I'm Also A We // Hyunlix

Secrets

NOW

F E L I X

Home is different. To what it was before and to what Felix imagined it would be when he stepped on the plane. He's surprised by how much hasn't changed at all, how time seemingly stood still for so many aspects of his life once he left it. Only when he looks closer and watches the little details, he sees how time has moved the way it's supposed to, and it's just him who's different now. He's the one that changed. He looks at the faces of his loved ones and wonders what they would say if they only knew how much.

He's distracted when he arrives, all the emotions of meeting his family again are running high, and the happiness and relief are overwhelming, drowning out so much of what happened in the last months. There's no space for fear, or for any other thought at all, and Felix basks in it. In the feeling of being home now that this one is no longer the only place, or the only people, he calls home.

It creeps in slowly, the thoughts of the others. He manages not to slip over, to see where everyone is and what they're doing, and he's determined to spend at least a day without them. It should be easy. And it is at first, but the later and the quieter it gets the more his thoughts seem to drift without him even noticing. And with it, the fear grows inside him, the familiar and hated anxiety, taunting Felix as if it's knowing there's nothing he can do once he's noticed it coming.

It hits him when he unpacks that first evening after he's sat with his family for hours and ate and talked until his little sister fell asleep on the sofa and neither of them could keep their eyes open anymore. When he arrived, he just put his luggage in the corner of his room but now that he's ready to go to bed, he unpacks everything, piece by piece, carefully hanging up the clothes in his old closet. And that's where he feels it the most. His clothes look completely out of place on his old hangers, like they're too big both in size and symbolism for this small room.

Among his own shirts in his bag, he finds another one. Familiar, but not his. Felix bursts into tears then, so suddenly that the sobs are ripped out of his throat and he clasps his hand over his mouth to keep the noise in, afraid he's going to wake up one of his siblings and be asked for explanations for these tears. He wraps his arms around the shirt, pressing his face into the soft, well-worn fabric, and it still smells like Hyunjin, faintly, but enough. Hyunjin must have slipped it into his bag at some point, knowing how much comfort it would give him.

'Thank you', he texts him, even though it's late, and Hyunjin went home to his own family, and is probably busy catching up as well.

The answer comes later when Felix is already curled up in bed, childhood bedding pulled over his shoulder, and the shirt carefully placed next to his pillow. It looks somehow alien there, this innocent object that holds so much meaning.

'Did you find my shirt?' is the reply and a little smiling emoji at the end that makes Felix's heart ache.

'Yes.'

'Does it help?'

Felix touches the shirt, fingertips gliding over the fabric. He thought briefly about wearing it but he doesn't want to risk it losing its scent.

'Yes. Yes, it does. Thank you so much.'

Hyunjin calls immediately after, and suddenly Felix is looking into his tired, smiling face, and he feels a little silly for having overreacted again.

"How's your family?" Hyunjin asks maybe just to be polite, but he listens to Felix retelling how he arrived in the morning and met up with his older sister and his mom, and then he laughs when Felix gives him a play-by-play of how he surprised his little sister, who hadn't known that he was coming.