, Felix was too private for gossip. Hyunjin guessed.  He always ended up guessing. Chan probably knew everything. Numbers and names and that soft catalog of firsts.

Hyunjin caught them in English sometimes, quick syllables snapping between them like magnets, and he pretended he wasn’t listening while collecting fragments: seven exes, maybe. Seven someones who got to hold the part of Felix that didn’t belong to a stage.

Hyunjin only understood to a point. He assembled the rest like he did choreography. Filled the gaps, counted the beats, didn’t look down.

Before all of this, before red ocean light crowds and screens taller than buildings, they were just trainees with time to kill and no witnesses.

Felix had always loved hugging. Everyone, everything. A general practice of gravity. Hyunjin learned the rules there too. Warm palms on shoulders, a quick press of forehead to shoulder if the day went bad. In those days Felix would tumble into him without choreography, pure and uncurated.

Even later, when it was real, Hyunjin watched from the corner of his eye to see if a lens had found them, if the moment became “shipping content” the second it happened.

He was grateful for anything Felix gave him. That was the cruelest truth.

Gratitude tasted like sugar… easy to swallow, bad for his teeth.

Seven years later, they had proof they were right to want this. The biggest tour of their lives, numbers that felt invented. The attendance records, sold-out shows in cities that used to exist only in their playlists or couldn’t even pronounce.

The last night was a cathedral of sound, a roofless place where the sky poured in and the fans sang loud enough to rattle his bones. During the ment, Hyunjin looked at the floor to steady himself and found a confetti star stuck to his shoe. He left it there. It felt like the right kind of silly to carry it through the final bow.

Felix was a live wire all night, energy sparking in every direction. Backstage, he bounced like he’d stolen a piece of the arena’s electricity and it was trying to get out of him. Someone said it was the gummy bears, and Felix made a face as if he was offended they’d revealed his secret.

Hyunjin watched him move between staff and members and instruments, caught the way he shoved his beanie down when a camera appeared, the shy reflex that never changed.

The airport was the same as it had always been, a liminal hallway of fluorescent lights and coffee that tasted like cardboard. They had done this a thousand times and never like that: the last flight of the tour, a return that felt heavier because it was finally allowed to.

Hyunjin sat by the window on the plane and pretended to sleep while everyone negotiated overhead space and seat swaps. Jisung sat across the aisle, and Felix dropped his bag there, their knees bumping, their voices a bright ribbon of English. Hyunjin caught words because of heavy accent, not sentences. He hated the way he leaned in.

They took off. The seatbelt light blinked off with a soft ding. The cabin settled into a hush built from shuffling blankets and the click of phone cameras that didn’t quite go dark.

Felix appeared at his elbow like a thought he’d had hours ago. “Hyune, do you still have the gum?” he asked, voice low like a secret they weren’t supposed to share while the night pressed against the window. “The one we bought together? Mine disappeared.”

Together.

Hyunjin felt stupidly, fiercely grateful for that word. He reached into his bag without looking away from him.

“Yeah,” he said, and it came out gentler than he meant, like the gum was a promise. He pressed the pack into Felix’s palm. Their hands touched, and it was nothing for Felix, and it was everything for Hyunjin.

Felix beamed. That was the thing about him. He still beamed like a kid even when the cameras were off, a light turned up by its own switch.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he said, and then, like it was natural, like he always did this, Felix caught Hyunjin’s hand and kneaded at the base of his thumb with his own thumb, a clumsy little hand massage, laughing under his breath about how he’d lost his pack somewhere between the stage and the van and then possibly the earth’s core.

He talked with his hands, massaging, so both of them were in motion. Hyunjin’s hand held, turned, his knuckles pressed like he was a piano key Felix was trying out.

Hyunjin felt the maps of his bones suddenly, acutely. He worried he was holding wrong, too stiff or too desperate. He laughed when Felix laughed because it gave his face something to do.

He stored, he recorded, he hoarded the warmth. Later he’d remember the exact pressure between tendon and skin and the way Felix’s ring clicked softly against his nail.

The pilot spoke, a clean voice cutting through the cabin. Felix squeezed once, automatic, like a period at the end of a sentence, and let go. “Okay,” he said, already stepping away. “Thanks again, Hyune.” He tapped the gum against his palm as if it was a drum and went back to his seat, his head bent toward Jisung’s phone, toward a joke Hyunjin wasn’t part of.

It would have been easier if the ache had had dignity. It didn’t.

It was messy and small and embarrassingly hopeful.

He stared at his hand after Felix left, felt the ghost of pressure like it was trying to write something into his skin. He wiped his palm on his sweats and hated himself for it, then hated himself for the hating, a loop that never ended.

Outside the window the world was a black ocean with a few stray constellations where cities broke the surface.

He chewed a piece of gum because it was there and because the sweetness would give his mouth something to think about. He counted beats. Four to inhale, four to hold, four to exhale. He imagined a choreographer somewhere in the sky telling him where to place his body so he wouldn’t fall.

Across the aisle, Felix and Jisung laughed. Hyunjin heard his name and something like “hero,” then a stretch of English too quick to catch. Chan leaned over the back of the seat to throw in a comment, all three of them glowing like a planet with three suns.

Hyunjin stared at the safety card, at the illustrated people who always made it out, at the neat arrow pointing to the exit that looked so obvious if you had to find it.

He felt ridiculous thinking about exes, counting ghosts like they could reassure him. Two girls before debut. One boy after. He could have listed their birthdays if someone asked because he was polite like that. He could remember the exact fight in month eleven that would have made a different person walk away. He could say he learned something, that he grew up.

But…

None of it applied here. None of it applied to the unspent wanting he’d been carrying for years, the kind that made him rearrange his day so he was standing near Felix more often than chance would allow and then pretend he was always meant to be there.

He wanted to be good. He wanted to be the kind of man who didn’t take more than he was given.

Felix didn’t owe him anything.

That sentence was a stern teacher, it kept him in his seat. It tucked his hands into his hoodie pocket when he felt reckless. It kept him soft. It kept him starving.

There was a turbulence shudder, and somewhere a bottle rattled in a cart. The seatbelt light blinked on again, and a flight attendant padded down the aisle with a quiet smile that said everything was normal.

Hyunjin breathed out. He remembered predebut dorms. The sticky summer walls, the single fan rotating like it had a grudge, the way Felix would end up sprawled half on the floor, half on Hyunjin’s mattress after movie nights.

