Work Text:
Hyunjin knew how to become beautiful.
That was the easiest version of himself to find.
Beauty had instructions. It had angles, lighting, posture, and silence. Beauty lived in the slight tilt of his chin, in the looseness of his mouth when he was meant to look soft, in the distance he put behind his eyes when the camera wanted something untouchable. Beauty was not effortless, no matter how many people said it was. It was a language he had studied until it became muscle. He knew where to put his hands. He knew when to blink slowly. He knew how to let his face empty itself of anything too human so people could fill it with whatever they wanted.
Ethereal.
Prince-like.
Delicate.
Dangerous.
Art.
Muse.
Angel.
Doll.
He had been called so many things that sometimes his own name felt like the least convincing one.
The photoshoot had ended three hours ago, but he could still feel the makeup on his skin even after washing it off twice. Not physically, not really. His face was clean. The bathroom sink still had faint traces of tinted water near the drain from where foundation and shimmer had run in thin, flesh-colored streams beneath his hands. His hair was damp from the shower, hanging darker around his cheeks. He wore one of Felix’s oversized shirts, soft from too many washes and smelling faintly like vanilla detergent and the sweet, warm scent Felix always carried from baking.
He should have felt real in it.
Felix’s clothes usually did that: they turned the volume down, they made Hyunjin feel less arranged, less admired, less looked-at. On good days, being swallowed by Felix’s shirt felt like stepping out of the glass display case everyone kept putting him in. It made him someone who could sit cross-legged on the floor and eat cereal from the box. Someone who could be ugly for a second. Someone who could breathe with his mouth open and laugh too loudly and exist without turning it into an aesthetic.
Tonight, the shirt felt like a costume too.
That was when Hyunjin knew the bad feeling had teeth.
He stood in front of the bedroom mirror with the lights off except for the bathroom glow behind him. It made his reflection look soft around the edges, blurred enough to be forgiving and clear enough to hurt. He stared at himself until the shape in the mirror stopped belonging to him. Long limbs. Damp hair. Pretty mouth. Shirt slipping off one shoulder. A face people kept insisting was rare, as if rarity meant anything when the person wearing it didn't know how to stay inside it.
He lifted one hand and touched his cheek.
The mirror copied him.
He hated that.
Hyunjin dropped his hand.
His phone lit up on the bed behind him. He didn't look, but the screen brightened the room for a second, a pale flash over the sheets. It had been doing that for ten minutes: messages, notifications, comments, tags, fan edits. The usual after a shoot dropped. Everyone had something to say about him when he was properly lit.
He had looked at first. He always told himself he wouldn't, and he always did. The first few comments had been harmless enough, affectionate even, the kind of praise he should have been grateful for because gratitude was what good people felt when they were loved by strangers.
‘He doesn’t even look real.’
‘His face is insane.’
‘Hyunjin was born to be looked at.’
‘He’s literally art.’
‘No one does visual like him.’
‘Who needs a personality when you have a face like that.’
‘He knows exactly what he’s doing.’
That last one had stayed under his skin.
‘He knows exactly what he’s doing.’
He did. That was the problem. He knew how to lower his lashes until people called it sensual. He knew how to look away like he had a secret. He knew how to smile just enough to seem soft but not enough to lose the mystery people liked assigning him. He knew how to make his body speak a language he didn't always feel. He knew how to become the version of himself people clapped for.
And if he knew how to do it, if he could choose it, shape it, perform it, then what did that make him when someone loved him for it?
Real?
Talented?
Fake?
He turned away from the mirror, then immediately turned back, as if his reflection might change when unsupervised, but it didn't.
His phone lit again, this time, he looked. A message from Felix sat at the top of the screen.
Lixie: I’m almost home. Bought those strawberries you like. Don’t eat dinner without me, okay?
Hyunjin stared at the words until they softened.
‘Almost home.’
‘Strawberries.’
‘Don’t eat dinner without me.’
Felix had a way of making love sound domestic, almost embarrassingly ordinary. He loved; in errands, in plastic containers of cut fruit, in warm hands slipped under cold fingers. He loved like a person building small bridges all day and pretending not to notice when Hyunjin used them to cross back into himself.
Hyunjin wanted him so suddenly it scared him.
Then, just as quickly, the want soured.
Which version of me is he coming home to? The thought arrived fully formed, quiet and cruel. Hyunjin looked back at the mirror looking at the face staring back at him, the face in the mirror looking more and more distant from who he was.
Was Felix coming home to the soft boyfriend in his shirt?
The beautiful one from the photoshoot?
The dramatic artist who painted feelings too big to name?
