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Felix places the shopping bags in the kitchen and gets to unpacking the groceries. It was his turn to do the shopping today, and he wanted to get it done before dance class later. He still gets nervous about going to the dance studio even though it’s been two years and he’s never seen him there.
With all the texts and calls his friends and family received in the time after the breakup, it wouldn’t surprise Felix if he came looking for him everywhere he knew Felix could be, especially since he didn’t have Felix’s new address. The dance studio where they met would be the first place Felix looked if their roles were reversed.
To be fair, it took a year for Felix to feel well enough to get back to dancing, so he could’ve come looking for him a few times before Minho scared him too much to come back. Felix imagines that’s something only Minho could achieve.
At the thought of him, his mind starts doing that thing where it analyses what happened. Felix has noticed it more recently. How he thinks about him countless times throughout the day, getting stuck in the same thought patterns over and over. Memories are hard to escape when they show up in every dream, only in his dreams, Felix is the one doing the hurting.
He had one of those dreams last night, and he would like not to think about it, but that doesn’t seem to be an option. As he places food in the fridge, he flinches at the images playing out behind his eyes. There’s a lump in his stomach, and he starts tapping one foot against the floor in reaction to the sudden tension in his body.
“Was it okay?” Jisung’s voice makes Felix jump. He swallows thickly and plasters on a smile to hide the way his heart races in fear. Jisung appeared in the kitchen like lightning from a blue sky.
“Hm? Oh, yeah, fine.” Felix says. He’s been going to the store alone for ten months now, it’s about time his roommates learn he’s healthier. He won’t be bedridden because he walked to and from the store. In fact, he feels good as is excited to dance later- if he forgets about the location.
“You do that a lot.” Jisung looks thoughtful, eyes moving up and down Felix’s body. It makes him want to hide behind a chair. Suddenly his clothes feel too tight, too revealing, despite wearing a hoodie and loose jeans.
“Do what?” Felix asks, placing the last thing in the fridge before crossing his arms over his chest. But that only tightens the fabric over his shoulders, so he lets go and pulls the fabric away from his skin.
“Jump. You were never that jumpy before.” Jisung observes. He’s looked at Felix with concern for a long time, but it’s different than when Felix’s ME was bad. This is a worry more rooted in fear than empathy.
Felix almost asks before what, but that would invite Jisung to say the name out loud, and Felix would rather achieve the impossible task of forgetting it. If only it were possible to forget something that echoes in his head all day. It’s been two years, for god’s sake, he should be fine by now.
“Maybe I never had a reason to be jumpy before.” Felix hears the sadness in his voice and curses himself for letting any weakness show. He knows he’s jumpier than he used to be, and he doesn’t really like being touched anymore. Before everything happened, Jisung would’ve probably hugged him when he entered the room, but he has learned not to do that anymore.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about that.” Jisung says slowly, leaning back against the counter.
“About my reasons to be jumpy?” Felix asks in the same way he always does when his friends try to talk about him. His tone is mocking, making it a joke to deflect the subject. It usually gets the message across that he’s not open to have the conversation.
“Yeah.” Jisung falters, glances down, and when he looks back up, his eyes are glassy. Felix’s chest squeezes, and he feels like he might cry too. He can’t stand causing any kind of negative emotion in others.
“Hey, don’t worry about me, I’m okay.” Felix softens his voice, tempted to reach out for Jisung, lend a comforting touch, but he keeps his hands to himself. It’s almost funny to think about how touchy he used to be, but it probably shouldn’t be.
“Exactly. You’re okay.” Jisung sounds a tad desperate. “You’re healthier than I’ve ever seen you- physically. But you’re not happy.” The honesty takes Felix aback.
“I am perfectly fine. I actually never think I’ve been calmer.” Felix says, and not a singe word is true. It’s weird to feel yourself spiralling and being unable to stop it. There were a few months where he thought he’d escaped any mental damage. He wrote a book about what happened, and it helped him process everything. He let his friends back in, he visited Olivia, he even went back to the dance studio.
Then one day he was stalking his ex online- as one does- and one post in particular caught his attention. It said, ‘being scared of saying ‘no’ isn’t consent’. It is exactly what Minho told him. And since that moment, a new thought has haunted him. What if he had the same experience as Felix? What if Felix made him feel abused too? And just like that, the trauma infiltrated every corner of his life.
