I'm Also A We // Hyunlix

Broken As We Are

ACT THREE

NOW

M I N H O

Minho stares at the few pages of loose paper on his desk. He keeps them in the kitchen, in between the pages of one of his cookbooks, folded and hidden as best as he can. He only takes them out at night and when he's alone, studying the content.

Felix grabbed them in the hospital when they broke Hyunjin out. It was a split-second decision, and he was moving Minho's hands, stuffing them quickly into Minho's pocket, and Minho's sure Felix has already forgotten about it with everything else that's been going on.

But Minho hasn't. He's been reading the content a few times now, trying to make sense of it.

It's morning this time, and he carefully puts them into his back pocket when he steps into the living room, where Felix and two of the staff are moving bags and backpacks back and forth. Not frantically, but urgent.

Minho watches them from his open door, takes in the moment of normalcy as much as he can because those are far and few between, and he's grateful for anything that is not the crushing, hollowing pain that has festered in every member of this group.

"No, wait, I need the blue one," Felix says and rushes back into his room. Minho never finds out what the blue one is, because then he comes back out with three other things in his hand, none of them blue. The staff is patient, courtesy of working with 8 of them for so many trips now that nothing much phases them anymore.

Minho feels Jisung a moment before he steps through the front door.

It's always been like this, from the beginning. Sometimes, in his weak moments, Minho would even think it's been like this before the bond. Like the shifting particles in the air announcing Jisung's presence.

He walks in first, eyes small and hair disheveled, and he looks like he just woke up three minutes before they left the house. Chung-hee walks in after, and then one of the new staff, the woman that Minho doesn't trust yet, Kate, and then Hyunjin behind them.

Out of all, Hyunjin looks the most awake, which is probably the most surprising, but he's dressed casually, not in their usual airport outfits.

Minho's gaze flickers to Felix, who notices Hyunjin coming in too, and who can't quite hide the hitch in his emotions, rolling off him so freely this early in the morning.

Minho watches Hyunjin, and he catches the precise moment he feels it too. Hyunjin's eyes widen and he blinks several times, a blush creeping up his cheeks.

Their hunger for each other that night had been laced with so much longing and pain, that Minho remembers the exact feeling even now, almost a week later. He had not been fully asleep yet, but jolted awake at the storm crashing over him, Felix's emotions mostly because he still needs to concentrate not to bleed on everyone else, but Hyunjin's too.

"Your charger!" Jeongin comes out of his own room, handing Felix the object in question, and earning a relieved smile and a quick brush over his shoulder.

There's the most subtle shift in the air, and ironically, Minho is glad that Jeongin can't feel it.

They haven't talked about Jeongin's decision to cut the bond. They've tried, at least Changbin and Seungmin have, but neither of them is really ready to make Jeongin talk about a truth that's not actually been hidden from them. Minho knows that Hyunjin and Jisung are the most hurt by it, not because they told him, but because they can't hide the hunched shoulders and the furrowed brows when Jeongin is close.

"Yongbok-ah let's go," Hyunjin says, in English, with crossed arms over his chest, but the annoyance on his face is fake and Felix looks up, laughing and nodding, and then he promptly runs back into his room to get yet another item he forgot in the first place.