The flirt who knew exactly when Felix’s ears would turn red?
The quiet one who went still when overwhelmed?
The difficult one?
The empty one?
The one who could spend an hour laughing in Felix’s lap and then look in the mirror ten minutes later and feel like someone had erased him from the inside out?
Which one did Felix love?
Worse, which one had Hyunjin taught him to love?
He moved before he could think better of it, crossing to the closet and sliding the door open. Clothes hung in careful sections, his own private museum of selves. Soft sweaters for the gentle version. Black trousers and sheer shirts for the untouchable version. Loose paint-stained clothes for the artistic version, the one people called deep when he was really just messy and too full. Stage clothes kept in garment bags, not his to wear casually but impossible to ignore, like ghosts pressed flat in plastic.
Hyunjin reached for a black shirt first. Then stopped, that was too obvious.
He grabbed a white one instead, soft and open at the throat, something he had worn once on a lazy morning when Felix had looked at him across the kitchen and gone quiet. Hyunjin remembered that look, it had warmed him then, now he didn't trust it.
He changed quickly, Felix’s shirt dropping to the floor at his feet.
In the mirror, he became different.
Less borrowed softness, more clean lines. Pale fabric against skin, damp hair pushed back from his face. He tilted his head, he tried the expression people liked. The almost-smile, the gentle distance. The version of him who looked as though he had never needed anything too loudly in his life.
He looked beautiful, but he felt nothing.
Hyunjin pulled the shirt off so fast the collar caught briefly at his chin. He threw it toward the bed, then dug through the closet again, hands moving with a frantic precision that would have looked calm from far away. Black this time, something that made his shoulders look narrower and his neck longer. He changed. Looked. Changed again. A sweater. A loose cardigan. A sleeveless top he wouldn't actually wear out tonight. A hoodie. Felix’s shirt again. His own shirt again.
Each version appeared in the mirror and vanished.
Soft Hyunjin. Cold Hyunjin. Pretty Hyunjin. Tired Hyunjin. Expensive Hyunjin. Boyfriend Hyunjin. Idol Hyunjin. Artist Hyunjin. Fake Hyunjin.
The room blurred around him.
By the time the front door opened, there were clothes on the floor, on the bed, hanging half-off the chair. Hyunjin stood in front of the mirror wearing black trousers and no shirt, one hand pressed flat against his sternum as if he could feel around for whoever was supposed to be underneath.
“Hyune?” Felix called from the entryway, bright and warm and real. “I got strawberries, and before you say they’re out of season, I know, but they looked good, so we’re being optimistic.”
Hyunjin didn't answer. The sound of Felix moving through the apartment followed. Shoes coming off. Bag set down. A cabinet opening in the kitchen. The fridge. Domestic music. The kind of ordinary noise Hyunjin usually loved because it proved life existed outside his head.
Tonight, every sound made him feel more exposed.
“Hyune?” Felix’s voice was closer now, softer with question. “You in the bedroom?”
Hyunjin’s hand dropped from his chest, the door was already open. He hadn’t thought to close it.
Felix appeared in the doorway with a container of strawberries in one hand and his phone in the other, hair loose around his face, cheeks a little pink from the cold outside. His expression shifted the moment he saw the room, his eyes moved over the clothes, the mirror, Hyunjin’s face, his bare chest, the discarded shirts like shed skins.
The strawberries lowered slowly.
“Hey,” Felix said, careful now.
Hyunjin hated careful, he hated needing it, and hated how quickly Felix found that tone, like Hyunjin came with a weather pattern Felix had learned to read.
“Hey,” Hyunjin said. His voice sounded normal, that made it worse.
Felix stepped inside but didn't come too close. “What happened?”
Hyunjin smiled automatically. There. Another version. The easy one. The practiced one. The one who could make Felix worry less if he used it properly.
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just changing.”
Felix looked at the floor and Hyunjin followed his gaze.
Seven shirts, two sweaters, one hoodie, Felix’s crumpled oversized tee, and a pair of jeans he had apparently thrown near the dresser without remembering.
Felix looked back at him. “Into what? A tornado?”
The joke was soft. It should have worked, Hyunjin even felt the shape of the laugh he was supposed to give, waiting in his throat like a cue, but it didn’t come.
Felix’s smile faded as Hyunjin turned back to the mirror because looking at Felix was suddenly too hard. Felix’s gaze had always felt like sunlight to him, but tonight it felt like examination. Not because Felix made it that way. Because Hyunjin could not stop turning being seen into being judged.
“I couldn’t decide,” Hyunjin said.
“For dinner?”
“For existing.”