The messed-up part is that being with him helped him in some ways. For so long, Felix was so scared of making himself flare up that he never tried to push himself. His life was dictated by illness, controlled by the fear of symptoms. But during the relationship, he learned how to move his body, and how to do things again without being afraid.
He kept doing it after they broke up, slowly building his strength and tolerance. He learned about the mind-body connection and processed his grief in a way he should’ve years ago. And his health has improved so much that while he still can’t work, he can live again.
That’s what messes him up the most. He is so grateful for the person who helped him out of his shell, who brought him on the path to get his health back. But how can that be the same person who did all of that for selfish reasons? He never intended to help Felix; he simply pretended that Felix wasn’t sick. So how can Felix be grateful to someone who hurt him so much? He hates himself for feeling this way.
“You’re not calm, you’re numb.” Jisung says boldly. Felix is used to Jisung’s unfiltered words, but he’s usually much more careful during serious conversations. His boldness in this conversation makes Felix wonder if there’s any truth to what he’s saying.
“Is there really a difference?” Felix asks figuratively. Some part of him knows that there is, but he couldn’t say what it is.
“Yes. There’s a huge difference.” Jisung says. Felix doesn’t say anything to that. He doesn’t know what the point of this talk is, and he’s starting to feel backed into a corner. He rubs his fingers against the opposite palm, remembering the feeling of glass slicing his skin. He still has scars. He probably should’ve gotten stitches, but he never considered it until his mom mentioned it months later.
“You think about it all the time, don’t you?” Jisung asks quietly, as if he can tell where Felix’s mind went in the silence. “Everything reminds you of it.” It isn’t a question. Felix glances at the doorway, but images of being pulled back by the arm and punched in the gut keeps him from making a run for it.
“I think that’s a pretty natural reaction to what I went through.” Felix says. That’s what everyone told him in the immediate aftermath, when he still talked about it; that it was normal to struggle with it and to think about it a lot. And it’s what he’s kept telling himself since he stopped talking about it.
“Do you dream about it too?” Jisung continues, as if he’s building up to something. Felix feels like he’s walking into a trap.
“Again, natural reaction.” Felix feels like he has to defend himself. Like he has to explain to his friend that he’s okay. But he won’t be passive. If anything, his insistence to stand up for himself should prove that he didn’t mess him up that badly.
“It affects the way you dress, the way you act, you filter what you say, how you feel, even with us.” Jisung lists off like a persona attack. He looks offended too, as if he’s taking Felix’s issues personally.
“Is there a point, or are you just trying to make me feel like shit?” Felix snaps. Cold sweat washes over him, body bracing for a reaction he knows Jisung will never have.
Jisung deflates, looking guilty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come on so strong. I’m just worried about you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.” Felix reiterates what he spends all day convincing himself of. If he has to work so hard to believe it, is it really true?
Jisung lets out a deep breath. “Did you know that PTSD symptoms can start within three months of the trauma, and you only have to have them for a month to meet the criteria?” Jisung looks defeated, and no less worried than before.
“It also has to impact daily life.” Felix adds. He knows all this, he has researched it already, and he knows that Jisung is wrong.
“Doesn’t it?” Jisung asks. Yes, Felix thinks yes it does. Jisung is right about some things. Felix dresses differently – terrified of being sexualized. He doesn’t wear shorts or short sleeves even in summer, tight-fitting clothes or low necklines. He always stays in control of himself, making sure he’s acting appropriately and not provoking anyone, he watches what he says, and he doesn’t have full access to his emotions. But that’s just life. You go through shit and it changes you.
“I don’t have flashbacks.” Felix reasons, ending the conversation once and for all. He knows PTSD, and he has done all the research he can on flashbacks to figure out if he has them, but he doesn’t. He never forgets where he is or loses track of reality because it feels like the memory is currently happening.
“You don’t have to. There are many types of re-experiencing symptoms. Flashbacks is just one of them.” Jisung says. Felix rejects the idea, pushes it into the back of his mind, pretends he didn’t hear it.
“I have to get ready for class.” Felix says, holding his breath as he walks toward Jisung, hoping he’ll be allowed to pass. He blinks away the though of an arm stopping him, pretends he can’t feel the echo of bruises under his skin.
Jisung steps aside, but Felix still holds his breath until he’s out of reach, only realizing how fast he’s walking once he can breathe again.