Back then he didn’t have to parse who he was playing to. He wondered when he had learned to wait for the red light on the camera before letting himself lean in.

He took the gum wrapper and smoothed it flat. It felt like a “charm” in the idiot way objects did when you were tired enough. He folded it into a small square and tucked it behind his phone case. Later he’d find it and pretend it was a joke about being sentimental. He’d say, “I’m weird,” and everyone would laugh. It would be fine.

Sleep pulled at him the way the stage did, irresistible if he let it. He angled his cheek to the window and closed his eyes.

Behind them he projected the same old reel. Felix’s hand in his, the simple pleasure of being needed for something so small. It was cruel how quickly his mind decorated a moment, added soft focus, rewrote the ending, turned back toward him one more time.

When he opened his eyes again, the cabin was dim. People had become shapes. Across the aisle, Jisung was curled into a comma against the armrest, and Felix’s head had tipped toward him, a careful not-quite touch. It was innocent. It should have been nothing. It took the breath from Hyunjin’s throat anyway. He looked away before he could measure how long he looked.

He pulled his hood up. His phone screen showed him, briefly, a reflection of a tired man with too much light on his cheekbones. He opened the notes app and wrote a line he would delete in the morning:

Some things look better when you pretend they’re for everyone.

Then he sketched instead, the rough outline of a hand with a ring and a thumb pressed to the base of another’s, a geometry of longing he’d been solving for years.

He wished that being known didn’t look so much like being seen. He wished he could stop being good at the kind of pretending that paid his bills. He wished his chest didn’t lift every time Felix said together, like it was proof of anything.

He turned the screen off. Outside, the world was still dark. The plane kept moving forward. He rested his palm over his heart as if he could press it quiet.

Of course, he thought, because it was the only answer that fit. Of course.

It had been days since he’d seen Felix.

Chan had said the team was getting one whole week to fully rest. Official, stamped rest, the kind written in the group chat with a “no schedules unless emergency” clause.

They would come back soon. The word comeback held a new shape in Chan’s mouth because they had named the album Karma. Hyunjin tried not to think about the title as a warning.

The dorm felt like an abandoned set after the lights went down. Their cups sweating on coasters, a pair of trainers wedged under the coffee table, the air-conditioning clicking unevenly.

Their arrangement hadn’t changed. This dorm with Changbin and Hyunjin. The other one, ten minutes away on foot, with Felix and Seungmin. And in a distant, Jeongin and Chan, Minho and Jisung. In practice it meant the city kept them in separate boxes and called it rest.

He called Seungmin because the silence made a thin buzzing at the edge of his hearing. The line rang long enough for guilt to take shape, then connected.

He pressed the name “My Singer.” Because he was sentimental like that.

“Oh, what’s up?” Seungmin’s voice was thick with sleep, which made no sense because it was barely eight.

“What are you guys doing?” Hyunjin asked, tipping backward on a dining chair until its front legs lifted and hovered. “I’m bored. Changbin and I just finished the gym and now he’s—”

“Out,” Seungmin finished for him, amused. “He told Felix he was meeting a friend from TXT. You’re alone?”

“Tragically,” Hyunjin said, letting the chair down. He scanned the entryway as if Changbin might miraculously appear with takeout and a bad joke.

“Felix is out too ,” Seungmin added around a yawn. “I’m… I’m actually going back to sleep. Don’t judge. Don’t be a hater.”

Hyunjin smiled because it cost nothing. “I would never.”

“Liar,” Seungmin said fondly. Fabric rustled on his end. “Night. Well, night-for-eight. If Felix heads your way, I’ll text.”

“Okay.”

The call ended, and the room returned to its old appointment with quiet.

He didn’t mean to reach for the charcoal. It happened the way muscle memory always did for him: a hand obeying a habit. The stick left a black comet against the side of his thumb as he set the paper down. He told himself he was just practicing.

No reference photos, no cheating, just what he remembered.

Unfortunately, he remembered too well. The line of Felix’s nose arrived under his hand without permission, the small break of slope where the light always collected. The mouth came next, a little wider on the right when he smiled, a tiny quirk he pretended no one else noticed.

Freckles dotted across the bridge. Which he knew how many gathered there if you looked close, had counted them once in a green room mirror when Felix leaned over his shoulder to check a zit and Hyunjin laughed like they were sharing a joke instead of his private pilgrimage.

His phone lit face down, a square of pale light against the table. He wiped his knuckle on his sweats and flipped it. Jeongin.

[Baby Bread: hyung where’s my scarf]

 

[Hyunjin: mine now]

 

[Baby Bread: EXCUSE ME??? Yah!!! Hyung, you borrowed it during tour]

 

[Hyunjin: finders keepers texter weepers]

 

[Baby Bread: i will end you]

 

[Hyunjin: try it baby bread]

 

He stared at the thread until the typing bubble appeared and disappeared twice. Then nothing.

He set the phone aside and returned to the sketch, deepening the shadow at the corner of Felix’s eye, the place that always betrayed tiredness first. The page got messier, so did his hands.

A habit inside another habit had him opening his burner account on Twitter (X) and Tiktok in the next break, thumb moving without thought. He scrolled past edits. their own faces slowed and scored to unlikely songs, past fancams of the last ment, past a fan who had caught him tying his shoe onstage and called it the cutest thing he’d ever done.

He didn’t recognize himself in that one. He preferred not to look at the posts that read like letters to the version of him that lived on the screen. He liked them, privately, later, from a distance.

The craving rose like a fog. He reached for the cigarette box on the shelf by the balcony door and found it light. Empty. He groaned into the quiet, a soft sound that made him feel even more alone.

"Fine. A walk, then."

A hoodie, a cap pulled low, the bulky glasses that altered his face just enough, a mask. He took the charcoal-stained towel to the sink and watched the water run gray before it ran clear. Outside, the hallway lights buzzed like old bees.

The city at night had its own choreography, one he loved in a way that felt unfaithful to sleep: puddles reflecting billboards, the suede swish of buses sliding past, delivery scooters streaking phosphorescent between lanes. He counted the convenience stores between the dorms the way other people counted steps.

He told himself he’d buy one pack. Maybe two, in case he got lazy. He bought five at the counter without letting himself think, the way a person orders extra sides when they plan to eat their feelings.