The words slipped out before he had time to make them prettier. Felix went very still behind him as Hyunjin closed his eyes.
Great.
There it was. Too much, too fast. A normal person would have said they were having a weird night. A charming person would have made a self-deprecating joke. A manageable person would have accepted strawberries, kissed Felix hello, and waited until the feeling passed without turning the bedroom into evidence of psychological collapse.
Felix set the strawberries on the dresser with a quiet click. “Can you look at me?”
Hyunjin opened his eyes, but he looked at Felix in the mirror instead. Reflected Felix was easier, he was contained by glass.
Felix noticed, because of course he did. “Not like that.”
Hyunjin laughed under his breath. “Demanding.”
“Only when you start talking like you’re disappearing.”
The gentleness of it almost broke him. Hyunjin reached for a shirt from the bed, any shirt, suddenly aware of his bare skin in a way that made him feel staged. Felix had seen him undressed hundreds of times, loved him that way, touched him that way. Slept warm against him. But this was different, this wasn't intimacy, this was exposure. He pulled the nearest shirt over his head without checking which one it was.
Felix’s shirt again, of course, the collar slipped wide over one shoulder, in the mirror, he became soft and his throat tightened.
Felix came closer then, just one step. “Hyunjin.”
“Don’t,” Hyunjin said.
Felix stopped. “Okay.”
The immediate obedience made Hyunjin’s eyes burn, which made him angry because it was kind. Kindness had no business feeling like pressure.
“I don’t know what you’re stopping for,” Hyunjin said. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You said don’t.” Felix remarked softly
“I say a lot of things.”
“I listen to most of them.”
Hyunjin’s mouth twisted. “That’s unfortunate.”
Felix didn't smile. “Yeah. Sometimes.”
The honesty struck sharper than a joke would have. Hyunjin turned around before he could stop himself. “What does that mean?”
Felix blinked, caught by the sudden edge. “It means sometimes listening to you is hard when you use words to keep me away.”
“Oh.” Hyunjin breaths out
“Hyune-”
“No, it’s fine.” Hyunjin folded his arms, the fabric of Felix’s shirt soft under his hands. “I’m difficult, we can say it, this is a safe space.”
Felix’s brows drew together. “That is not what I said.”
“No, you said it’s hard to listen to me.”
“When you’re hurting and trying to make me leave the room before I can see it.” Felix argued gently
Hyunjin laughed. “That is such a pretty way to call me a problem.”
Felix’s face changed, hurt showed first, then the kind of tiredness that made Hyunjin’s stomach drop because it reminded him Felix was human and not an infinite well of patience shaped like a boy with freckles.
“I’m not calling you a problem,” Felix said. “I’m trying to understand what’s happening.”
“What’s happening is I’m having a wardrobe crisis, very tragic, call Donatella .”
“Hyunjin.”
There it was, his full name in that voice. Not scolding, exactly, but grounding. Usually, it helped but tonight, it made him feel cornered.
“What?” Hyunjin snapped. “Do you want me to say something profound? Do you want me to make it understandable so you can hold it properly?”
Felix’s jaw tightened. “I want you to tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know the truth.” Hyunjin heard himself breathing. He turned away again because Felix’s face was doing something unbearable, something open and worried and full of love Hyunjin suddenly didn't know how to receive. “I don’t know,” Hyunjin repeated, quieter. “That’s the whole problem.”
Felix didn't answer right away.
Hyunjin stared at the mirror. The version of himself inside it stared back wearing Felix’s shirt and a stranger’s face.
“I looked at the photos,” Hyunjin said eventually.
Felix’s reflection shifted behind him. “From today?”
“Mm.” Hyunjin responded humming, still staring at himself in the mirror, his eyes not staying on one feature in particular.
“They were beautiful.”
The word hit something raw so directly that Hyunjin actually flinched.
Felix saw it. “Sorry. That wasn’t-”
“No, say it.” Hyunjin’s voice came out smooth. “They were beautiful. I was beautiful. That’s always the safest thing to say.”
Felix moved closer, then stopped himself again. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“How do you mean it?”
“I mean you looked like you.”
Hyunjin laughed, and this time it sounded cruel even to himself. “Which one?”
Felix’s expression faltered. There the question had found the place words could not cover. Hyunjin turned fully toward him, the momentum of the spiral taking him before he could decide whether he wanted to be stopped. “Which one of me did I look like, Felix?”
Felix stared at him. “What?”
“The one from the photos? The one people like? The one you like? The one who looks expensive and tragic and quiet? The one who knows where to put his hands? The one who doesn’t need anything?” Hyunjin’s voice shook, and he hated that, so he made it sharper. “Or this one? The one standing in your shirt because he thought it might make him feel like a person and then realized he can’t turn comfort into a costume?”
