hold me ♡ minsung

36. i almost regret it

♡

FEBRUARY 8

    "Let's watch a movie~" Felix chirped.

   Thank goodness it was Saturday again. It had been another long, emotionally exhausting week, and Minho would have been glad to lounge around and watch something for a while, to zone out and (hopefully) not think.

    This week was so weird.

   Things were like they'd never been before. Minho's mind was thrown for a loop the moment he asked Jisung for help, and ever since he'd been struggling to figure out what to do, what to think, and what to feel. He was losing his firm, desperate grip on what he considered 'right' (or more like, 'appropriate, personally-befitting behavior') because now his objective had changed from 'pretend it's all good so that no one knows you're a pathetic baby inside' to 'fix the fact that you're a pathetic baby inside', and honestly, he didn't know how to do it... how to do it his way, that is.

   The weirdest thing was that as Jisung kept springing small, inconspicuous touches on him (like he said that he would, and Minho techincally allowed, though he really wasn't okay with it) throughout the week, his reactions weren't consistent. Jisung touched him three times that week, not counting Sunday.

   Tuesday, Jisung just tapped his forearm briefly to get his attention and ask if he'd heard how many pages were assigned to read in the Bio textbook that day, because he'd evidently missed it when the professor mentioned it. Minho just found it irritating, as he always did when someone tapped him. Weren't there other ways of catching attention that weren't so disgruntling? But... still, it wasn't the usual discomfort. It was different. Why was it different?

   Because it was simplest solution to let him to put away the thought and continue with whatever more important thing he'd been trying to focus on, he just brushed off the section of his affected section of his arm, since he was used to feeling a lingering discomfort from contact like that, and the fact that it wasn't there, much like it wasn't there where Jisung touched his shoulder, was freaking him out. Minho had already been already feeling off and having trouble focusing that morning, so he had to do what he could to get it off his mind, and that meant carrying out his usual 'cleaning-off', even if it wasn't really needed.

   After that, there was one occasion where Jisung casually extended his closed hand for a fist bump upon seeing Minho. It was something that a lot of the other boys did when they felt like it without even thinking, but no one ever tried it with Minho, thank goodness. Minho really didn't want to press his fist to Jisung's but, ah, wouldn't it be worse to refuse and have to deal with Jisung's pestering him about it afterwards?

   It turned out to not be so bad. Knuckles on knuckles wasn't all that disturbing, because it hardly even felt like skin was touching, and the tiniest stinging sensation from the hit covered any of the regular discomfort. Still, it wasn't something he wanted to let Jisung make a habit of doing.

   Then, yesterday, Jisung did something similar (though this time it was at breakfast when Minho quietly remarked that he shared one of Jisung's weird food opinions)— he flashed an open palm at Minho for a high five, and again, Minho decided it was better to just let him have his way and give him a (not very enthusiastic, and fairly hesitant) hand to meet it... but when he did, Jisung closed his fingers around Minho's all of a sudden and gave their hands a solid shake, as if he were cheering. ...Minho jerked his hand away from him hurriedly, not only because others were present and able to see, but because... he kind of liked it, and as expected that set him off to have another complicated, anxious day.

   Yeah... it was a tough week, so Minho was glad to hear that everyone else was just as ready to laze about and do something mindless for a good two hours or so.