On the way back, a truck idled at the curb with a wrap that stole his breath. Felix smiled from the side panel in soft studio light, a cup of Gong cha cradled in both hands like an offering. The straw pressed against his lower lip. The caption promised warmth, sweetness, winter.

Hyunjin stood there while the truck beeped as it reversed, the image gliding away from him in polite mechanical bursts. He started walking again, which was a mistake, because the building ahead of him bloomed into a huge screen.

The Hera ad he had tried not to notice and there was Felix again, bare-faced and luminous, skin like an answer the question didn’t deserve.

He shook his head hard, as if he could unclog the ache.

Cruel, he thought, and then wondered if the universe had heard him and decided to show off.

He didn’t know why his feet turned toward the tea place. He could have told himself it was because he wanted something sweet. He could have said his throat felt raw and milk tea soothed it. He could have said anything except the truth, which was that he wanted to be where Felix’s smile was sanctioned to live, even in a simulation.

Inside, the kiosk lit up with a cheerful chime. “Hi Sweetie, this is Felix,” said the order screen in a voice that was too familiar. “Let me help you pick a drink today!”

Hyunjin laughed out loud, a small helpless sound that startled him. He tapped a drink and then the cancel button just to hear the greeting again. He felt sudden cold across his spine.

Once. Twice. A third time, just to prove he still had control over some small corner of his life.

He finally paid, face tucked down, eyes on the cartoon bobas rolling at the bottom of the digital cup. The staff handed him the drink with a cup sleeve of Felix’s pretty face.

He stepped aside and lifted his phone, taking a photo of the cup and his own face, the curve of his mask, the tilt of his cap shadowing his eyes. It was ridiculous. It was also only for him. He slid the photo into a folder he’d named with a single dot.

The first sip was too sweet. It turned bitter immediately, as if his mouth refused to be fooled.

He was headinh home when he almost collided with someone rounding the corner, all hoodie, mask, and apologetic hands.

“Oh?” the someone said, and the rest of the face was unnecessary. Hyunjin knew the posture, the way the shoulders hiked when surprised, the laugh that came with the word even when it was a question. Felix.

They stopped in that dance people do when both try to get out of the other’s way and only manage to mirror each other. Hyunjin stepped back and lifted his cup, stupidly, as if it were evidence of some crime.

Felix’s eyes crinkled. “You got that?” he said, amusement muffled by his mask.

“I was thirsty,” Hyunjin lied, and the lie hurt because it wanted to be true.

They slid automatically into the small talk that had kept them safe for years. The night air pressed cool and damp against the skin around his eyes.

“Is Changbin hyung home?” Felix asked, rubbing a palm over his arm like he was trying to settle his own nerves. “Seungmin said if I pass by your place, I should get the playing cards. He swears we left them after the last game.”

Hyunjin huffed a laugh before he could stop himself. “The cards that cost as much as a small appliance?”

Felix made a noise. “Okay, not that much. But they’re… kind of expensive. That’s why he doesn’t want to buy another set. He said—” Felix hesitated, eyes flitting to Hyunjin’s cup and back. “He said if I’m going to yours anyway, I might as well grab them.”

“Changbin’s out,” Hyunjin said. “TXT friend.”

Felix snapped his fingers softly. “Right. Right. Then… I mean, you could just… find them through his things? If you’re not busy?”

Not busy. Hyunjin looked down at his charcoal-stained cuticles, hidden by his sleeves, at the condensation ring the cup had left on his palm. He nodded too quickly. “I’ll bring them over,” he said. “Or I can meet you halfway. Ten minutes is nothing.”

Felix’s laugh was a puff of fog in the streetlight. “Not now. It’s late. I mean, maybe tomorrow—”

“It’s fine,” Hyunjin said, then recalibrated, softening the words. “I am already out anyway.”

They stood there a moment too long in the wake of that, the night letting traffic hiss by so the quiet could be heard. Hyunjin could see the shadow the brim of Felix’s cap threw over his eyes. He could see the curve of the mask against his cheek, the thread near his ear that always got loose and made him hyper-fixate until he fixed it for him. He kept his hands at his sides.

“Thanks,” Felix said finally, sincere like it didn’t cost him anything to be. “Text me when you’re downstairs.”

“Okay.”

They began moving in opposite directions at the same time, the choreography of polite exit. Hyunjin went three steps and turned because he was stupid like that. “Felix.”

Felix paused. “Mm?”

Hyunjin lifted the cup, the cup sleeve with Felix’s printed smile beaming in the streetlight. “Your voice at the kiosk,” he said, aiming for a joke and landing somewhere near confession. “It was helpful.”

Felix’s eyes creased again, something like delight meeting something like embarrassment. “Oh God,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “They made me record so many versions. I sound like I’m twelve.”

“You sound like you,” Hyunjin said, and after the words left he wished he could catch them and put them back where they belonged. He saved himself with a small bow of his head. “I’ll bring the cards.”

“Okay,” Felix said again, softer. “See you later.”

Hyunjin watched him go until the corner took him away. He stood there longer than he should have, the drink sweating through the cardboard sleeve, the cold ring turning his palm wet.

He looked up at the building across the street where windows framed other people’s evenings. The blue television light, a plant silhouetted, two hands washing a dish together and told himself to move.

Inside their dorm, he put the cigarette packs in a row on the counter like he thought he might scare himself straight by seeing how much he’d bought.

He hunted down the playing cards, the expensive kind with edges that caught the light like foil and the backs in a design Seungmin had insisted was classy and slid them into a tote. He checked his phone.

No new messages. The last thing on the screen was still Jeongin’s empty typing bubble, frozen.

He passed by the sketch on the table and stopped. Felix looked back from the paper with a softness Hyunjin hadn’t put there on purpose. The freckles were exactly where they lived in the real world. He set his palm gently over the page, careful not to smudge. He didn’t know if he was trying to hide it or warm it.

He took a photo of the drawing because he knew himself. He would erase tomorrow if he could. He tucked his phone away before the impulse turned into a sending.

On his way out again he caught himself in the hallway mirror. Cap, mask, glasses and thought, almost funny, that he had made himself into a person you could pass without noticing. Maybe that was the point. Maybe that was the only way to keep walking.

He texted Felix:

[Hyunjin: downstairs in 5.]

Then, privately, almost immediately after, he opened the folder with the single dot and looked at the photo from the tea shop. His own anonymous eyes. Felix’s cup sleeve, printed smile.

It was sweet. It was bitter. He closed the folder and went to deliver the cards.