Felix’s mouth parted slightly. Hyunjin wished he had stopped earlier. He wished there was a version of him who could feel the cliff edge before stepping off it. But the words were coming now, each one dragged up from somewhere dark and crowded.
“I don’t know who you love,” Hyunjin said. “I don’t know if it’s me or the idea of me. I don’t know if anyone knows the difference. I don’t even know if there is a difference.”
Felix looked stricken. “Hyune, I love you.”
“Which one?” Hyunjin demanded.
“All of you.”
“No.” The word cracked like glass. “No, don’t do that.”
Felix stepped back half a pace, startled. “Do what?”
“That thing people do when they don’t understand the question, so they answer with something pretty enough to end the conversation.”
Felix’s eyes flashed, not with anger exactly, but with hurt finally catching fire. “I’m not trying to end the conversation.”
“You just don’t know what else to say.”
“Maybe I don’t!” Felix said, voice rising and then immediately lowering, as if he had scared himself with it. “Maybe I don’t know what to say when you ask me which version of you I love like you’re a list I’m supposed to choose from. I’m trying, Hyunjin. I’m sorry if I’m doing it wrong.”
The frustration in Felix’s voice should have made him stop. Instead, Hyunjin’s fear gathered around it like proof.
There it is.
He is tired.
He does not know how to love this.
He only loves you when you are understandable.
Hyunjin smiled, small and awful. “You don’t have to try so hard.”
Felix went still and Hyunjin knew the shape of those words as they left him. Knew the knife hidden inside them. He could see it entering Felix’s chest and still could not take it back.
Felix swallowed. “That was mean.”
The bluntness of it landed harder than yelling. Hyunjin looked away. “I know.”
“Then why say it?”
‘Because I wanted to see if it would make you leave.’
‘Because if you leave, at least I will know which version of me was too much.’
‘Because if I hurt you first, I do not have to stand here and wait for you to realize there is nothing solid underneath what you love.’
“I don’t know,” Hyunjin said instead.
Felix took a breath. It shook a little. “I think you do.” he looked scared but steady, hands curled at his sides like he wanted to reach and was choosing not to. “I think you’re trying to make me angry because angry is easier than worried. I think you know what to do with someone leaving. I think you don’t know what to do with someone staying and not understanding perfectly.”
Hyunjin's eyes snapped to Felix, he hated how close that was. He hated it so much his eyes filled.
“That’s not fair,” he said.
Felix’s voice softened. “I know.”
“No, I mean-” Hyunjin pressed the heel of his hand to one eye, angry at the wetness there. “It’s not fair that you get to see it.”
Felix’s face broke open a little. Hyunjin turned away again, but Felix’s reflection was still there. Always there, warm and freckled and wounded. He wanted to crawl into him.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m made entirely out of what people see,” Hyunjin continued, and the words came slowly now, less like an attack and more like something bleeding through fabric. “Like there isn’t anything underneath. Like if everyone stopped looking at me, I’d stop existing.”
Felix didn't interrupt.
Hyunjin stared at himself again. “I know what to be when someone calls me beautiful. I know what face to make, I know how to act on stage, in interviews and at fan meets. I know how to accept it and how to turn it into something useful. I can be grateful, charming and humble enough that people don’t think I’m arrogant and aware enough that people don’t think I’m stupid. I know all of that.” His voice thinned. “But when I’m alone, I don’t know what’s left.”
Felix whispered, “Hyune.”
“I’m serious.” Hyunjin’s fingers curled into the hem of the shirt. “I can feel myself changing depending on who is in the room. Staff, cameras, fans, friends, you. Especially you.”
Felix looked pained. “Me?”
Hyunjin nodded, shame tightening around his throat. “With you, I want to be soft, because you like soft things. You make soft things, you turn flour and sugar into comfort like it’s easy. Your brand deals are always presenting you as soft, and delicate because that's what you are. You look at me like I can put every sharp part down.” He laughed once, miserable. “So I try. I wear your shirts. I talk quieter. I let myself be held. I make myself into someone who can be loved gently.”
Felix’s eyes were wet now tears being held on the brim of his lashes.
Hyunjin pressed on because stopping would kill him. “But then I don’t know if that version is real either. I don’t know if I’m soft because I am soft or because you make me want to be something you won’t cut yourself on.”
Felix looked like the words hurt him physically. “You think I only love you as soft?”
“I think I don’t know who I am when I’m not being shaped by the person looking at me. Photographers tell me how to stand. Choreography tells me how to move. Fans tell me what they want to see.” The silence after that was different.
