Hyunjin could barely move, barely breathe. He fell almost in a trance as next to him, Changbin and Minho bid them goodbye. It was insignificant in the moment, a waste of his attention as he focused on the sole reason his heartbeat was beating out of his chest.

Felix.

The younger was laying half on top of him, his head on Hyunjin’s chest, the fluffy blond hair tickling the elder’s face. Felix’s hands played with the loose drawstrings of Hyunjin’s hoodie, carefully winding and unwinding them around his small fingers.

“Are you feeling better?” Hyunjin cleared his throat. He didn’t know where he found the rationality to do anything but lock the doors and stay there for an eternity or two.

“Mm?” The younger lifted his head for a moment, looking up at Hyunjin with unfocused eyes. “Yeah.”

He checks anyway, pressing his hand against Felix’s forehead. It was warm, but nowhere near as bad as it had been before. “Looks like the fever is leaving.”

“Mm.” The younger went back to fiddling with the drawstrings, and Hyunjin almost melted into the couch. Where had these feelings come from? It scared him, the intensity of what he felt. Felix was just there, innocently existing, and here was Hyunjin with his stupid thoughts and stupid heart.

“I’ll heat up some soup for you.” He moved to sit up, and for a moment, it seemed as though Felix would protest.

But the younger let him go without a word, grabbing a throw pillow to curl around as he very obviously wasn’t fully awake yet. “‘M not hungry.” His voice was deep, dipping lower as he made no effort to control his tone, and the just-awake rasp made Hyunjin’s stupid heart beat ten times faster.

“You need to eat, Lix-ah.” he tried coaxing, running a hand through Felix’s fluffy hair, trying to smooth it into place.

“Don’ wanna.”

“Please Bokk-ah?”

The younger boy froze, eyes flying open. He seemed shocked, like he’d been startled awake by a bucket of cold water.

“Felix?”

The blond shook his head, snapping out of it. “I’ll eat, thank you.” He said quietly, sitting up but looking down, like a kid getting scolded. He reminded Hyunjin of Jeongin in a way, and the elder chuckled at the thought as he stepped away into the kitchen.

“Jisung’s made nothing but soup for the last few weeks, I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

Hyunjin hummed, opening the fridge and crouching to maneuver the heavy pot from the flimsy shelf. “You can take a shower and change if you want to; I have a spare tee and some sweatpants on the washing machine in the bathroom.”

“Mm.” he could hear Felix moving in the living room, getting up from the couch and making his way down the hall, towards the bathroom. “Thanks hyung.”

The pot nearly fell from his arms.

Taking a deep breath, Hyunjin mentally counted down from ten. He can survive this. He can. He has to.

Okay, maybe he can’t.

Telling Felix to go shower and then change into Hyunjin’s clothes was a very, very bad idea. One of Hyunjin’s top ten blunders, if you will.

Because now he was back here, so close to him, their knees touching as they sat on the floor in front of the couch, blowing on their soup so it wouldn’t sting their mouths. Because now Felix smelled like him, Hyunjin’s body wash and his shampoo, and if that wasn’t enough to knock him out cold, there was a plethora of other things.

Like Felix’s hair, that had grown in the few months Hyunjin had been away, and now it was almost as long as Hyunjin’s; long enough to start to curl in beautiful waves around his bare, freckled face like a halo, like flower petals around the center.

Hyunjin’s clothes fit him too big, hanging loosely around him in a way that made Hyunjin want to scoop him in his arms and smother him with ki—

Hyunjin coughed, choking on a noodle, his face progressively turning redder.

Felix immediately set his bowl down, turning to him with the softest concern, hand moving to pat him on the back, his face getting closer as he worried and—

“Are you okay, hyung?”

Hyunjin was not proud of the way he whined, but thankfully the younger seemed to take it as a sign of physical pain, not the emotional turmoil he was causing.

“‘M fine.” Hyunjin said eventually clearing his throat when the coughing fit subsided. “Noodle went down the wrong way.’”

The intensity in Felix’s eyes made him look away first, hiding behind his bowl of soup like he was unbothered. He wasn’t. He’d started slipping.

A ‘fine’ instead of ‘positive’ here, a ‘Bokk-ah’ instead of ‘Lix-ah’ there… he needed to get his shit together, and he needed to do it fast, because Felix was far from stupid. Already, Hyunjin saw him puzzled, eyes darting to him when he thought Hyunjin wasn’t looking, studying him with a curious and hurt look on his face.

Did he suspect that Hyunjin remembered? Did he wonder why Hyunjin was lying to him? Did it hurt him?

Unconsciously, Hyunjin moved closer to the younger, their thighs pressed against each other.

“Hyunjin.” Felix’s voice was deep, and firm, so close to him that for a brief moment, Hyunjin was afraid. But Felix just smiled, gesturing to the soup. “Thank you.”

And then they lapse into silence.