Felix was already waiting by the lobby when Hyunjin texted. He was in his usual hoodie. Felix’s eyes bent into crescents, happiness broadcasting itself like a weather pattern, and Hyunjin felt that familiar pinch under his ribs. The one that said don’t look too long and look while you can at the same time.

“Cards?” Felix asked, holding out both hands like a child expecting treasure.

Hyunjin smiled but didn’t gave them instantly to the other. “I guard them with my life,” he said, trying for stern. It came out fond.

Felix laughed, head tipping back just enough that the lobby light caught on his lashes. The sound was the same one from practice rooms and backstage corridors and cramped vans at two a.m. A sound that made other people respond without knowing why.

Every time, it made Hyunjin ache like he’d swallowed heat.

They went up the stairs out of habit, not the elevator, a ritual leftover from years when they’d measured stamina in flights and dorm room doors.

At Felix and Seungmin’s place, the hallway smelled faintly of sweat pea and something buttery. Felix’s bare feet squeaked against the floor as he toed his slippers off. Hyunjin hovered in the doorway, polite, ready to hand over the cards and leave before he could collect more of the night than he should.

“Thanks,” Felix said, hugging the tote to his chest. Something warm lived in his eyes when he looked at Hyunjin up close, a softness that never resolved into anything else. It was unfair that kindness could bruise.

“Anytime,” Hyunjin said. He reached out and ruffled Felix’s hair the way he always had, knuckles gentle against soft strands.

It was muscle memory, a benediction they’d smuggled out of trainee years. Like good night, good job, good boy. Felix made an automatic pleased noise and leaned into it for a breath, then shook his head, hair falling messily.

“Okay,” Hyunjin said, taking a small step back. “Go rest. I’ll—”

“Wait,” Felix blurted, too quickly, as if catching something before it fell. He lifted the tote sheepishly. “I… cooked too many ramen.” His eyes darted toward the kitchen as if he was about to be scolded. 

“Seungmin said he wanted ramen before I went out with my friends. So when I went back after we met earlier, I put the noodles in. And then when I opened his room, he’s already asleep. I realized it while the water was already boiling and cooked the noodles.” He lifted a shoulder, trying to play it off. “If you don’t want, it’s okay. I know it’s your rest day.”

Of course he wanted. The word wanted felt too sharp in his mouth.

“I can help you commit the crime,” Hyunjin said lightly. “It’d be a tragedy to let them die alone.”

Felix’s eyes curved again, relief brightening them. “Come in.”

The kitchen had the gentle chaos of two boys who cleaned in bursts. Seungmin was kinda neat freak, Felix wasn’t. There’s a drying rack of mugs, a dish towel with cartoon pears, a small army of seasoning packets lined like soldiers by the stove.

Steam made the air soft. the ramen waited in two bowls, chopsticks laid across the top like a promise. It was brutal how easy it was to be here. Brutal how his body recognized the place and decided to relax before his heart could object.

They sat at the counter elbow to elbow. The first mouthful burned in the way that made Hyunjin close his eyes and hum. Felix grinned at this, shaking in a flurry of satisfied shivers that were mostly a joke and partly real.

Their talk found the shallow end weather, Chan’s voice notes with increasingly dire reminders about returning to vocal warm-ups, how Seungmin’s sudden nap schedule had broken all known laws of teenagers-turned-idols.

“Remember when you filled out the hospital thing and wrote me as your guardian?” Hyunjin said, surprising himself with the memory as it rose. The minor accident last January flickered past. Felix insisting he was fine while clutching his wrist. Paperwork had wanted certainty. Felix had put Hyunjin’s name down first.

Felix’s ears went pink. “Emergency contact,” he corrected softly, nudging Hyunjin’s knee with his own under the counter. “Guardian was just— the nurse asked who knew my meds and I panicked. You always remember everything.”

“Seungmin remembers everything,” Hyunjin said.

“Yeah, but I remember you.” Felix said it casually, like telling the time. Hyunjin felt it land and tried not to bleed.

They ate with the domestic silence of siblings, a ritual of passing napkins and refilling water without asking. Felix’s hand found Hyunjin’s shoulder when he reached for the pepper flakes, an absent-minded squeeze he didn’t seem to notice giving.

Later, while laughing about a staff member’s dad jokes, Felix’s palm landed briefly on Hyunjin’s knee and then slid higher to his inner thigh with the lazy aim of someone who trusted their target not to spook.

Hyunjin didn’t startle. He trained his body not to. He kept his face open and unbothered and brought his bowl up for the last sip like that was what had his breath locked in his chest.

“Movie?” Felix asked after, pointing his chopsticks like a wand toward the living room. “Before you go. Something dumb. My brain is soup.”

He said it the way he said everything tonight: effortlessly. He didn’t even give Hyunjin time to agree before he was padding over to set up the projector they sometimes used to turn the wall into a screen.

Hyunjin took the bowls to the sink because he needed a task that had edges. The water hissed hot over porcelain. He scrubbed, rinsed, stacked.

When he looked up, Felix was sprawled on the sofa with a blanket over his lap, the projector’s menu blinking a soft constellation onto the wall, the remote loose in his hand.

“Come on, Jinnie,” Felix said, patting the cushion next to him. “My legs are going to fall off if I sit alone.”

“Alright,” Hyunjin replied, and sat close enough that their knees touched anyway.

They picked something light, the kind of movie that telegraphed its punchlines far in advance. Felix laughed early and often, his mask off, his face open the way it only ever was at home. He narrated his favorite parts as they happened, half to Hyunjin, half to himself.

Felix leaned in when something delighted him, bumping their shoulders together, and then leaned away to fling his arm over the back of the couch, fingers idly tapping the cushion behind Hyunjin’s neck. Every small orbit felt like proof of a gravitational pull that wasn’t his to name.

Around midnight the apartment shifted subtly, the building sighing, the courtyard outside going quieter. A corner of the screen flashed the time. Felix paused. “Oh,” he said, blinking. “It’s twelve already?”

Hyunjin glanced at his phone like the numbers might contradict the obvious. “Time,” he said, arranging his voice into something easy, “is a social construct.”

Felix groaned and sank lower, blanket hitching up his shins. “I’m sorry for hijacking your rest day, I didn’t notice,” he said, sincere enough that Hyunjin felt the urge to reassure him in a language he didn’t speak.

