The Mess We've Made | Minsung

chapter forty

"You better be lucky I have an immune system made of fucking steel."

Minho clung to me tighter, "I'm sorry."

I looked over at him with a frown and put a hand to his face, "Baby, you're so flushed. I wish your fever would just go down already."

"My body hurts."

"Oh, honey, I know," I said to him, kissing his forehead.

"Our bed is currently a cocoon of my sickness," Minho joked, his voice weak and hoarse.

"Don't talk, it'll just make it worse."

"I want to talk to you. You're my best friend," Minho pouted at me. "Do I have to be quiet?"

"It's up to you," I chuckled.

"Okay good because I want to talk to you," Minho grinned at me. "So. Life. What's been happening?"

"You know what's going on," I chuckled.

"Okay but I don't know the little details. Give me the shit you've pushed to the back of your mind. Tell me about work, even."

"I thought we agreed not to talk about that."

"I know, I know, I'm just really starting to get curious and I don't want to be creepy."

"I got banned from participating in Trivia Night because I was straight up just murdering everyone anytime we played," I said with a laugh.

"That's my babyyyy," Minho grinned, wiggling back and forth excitedly.

"There's an upside. I'm now the metaphorical Dungeon Master, if you will," I said, laughing at myself. "I'm sorry, we just have a lot of inside jokes and I can't even explain them."

"Who all is in that group again?" Minho asked me.

"Avalon, Niyah, Kimi, Nelson, Veronica, and Dylan."

Minho gagged, "Yuck. The last name you mentioned."

I laughed, "What's wrong with it?"

"That's the name of you know who," Minho whispered.

"Ew," I shuddered, "I'm never going to be able to look at him the same."

"I got this News app notification about you giving some speech to a high school or something. What was up with that?" Minho asked me with a small smirk on his face. "I've been trying to avoid looking at stuff about you online since we had that talk a few weeks ago but when I saw the headline I died laughing, I need to know."

"So, aside from working with me in the Social Care department and helping me with my thesis, Dylan does quite a few things. One of them being that he's a high school football coach. We thought it'd be cool if I went there and gave a motivational speech to his team."

"Well, my ex definitely wasn't a high school football coach so we can cross that off the list of things we have to worry about," Minho chuckled, then coughing. "Sorry."

"He's really cool. It turns out that him and I have a lot in common so we've been hanging at his place a lot. His house became the spot or whatever after we tripped at his house," I laughed, "Avalon comes a lot too so we're not always alone. Changbin and Seungmin hang around the group too and we've established names for these friend groups too. Felix even comes around sometimes when we hang out in the group but more often than not he's hanging out with Veronica and I or Avalon and I. I think Hyunjin even came once too but that could've just been a fever dream because I was really fucked up that night."