><><><
Felix squints at his laptop screen, reading the same lines over and over. When he got back to his room, he opened his laptop to write but after staring at a blank page for an indeterminate amount of time, he ended up on nhs.uk instead. It seemed like a trusted site, which sounded great at the time, but makes it hard to argue against what he’s reading.
In all of Felix’s research, he never realized that flashbacks are only one type of re-experiencing, and that it is re-experiencing that is the criteria for PTSD, not flashbacks. It feels as if his whole brain is shifting around to make space for this information.
The website lists four types of re-experiencing. Flashbacks; which he already knows he doesn’t have. Nightmares; which he does have. Repetitive and distressing images or sensations; which is what made him wonder if he had flashbacks in the first place, until he realized they weren’t vivid or intense enough. And physical sensations, such as pain, sweating, feeling sick or trembling; which he assumes is in combination with memories, and he can’t deny that happens to him too.
A knock on the door makes Felix quickly close the website and pull up his blank Word document. It’s been blank for months, as if writing that first book took all of his talent with it. Writer’s block is kind of a problem when he accidentally made writing his job. Felix wonders if he would be proud that he finally wrote something, or if he’d beat Felix for making something of himself. He’d definitely beat him for writing about the abuse.
Chan’s head peeks in Felix’s door. “Writing?” He asks. Seeing him makes something warm bloom in Felix’s chest, and he pushes down the meaning of that feeling. It’s not something he ever wanted to feel again, but what is that saying? ‘The heart wants what it wants’? It can want all it wants, but it can’t have it.
“Mhmm.” Felix hums, closing his laptop before Chan can see that he is in fact not writing.
“I thought maybe we could talk before dance class.” Chan says. This is it, Felix thinks, he is here to punch him in the face for leaving. Only, he doesn’t know where Felix lives, and he has no way to find out. And Chan would never let him in, or even open the door, so that can’t be it. It probably will be true someday, but it’ll happen when Felix is home alone so no one can protect him.
“Did Han-ie talk to you?” Felix asks, braced for another round. He isn’t sure how to argue against it this time, with what he now knows.
“He always does; we live together.” Chan points out with a smile. “But no, nothing out of the ordinary.” He adds when he sees how worried Felix is. Not that it’s anything new for Felix to be worried and cautious. He goes into every conversation with memories of how the most innocent talks have ended in pain and bruises.
“Then why are you so nervous?” Felix asks, seeing the way Chan fidgets. He doesn’t have a specific nervous habit, he just kind of looks like he’s in constant movement, like he’s glitching or something.
“No reason.” Chan shrugs his shoulders and clears his throat. Felix raises a sceptic eyebrow, but waves Chan inside. Chan knows better than to sit on the bed, leaning against the wall beside the desk instead.
Felix closes his eyes for a moment, wondering how many adjustments like that his friends have made in the last two years from seeing him get anxious. They never asked him why physical touch or sitting on the bed makes him anxious, but they didn’t have to. Sometimes Felix regrets telling them anything, but he can’t imagine how alone he’d feel if no one knew.
“How’s the story coming along?” Chan glances at Felix’s closed laptop. It used to be covered in stickers, but now it’s plain, boring. Felix spent hours scrubbing off all the glue one of his first nights in this apartment. He still doesn’t know why, but he hasn’t been able to replace the stickers.
“It’s not. I’m not even sure I like the idea anymore.” Felix admits. He had a thought about friendship and recovery, but how can he write about that when he isn’t living it?
“But it sounded so great!” Chan encourages. Felix shakes his head, pushing the laptop further away from himself as if he can separate from what it told him.
“Did you really come here to talk about this?” Felix asks, highly doubting it. Chan sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a shirt that looks like it belongs to Jisung, at least one size too small, even though Jisung has bulked up recently. Someday, Felix hopes he can appreciate that chest without getting anxious.
“No,” Chan admits. “I wanted to tell you something. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, considering everything, but-”
Felix talks over him. “You did talk to Han-ie.” So, Jisung couldn’t get through to him, so he sent Chan to back him into another corner? Well, there’s no point. Turns out Jisung did get through to him.
“I did, and he said I should tell you something.” Chan says, continuing to fidget. There is no stillness in his entire body. Felix hasn’t seen him this nervous since… never.