“It’s okay,” Hyunjin said immediately. He shouldn’t have added anything else, but he did. “I can crash here if you want.”

It wasn’t even a strange offer. They were the kind of group that treated sleep the way kids treat crayons. Borrowed, traded, left everywhere. How many times had they sprawled in piles across practice room floors, the AC set too high, someone’s foot using someone else’s thigh as a pillow?

Felix brightened, beam full wattage. “Sure. Popcorn?”

Hyunjin rolled his eyes but he was already up, the blanket puddling, his socks sliding a little on the wood. “I want cheese popcorn.” Felix said want the way other people said need.

Felix watched him bustle, the small domesticity of it almost obscene. He fished a bag from the cupboard and fed it to the microwave with seriousness, keying in the time. When the kernels began to rattle and then burst, he pressed his palms to the counter and grinned at the tiny fireworks like a kid. The smell wove through the apartment. Salt, butter, nostalgia.

“Too much?” He asked, shaking the bowl for effect as he returned.

“Perfect,” Felix said, and Hyunjin over analyzed what it meant. Like in a way that made him want to step on his own throat.

They settled again, Felix cross-legged, Hyunjin a parentheses around him. Felix talked with his mouth half-full about nothing of consequence: a strap that had broken onstage in Phoenix, a fan call where someone had brought their grandmother and the grandmother had scolded him for being too skinny, the way Minho had snored through an entire bus ride and then denied it with righteous fury.

Hyunjin laughed in the right places. He also laughed in the wrong ones, because smiling was easier than telling the truth to his face.

Sometimes Felix’s head tipped toward his shoulder and stayed there for a scene. And sometimes his hand found Hyunjin’s wrist to point at something and forgot to let go.

Hyunjin cataloged each contact and paid for them with interest. The movie unfurled its predictable arcs, and he let it wash over him. Felix tossed popcorn into the air and caught it with ridiculous accuracy; when he missed, he chased the kernels into the folds of the blanket and emerged triumphant, hair knocked into more disorder.

Hyunjin wanted to fix it again. He kept his hands still.

“This is nice,” Felix murmured at one point, almost to himself, eyes on the screen’s false stars. “Just… quiet.”

Hyunjin swallowed around the ache that sentence opened. “Yeah,” he said. “Quiet’s good.”

He felt tired in the way sadness made you tired. He glanced sideways at Felix, at the profile he could have drawn with his eyes closed, at the half-smile that lived on him like a houseplant facing the sun.

The word family or friends sat between them on the couch like a chaperone. Felix’s emergency contact. His guardian on a form. His safe place, in the most boring, holy sense of the phrase.

He wanted to keep it for Felix. He wanted to burn it for himself.

When the credits finally rolled, they watched them all the way through because some habits wouldn’t be shaken. The projector washed the room in soft light, more dream than lamp. Felix yawned, jaw cracking delicately, and slumped into Hyunjin’s side without ceremony.

“Sleep,” Hyunjin said, voice low so it didn’t break. “I’ve got you.”

Felix hummed, a grateful little sound, and rested his head on Hyunjin’s lap then closed his eyes. Like it was the obvious place to rest. Hyunjin stared at the far wall and let the ache bloom to the size of the room, then smaller, then quieter, like a wave completing itself.

He smiled. He was good at that. He smiled until it felt real enough to pass for peace. He kept his shoulder steady. He watched the projector time out and leave them in the dark, the kind you only got in the middle of a city when everyone had gone to bed.

Every so often he could feel Felix breathe. His ribs expanding and hollowing and he counted each one like he used to count beats. The rhythm that told him where to put his body so he wouldn’t fall.

It was fluffy. It was also one-sided. He let both truths sit in his lap like the same animal, tame for now, teeth hidden.

When Felix was fully asleep, he slid a pillow under his head. Then paralleled himself to Felix. He reached for the blanket and tugged it over them with his free hand, careful not to wake the sleeping fairy. Then he leaned his head and closed his eyes.

Hyunjin couldn’t breathe.

For a second he thought the room had vanished and left him inside his own chest, tight as a fist. The clock on the projector’s remote glowed from the coffee table 2:30 a.m.

He blinked until shapes returned. He forgot he was not home. The slant of the ceiling, the soft wreckage of the blanket and felt the press at his throat resolve itself into an arm.

Felix’s arm. Slung heavy over Hyunjin’s neck, wrist wedged against his collarbone in a gentle chokehold.

The couch had more real estate than memory suggested. Wide as a daybed. At some point they had both surrendered to it, drifting from movie to the soft-edged sleep that came after too much salt and too much sweetness.

Now Felix was sprawled half on his stomach, half against Hyunjin, mouth parted, a sigh caught there like a stuck note.

“Hey,” Hyunjin whispered, as if the quiet could hear him. He slid his fingers under Felix’s elbow and carefully peeled the arm away, easing the weight down to rest against Felix’s own ribs. The moment the pressure left, his throat felt like a tunnel full of winter air. He breathed slowly, until the panic loosened its teeth.

Stray blond hair had fallen across Felix’s brow. Hyunjin brushed it aside without thinking and hated himself for the tenderness that moved his hand.

He stood carefully and stepped over the tide of blanket, and padded to the bathroom.

He peed, washed his hands, and waited for the water in the glass to stop trembling. He drank and tried to quiet his heart with the kind of logic that never worked at two in the morning.

It’s nothing. He’s asleep. It’s just Felix being Felix. His pulse ignored him, thudding like shoes down a hallway.

When he came back, the couch looked like an invitation and a dare. He slid under the blanket again, orienting himself at the edge, as if more space could translate to more safety.

Felix made a sleepy sound and rolled toward him, arms traveling by instinct alone. The next breath, Hyunjin had a body full length pressed against his side, a knee hooking around his thigh, an arm around his waist pulling him in with a sleepy, unarguable strength.

Of course. Felix was a snuggler by nature, the same way some people were early risers or loved cilantro. He hugged everyone, in daylight and dark both. He had clung to staff noonas when sad and to members when bored. He’d kept the ridiculous hotdog pillow Changbin had given him and had taken it on tour as if it had a passport.

Even without cameras, Felix was Felix. There was no meaning for Hyunjin to mine here. There was, and he should not.

He hugged back anyway, because his arms were liars and he was tired.

Felix burrowed in, nose finding the soft place under Hyunjin’s jaw, breath warm at his pulse. It was too much. It was nothing. It was both, and the overlap crushed him. Hyunjin stared at the ceiling as if it could offer a rule with whatever this was.