Felix sat down on the edge of the bed slowly, as if his legs had finally given up pretending they were steady. He looked at the clothes around him, then at Hyunjin, then at the mirror. His face held so much sadness that Hyunjin almost apologized just to make it stop.
But Felix spoke first. “When I was younger,” he said quietly, “I used to think being kind was the only reason people kept me.”
Felix’s gaze dropped to his hands. “Not exactly the same. I know. But I thought if I was soft enough, useful enough, warm enough, no one would have a reason to dislike me. And then sometimes people praised me for it so much that I got scared there was nothing else worth loving. Just the kindness, the sunshine. Just the version that made everyone comfortable. Fans love when I am soft, my brands tell me what they want to see and I do it because I never wanted to let anyone down. Because I don’t want them to leave me.”
Hyunjin stared at him.
Felix smiled faintly, but it looked tired. “So when you say I like soft things, you’re right. I do. But I don’t love you because you become soft for me.” He looked up. “And I don’t want you to make yourself harmless so I’ll stay.”
Hyunjin’s throat worked around nothing as Felix patted the space beside him once.
Hyunjin didn't move immediately. The mirror held him there a moment longer, his reflection standing alone while Felix sat behind him among the wreckage of clothes and identity. Then he crossed the room and sat beside him, not touching, close enough to feel warmth.
Felix turned slightly toward him. “Can I say something without you biting me?”
“No promises.”
“That’s fair.”
Despite himself, Hyunjin’s mouth twitched.
Felix took that as permission. “When I said the photos were beautiful, I didn’t mean that’s all I saw. I know why it hurt you, I think I get it more now. But I also don’t want to avoid saying you’re beautiful like beauty is the enemy.”
Hyunjin looked down.
Felix continued, careful but not timid. “Your face is yours, your body is yours. The way you move, the way you understand a camera, the way you turn being perceived into art. That is not fake just because you know how to do it.”
Hyunjin’s eyes burned again, quieter this time.
“You perform,” Felix said. “That does not mean you are only one performance.”
The sentence entered him slowly. Hyunjin looked at his hands. Long fingers, clean nails. Hands that painted, posed, shook, held Felix’s waist in the kitchen, clenched around fabric when he was trying not to cry. His hands had looked elegant in the photos. People had commented on them too. He curled them into fists.
“I don’t know how to tell the difference,” he admitted.
Felix nodded. “Okay. That’s a big thing to not know.” Felix’s voice stayed gentle. “We don’t have to solve it in one night.”
Hyunjin laughed faintly. “I would prefer we did.”
“I know. You like emotional efficiency after causing maximum chaos.”
“Rude.” Hyunjin scoffed softly
“Accurate.”
Hyunjin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. For a while, neither of them spoke. Felix’s presence beside him was warm but not invasive. Hyunjin could feel him choosing patience, and for once, that didn't make him want to punish him for it.
The room smelled faintly of strawberries.
His chest ached.
“I feel fake,” Hyunjin said into his hands. “All the time, not in a dramatic way. In a… I don’t know, like a bone-deep way. Like everyone else got something at the center of them, and I got mirrors. I reflect things and become things. I know how to be wanted, or admired, or worried over, or desired, or protected. I know how to become a feeling someone else can understand.” His voice cracked. “But I don’t know who I am when no one needs me to be anything.”
Felix’s hand moved slowly, stopping just short of Hyunjin’s knee. “Can I touch you?”
Hyunjin nodded without lifting his face and Felix’s hand settled on him, warm through the fabric on his knee. “Maybe no one knows themselves perfectly when they’re alone.”
Hyunjin laughed wetly. “That is not comforting.”
“No, listen.” Felix squeezed his knee lightly. “I’m not saying what you feel is normal in a dismissive way. I’m saying maybe your brain is asking for something impossible. Like one pure, untouched version of you that exists completely separate from being loved or hurt or seen or shaped by life. Maybe there isn’t one version. Maybe people are built from all of it.”
Hyunjin slowly lowered his hands, and Felix looked nervous now, like he was afraid of saying the wrong thing but determined to say it anyway. “The stage version is you. The soft version is you. The sharp version is you. The one who gets mean when he’s scared is you too, even though we can talk about that one needing better hobbies.”
A broken laugh slipped out of Hyunjin. Felix smiled, small and relieved. “The one in my shirt is you. The one who hates being called beautiful and still wants me to think he is beautiful is you. The one who performs is you. The one who doesn’t know how to stop performing is also you.”