“Look, I know he messed me up, but I promise I’m dealing with it.” Felix jumps in before Chan can try to tell him how he feels. Felix is more self-aware than they think. He just doesn’t like to reflect on it because he has a hard enough time not thinking about what he went through. Why would he willingly add onto that?
He barely takes notice of Chan’s confusion before continuing, “It’s not like I’m blind to what is going on with me, but what difference does it make? So what if I have PTSD? For all I know, I might.” The next words die on his tongue, surprised into silence by himself. If only Jisung could hear him now.
“I think you do.” Chan agrees after a moment. He’s frowning at a spot on the wall, no longer fidgeting. Felix turns around to see what he’s looking at, half expecting a painting he though was burned a long time ago. But there is no field of wildflowers and sunlight with a familiar figure in the middle, just an empty wall. Ironically enough, he’d love the painting if someone else had painted it, now that he feels free again.
“You do?” Felix asks, frowning. It felt like a joke when he said it out loud. He didn’t expect Chan to agree.
“But I didn’t know Han-ie thought so too.” Chan says. Didn’t he just say that he talks to Jisung all the time? How could they never have had this conversation if they were so worried?
“Fuck,” Felix mutters into his hands. “Is this when I can’t ignore it any longer? When two of my closest friends say it on the same day?” He feels defeated, but there’s also a sense of relief. As much as he wants to resist it, it explains so much. And with a diagnosis like PTSD, there is hope that maybe he won’t be like this forever.
“You seemed a lot more resistant to the idea a moment ago.” Chan points out. Felix wonders if his acceptance has anything to do with who he’s talking to. As much as he loves Jisung, Chan is different. He knows what the warmth in his heart would mean if he wasn’t so traumatized. But as it is, it can’t mean anything.
“I didn’t want to believe it earlier.” Felix says. The adjustment is happening so fast in his mind that he isn’t sure if he believes it now, or when it changed. But his lack of defensive response speaks volumes.
“What changed?” Chan asks. There is pride behind his eyes, and it makes Felix feel unbearably shy. He almost regrets admitting it, hates that Chan is so certain of the problem that he’s proud of Felix for seeing it, but it’s too late now.
“If there’s a reason for the terrible things in my head, maybe I’m not such a horrible person.” Felix says. Chan has been his protector for as long as they’ve known each other, and Felix fairly certain that nothing he says can break their bond. He tried very hard to break them, but even he couldn’t do it. If anything, their feelings have grown since then, in ways Felix isn’t sure how to process.
“You’re not a bad person, Lix.” Chan softens. His hands twitch like he wants to reach out, and god, how much Felix wishes he could accept the hug. He craves the touch, misses how warm and safe Chan’s arms are. But he can’t do it, no matter how much he wishes he could.
“You wouldn’t say that if you were in my head.” Felix looks down, finds a strip of paper to fidget with. He tears it between his fingers, again and again.
“The things in your head, how do they make you feel?” Chan asks gently. He should know he doesn’t have to be so cautious, but Felix has become such an anxious person, he knows there’s reason for Chan’s caution.
“Repulsed, disgusted, insane.” Felix says honestly. He can never speak about his dreams, or what he does in them, or to who he does it. He must be a monster to even be able to dream about doing that to someone he loves.
“Would you ever actually do any of those things?” Chan continues. Felix looks Chan directly in the eyes, sees the face that is reflected in his nightmares, imagines how much worse it would feel if it was real, and he doesn’t know how he could ever live with himself. Even in the nightmares, he hates himself for what he’s doing.
“No, of course not!” Felix exclaims, even more repulsed at that idea.
“Then you’re not a bad person. You’ve just been through something bad, and your mind is trying to process it.” Chan reasons. There is something so soft on his face, a safety in his body language that Felix has noticed more and more recently. He knows what it is, knows that it is in himself as well. Can Chan see it? Or is it too hidden behind everything else?
“This isn’t what you wanted to talk about, is it?” Felix asks, suddenly putting it all together. Chan’s confusion when Felix brought it up, saying he didn’t know what Jisung was worried about. There’s no way both of them randomly came to him with this on the same day.
“No, there was something else, but I don’t think it’s the right time.” Chan says. In some ways, it’s the clearest way he could express how he feels. He’s saying that something so important to him doesn’t matter when Felix isn’t in the right state to receive it. And really, what is love if not that?