His heartbeat went from fast to feral. Panic made everything bright around. There was no camera, no show, no justify-this later with the language of fan service.

There was just the animal fact of bodies and the stupid, human truth of wanting. He could feel the thought forming: Get out before you ruin it. Peel away. Make it a joke, make it a drink of water, make it anything but this.

He started to extract himself again, fingers curling under Felix’s forearm, a breath drawn for the apology he’d deliver to the dark.

“Do you hate hugs now?”

The words were small and terrible. Hyunjin froze, hand still holding the arm he’d meant to move. He looked down, and found eyes open, reflecting what little light the room allowed. For a second the dark felt crowded with misunderstanding.

“Huh?” Hyunjin said, brilliant and useless.

“Hyunjin,” Felix said, voice rasping with sleep, “do you not like my hugs anymore?”

Hyunjin’s mouth failed him first. “No—I mean, I like it. I still like it.” The sentence came out broken, true and clumsy.

Felix’s gaze didn’t waver. “Even without cameras?”

The question landed like a coin tossed into a well and never hitting bottom. Hyunjin felt the answer arrive from somewhere too deep to lie. “Yeah. Of course.” He tried to smile, the kind that made things easy. “We all eight snuggle even without cameras. You know that.”

“Oh,” Felix said, and then didn’t say anything else.

“Oh, what?” Hyunjin asked, because silence made him reckless.

Felix’s brows pulled together. It was such a small shift, but Hyunjin knew the preface on that face—the one that appeared in green rooms before long days, the one that meant this hurts and I’m trying not to be loud about it. Panic shot through him, bright and uncomplicated.

“Hey,” Hyunjin said, moving without plan, cupping Felix’s face with both hands. His fingers framed warm skin, the kind of heat that telegraphed a blush even through stairwell dark and moonlight. “Don’t—what’s wrong?”

Felix shook his head, and the movement just pressed his cheek more firmly into Hyunjin’s palm. The heat there was a confession. Hyunjin felt it, shocking as electricity.

He didn’t know what he was doing. He only knew the instant before he did it, a stalling in the blood, a silence at the center of noise.

He leaned in, not like a leap, not like a victory, but like two exhausted thoughts finally touching. They were still looking at each other, stupidly, bravely, and then the distance was gone.

Hyunjin kissed him. Stupidly kissed him. Trembling, sweating, heart pounding. He was panicking but still tried his best to hold Felix. It wasn’t cinematic. Far from it. His mouth found Felix’s with the care a person uses to close a door they shouldn’t have opened. He exhaled into it like an apology. The blanket rustled.

Somewhere a car turned a corner far below, a low shhh like the city was trying to save him from himself.

A tear suddenly slid out of Hyunjin’s eye and surprised his own cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. I’m sorry, he thought, though he didn’t know for what specifically. For the years of pretending he was acting, for the way he’d converted every kindness into evidence, for bringing his hunger here to this quiet, safe couch at a stupid hour.

He thought: This is one-sided so let it be gentle, let it be brief, let it be forgettable for him later. Don’t ruin it. Don’t ask for more. Don’t leave teeth marks on a place you only borrowed.

Felix didn’t move at first, and in that no-movement... Hyunjin felt the full weight of the world he’d made up arrive to collect rent.  He tasted salt and didn’t know if it belonged to him. He let the kiss stay sad on purpose, a simple press of mouth to mouth, as if he could pay the debt by refusing joy. He tried to study and to unlearn at once.

It was brutal with how still Felix was. And Hyunjin wasn't sure if he ruined their friendship. Please, no. I'm so dumb. I'm definitely the leader of Paboracha. 

And then… like a very small mercy deciding to test its own strength… Felix kissed back.

It was a shy answering, a change in pressure that said I'm here more than anything else, the first inhale after almost drowning. Felix’s hand lifted from Hyunjin’s waist to the back of his neck, fingers slipping into hair with the hesitance of someone touching a bruise. The room stayed dark, the moon kept its counsel. Their mouths fit in that patient way that felt less like discovery and more like recognition. Hyunjin’s breath cracked, and he let it.

It shocked Hyunjin to the core.

He was the one who pulled back. Only a fraction, only enough to hover, to look. Felix’s eyes were open, wide and startled, lashes shadowing his cheeks. His mouth looked kissed in the way that would ruin Hyunjin if he kept staring.

“Okay?” Hyunjin whispered, voice not quite behaving.

Felix swallowed. The hand at Hyunjin’s neck didn’t leave. “Okay,” he said, very quietly, like he was agreeing to something enormous.

Hyunjin kissed him again because stopping felt like a betrayal of everything his body had been storing for seven years.

It was harsher now, hungrier. Teeth grazing, breath breaking, the blanket snarled under their knees. Their hands went searching like they were late to their own lives. Jaw, pulse, warm waist under cotton, that familiar shoulder suddenly new. Seven years of hugging had not prepared him for heat that answered back.

They broke only to breathe, foreheads touching, the room holding still.

“You know we can’t do this right?” Felix spoke first, voice rough.

“I know. That’s why I’m holding it in.” His hands were shaking. He hovered, hoodie immediately discarded.

Felix brows knotted. “What?” He shook his head, trying to stop whatever Hyunjin might say next. 

"Yes, I have feelings for you. Ever since we're trainees. I fell the first time I saw you." He froze, tears brimming on his lower lashes. The words left his mouth with such cowardice tone. It wasn't supposed to sound like that.

But he sounded pathetic.

"Hyunjin..." his own name from the man in front sounded like a pity for him. It felt like he made a fool out of himself.

It was never supposed to be like this.

Seven years.

Seven years of friendship camouflaged as proximity. Of laughing through rehearsals and bleeding through silence. Of fan service smiles and friendly dressing rooms. Of pretending they were nothing off-camera when the world screamed Hyunlix on every screen.

Seven years of Hyunjin holding his breath.

Now… Felix was under him. And he was finally breathing.

But each inhale was broken. Ragged. Each kiss a sob held in too long. Their mouths clashed like fists, hard and needing, teeth clicking, tongues tangled in grief. It wasn’t elegant at all. Nah. It was starvation.

Hyunjin kissed like he was trying to erase the years. To rewrite every moment they laughed like brothers when all he wanted was to love Felix in private. His fingers trembled as he pushed Felix’s shirt up, as he dragged his palms across the planes of skin he had only seen in half-lit dressing rooms, in glimpses, in his sleep.