Hyunjin looked at him, tears blurring the freckles across Felix’s cheeks. Felix’s smile faded into something more serious. “I don’t love one clean version. I love a person. People are inconsistent.”
Hyunjin whispered, “What if I’m only inconsistent?”
“Then I’ll love you inconsistently.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I’m tired and emotionally profound. Don’t fact-check me.”
Hyunjin laughed again, and this time it broke halfway into a sob. Felix moved immediately but stopped himself, eyes searching. Hyunjin answered by leaning sideways, and then Felix was there, arms around him, pulling him in with a softness that didn't demand he become softer to deserve it. Hyunjin folded into him, face pressed against Felix’s shoulder, and cried with the quiet humiliation of someone who had tried very hard to remain visually pleasing even in collapse.
Felix held him anyway.
No camera. No mirror. No audience. No version worth admiring.
Just Felix’s hand moving up and down his back and Felix’s voice near his ear, low and warm. “I’m here. I know you don’t feel real right now. I’m here.”
Hyunjin clutched at him. “I’m sorry, for being like this.”
Felix’s hand paused, then continued. “Try again.”
Hyunjin groaned weakly into his shoulder. “I hate when you do that. I’m sorry for being mean.”
“That one I accept.”
Hyunjin’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know.”
“But I did.”
“Yeah.” Felix’s voice was soft, but honest. “You did.”
Hyunjin squeezed his eyes shut. The shame tried to surge again, tried to turn Felix’s honesty into condemnation, but Felix held him through the first wave of it. didn't over-explain. didn't rescue him from guilt. Just stayed.
“I got scared,” Hyunjin said after a while. “When you looked worried.”
Felix’s chest rose under his cheek. “Why?”
“Because worried feels like you’re seeing too much.”
“I probably was.”
“That is not comforting either.”
Felix’s fingers slipped into the hair at the nape of his neck. “I don’t want to only see the version that knows how to be seen.”
Hyunjin went very still and Felix continued, quieter. “I know you’re scared that if I see past the beautiful parts, I’ll find nothing. But I’m scared that if you keep believing that, you’ll never let me love anything real without accusing it of being fake.”
The words hurt because they were true. Hyunjin pulled back enough to look at him. Felix’s eyes were wet, but steady. There was no worship in his face. Just love, worried and a little bruised and still choosing to sit on the bed among Hyunjin’s discarded selves.
“I don’t know what real is,” Hyunjin admitted.
Felix nodded. “Then we start smaller.”
“With what?”
Felix looked around the room, thinking. Then he reached for the strawberries on the dresser. “With this.”
Hyunjin stared. “With fruit?”
“Yes.”
“I am having an identity crisis.”
“And you haven’t eaten dinner.” Felix pointed out
“Felix.”
“Hyunjin.” Felix opened the container with the grave seriousness of someone handling medical equipment. “You cannot dismantle the concept of self on an empty stomach.”
“That sounds stupid.”
“It sounds like something a therapist would say if they had my face.” Felix smiles
Hyunjin made a noise dangerously close to laughter. Felix picked up a strawberry and held it out, not to his mouth, just between them.
“What version of me likes strawberries?” Hyunjin asked, trying for dry and landing closer to fragile.
Felix thought about it. “The version who pretends he doesn’t care that I cut the leaves off because he doesn’t like the texture.”
Hyunjin blinked.
“The version who says they’re too sweet and then eats seven.”
Hyunjin looked away.
“The version who once got juice on a white sweater and looked personally betrayed by fruit as a species.”
A real laugh escaped him then, small and startled.
Felix’s face softened. “That version.”
Hyunjin took the strawberry from him. It was cold from the store fridge, but slightly warm from sitting on the dresser, sweet and a little tart, seeds rough against his tongue. Completely ordinary. Completely unimpressed by the question of who he was.
Felix ate one too, then leaned back on one hand. “Your turn.”
“My turn what?”
“Name a version.”
Hyunjin frowned. “Of you?”
“Of you.” Felix nodded towards Hyunjin.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Probably.”
Hyunjin looked at the half-open closet, the clothes on the floor, the mirror waiting patiently for his next mistake. He wanted to refuse, wanted to make a joke, wanted to say this was stupid and dramatic and beneath them. But Felix was watching him, not with expectation exactly, but with invitation.
Hyunjin took another strawberry mostly to buy time. “The version who paints at three in the morning and gets angry when the blue is wrong.”
Felix nodded seriously. “Real.”
“The version who hates being interrupted and then gets lonely when no one checks on him.”
“Very real. Annoying, but real.” Felix nods for him to continue.
Hyunjin’s lips twitched. “The version who likes when you call him pretty, but only when no one else is there.”