“Tell me when I’m better, okay?” Felix says. He knows he can’t hear it now, but he will want to know someday. When he is better enough to admit that he reciprocates the feelings.
“Okay.” Chan smiles sadly, but with acceptance. He isn’t disappointed or hurt.
“I mean it. Even if you feel differently by then. Tell me how you felt in this exact moment. In every moment you wanted to tell me.” Felix says, just to drive home that this isn’t a rejection. It’s a ‘later’.
“I’ll write it down.”
><><><
Felix leans against the mirrored wall, trying to catch his breath. The dance studio is long empty by now, but it takes a while to cool down in his hoodie and sweats. Minho walks around the room, cleaning up after class while throwing occasional glances in his direction. Felix wonders how he never noticed just how worried his friends are for him.
“Did he ever come here looking for me?” Felix asks. He’s always been too scared of the answer, and he can’t tell what makes him brave enough to ask now. Maybe it isn’t brave at all, just stupidity.
“Once.” Minho says without looking up. Felix expected the number to be much higher. It is a relief that it isn’t.
“What happened?” Felix asks, curiosity getting the best of him.
“I happened.” Minho simply says. And that really is all Felix needs to know. He can imagine the details, will probably imagine it countless times in the near future. There is something satisfying about it. Knowing that he only dared came here once.
“I think I have PTSD.” Felix lets the words slip out before he can change his mind. Once they’re spoken out loud, he wants to cry with how true they feel. Minho drops the mat he’s carrying, coming to sit beside Felix instead. He leaves a healthy amount of space between them.
“I can’t diagnose anyone, but I think so too.” Minho agrees. Felix runs a hand through his hair and hangs his head with a humourless laugh.
“Did everyone know but me?” Felix says. This has been a big day for him, and he is exhausted- but not fatigued, and that’s a distinction he still loves pointing out to himself.
“It’s not like we didn’t try to talk to you about it, but there was nothing we could say when you weren’t ready to hear it. You had to figure it out in your own time.” Minho explains softly.
Felix lets that sink in for a moment. Has he really been so insistent that he’s fine that it has been impossible to talk to him? He supposes he has, but he wasn’t able to see it until now.
“I think I’m trying so hard to understand how anyone could ever do that that I dream about being him.” Felix admits. He will probably regret it later, when he realizes that someone knows the fucked up shit in his head, but right in this moment, his guards are lowered from the dopamine of physical activity.
“Maybe.” Minho frowns, deep in thought. He doesn’t look at Felix like he’s crazy, which is a relief. “The brain often works in opposites. Maybe you dream that you’re doing the bad thing because you think so much about the bad that was done to you.”
And with that, Felix understands why he told Minho. “But why didn’t I realize this was a thing?”
“I think you probably did, but you convinced yourself it couldn’t be.” Minho comes up with yet another great explanation. It helps to talk to someone who is training to become a psychologist.
“Why would I do that though? Why lie to myself like that?” Felix wonders. Minho half-smiles, like he’s familiar with the feeling.
“It’s easier than facing what the truth means. You don’t want it to still affect you. You just want it to go away. Admitting you have PTSD is the opposite of that.” Minho speaks with the stereotypical calmness of a therapist. Felix has seen it countless times on TV, but Minho manages to appear genuine while doing it.
“Will you be my therapist?” Felix half-jokes. Wouldn’t that make it so much easier?
“Even if I was licenced, I couldn’t do that,” Minho looks apologetic. Felix knew it couldn’t happen; Minho is way too close to him. “But I can help you find someone for trauma therapy, if you’re ready for it.”
“I am so ready to get this out of my head.” Felix says. He smiles when he recognizes this part of himself. The part that used to process things slowly and then all at once. It looks so sudden to everyone else, even to himself, but really, his subconscious has been working on it for a long time. It’s a small thing, but it’s a piece of who he used to be.
“They can’t make you forget-” Minho starts to correct him, and Felix talks over him.
“I don’t want to forget, I just don’t want it to control me anymore. I have fought so hard to get my body back, I don’t want to lose my mind.” Felix says. He imagines how much easier life will be once he gets his mind sorted out as well. Maybe it’ll even have an additional positive impact on his physical health.
“You won’t lose your mind,” Minho smiles, “But you can take back control.”