Felix moaned softly, breath catching in his throat, and that sound... Fuck, that sound, made Hyunjin's tears will to fall even harder.

He pressed his forehead to Felix’s chest, kissed his ribs like he was kissing scripture, like each bone was a stanza in the poem of a life Hyunjin would never get to hold. The skin beneath his mouth was warm. Real. Soft.

“I waited,” he whispered into Felix’s sternum, the words sticky with salt and shaking breath. “I waited for you to look at me like this.”

Felix’s hands slid into his hair. Wordless. Permission. Maybe even affection. Or pity. Hyunjin didn’t know, and he didn’t care.

He moved lower, tasting the dip of Felix’s stomach, tongue worshiping every groove, every tremble. He tugged the blond's boxer shorts until he was bare. Beautiful and vulnerable. He spread Felix’s thighs apart, fingers trailing the inner skin, thumbs ghosting near the base.

Felix’s breath hitched. Hyunjin looked up through tears.

“Tell me to stop,” he begged with his shaky voice, tears still with his eyes.

Felix didn’t. He opened his legs wider instead.

Hyunjin took the younger's shaft in, slowly, mouth soft, movements aching, like this wasn’t lust but mourning. As if he were grieving every time he saw Felix smile at someone else, every time he had to laugh when the staff teased them about chemistry that wasn’t supposed to be real.

He moaned around him, sucking slow, deep, tears running down his flushed cheeks like blessings. His long fingers whistling inside and out of his tight hole. Felix whimpered above him, hands tightening in Hyunjin’s hair, thighs shaking. He was already so close, breath coming fast, head thrown back.

Hyunjin pulled back. Not yet. Not yet.

He climbed over Felix again, mouth wet, jaw trembling. “I need you,” he gasped.

Felix’s eyes were glassy, his face already wrecked from kisses, hands, longing. “Then take me. But gentle, please.”

It was not the first time he’d said those words in songs. But never like this. Never with his voice so bare.

Hyunjin's well lubricated shaft entered him slowly, tip first which took achingly five seconds. A sob cracked from his throat at the tightness, the heat, the way Felix arched and gasped and clung. His hands dug into Felix’s hips when he was fully inside as if he’d fall through the earth without him.

They moved together like music in slow motion. The pace wasn’t fast. It wasn’t about release. It was about staying. Staying in this moment where no one else existed.

Hyunjin kissed him hard. Then again, softer. Then again, slower. And every time Felix kissed him back, he was always devastated. Because Hyunjin had prepared himself for Felix to pull away. To whisper We can’t. To say it was a mistake.

But he didn’t. Felix kissed like he’d been waiting, too. Like the silence was killing him, too.

So Hyunjin made love to him like it was the first and last time. He thrust deeper, slower, his rhythm trembling like his hands. He kept crying, eyes closed, nose brushing Felix’s cheek, their moans muffled in shared breath.

He kissed Felix everywhere. All over. Against shoulder, neck, temple, collarbone. When he pressed his lips behind Felix’s ear, he whispered, “you're tight, Felix...”

Felix’s body arched, voice catching in his throat, hand finding Hyunjin’s jaw as if to anchor him to this moment. "And you're—enormous... Hmmmmm..."

They kissed again. Slower than it already was. Wetter. Softer.

Hyunjin’s lips moved like he didn’t want to wake from a dream. His tongue swept across Felix’s gently, brushing like petals, memorizing every texture. His hands cupped Felix’s face, thumbs caressing the freckles like they were small flowers only he could see this close. He moved his hips with the rhythm of a broken love song. 

Their kiss was full of things they couldn’t say on camera.

You’re mine.

You’ve always been.

Why did it take so long?

The dark haired pulled Felix closer, planted a kiss against his forehead. It was too late to back down. He already admitted. Might as well go with full-blown confession. “If the only way I get to keep you—to... to keep loving you... is to call us fan service, I’ll perform it until I’m hollow. I will bow, smile, and die by inches beside you.”

A tear shamefully fell again from Hyunjin’s eye. He pounded hard, pushing himself deeper and deeper. His hard length throbbing achingly. “I’ll still love you. I don't care if you don't love me back.  Just… tell me how quiet you need me to be.”

His mouth trembled so he steadied it by kissing Felix again, desperate to stop himself from crying. He kissed and kissed until he heard that small sound that only Felix could make. Felix pulled back an inch, breath catching. "I need you to not let anyone know this. Please."

He nodded, sweat falling like rain. "Oh, God Felix. I didn't know you're this sweet inside."

Time loosened its grip. The clock on the table said 4:07, and then it said nothing at all. They learned by repetition. Slow at first, then braver. The careful undoing of a language they had only ever spoken sideways.

The night breathed around them, and Hyunjin kept telling the same truth with his hands. Felix answered in the grammar of touch, of offering. The back of his knees reaching Hyunjin’s shoulders pulling him closer when he would have pulled away, letting Hyunjin's huge cock buried deeper, his mouth finding Hyunjin’s when he stumbled over a doubt, his whole body saying yes where his voice was afraid to.

Everyone knew Hyunjin loved him. Staff joked without cruelty. Edits had compiled a case file. Members teased and then looked away when the teasing hit bone. Hyunjin had thought he’d learned to live with the knowing that never knew enough. But here, with Felix’s fingers in his hair and his breath catching on Hyunjin’s name, the ache rearranged itself into something worse: hope, reckless and bright.

He wept before he noticed, a small hot track cooling on his cheek, then another. Embarrassment flared and died. There was no one to save face for. Felix’s thumb found the damp, and the way he touched the proof felt like someone closing a door gently for you.

“I love you,” Hyunjin said into the quiet, because the night had already taken everything else from him. His sleep, caution, air. And he wanted it to take the truth too, all while fucking him raw. “I love you, Yongbok. I never pretended.”

Felix didn’t say it back. He kissed him in a way that sounded like the words and refused to be them. It hurt in the exact shape of Hyunjin’s name.

“It’s okay if you don’t love me back,” Hyunjin added, breaking on the okay, because it wasn’t and he wanted to be better than the wanting. He kissed the blond’s temple, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, as if gratitude could be mapped. “It’s really okay. Just... hmmmm—don’t lie to yourself for me.”