Felix’s eyes warmed. “Real.”
Hyunjin’s voice softened. “The version who sometimes thinks you deserve someone easier.”
Felix didn't answer as quickly that time. He reached for Hyunjin’s hand, and Hyunjin let him take it. “Real,” Felix said. “Wrong, but real.”
Hyunjin looked down at their joined hands. “The version who doesn’t know if he’s a good person,” he whispered.
Felix squeezed his fingers. “Real.”
“The version who performs kindness because he’s scared the natural amount isn’t enough.”
Felix’s expression shifted painfully. “Real.”
“The version who wants to be known and hates when anyone gets close enough to know him.”
“Real.”
Hyunjin’s throat tightened. “The version who is scared there’s no version at all.”
Felix brought their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Hyunjin’s knuckles. “Real.”
The word broke something open in him. Hyunjin leaned forward until his forehead touched Felix’s. Their hands stayed between them, tangled and warm. For this moment, he didn't look at the mirror. He didn't need to. Felix was close enough that Hyunjin could feel his breath, close enough that being perceived didn't feel like being consumed.
“I don’t want you to stop calling me beautiful,” Hyunjin whispered.
Felix’s mouth curved faintly. “I figured.”
“I just don’t want it to be the only thing that feels true.”
“It isn’t.”
“How do you know?”
Felix tilted his head, brushing their noses together. “Because beauty doesn’t leave socks in the hallway.”
Hyunjin pulled back, offended. “That is your evidence?”
“Beauty also doesn’t cry when animated dogs are reunited with their owners.” Felix points out
“I was tired.” Hyunjin defends
“Beauty doesn’t spend forty minutes arranging flowers and then pretends it was casual.”
“I have an eye for balance.”
“Beauty doesn’t get jealous of my brownie recipe because people compliment it too much.”
Hyunjin gasped. “That is confidential.”
Felix smiled then, really smiled, and the room warmed by degrees. “I know you, Hyune. Not completely. Not perfectly. People aren’t puzzles you solve once and put away. But I know pieces of you that have nothing to do with the way you look.”
Hyunjin looked at him helplessly.
“And I want to keep knowing,” Felix added. “Even when the pieces change.”
Hyunjin’s eyes stung again, but he was too tired to be embarrassed by it. “That sounds exhausting.”
Felix caught it and squeezed his hand. “And worth it. Both can be true.”
‘Both can be true.’
Hyunjin breathed slowly, trying to make space for that.
Felix could be tired and love him.
Hyunjin could perform and still be real.
He could be beautiful and more than beauty.
He could be inconsistent and still whole enough to hold.
The mirror stood across the room, reflecting them both now. Hyunjin looked at it before he could stop himself.
This time, he saw Felix first.
Felix sitting close, hand in his, freckles soft under the bedroom light, expression serious and fond. Then he saw himself beside him. Hair messy, eyes red, Felix’s shirt slipping off one shoulder again, face bare and uneven from crying.
Not ethereal.
Not stage-ready.
Not a photograph anyone would praise.
Just a person who had cried too hard and eaten strawberries during an identity crisis. Hyunjin stared at that version for a long moment.
He didn't love him, not yet at least.
But he didn't entirely look away either.
Felix followed his gaze to the mirror. “What are you thinking?”
Hyunjin swallowed. “That I look terrible.”
Felix hummed. “A little.”
Hyunjin’s head snapped toward him.
Felix’s eyes glittered with cautious humor. “What? You said you didn’t want me to only call you beautiful.”
Hyunjin stared, then laughed so abruptly it startled them both. It came out broken and wet, but it was laughter, and Felix’s smile softened into relief.
“You’re awful,” Hyunjin said, “You’re sleeping on the couch.”
“You need me too much.”
The words landed, and Felix seemed to realize a second after saying them, his expression flickering with alarm. But Hyunjin only looked at him, waiting for the old fear to turn it sharp, but it didn’t, or maybe it tried, but he could feel Felix’s hand in his, the strawberry sweetness still on his tongue, the room messy with proof that he hadn't vanished even when he felt unreal.
“I do,” Hyunjin said quietly.
Felix’s face softened.
“I hate that,” Hyunjin added. “I really hate it.”
“I believe you.”
Hyunjin looked down at their hands again. “But I do.”
Felix kissed his knuckles once more, not as a reward, or an answer, just because he could. “I need you too.”
Hyunjin’s laugh was small and disbelieving. “For what?”
Felix leaned into him, shoulder pressing against his. “To tell me when the blue is wrong.”
“That is very important.”
“To eat seven strawberries and pretend you only wanted one.” Felix added on
“Nutritional support.”