Felix answered by moans. Loud, sweet, moans that might or might not wake Seungmin up. If love was a sentence too dangerous to say aloud, then this was the paragraph that tried.

They came together. Hyunjin shaking, his cream sliding in and out of the other's hole, then burying his groans in Felix’s shoulder. Felix clinging to him like the world was ending.

And maybe it was.

Because when it was over, when the air turned still and sweat cooled on flushed skin, reality seeped back in. Hyunjin lay beside him, arm still around Felix’s waist, nose buried in his damp curls.

“Felix... Should we break the rule?”

That stupid, ironic rule. No relationships in the group, but sell the ship like merch. Though he understood it well. If any of them will do dirty stuff behind and somehow drifted apart, it will affect the group’s dynamics. But the cruel part wasn’t that. It was to fucking act like he was in love in front of the camera. ACT.

And all this time, he wasn’t pretending.

“Yeah, we can bend a little,” Felix said, eyes wet, certain. “I’d love to break the rule with you, Hyunjinnie.”

Fireworks went off behind Hyunjin’s eyes. He pressed Felix down and hovered over him like a man approaching a prayer he didn’t deserve. The projector’s dead eye stared at nothing. Outside, the city held its breath.

"Huh?"

The room smelled like salt and butter and skin. Hyunjin traced the ridge of Felix’s collarbone with a fingertip because he needed something small to survive. He wanted to carve the moment into bone so morning couldn’t sand it away. He wanted things he had no right to want: promises, ordinary futures, waking up to the same face without counting consequences first.

Felix brushed Hyunjin’s hair off his forehead the way Hyunjin had done for him earlier. The tenderness should have calmed him. It didn’t. It made the grief bloom again. Large as a room, then larger.

Hyunjin hadn’t noticed the shift at first.

Not until Felix pulled away from the warmth of his arms, hands ghosting over his chest like an apology. For a moment, Hyunjin thought he was leaving. That he was escaping the weight of what they’d done.

But instead, Felix climbed over him, slow and quiet, as if gravity had decided to move in reverse.

Hyunjin blinked up. And time stopped.

Felix straddled his hips, thighs tight against Hyunjin’s sides, golden hair falling into his eyes, lips still swollen, chest rising with tremors that hadn’t settled. The dawn from the window painted him in gold. Every freckle shimmered like a constellation across his cheekbones, as if the sky had scattered itself there to feel closer to him.

Hyunjin couldn’t breathe.

His hands lifted unhurriedly, brushing along the curve of Felix’s thighs, up to the indent of his waist. Felix’s palms were planted on Hyunjin’s chest now... trembling just barely. His head tilted slightly, studying him with that same quiet gaze. The one Hyunjin had seen too many times onstage. The one he’d always mistaken for something else.

But this time, there was no stage.

Only truth. Only them. And his eyes.

Hyunjin felt the breath leave his lungs. Felix’s gaze wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t playful. It was devastatingly sad.

As if he already knew this meant hiding. As if he were memorizing Hyunjin’s face, afraid the memory would fade too quickly when morning came and the world would ask for Hyunlix fan service again with smiles, scripted glances, and rehearsed intimacy.

Felix stroked Hyunjin’s shaft until it garnered some hardness. Until the girth was maddening wide again. The length was impressive. He moaned as Felix spat on it and said, “Last round?”

He didn’t even get to answer as the blond positioned and lowered himself slowly. Their chests pressed once more, hips aligning again, the angle new and sharp, pleasure blooming fresh. Hyunjin gasped, hands instinctively gripping Felix’s waist tighter.

Felix began to move. Bouncing on it. Not fast. Just… tender. “Oh fuck, Hyunjin… so… uhmmmm—big.”

He arched his back once more. His nails were clawing Hyunjin’s hard biceps. He moaned carelessly as Hyunjin could only groan angrily. 

Every roll of his hips was a question. Every grind, a confession. His forehead then rested against Hyunjin’s as he rode him, slow, rhythmic, intimate in a way that no choreography could mimic. 

Hyunjin loved Felix in the way that no one would understand. Love was an understatement. He needed a bigger word for that. It was not an exaggeration that he would literally take a bullet for Felix. And now that they’re making love? Hyunjin couldn’t wrap it around his head. So cried again. Silently this time.

Because Felix was so beautiful like this.

His lashes fluttering. His lips parting. His hair falling across his eyes. His hands tracing along Hyunjin’s jaw like he was something to be handled with poems. 

“Felix…” Hyunjin whispered, voice cracked.

Felix kissed him. Not to silence him but to share the ache.

Their mouths met softly, tongues brushing, breath shared like communion. Hyunjin’s fingers slipped up his back, pulling him closer, as if closing the distance could somehow make this real.

It couldn’t. They both knew. And when Felix came again, shaking, mouth open in a silent cry. “Hmmmmmng—Hyunjin!!!!”

And Hyunjin followed, almost singing Felix’s name, broken beneath him.

Breathless. Whole body was trembling. Both ruined. Afterward, they stayed like that with their foreheads pressed together, sticky sweat, skin hot.

“I don’t know how to be brave in daylight,” Hyunjin confessed, voice hoarse.

Felix turned and kissed the words where they landed. “Then be brave now,” he whispered. “We’ll borrow from it later.”

Hyunjin held Felix’s face in both hands and looked at him like a man finally finding his way home from a city that would pretend not to know him in daylight. “Remember me like this when we have to pretend,” he said, because it was the only prayer he believed.

Felix nodded once, eyes bright. He didn’t say anything back. He gave them shape with his mouth instead, kissing Hyunjin slowly, then deeper, then with the kind of choice that remakes the air. It wasn’t an answer that could survive the group chat or the interview couch or the choreography, but it was an answer.

They rested forehead to forehead. Hyunjin listened to the small, stubborn rhythm under Felix’s skin and counted it the way he used to count beats onstage (four to inhale, four to hold, four to exhale) like a promise he had no right to keep.

When the light finally crept onto the floor, they were still tangled, sore with tenderness, empty and full at the same time. The morning would name them something cheaper. Fan service. The morning always did.

Hyunjin let himself have one last, wrecked mercy. He whispered, “I love you, Felix,” and kissed him like a man stealing a final breath before diving.

Felix kissed him back, "I love you too, Hyunjin." And it was destructive.

By call time, he would stand beside Felix and give the world its favorite scene, pretending it hadn’t killed him to make it.

He was very good at dying slowly where everyone clapped.

>FIN<