“To steal my shirts and then have existential crises in them.” Felix smiled softly
Hyunjin groaned. “Please stop making me sound charming.”
“To make the apartment feel like someone lives here with me,” Felix said, quieter now. “Not performs here, but lives.”
That was the part that undid him more than anything. Felix’s patience was not empty softness. It had shape, and boundaries. It had truth inside it and didn't pretend Hyunjin hadn't hurt him. He didn’t pretend the spiral was romantic. He didn't say every version of Hyunjin was easy to love. He simply stayed beside him in the mess and kept pointing, gently, toward what was real.
Hyunjin rested his head on Felix’s shoulder.
“I don’t feel fixed,” he whispered.
Felix’s cheek settled against his hair. “Good.”
Hyunjin frowned. “Good?”
“If you felt fixed after one conversation, I’d be concerned.”
A tired smile tugged at Hyunjin’s mouth. “You’re getting bold.”
“I’ve been bold. You’re usually too busy being dramatic to notice.”
Hyunjin closed his eyes. “I’m sorry for the mean thing.”
“I know.”
“I’m also sorry about the clothes.”
Felix looked around. “You should be. This room looks like your closet exploded from emotional neglect.”
“I’ll clean it.”
“Tonight?” Felix questioned surprised
Hyunjin opened one eye. “Absolutely not.”
Felix nodded. “Good. I was testing you.”
They sat there until the strawberries lost their chill and the bathroom light went dim from inactivity. The mirror kept reflecting them, but eventually Hyunjin stopped checking it. Not because the question had gone away. It hadn't. Somewhere inside him, the emptiness still shifted. The mirrors were still there, angled and waiting. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next time a camera asked him to become something beautiful and hollow, he might forget this conversation entirely. He might stare at another photograph and feel himself disappear behind his own face. He might ask Felix again which version he loved, and Felix might get tired, and Hyunjin might get scared, and they would have to find their way back through the same dark with different words.
But tonight, Felix took one of the discarded sweaters from the bed and tossed it toward the laundry basket. It missed by several feet.
Hyunjin lifted his head. “That was pathetic.”
Felix looked at the sweater on the floor, then back at him. “I’m emotionally exhausted.”
“You can bake twelve dozen brownies without blinking, but you can’t make a laundry basket from three feet away?”
“I contain multitudes.”
Hyunjin stared at him.
Felix stared back, then raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Hyunjin shook his head, smiling before he could stop it. “Nothing.”
Felix narrowed his eyes. “You’re making fun of me.”
“A little.”
“Good.” Felix stood and offered him both hands. “Come eat dinner.”
Hyunjin looked at his hands, then took them.
Felix pulled him up, not dramatically, not like saving him from the floor, just helping him stand. Hyunjin’s balance shifted forward, and for a second they were chest to chest, Felix’s hands warm around his. Hyunjin looked down at him, at the familiar freckles, the gentle mouth, the eyes that had seen him ugly tonight and hadn't mistaken ugly for all he was.
“Which version am I right now?” Hyunjin asked.
Felix tilted his head, considering him. Hyunjin braced, though he didn't know for what.
Felix squeezed his hands. “Hungry.”
Hyunjin blinked, then let out a laugh. Felix grinned, pleased with himself, and pulled him toward the door. Hyunjin followed, stepping over shirts and sweaters and all the selves he had thrown onto the floor trying to find the one that would finally feel true.
In the kitchen, Felix reheated rice and scolded him for trying to survive on strawberries and crisis alone. Hyunjin sat on the counter even though Felix told him not to, and when Felix turned his back, Hyunjin stole another strawberry from the container. Felix caught him immediately and said, “That’s three,” and Hyunjin said, “I’m unstable, not unskilled,” and Felix laughed so warmly that Hyunjin felt it settle somewhere under his ribs.
A small thing, a real thing. Maybe identity was not one solid shape waiting at the center of him. Maybe it was a series of moments he could learn to recognize as his own. Strawberry juice on his fingers. Felix’s shirt on his skin. Shame in his throat. Love in the room. A mirror he didn't have to obey. A version of himself hungry enough to eat dinner after all.
Felix set a bowl in front of him and leaned against the counter between Hyunjin’s knees, close enough to be chosen, not close enough to trap.
“Hyune,” he said softly.
Hyunjin looked at him.
“You don’t have to become someone else for me to stay.” Felix reminded him.
The sentence was too big to believe all at once, so Hyunjin took it in the smallest piece he could manage. Tonight, he didn't have to become someone else tonight.
He reached for the bowl, fingers brushing Felix’s on the way, and let that be enough.